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Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Chinua Achebe And The Post-Colonial Esthetic: Writing, Identity, And National Formation, Simon Gikandi
Chinua Achebe And The Post-Colonial Esthetic: Writing, Identity, And National Formation, Simon Gikandi
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Chinua Achebe is recognized as one of Africa's most important and influential writers, and his novels have focused on the ways in which the European tradition of the novel and African modes of expression relate to each other in both complementary and contesting ways. Achebe's novels are informed by an important theory of writing which tries to mediate the politics of the novel as a form of commentary on the emergence and transformation of nationalism which constitutes the African writer's epistemological context. Achebe's esthetic has been overdetermined by the changing discourse on representation and national identity in colonial and post-colonial …
Reflections On Linguistic And Literary Colonization And Decolonization In Africa, Eric Sellin
Reflections On Linguistic And Literary Colonization And Decolonization In Africa, Eric Sellin
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Despite the cultural diversity found in Africa and the complexity ofthe psychology of the colonizer and the colonized, several fundamental facts emerge regarding the function of language and literature in recent African history. The colonizer sought to instill a sense of inferiority in the colonized as part of the dynamics of conquest, placing special emphasis on education and language. These notions, lucidly discussed by such social thinkers as O. Mannoni, Frantz Fanon, and Albert Memmi, have analogues in the defense of language everywhere where lingua-political oppression occurs, be it in colonial Africa or on an Arapaho reservation in the American …
Autobiographical Authority And The Politics Of Narrative, Renée Larrier
Autobiographical Authority And The Politics Of Narrative, Renée Larrier
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Autobiographical narratives, which include autobiography, autobiographical novel, memoir, and chronicle, constitute a major genre in African francophone literature. Informed by history, they do not celebrate personal accomplishment, but rather accentuate the group experience. These self-stories rely on realistic representation in order to document events for future generations and function to correct stereotypical misconceptions—therein lies their political consciousness.
Writing Double: Politics And The African Narrative Of French Expression, John D. Erickson
Writing Double: Politics And The African Narrative Of French Expression, John D. Erickson
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This essay studies two African narratives of French expression (Le Temps de Tamango of Boubacar Diop and L'Enfant de sable of Tahar ben Jelloun) to see how they create a discourse of difference that challenges and deconstructs the conventions of the discursive system of French, its signifying practices, and its ideological underpinnings. The tactics of these narratives, which mark them as post-colonial in a strict sense (as opposed to neo-colonial), are productive of a radical other-meaning, a new meaning that "speaks" to the concerns of and problems confronting the non-Western writer.
Oligarchy And Orature In The Novels Of Nuruddin Farah, Derek Wright
Oligarchy And Orature In The Novels Of Nuruddin Farah, Derek Wright
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
In Farah's fiction Somali oral traditions are shown to possess a resilient strength and even a revolutionary vitality. Yet they are not envisaged polemically, as unsullied alternatives and sources of counter-discourse to post-colonial realities: rather, they are shown to be implicated in their evils and corruptions. Faced with a mode of reality built on oral discourse, where the written word is ruthlessly suppressed, written texts either retreat into secret cipher or are themselves infiltrated by the vaporous oral reality of public life and take on selected elements of oral literary conventions: notably, their fluid indeterminacy of meaning and interpretative openness, …
The Political Alienation Of The Intellectual In Recent Zairian Fiction, Janice Spleth
The Political Alienation Of The Intellectual In Recent Zairian Fiction, Janice Spleth
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
A high proportion of recent Zairian fiction features intellectuals—educators, priests, students, and professionals—as major characters who are in some way alienated from society. This study documents the extent of this occurrence in novels by Mbwil a Mpang Ngal, V. Y. Mudimbe, Bolya Baenga, and Pius Ngandu Nkashama and, at the same time, relates the situation of the intellectual as seen in these works to some of the social and political factors peculiar to Zaire's colonial history and post-independence evolution. Analyses of individual novels provide the basis for a discussion of Belgian colonial policies regarding the évolué, the ambiguous role …
The Politics Of Exile: Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy, Gay Wilentz
The Politics Of Exile: Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy, Gay Wilentz
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy or Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint is a relentless attack on the notions of exile as relief from the societal constraints of national development and freedom to live in a cultural environment conducive to creativity. In this personalized prose/poem, Aidoo questions certain prescribed theories of exile (including the reasons for exile)—particularly among African men. The novel exposes a rarely heard viewpoint in literature in English—that of the African woman exile. Aidoo's protagonist Sissie, as the "eye" of her people, is a sojourner in the "civilized" world of the colonizers. In this article, I examine …
Agostinho Neto: Pure Poetic Discourse And Mobilization Rhetoric, Janis L. Pallister
Agostinho Neto: Pure Poetic Discourse And Mobilization Rhetoric, Janis L. Pallister
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Neto's importance in relationship to the modern genre we will call militant or guerilla poetry and his considerable poetic gifts as well call for a mainstreaming of his literary contributions. "Protest poetry" might more aptly describe his oeuvre; the term is certainly a somewhat better representation of his content than "guerilla poetry" or "poetry of combat." But whatever word is used to sum up that content, in the article on Neto one sees contextually how this talented poet fuses his ideologies with his structures, and intertextually how he avoids the diatribes, the invective and the stereotypically strident rhetoric of most …
Nadine Gordimer: The White Artist As A Sport Of Nature, Barbara Temple-Thurston
Nadine Gordimer: The White Artist As A Sport Of Nature, Barbara Temple-Thurston
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This article applies principles of new historicism to show that A Sport of Nature can be read as Gordimer's attempt to persuade South African artists to reject mere protest art and to shift art beyond the trap of oppositional forces in South Africa's history today. The text calls instead—via fiction and the imagination—for a new post-apartheid art that will generate creative possibilities for a future South Africa. Gordimer's protagonist, Hillela Capran, is read as a metaphor for the white South African artist who, like Hillela, struggles for an authentic identity and meaningful role in the evolving history of South Africa. …
`Boy!': The Hinge Of Colonial Double Talk, Anne M. Menke
`Boy!': The Hinge Of Colonial Double Talk, Anne M. Menke
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The French colonial enterprise in Africa enforced racial segregation, yet encouraged Africans to assimilate the French language, culture, and religion. The essay questions these contradictory policies through readings of Ferdinand Oyono's novels. It argues that a figure that embodies undecidability—the colonial servant known as the "boy"—is the locus of the denaturalization of the identities that were simultaneously institutionalized and denied by the Manichaean colonial world.