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This paper suggests a way of looking at postcolonial African identity as fluid, relational and always in flux. I explain this fluidity of identity by making a connection between Victor Turner's concept of liminality and Homi Bhabha's innovative formulation and application of the same idea in his text, The Location of Culture. The connection is important because, in espousing the vocabulary of liminality which gestures toward fluidity and allows particular spaces of meaning to emerge, both Turner and Bhabha are involved in what Stuart Hall calls 'thinking at or beyond the limit' (1996, 259), a thinking on the margins. I conclude the paper by arguing that it is this thinking on the margins that sheds light on African identity, especially as the continent gradually becomes part of the postmodern and globalized world.
The Journal of African Cultural Studies is an international journal providing a forum for perceptions of African culture from inside and outside Africa, with a special commitment to African scholarship. It focuses on dimensions of African culture including African literatures both oral and written, performance arts, visual arts, music, the role of the media, the relationship between culture and power, as well as issues within such fields as popular culture in Africa, sociolinguistic topics of cultural interest, and culture and gender. It has evolved from the journal African Languages and Cultures, founded in 1988 in the Department of the Languages and Cultures of Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Although the journal no longer carries articles on African languages that are primarily linguistic in character, it remains strongly interested in the languages of Africa as channels for the expression of their culture. All views expressed are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the editors.
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