The objective of this paper is to analyze and criticize the different endeavors to build and display African identity, basically starting with a chauvinist discussion on one hand, and an instrumental one on the other, on Africa and its people. Based on a critical interpretation of the various essential points made regarding a supposed consensual world Pan-African survey, the author warns against the perils originating from a thoughtless search of an African alterity without duly acknowledging African cultural, political and geographical specifics. Both the economicism and the metaphysics of the difference are historicisms seen by the author as doomed to fail, considering the plurality of signs and contexts on which African self-registration and self-affirmation were based throughout the 20th century.
self-registration; self-affirmation; self; autonomy; imaginary; African collective imaginary; African politics