Pub Date : 2021-07-19DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.05
S. Moran
ABSTRACT:Chinua Achebe's interpretation of Joseph Conrad is part of the english literary canon and colonial and postcolonial studies. As a focus of debate and invitation to self-critical, historically aware interpretation it forms a critical intersection that demands responsible reading. This essay proposes some preliminary considerations regarding the process of evaluating of Achebe's legacy.Whatever Conrad's problems were, you might say he is now safely dead. Quite true. Unfortunately, his heart of darkness plagues us still. (Achebe, "An Image of Africa" [Massachusetts Review] 788)
{"title":"Achebe on Conrad","authors":"S. Moran","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.05","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Chinua Achebe's interpretation of Joseph Conrad is part of the english literary canon and colonial and postcolonial studies. As a focus of debate and invitation to self-critical, historically aware interpretation it forms a critical intersection that demands responsible reading. This essay proposes some preliminary considerations regarding the process of evaluating of Achebe's legacy.Whatever Conrad's problems were, you might say he is now safely dead. Quite true. Unfortunately, his heart of darkness plagues us still. (Achebe, \"An Image of Africa\" [Massachusetts Review] 788)","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"51 1","pages":"102 - 82"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47912600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-19DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.02
C. Garritano
ABSTRACT:This article demonstrates that Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's novel I Do Not Come to You by Chance dialogues with a multiplicity of texts and discourses at literary and popular registers. It explores affiliations between African literary narratives about 419 and the popular narratives that migrate through minor and informal transnational networks of production and consumption in Africa and the diaspora. The article analyzes the textual strategies Nwaubani's novel adopts to negotiate between literary and popular publics, paying close attention, on the one hand, to the novel's entanglements with local, popular narratives and, on the other, to the strategies of literariness it takes up. The aim is to describe, in particular, the novel's intersections with and rewriting of the idioms and aesthetics so pronounced in popular texts, such as Nollywood and Ghanaian movies, as well as its playful and poignant reimagining of the tropes and forms adopted in 419 fraud emails.
{"title":"Email Scams, Nollywood Movies, and the New African Literary Novel: Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's I Do Not Come to You by Chance in the Post-Global Age","authors":"C. Garritano","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.02","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article demonstrates that Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's novel I Do Not Come to You by Chance dialogues with a multiplicity of texts and discourses at literary and popular registers. It explores affiliations between African literary narratives about 419 and the popular narratives that migrate through minor and informal transnational networks of production and consumption in Africa and the diaspora. The article analyzes the textual strategies Nwaubani's novel adopts to negotiate between literary and popular publics, paying close attention, on the one hand, to the novel's entanglements with local, popular narratives and, on the other, to the strategies of literariness it takes up. The aim is to describe, in particular, the novel's intersections with and rewriting of the idioms and aesthetics so pronounced in popular texts, such as Nollywood and Ghanaian movies, as well as its playful and poignant reimagining of the tropes and forms adopted in 419 fraud emails.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"51 1","pages":"18 - 35"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48119478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-19DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.04
A. Khan
ABSTRACT:Wole Soyinka's dramatic works are written on Yoruba myth that respond to the changing times in Nigeria. I here present an overview of Soyinka's religious position and how this position develops in the light of his writings. The article examines Yoruba religion and how it fulfills religious and political purposes by revealing what cannot otherwise be seen and, through new formal representation, interrogates and expresses varied meanings of contemporary Nigerian political, religious, and social realities. The article aims to illustrate through a social narrative the role and function of the evils and sacrificial heroes and their affiliation with the sacred and the profane in the regions of Nigeria. The article argues that though the religious evils are subject to moral opprobrium, they are able to breach both the sacred and the profane because of their close relationship to power and money.
{"title":"Exploration of Moral Corruption and Yoruba Religion through Wole Soyinka's Philosophical Plays","authors":"A. Khan","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.04","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Wole Soyinka's dramatic works are written on Yoruba myth that respond to the changing times in Nigeria. I here present an overview of Soyinka's religious position and how this position develops in the light of his writings. The article examines Yoruba religion and how it fulfills religious and political purposes by revealing what cannot otherwise be seen and, through new formal representation, interrogates and expresses varied meanings of contemporary Nigerian political, religious, and social realities. The article aims to illustrate through a social narrative the role and function of the evils and sacrificial heroes and their affiliation with the sacred and the profane in the regions of Nigeria. The article argues that though the religious evils are subject to moral opprobrium, they are able to breach both the sacred and the profane because of their close relationship to power and money.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"51 1","pages":"66 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44058897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-19DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.01
A. Abba
ABSTRACT:Although Chimamanda Adichie has received much critical engagement since the publication of Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck, Adichie's attempt to engage Half of a Yellow Sun as a literary platform both for articulating the trauma of Biafran experience and negotiating postwar reconciliation in Nigeria has been largely ignored. Seeking to cover this gap, this paper argues that while the novel attempts to reconstruct love and coherence from the heap of historical disorder by offering a seemingly unbiased diagnosis of the events of the war, it however makes the urgency for dialogue and reconciliation its symbolic gesture. Examining the experiences and reactions of the central characters in the novel, the paper contends that Adichie offers a new perspective that challenges the perpetuation of the ethics of national disintegration. Deploying Edward Said's postcolonial theory of nationalism in articulating the novel's insistence on integration rather than separation, this paper seeks to demonstrate, therefore, how Adichie's artistic projections suggest that postwar dialogue is a necessary step toward engendering viable togetherness in Nigeria.
{"title":"Remediating Biafra: Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun as a Symbolic Vehicle of Postwar Reconciliation","authors":"A. Abba","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.01","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Although Chimamanda Adichie has received much critical engagement since the publication of Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck, Adichie's attempt to engage Half of a Yellow Sun as a literary platform both for articulating the trauma of Biafran experience and negotiating postwar reconciliation in Nigeria has been largely ignored. Seeking to cover this gap, this paper argues that while the novel attempts to reconstruct love and coherence from the heap of historical disorder by offering a seemingly unbiased diagnosis of the events of the war, it however makes the urgency for dialogue and reconciliation its symbolic gesture. Examining the experiences and reactions of the central characters in the novel, the paper contends that Adichie offers a new perspective that challenges the perpetuation of the ethics of national disintegration. Deploying Edward Said's postcolonial theory of nationalism in articulating the novel's insistence on integration rather than separation, this paper seeks to demonstrate, therefore, how Adichie's artistic projections suggest that postwar dialogue is a necessary step toward engendering viable togetherness in Nigeria.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"51 1","pages":"1 - 17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45503298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-19DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.13
Susan Vanzanten
ABSTRACT:This essay discusses the contextual and formal qualities of Jesus of the Deep Forest, a long Ghanaian praise poem, situating this discussion in light of the difficulties Western readers often experience in encountering African oral literature. An analysis of the poem's artistic design begins with the conventions of its genre as an apae, a highly respected verbal artistic expression in Ghana. Without a narrative structure, the apae relies on a complex system of parallelism and repetition, along with three types of praise names. Close analysis of several representative passages demonstrates how repetition works. The poem's metaphors, shifts in voice and address, and use of allusion provide further access for aesthetic investigation. Such analysis demonstrates the creative evolution of an ancient literary form to address fresh contemporary realities. The elaborate artistry and the cultural significance of the poem point to the enduring importance of oral and religious genres for Africa today.
{"title":"A Contextual and Aesthetic Analysis of Jesus of the Deep Forest: Teaching an African Oral Poem","authors":"Susan Vanzanten","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.13","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This essay discusses the contextual and formal qualities of Jesus of the Deep Forest, a long Ghanaian praise poem, situating this discussion in light of the difficulties Western readers often experience in encountering African oral literature. An analysis of the poem's artistic design begins with the conventions of its genre as an apae, a highly respected verbal artistic expression in Ghana. Without a narrative structure, the apae relies on a complex system of parallelism and repetition, along with three types of praise names. Close analysis of several representative passages demonstrates how repetition works. The poem's metaphors, shifts in voice and address, and use of allusion provide further access for aesthetic investigation. Such analysis demonstrates the creative evolution of an ancient literary form to address fresh contemporary realities. The elaborate artistry and the cultural significance of the poem point to the enduring importance of oral and religious genres for Africa today.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"51 1","pages":"230 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47071391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-19DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.12
Arthur Rose
ABSTRACT:In the wake of the Fees Must Fall movements in South Africa, Nelson Mandela's invocation of the "Rainbow Nation" in his 1994 inaugural presidential address was subject to renewed criticism. This essay considers how, from its first utterance, the metaphor was never allowed to communicate its most significant affordance: the recognition that processes of transition are frequently buoyed up by ephemeral moments, whose use may be their very transience. By returning to the ephemeral in Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf, it shows how Van Niekerk's text asks how we allow things to pass away. Signaling this postapartheid ephemerality through the breath, Van Niekerk opens up a discussion about ephemerality in the foundational text of the postapartheid period that has been largely overlooked, but has, perhaps, never been more important than in South Africa's present.
{"title":"Postapartheid Ephemerality in Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf","authors":"Arthur Rose","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.12","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In the wake of the Fees Must Fall movements in South Africa, Nelson Mandela's invocation of the \"Rainbow Nation\" in his 1994 inaugural presidential address was subject to renewed criticism. This essay considers how, from its first utterance, the metaphor was never allowed to communicate its most significant affordance: the recognition that processes of transition are frequently buoyed up by ephemeral moments, whose use may be their very transience. By returning to the ephemeral in Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf, it shows how Van Niekerk's text asks how we allow things to pass away. Signaling this postapartheid ephemerality through the breath, Van Niekerk opens up a discussion about ephemerality in the foundational text of the postapartheid period that has been largely overlooked, but has, perhaps, never been more important than in South Africa's present.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"51 1","pages":"211 - 229"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45770285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-19DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.11
Sara Saei Dibavar, Pyeaam Abbasi, Hossein Pirnajmuddin
ABSTRACT:Using Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), we examine J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986) to explain how the conceptual metaphor "ARGUMENT IS WAR" is central to the novel's thematics and to the fictional "staging" of debates concerning authorial emplotment through the workings of the "social mind"—here the prospective readership. We focus on the inter-character discourse staged during the civilized confrontation between Susan Barton (the character attempting to be an author) and Daniel Foe (the author) in an attempt to have their intended stories told. Thus the socially aware minds of both parties involved greatly contribute to the formation of the well-known plot of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719). As a result of this argumentative path (ARGUMENT IS WAR), Susan and her framing narrative lose ground to the impositions by Foe and the exigencies of the social mind. A reading of the novel in terms of social mind with a focus on CMT reveals the cognitive complexity of the functioning of the social mind as a controlling medium in Foe.
{"title":"Social Mind as Author(ity) in J. M. Coetzee's Foe","authors":"Sara Saei Dibavar, Pyeaam Abbasi, Hossein Pirnajmuddin","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.11","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Using Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), we examine J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986) to explain how the conceptual metaphor \"ARGUMENT IS WAR\" is central to the novel's thematics and to the fictional \"staging\" of debates concerning authorial emplotment through the workings of the \"social mind\"—here the prospective readership. We focus on the inter-character discourse staged during the civilized confrontation between Susan Barton (the character attempting to be an author) and Daniel Foe (the author) in an attempt to have their intended stories told. Thus the socially aware minds of both parties involved greatly contribute to the formation of the well-known plot of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719). As a result of this argumentative path (ARGUMENT IS WAR), Susan and her framing narrative lose ground to the impositions by Foe and the exigencies of the social mind. A reading of the novel in terms of social mind with a focus on CMT reveals the cognitive complexity of the functioning of the social mind as a controlling medium in Foe.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"51 1","pages":"190 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45572592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-19DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.06
J. Fernández-Vázquez
ABSTRACT:This paper develops an intertextual reading that brings together Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Helon Habila's Oil on Water. It analyzes the major thematic and stylistic aspects that the two texts share: the presence of a metaphorical journey, the description of social and environmental damage as interrelated processes, and the presence of dialogic structures and narrative skepticism, which reveal the complexity of the oil conflict and question the possibility of finding the truth. The comparison between the two narratives shows how Habila recontextualizes the Conradian tropes to address socially and historically specific concerns related to oil extraction in the Niger Delta region, which were beyond Conrad's experience. From a theoretical point of view, the process of recontextualization that Habila undertakes transcends the traditional understanding of postcolonial intertextuality as an oppositional response to colonial ideology.To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.—Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
{"title":"Into the Heart of Nature: Conradian Echoes in Helon Habila's Oil on Water","authors":"J. Fernández-Vázquez","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.06","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This paper develops an intertextual reading that brings together Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Helon Habila's Oil on Water. It analyzes the major thematic and stylistic aspects that the two texts share: the presence of a metaphorical journey, the description of social and environmental damage as interrelated processes, and the presence of dialogic structures and narrative skepticism, which reveal the complexity of the oil conflict and question the possibility of finding the truth. The comparison between the two narratives shows how Habila recontextualizes the Conradian tropes to address socially and historically specific concerns related to oil extraction in the Niger Delta region, which were beyond Conrad's experience. From a theoretical point of view, the process of recontextualization that Habila undertakes transcends the traditional understanding of postcolonial intertextuality as an oppositional response to colonial ideology.To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.—Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"51 1","pages":"103 - 122"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49445720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-19DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.10
T. Njovane
ABSTRACT:In this article, I explore manifestations of (inter)subjectivity in relation to racial trauma and grief as portrayed through the child protagonist of K. Sello Duiker's Thirteen Cents, Azure. This discussion is informed by the representation of the black body in light of post-transitional politics, paying specific attention to Azure's connection to the historically maligned figure of Saartjie, a connection that reflects the reenactment of racial trauma in the contemporary moment. Azure's encounters with violence and loss, I posit, result in a psychic break that forms an index to the failure of recognition inherent in intersubjective relations grounded on racism. I argue that we can understand Azure's subjectivity by paying attention to the ways in which his subjectivity is mitigated by psychosocial directives on racialized existence, the symbolic potential of his repressed rage, and the transformative potential of filial connections. I contend that Azure stands as an individualized meditation on the shortcomings of the reconciliation narrative of the post-transitional period that tends to erase the more immediate consequences of South Africa's violent past for those who are most vulnerable. Ultimately, this child protagonist exemplifies the ways in which trauma and violence interfere with the most human of impulses, grief.
{"title":"\"My Mother Was a Fish\": Racial Trauma, Precarity, and Grief in K. Sello Duiker's Thirteen Cents","authors":"T. Njovane","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.10","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In this article, I explore manifestations of (inter)subjectivity in relation to racial trauma and grief as portrayed through the child protagonist of K. Sello Duiker's Thirteen Cents, Azure. This discussion is informed by the representation of the black body in light of post-transitional politics, paying specific attention to Azure's connection to the historically maligned figure of Saartjie, a connection that reflects the reenactment of racial trauma in the contemporary moment. Azure's encounters with violence and loss, I posit, result in a psychic break that forms an index to the failure of recognition inherent in intersubjective relations grounded on racism. I argue that we can understand Azure's subjectivity by paying attention to the ways in which his subjectivity is mitigated by psychosocial directives on racialized existence, the symbolic potential of his repressed rage, and the transformative potential of filial connections. I contend that Azure stands as an individualized meditation on the shortcomings of the reconciliation narrative of the post-transitional period that tends to erase the more immediate consequences of South Africa's violent past for those who are most vulnerable. Ultimately, this child protagonist exemplifies the ways in which trauma and violence interfere with the most human of impulses, grief.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"51 1","pages":"173 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43958498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-19DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.07
Maria-Gratias Sinon
ABSTRACT:This article explores the subjectivity of two Francophone black African women's in/visibility. Through Ousmane Sembène's film La noire de … and Henriette Akofa's novel Une esclave moderne, I pivot the ways the two works mirror the protagonists' isolating experience emblematized by the in/visibility that many migratory black women live across transnational spaces on both sides of the Atlantic, a crisis that takes its most palpable and sometimes deadly turn through a socially and ethically oppressive in/visibility. Inspired in part by the work of Renée Larrier (2000) and Françoise Lionnet (1995) in postcolonial Francophone contexts and theoretical works in Anglophone spaces like Samantha Pinto's Difficult Diasporas: The Transnational Feminist Aesthetic of the Black Atlantic (2013). I examine how laboring black women's oppression born of transnational migration informs the states and spaces of in/visibility. Ultimately, this article interweaves, in the transnational context across Francophone and sometimes Anglophone spaces, the fictional accounts of perpetual servitude of black women.
{"title":"Mirroring Domestic Crises of Black Women's In/Visibility in Ousmane Sembène's La noire de … and Henriette Akofa's Une esclave moderne","authors":"Maria-Gratias Sinon","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.51.4.07","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article explores the subjectivity of two Francophone black African women's in/visibility. Through Ousmane Sembène's film La noire de … and Henriette Akofa's novel Une esclave moderne, I pivot the ways the two works mirror the protagonists' isolating experience emblematized by the in/visibility that many migratory black women live across transnational spaces on both sides of the Atlantic, a crisis that takes its most palpable and sometimes deadly turn through a socially and ethically oppressive in/visibility. Inspired in part by the work of Renée Larrier (2000) and Françoise Lionnet (1995) in postcolonial Francophone contexts and theoretical works in Anglophone spaces like Samantha Pinto's Difficult Diasporas: The Transnational Feminist Aesthetic of the Black Atlantic (2013). I examine how laboring black women's oppression born of transnational migration informs the states and spaces of in/visibility. Ultimately, this article interweaves, in the transnational context across Francophone and sometimes Anglophone spaces, the fictional accounts of perpetual servitude of black women.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"51 1","pages":"123 - 136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46218458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：