Crossing Borders in African Literatures

Don Juan

Description

Crossing Borders showcases intellectual attempts to commit the process of African interrogation of postcoloniality and postmodernity to the exploration of perspectives on black identities and interactions of contemporary cultural expressions beyond the borders of Africa and across the Atlantic. We have particularised on theoretical and critical perspectives that show how the controversial influence of westernisation of Africa has demanded remedial visions and counteractive propositions to the cycle of abuses and fragmentation of the continent. We have consequently distilled some very significant historic and informative insights on modern African and black literary traditions methodically espoused to articulate the greater unity in the diversities, fusions and hybrids that have been embedded in the external and subjective realities of our universe.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism

Informations

• Publié par: Handel Books
• Date de parution: 04 septembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789783703674
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

         

   

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CROSSING BORDERS  in African Literature Smith and Ce (Ed.) ©African Library of Critical Writing Print Edition ISBN:9789783703605 All rights reserved, which include the rights of reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form by any means whether electronic or recording except as provided by International copyright law. For information address: Progeny (Press) International Attn: African Books Network 9 Handel Str. AI EBS Nigeria WA Email:[e-mail] Marketing and Distribution in the US, UK, Europe, N. America (Canada), and Commonwealth countries by African Books Collective Ltd. PO Box 721 Oxford OX1 9EN United Kingdom Email: [e-mail]

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Global Flows

Chapter 2

African Spaces, European Places

Chapter 3

African and AmerIndian Epistemologies

Chapter 4

The Ancestral Diaspora

Chapter 5

Modernity and African Identity

Chapter 6

Remaking the African Myth

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11

13

13

29

29

50

50

65

65

82

82

101

101

Chapter 7

Culture in Fictional Contexts

Chapter 8

Otherness in the African Novel

Chapter 9

Nationalism in the African-dictator Novel

Notes and Bibliography

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117

117

137

137

154

154

173

Introduction AN allexpansive heritage within and beyond regional or national groupings is built upon the framework o f twentieth century black cultural nationalism as a consistent element of Africacentred modernity whic h has seen modern African artists direct their investigation of black humanity toward the restoration and repair of past and the consequences of colonialism and westernisation. Against the consequent corruption a nd devaluation of tradition by imperial cultures, ‘Cro ssing Borders’ showcases intellectual attempts to commit the process of African interrogation of postcoloniality and postmodernity to the exploration of perspectives on black identities and the interaction of contemporary cult ural expressions beyond the borders of Africa and across the Atlantic. We have particularised on theoretical and critical perspectives that reveal how the continued and controversial influence of westernisation of Africa occasions a discontinuity in forms of life throughout the continent and now demands remedial visions and counteractive propositions to the cycle of abuses a nd fragmentation of the continent. Our studies of emerging and older works of African artists reveal how the African

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experience of modernity associated with the western paradigm is fraught with corruption and tensions at various political, social, economic and psychologic al levels of individual, communal and national existence. The scholars in this volume have distilled some very significant historic and informative insights on mo dern African and black literary traditions. Through thei r research efforts, a new black consciousness is agai n being methodically espoused to articulate the great er unity and higher prospects in the diversities, fusions and hybridism that are embedded in the external and subjective realities of the universe. Here then are truly original perspectives on the art and writings of Af rica which deign to interpret past histories, revaluate the present and adumbrate possibilities of Africa’s cultural endowment to human development.   

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Chapter 1 Global Flows

AG Roy THE global flows of Hindi popular cinema, christened Bollywood by the global media, have largely been located within the cultures of circulation that dom inate the contemporary global process. Bollywood is situated in a transnational network of production, distribution and consumption in the globalized economy in which loca l cultures, repackaged and redirected in metropolitan hubs, are made available for the consumption of the globa l consumer. While this might be true of certain kinds of films produced in the present phase of Hindi cinema tic history that may be defined as Bollywood, it does n ot account for more ‘local’ films in Hindi with a significant viewership within India and in Indian diasporas in the present or the past. This narrative of Bollywood’s contemporary global flows to white audience in Europe, North America, Canada and Australia occludes pre global travels of Hindi popular cinema to the Middl e East, Russia, China, Southeast Asia and Africa since the 1950s and those to Indian indentured populations in Fiji, West Indies and Mauritius even earlier. Studies by Manas

Ray and Vijay Mishra on the popularity of Hindi cinema in Fiji, and by Vijay Devadas in Malaysia, have uncovered an older history of Bollywood’s exhibition in Indian diasporic settlements and the incorporation of Bollywood images into Hindu epic narratives of Mahabharata and Ramayana on which diasporic desire converged in producing nostalgic myths of returns. Manas Ray’s thesis in his pathbreaking essay on the centrality of Hindi cinematic texts to the production of diasporic Indian identities in Fiji is corroborated by Vijay Mishra in his book Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire. While Ray points out that Bollywood’s identity producing function is retained by ‘twicemigrant’ F iji Indians to Australia,1 Vijay Devadas’s new work focuses on the forms of sociality that Bollywood te xts perform in places of settlement through case studies from Southeast Asia. Despite the long history of Hindi cinematic flows to Africa, the researcher is forced to depend on anecd otal evidence to testify to the popularity of Hindi film s in Africa. Shyam Benegal’s mention of the influence of Mother India (1957) on the Ethiopian filmmaker brought the Hindi films’ African constituency to public attention. Shashi Thaoor supports Benegal’s statement through the example of his Senegalese friend’s nonliterate mot her who would take a bus to Dakar to watch every Bollywood film despite not knowing a word of Hindi. But it is Brian Larkin’s work on the impact of Hind i films on nonSouth Asian communities such as the Hausa of Nigeria that inaugurates a new direction in the study of Bollywood’s African ‘invasion’ through connecting the movements of Hindi cinema in the past with Bollywood’s

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