Today, African lives, cultures, and politics remain significantly affected by precolonial and postcolonial configurations of modernity, as well as hegemonic global systems. This project explores Africa's conversation with itself and the rest of the world in terms of the contest between these institutions and a pristine 'nature.' The African continent jostles between these polarities in a turbulent and unpredictable manner as wars, genocide, famine, and other hardships punctuate its history and its struggles to develop. At the same time, this unpredictability is also a manifestation of hope, vigor and dynamism. This dynamic reveals often arresting insights into what humankind has been, what it is presently, and what it could be. In this sense, Africa manifests a sense of life that perpetually strives to escape modern institutions, even if it unavoidably must engage with those institutions.