Researching Dark Voices Within the Veil of the Academy

Adamu, Muhammad (2023) Researching Dark Voices Within the Veil of the Academy. In: Torn Many Ways :. Human–Computer Interaction Series (HCIS) . Springer, pp. 153-168. ISBN 9783031316418

Abstract

I grew up in the predominantly Islamic-oriented Northern part of Nigeria where the culture of the Islamic religion influenced everyday interaction in our communities. I attended an all-boys boarding secondary school where before dawn we learn to recite (and memorize) the Qur’an, enrol in the usual science subjects during the day, and then end the day by studying Islamic scriptures (the Holy Qur’an, the Hadith, and other scholarly texts). The orientation I learned from childhood was not to be an ‘African’, but rather a Black English-like gentlemen. My chapter concentrates on the use of language rather than the analysis of structures because being ‘black’ in the academy is, above all, about language and power, about trying to find a voice. We can, I believe, provide an alternative mode of expression, one where the reader is encouraged to become more aware of the implicit danger of reading and writing in a colonizing language, one where the reader might be charged with questioning the knowledge production process of writing in HCI. Who decides what form critique should take, what rhetorics are acceptable, and why the experiences, beliefs, traditions, emotions, and feelings of someone who has actually been through it can be ignored? Why is the ‘subjective’ so discounted?