Mission

DE-0, read /de'sif'R/, audits the historical record of Africa and the former colonies against the institutions that now teach it.

The premise is that the record is shared. The descendants of the colonised and the descendants of the colonisers attend the same universities, sit the same examinations, and inherit the same museums, archives, and reading lists. A history taught in that room with one party's verdict left standing as the default is not neutral. It is the old verdict, kept.

The subject is not Europe's guilt and not any continent's merit. The subject is the standard of evidence, and the attempt is to hold one standard for every party: no charge without a named exhibit, colonial records read against themselves, oral testimony entered as oral testimony, no institution admitted as witness to its own mercy. The attempt will miss at times. Corrections are published, named and dated.

Kant taught without "Of the Different Human Races" (1775) confirms the essay. Trevor-Roper's verdict on African history, left unread, stays in force. Silence on a ranking is a vote for it.

One version, take it or leave it, produced the null and the scramble. What replaces it has to be told to everyone in the room at once, without softening and without a scoreboard. Nobody has finished writing that version. This is one attempt at it.

Skander Kacem