African Languages, Literatures, and Postcolonial Modernity

African Languages, Literatures, and Postcolonial Modernity PDF Author: Samba Camara
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527559009
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
This book offers a fresh look into the “languages of postcolonial modernity” in Africa and, to a lesser degree, its diaspora. It foregrounds the notion of postcolonial modernity in reference to modernization as experienced in the postcolony and its contemporary legacies, and investigates how African languages and literatures, both as means of communication and as instruments of cultural agency, have embodied and mediated modernity. Each chapter grapples with the literary or linguistic dimensions of postcolonial modernity as portrayed in African novels, film, poetry or popular music or as embodied in African and Afro-diasporic languages and dialects. The chapters also reveal how literature and language, respectively, document and embody discourses, phenomena, histories, ideologies, and beliefs that resulted from the legacies of colonialism.

African Languages, Literatures, and Postcolonial Modernity

African Languages, Literatures, and Postcolonial Modernity PDF Author: Samba Camara
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527559009
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
This book offers a fresh look into the “languages of postcolonial modernity” in Africa and, to a lesser degree, its diaspora. It foregrounds the notion of postcolonial modernity in reference to modernization as experienced in the postcolony and its contemporary legacies, and investigates how African languages and literatures, both as means of communication and as instruments of cultural agency, have embodied and mediated modernity. Each chapter grapples with the literary or linguistic dimensions of postcolonial modernity as portrayed in African novels, film, poetry or popular music or as embodied in African and Afro-diasporic languages and dialects. The chapters also reveal how literature and language, respectively, document and embody discourses, phenomena, histories, ideologies, and beliefs that resulted from the legacies of colonialism.

Postmodernism, Postcoloniality, and African Studies

Postmodernism, Postcoloniality, and African Studies PDF Author: Zine Magubane
Publisher: Africa Research and Publications
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
When Kwame Appiah asked the question whether ?post? in ?postcolonial? was the ?post? in ?postmodern,? he challenged the theoretical tenets of both postmodernism and postcolonial studies and opened up a space for a dialogue, which unfortunately, only a handful of scholars have continued. This volume represents an attempt by Africanist scholars to intervene and change the course of current debates, which are being carried out with little or no thought to their applicability or relevance to African studies. The purpose of this study is not merely to present an ?African? version of postcolonial studies or postmodernism or to ?Africanize? their content and theory. Rather, it aims to re-situate these concepts and debates, which are at risk of being colonized by American and European academic provincialism. This collection considers perspectives from West, South, and East Africa as well as the Caribbean. It approaches current debates from the disciplinary perspectives of anthropology, history, linguistics, literature, philosophy, and sociology while dealing with a diverse range of issues including gender, race, ethnicity, and identity.Contributors to this volume include Grant Farred, Olakunle George, Zine Magubane, Alamin Mazrui, Amina Mire, Adlai Murdoch, Tejumola Olaniyan, Joseph Reilly, and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza.

Africa after Modernism

Africa after Modernism PDF Author: Michael Janis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135201447
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Africa after Modernism traces shifts in perspectives on African culture, arts, and philosophy from the conflict with European modernist interventions in the climate of colonialist aggression to present identitarian positions in the climate of globalism, multiculturalism, and mass media. By focusing on what may be called deconstructive moments in twentieth-century Africanist thought – on intellectual landmarks, revolutionary ideas, crises of consciousness, literary and philosophical debates – this study looks at African modernity and modernism from critical postcolonial perspectives. An effort to sketch contemporary frameworks of global intersubjective relations reflecting African cultures and concerns must resist taking modernism as a term of African periodization, or master-narrative, but as a constellation of discursive and subjective forms that obtains upon the present moment in African literature, philosophy, and cultural history. Africa after Modernism argues for a philosophical consciousness and pan-African multiculturalist ethos that operate, after the deconstruction of Eurocentrism, beyond self/other paradigms of exoticism or West/Africa political ideologies, in dialogue with postcolonial approaches to cultural reciprocity.

Relocating Agency

Relocating Agency PDF Author: Olakunle George
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791487768
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
A postmodernist metacritical look at theories of African literature.

The Francophone African Text

The Francophone African Text PDF Author: Kwaku Addae Gyasi
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820478302
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
Focusing on the African writer and the language of the former colonial power, The Francophone African Text: Translation and the Postcolonial Experience highlights the writer's re-appropriation of the foreign language in the creative writing process. It calls attention to the African writer's use of French, a process of creative translation in which the writer's words form a hybrid code that compels the original French to refer to the indigenous African language for meaning. Examining a group of works under the theme of translation, this book reveals that a consideration of both ideological and linguistic elements enhances understanding of the subject from the broader perspective of postcolonial discourse.

African Languages and Literatures in the 21st Century

African Languages and Literatures in the 21st Century PDF Author: Esther Mukewa Lisanza
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030234797
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
This edited book examines the crucial role still played by African languages in pedagogy and literatures in the 21st century, generating insights into how they effectively serve cultural needs across the African continent and beyond. Boldly positioning African languages as key resources in the 21st century, chapters focus on themes such as language revolt by marginalized groups at grassroots level, the experience of American students learning African languages, female empowerment through the use of African languages in music, film and literary works, and immigration issues. The contributions are written by scholars of language, literature, education and linguistics, and the book will be of interest to students and scholars in these and related areas.

A Companion to African Literatures

A Companion to African Literatures PDF Author: Olakunle George
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119058171
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
Rediscover the diversity of modern African literatures with this authoritative resource edited by a leader in the field How have African literatures unfolded in their rich diversity in our modern era of decolonization, nationalisms, and extensive transnational movement of peoples? How have African writers engaged urgent questions regarding race, nation, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? And how do African literary genres interrelate with traditional oral forms or audio-visual and digital media? A Companion to African Literatures addresses these issues and many more. Consisting of essays by distinguished scholars and emerging leaders in the field, this book offers rigorous, deeply engaging discussions of African literatures on the continent and in diaspora. It covers the four main geographical regions (East and Central Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa), presenting ample material to learn from and think with. A Companion To African Literatures is divided into five parts. The first four cover different regions of the continent, while the fifth part considers conceptual issues and newer directions of inquiry. Chapters focus on literatures in European languages officially used in Africa -- English, French, and Portuguese -- as well as homegrown African languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Swahili, and Yoruba. With its lineup of lucid and authoritative analyses, readers will find in A Companion to African Literatures a distinctive, rewarding academic resource. Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students in literary studies programs with an African focus, A Companion to African Literatures will also earn a place in the libraries of teachers, researchers, and professors who wish to strengthen their background in the study of African literatures.

Rewriting Modernity

Rewriting Modernity PDF Author: David Attwell
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821417118
Category : Apartheid in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History connects the black literary archive in South Africa to international postcolonial studies via the theory of transculturation, a position adapted from the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz.

The Tongue-Tied Imagination

The Tongue-Tied Imagination PDF Author: Tobias Warner
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823284301
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Should a writer work in a former colonial language or in a vernacular? The language question was one of the great, intractable problems that haunted postcolonial literatures in the twentieth century, but it has since acquired a reputation as a dead end for narrow nationalism. This book returns to the language question from a fresh perspective. Instead of asking whether language matters, The Tongue-Tied Imagination explores how the language question itself came to matter. Focusing on the case of Senegal, Warner investigates the intersection of French and Wolof. Drawing on extensive archival research and an under-studied corpus of novels, poetry, and films in both languages, as well as educational projects and popular periodicals, the book traces the emergence of a politics of language from colonization through independence to the era of neoliberal development. Warner reads the francophone works of well-known authors such as Léopold Senghor, Ousmane Sembène, Mariama Bâ, and Boubacar Boris Diop alongside the more overlooked Wolof-language works with which they are in dialogue. Refusing to see the turn to vernacular languages only as a form of nativism, The Tongue-Tied Imagination argues that the language question opens up a fundamental struggle over the nature and limits of literature itself. Warner reveals how language debates tend to pull in two directions: first, they weave vernacular traditions into the normative patterns of world literature; but second, they create space to imagine how literary culture might be configured otherwise. Drawing on these insights, Warner brilliantly rethinks the terms of world literature and charts a renewed practice of literary comparison.

Academic Discourses on African Postcolonial Literature in the Past 20 Years

Academic Discourses on African Postcolonial Literature in the Past 20 Years PDF Author: Anna Poppen
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656718776
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 25

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Book Description
Project Report from the year 2012 in the subject Literature - Africa, grade: 1,0, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, language: English, abstract: The academic discourse on African postcolonial literature is characterized by a continuous process of debates on a variety of issues, reassessments of theories and redefinitions of terms. The term African postcolonial literature refers to writings produced after the political independence of various African states which were formerly subject to European colonial rule. Most of this literature written by African authors in their home countries or in diaspora deals with issues of colonial experience or decolonization. However, as Graham Huggan points out, the term African literature is a problematic concept, because “it conveys a fiction of homogeneity” and ignores the cultural variety existing on the African continent. Gikandi explains that the foundations of modern African literature have been laid by the process of colonization, e.g through education in Christian schools which have enabled today’s forms of literature. Gikandi emphasizes the irony of this fact: “[W]hile the majority of African writers were the products of colonial institutions, they turned to writing to oppose colonialism.” This leads to various problems when dealing with African writings, especially when applying the viewpoint of postcolonial criticism, which has been trying to theorize African writings since the 1980s. As Huggan points out, postcolonial criticism has been criticized “as subscribing to the very binaries (e.g. ‘Europe and its Others’) it seeks to resist.” This paper contains an annotated bibliography which considers various issues regarding African postcolonial literature that have been discussed in the past 20 years. Here, the term African postcolonial literature is understood in a temporal way (referring to the postcolonial era in Africa) and in an academic way (referring to the postcolonial discourse). The articles, collections of essays and monographs listed in the bibliography only provide glimpses at the extensive and elaborate discourses on African postcolonial writings. However, the entries in the bibliography have been categorized in order to cast a light on the main issues and problems discussed in this field. In the following, introductory works and texts dealing with the two main genres of African literature will be presented first. Works referring to postcolonial theory and consequential problems and debates (e.g. on language) take the major part of the bibliography.