Experiencing WS: the making of an artist scholar, by Femi Euba. New York: Austin Macauley Publishers, 2021. 275 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1-6437898-2-8: Paperback. $15.95

Abstract

critical histories and genealogies nonetheless map these onto extant engagements and ways of delineating the discipline, even as they attempt to re-orient it. The Routledge Handbook of African Literature, on the other hand, is preoccupied less with a mapping of the field and more with a performance of its possibilities through practice and example. Self-contained pieces show what the discipline of African literary criticism is and can be, even as they sometimes feel more fragmentary or discrete. Neither approach is more or less successful; both offer rich possibilities for understanding the futures and pasts of African literary criticism. Indeed, in their differences, these two volumes illustrate a key point made by Stefan Helgesson in his introduction to Southern African Literatures in the Companion. In this introduction, Helgesson notes the trouble that arises with any attempt to delineate a literary region or sub-classification, particularly those which try to enforce singular and static boundaries to do so. Instead, he offers the concept of “frontline figures” as “a productive point of departure for studying Southern African literatures as Southern African, from within the literary works themselves,” while still remaining attuned to “the building, crossing, closing and transformation of borders, both conceptual and physical” (208). Perhaps ultimately, then, this is what these two volumes enable, when read together. Through two different but complementary approaches to understanding African literary writing and its attendant critical fields, these volumes remind us of the multiple crossings, languages, approaches, and boundaries negotiated within and productive of the literary text as literary text. Moreover, they demand an attentiveness to the different levels of critical visibility which persist as much as literary visibility, foregrounding how intellectual conversations, landscapes, dialogues, and fields are not singular and that it is essential for a robust future to enable their expression from different positions – both literally and intellectually.