African Literatures

These poems, composed in Somali and in English, provide a poetic reflection of the recently emerged debate on the theme of Caddaan Studies which means "White Studies". The criticism and counter-criticism contained in the debate dug so deep into life nerve of Somali Studies that over a thousand people participated. The poems, under the title "Inaugurating Caddaan Studies" were composed with a critical observation of the debate.

This essay makes a case for the categories of littoral literature and coastal form through which it aims to take up the expansive possibilities of the maritime turn while keeping both the materiality of the ocean and the locality of the shore in sight. It elaborates the notion of coastal form through a focus on the African Indian Ocean littoral and with reference to the oeuvres of Mia Couto and Abdulrazak Gurnah. Both are shown to muddle the inside-outside binary that delineates nations and continents, and which has been particularly stark in framing Africa in both imperial and nativist thought. At the same time, coastal form is found to decenter, extend and thicken constructions of world literature, while opening to a planetary perspective sensible to the prodigious and implacable forces of the Anthropocene.

... [4] The fedra are stories of origins of the formation of the world, men, women, death, human ... not signal the end but is followed by a new improvement which gives the narration the charm ... result from the insertion of episodes and sequences into the middle of a narrative and from ...

The paper discusses ways in which the song form known as isicathamiya mediates
subjectivity on a national and transnational scale in the new post-1994
era, known by isiZulu speakers as uhlel' olusha. Singers are constantly testing
the limits of the genre, both through the choice of subject matter for songs
and in their performance style. They take it in new directions and through
the "embodied knowledge" they display, they engage in emergent and established discourses on the nature of contemporary South African, and Zulu identity. Singers align themselves and their audiences to the global through commentary in song on events such as 9/11 and this itself becomes a shifting topic of choral conversation through time, reflecting, among other items, changing responses to America and to "Bin Laden." The paper also explores the different publics with which performers interact and argues that a group such as the famous Ladysmith Black Mambazo, which now performs mainly on global circuits, has to limit its discourse accordingly; it cannot engage with urgent and topical events that inform social consciousness within South Africa
as freely as groups more closely in touch with their local constituencies. The
paper also sketches the history of the genre and sets the overall discussion
within a paradigm of popular culture and the political; it draws on work by
Catherine Cole, Johannes Fabian, Veit Erlmann, and Louise Meintjes.

Le Destin Glorieux Du Maréchal Nnikon Nniku and Kongi’s Harvest by Tchicaya U Tamsi and Wole Soyinka dramatize the inner workings of autocracies. President Nniku of the republic of Mutulufwa and Kongi of Ismaland are ruthless dictators that will stop at nothing to secure their respective power. This article intends then to scrutinize the different ways and means used by these autocrats to hold their fellow countrymen hostage and deny them the right to live and prosper in a nation they can call their own. It also tries to shed light, not only on the survival strategies used by the victims, but also on the aesthetic tools that both playwrights resort to to ridicule such regimes.

ABSTRACT:This essay positions Egyptian physician, novelist, and activist Nawal El Saadawi's understudied novel God Dies by the Nile within a broader framework of Egyptian revolutionary movements. It analyzes representations of the peasantry—which, historically, symbolize Egyptian nationalism—and argues that British and American (neo)colonial intervention in Egyptian policies has legitimized patriarchal violence while disrupting the subaltern family unit through the misuse of religious rites; as a result, women, especially, become victims of sexual exploitation and forced labor. By focusing on the heroine's political awakening through her participation in a Zar ritual, a folklore exorcist practice, the paper highlights the importance of the ritual's failure in subverting the matrimony between Islam, patriarchy, and capitalism. The novel thus overturns preexisting beliefs concerning peasant oppression and foregrounds the significance of non-linguistic modes of political awakening, class-consciousness, concerted collective action, and, ultimately, national revolt.

This essay examines an instance of the use of folklore by writers in postcolonial African societies to problematize postcolonial systems in fiction. The essay discusses how Benjamin Kwakye exploits the trickster character as a semiotic figure to construe the themes of survival and social and economic insecurity in The Clothes of Nakedness. The features of the trickster deployed include the spider imagery and his webbing across geographical margins, the use of trickery and manipulation as survival and power-building strategies, and the role of the trickster as a “hero-scamp” and villain. Towards the end of the narrative, the trickster is removed from focalization, and villainous events he engineers are construed as happening in spite of him. He remerges at the end as the ubiquitous spider in whom all mysteries make sense. These strategies are related to postcolonial issues of corruption, socioeconomic marginalization, and international aid.

This book gives a comprehensive account on literature landscape of Ethiopia in a period from 1850's through to 1960's. It tries to infer the dynamics of the fabrics of Ethiopian society with biographic sketches of giant Ethiopian writers and their literary works. The book is organized into two parts. In the first part, the history of Ethiopian literature in general and that of Amharic literature in particular is depicted, the reference period being from 1850's to 1960's. To that end, broad elements of literature - fiction and non-fiction - were reviewed, with focus on novel & novella, drama & plays, journalism & journalistic works. In the second part, the short biography of 30 Ethiopian literary giants depicted. The book reflects how the political, socio-economic and socio-cultural dynamics in Ethiopia shaped and/or shaped by literary works & life of Ethiopian writers.

‘I am talking about a book which parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past and continues to do so in many ways and many places today.’

-Achebe, On Heart of Darkness, in an interview for The Paris Review

Oral literature is an aspect of literature preserved not in written form but in oral form. It is highly valued in Africa in general and in Igbo in particular mainly because of its didactic nature. To some people, Oral literature is only but a mirage because what is not written down cannot in any way, be regarded as literature. The researcher sees this as an illusion and thus, in this paper, he makes it vivid that anything written down was first conceived and probably rendered orally. He sees oral literature as an indispensable aspect of literature. In this paper, he has chronicled various forms of oral literature, stating their areas of overlap and their differences as well as their various needs and uses.

O teatro em Angola, como experiência de produção literária e artística, forneceu um projeto estético de arte engajada que culminou em representação de contextos revolucionários, nutridos pelos processos de formação da identidade nacional. Esta dissertação tem o objetivo de analisar a dramaturgia política angolana, a partir da peça teatral A Revolta da Casa dos Ídolos (1978), de Pepetela, a fim de demonstrar a força de poéticas teatrais políticas produzidas em Angola, no período da descolonização portuguesa. Nessa direção, esta investigação, que se pauta no estudo de uma exemplaridade da dramaturgia angolana pós-colonial, cujo impacto sociocultural indica a militância do autor nas questões políticas do país. Como base teórica para sustentar nossa perspectiva analítica foram utilizados os trabalhos de Erwin Piscator e Bertold Brecht para a caracterização do teatro político moderno e Edward Said e Frantz Fanon para a discussão sobre as abordagens políticas dos estudos pós-coloniais que puderam colaborar para a defesa da peça A Revolta da Casa dos Ídolos como um drama político, ultrapassando as denominações comuns ao teatro histórico.

My Lectures and Tutorials - https://youtu.be/v1jzJqMDR8M

Published in the collection Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism in 1991, Rushdie’s essay asseverates the central argument - that labeling a diverse and complex corpus of literature from the different corners of the world under the “new and badly made umbrella” of ‘Commonwealth literature’ does a great disservice to the individuality and intricacies of these works by a falsely simplistic and make-believe title. It leads academics, institutions, and critics to dismiss it as non-serious and peripheral literature that has no association with the great English tradition.

Building on this, Rushdie offers brutal and searing criticism of the social and political impacts of this “ghettoization” of literature and questions the very foundation of the inception of such a “racist” classification of literature.

Oral literature is the vast field of knowledge through which cultural information and messages are transmitted verbally from one generation to another. It is the complex corpus of verbal arts created as a means of recalling the past. One major feature of oral literature, which relates to the nature of performance, is the involvement of the community in the creative process as well as in the criticism. Every performance is for and about the audience. Oral literature is steadily attracting scholarly attention in the post-colonial African context, which is more and more becoming saturated by the mass-media outlets. The researcher, therefore, intends to highlight the interface of orature, multimedia, ICT and globalization as well as the effect of mass media on oral literature, particularly in Africa through the lens of Post-Colonialism.

Este artigo se propõe a discutir aspectos da oralidade e sua influência na poética do escritor moçambicano Mia Couto.

This article proposes to discuss aspects of orality and its influence on the poetics of the Mozambican writer Mia Couto.

ABSTRACT
The importance of contemporary Nigerian poetry in English does not lie merely in its consideration as a point of historical construct within the conceptual framework of modern Nigerian poetry, rather, it must be construed more significantly vital as a social credo of poetic engagement, set apart, for instance, from the self-reflexive indulgent attitude of the earliest Nigerian poetry of modern era. Consequently, this paper aims at examining and determining through systematic outlay, firstly, if the expressive character of poetry purely must be a verbal act with strictly aesthetic function or, a functional statement of a social act. From that foothold, this paper proceeds to specifically examine by theoretical application, the Nigerian poetic instance in order to establish a possible conceptual framework for the poetry written by contemporary Nigerian poets.

Although scholars of Somali Studies have engaged themselves in examining the Somali society from several perspectives, colonial and early Somali writers mainly observed the Somali people as homogenous, egalitarian and nomadic pastoral. Themes on multi-ethnicity, multiculturalism, and linguistic diversity were ignored as topics that sully the myth of the selfsame ideology colorfully embroidered in the official historiography. The notion also deluded pioneering Somali scholars from critically studying their people and analyzing colonial writing; at least not beyond the western scholars' knowledge boundary. Accordingly, the Horn of Africa was exemplified as a unique African nation where citizens enjoy equality and share an all-in-one identity: culturally, ethnically, historically, and linguistically. Contrary to that notion, though, the everyday social situation makes the primordial ideology of selfsameness unsustainable. To establish the evidence, this essay discusses about how the Bantu Jareer agrarian community, a section among the different groups of subalterns in the country, views its environment and social space within the boundary of deeply offensive segregation by an extremely suppressive Somali society.

The main purpose of the paper is to analyze the role that proverbs play as signposts for the introduction and embedding of biblical intertextual elements in some Shona literary texts. It does this by closely reading Patrick Chakaipa's 1961 novel Pfumo Reropa. The paper notes that while proverbs are oral texts that serve as behavioral and moral conductors in diverse cultures, they are transferred to the written realm as part of the creative and literary act. The poetic nature of proverbs makes them attractive to most narrators who use them to entrench their main themes. This paper also proposes to read them in their function of interconnecting among others biblical literary texts by Chakaipa as these intertextual linkages can either appear by explicit reference to an earlier text usually known to the reader; or, implicitly, in the form of faint echoes of biblical texts, themes, motifs, traditions or events. Hence, the proverbs in Chakaipa's novel resonate with biblical allusions and echoes, something he does to subtly preach Christianity.

... Like novels by Nwapa, Emecheta, Bâ, and others, Adichie's novels represent a politics of the family while quietly but clearly telling stories of the nation; this is especially the case with her first novel, Purple Hibiscus. ... Print. ———. Purple Hibiscus. New York: Anchor, 2003. Print. ...

Calixthe Beyala, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie et Chika Unigwe dressent une scène où elles font jouer des acteurs et des actrices dont les rôles et les fonctions épousent bien ce qu’il conviendrait d’appeler le palindrome : « immigration du sexe et sexe de l’immigration ». Qu’elle soit volontaire ou non, la sexualité des différents protagonistes constitue la pierre angulaire de l’architecture des romans étudiés ici.  Ce papier entend souligner les différentes contributions de ces personnages à cet échafaudage narratif. Il tente non seulement de regarder les opportunités et les pièges qui accompagnent ce « sexe diasporique » mais aussi ce qu’il traduit en termes de positionnement politique ou apolitique des autrices.

This is a comparison between the theme of traditional Initiation in African Orature and the major theme in 1980s Black Township Literature: the Soweto Student Uprising.

This dissertation hypothesizes that much of the traditional war and honor ethos that existed in African communities before white oppression still played an important role in the minds of many freedom activists. One can interpret much of black fiction dealing with the 1976 student uprising in Soweto as allegorical enactments of the ritual passage of youngsters into adulthood.

The second part of this dissertation explains how the hypothesis that the ancient initiation and community purification ethos is the key to a “correct” interpretation of the novels breaks down when comparing the final chapters to the opening ones. Although it would appear that many black writers considered the ancient collectivist ethos a sine qua non for the success of the socialist revolution in a capitalist society, this interpretation becomes increasingly ambiguous towards the ends of the novels. The clash between the rebel socialist propaganda and the tendency of the protagonists to become increasingly withdrawn into privacy and isolated suffering remains unresolved until the end.This ambiguity reflects the reality of a changing South African society and the clash between the traditional collectivist ethos in male dominated communities and a society geared to increased individualism due to industrialization, economic progress, consumerism, urbanization and the shift to more balanced gender relationships.

This research is motivated by the dearth of research on the directions that twenty-first century Nigerian poetry has taken in over two decades of its existence. Its interest is in the revolutionary dimension that some of the poems have taken. It does not argue, however, that the preoccupation with revolutionary sentiments is peculiarly novel as regards Nigerian poetry. What it argues is that the revolutionary tradition which was birthed in the twentieth century Nigerian literature in response to colonialism has garnered a greater vim in the twenty-first century despite the socalled 'democratic' climate. Chosen for this task are selected poems from Fidelis Okoro and Odia Ofeimun, all of which were published in the twenty-first Century. Through the tools borrowed from Marxism, the research not only shows that the works are revolutionary but also the ways in which they are so. The dominant mode of reading in this research is the Althusserian symptomatic reading, but the Gramscian concept of hegemony and Some other relevant Marxist concepts will also come in handy. There is, in this work, the treatment of Odia Ofeimun'sGo Tell the Generals in terms of the perception of revolution as a Continuing process, through the evoking of what Ofeimun calls 'memories of unfinished Struggles'. Finally, in Okoro's Pimples and Dimples, a dissection of religious ideology and hegemony is undertaken. In all the cases, the aim is the depiction of the revolutionary, that is, the ways in which the texts have subverted ideological inhibitions to press for change in the order of things.

This essay seeks to demonstrate the interplay between gender and (oral and written) narrative spaces, and the relationship between those spaces and the shifting roles of men and women in the production of literatures in Hausa culture. The term Hausa is used to refer broadly ...

This article focuses on the religious information inside Ghanaian and Nigerian video movies regarding Akan and Yoruba women. More specifically, it focuses on the indigenous religious, Christian, and Islamic messages inside these movies in relation to women. The article demonstrates that Akan and Yoruba filmmakers, who dominate the Ghanaian and Nigerian video movie industries, are part of networks of religious institutions, predominantly Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian and modest Islamic ones. These organizations sponsor filmmakers to spread religious messages that promote hierarchical gender relations and the suppression of equal rights for women, e.g., economic independence. By providing an overview of Akan and Yoruba belief systems, in respect of indigenous, Christian, and Islamic gender-related positional concepts and ideological communication on what is appropriate behavior for women, the author will show and support the hypothesis that these movies contribute to women’s demonization and (economic) discrimination.

Studies on gender discourse have mainly focused on patriarchal tendencies pervasive in most societies. Literary scholarship has focused on the concept of male dominance buttressed by cultural ideologies inimical to the female gender. One of the distinctive aspects of Wole Soyinka's dramaturgy is his ingenious adaptation of Shakespearean and Euripidian drama. This paper explores Wole Soyinka's reconfiguration of gender in his adaptation of Euripides' The Bacchae in his The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite. Despite the two plays being separated by more than two millenniums, the article shows how Wole Soyinka's transposition of the Euripidian play speaks to African traditional and contemporary realities. Reading the plays from the standpoint of Greek and African notions of spirituality, the paper highlights the multifaceted portrayals of women in the plays and shows how aspects of spirituality may engender marginalisation and also empower female characters to contest patriarchal structures.