Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.08
Goabilwe Nnanishie Ramaeba, Wazha Lopang
ABSTRACT: This literary onomastics paper explores character naming in two of Bessie Head’s novels, namely, When Rain Clouds Gather and Maru , both set in villages of Botswana. The purpose is to illustrate how the author uses character names to advance her themes and storylines. The paper relies heavily on the lexical transparency of the names from a structural linguistics perspective and on the sociocultural contexts of the names from a sociolinguistics perspective. The analysis reveals that Head’s choice of character names is intentional and deliberate, meant to achieve a specific purpose, and this is reflective of the process of names and naming in real life scenarios, particularly in the African context. The names mirror the sociocultural contexts of the characters and in the process reveal their personalities, physical attributes, and the types of relationships they have with other characters. The paper concludes that Head employs a lot of symbolism and irony in naming her characters, powerful features that help to effectively communicate her themes.
{"title":"An Onomastic Analysis of Character Names in Bessie Head’s Maru and When Rain Clouds Gather","authors":"Goabilwe Nnanishie Ramaeba, Wazha Lopang","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.08","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: This literary onomastics paper explores character naming in two of Bessie Head’s novels, namely, When Rain Clouds Gather and Maru , both set in villages of Botswana. The purpose is to illustrate how the author uses character names to advance her themes and storylines. The paper relies heavily on the lexical transparency of the names from a structural linguistics perspective and on the sociocultural contexts of the names from a sociolinguistics perspective. The analysis reveals that Head’s choice of character names is intentional and deliberate, meant to achieve a specific purpose, and this is reflective of the process of names and naming in real life scenarios, particularly in the African context. The names mirror the sociocultural contexts of the characters and in the process reveal their personalities, physical attributes, and the types of relationships they have with other characters. The paper concludes that Head employs a lot of symbolism and irony in naming her characters, powerful features that help to effectively communicate her themes.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136208912","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.12
Werner Labuschagne
Reviewed by: Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature by Duncan Brown Werner Labuschagne Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature BY DUNCAN BROWN U of KwaZulu-Natal P, 2020. x + 202 pp. ISBN 9781869144494. Duncan Brown’s Finding My Way surveys and comments on the state and history of South African literary criticism from the vantage point of 2020. It aims to provide more productive in-roads to approaching emerging and established South African literature. This is especially salient regarding one of the book’s main arguments, that whereas South African literature itself has been flourishing, the contemporary criticism thereof has been lagging behind. As the title suggests, Brown employs his own personal experience as a career academic to add credence to his perspective of where he believes the discipline could be more fruitful. This more flexible and individualized tone works as a counterpoint to the rigidness of contemporary criticism. In the book, Brown attempts to untangle some of the limiting aspects of the conventional, institutionalized approach. In the opening chapters, Brown explains that a central issue in studying South African literature is whether a South African literature exists in the first place. Early on, Brown outlines the shortcomings of most major studies and expansiveness of South African literature, especially highlighting their failure to definitively categorize and unify a concise South African literary canon. In terms of post-apartheid criticism, the problem of a unified criticism seems even more apparent. Brown references Leon de Kock to make the point that, during apart-heid, “writers [and critics, I would add] could take on a sense of grave importance by virtue of writing in and about one of the great crisis points in the world” (50). Literary criticism in the country has, arguably, not found another stable unifying point since. While, in contrast, the literature and readership itself has flourished. Regarding the state of current criticism, Brown posits that there is too much focus on utilizing theory, rather than reading into the literariness of the texts themselves. Brown presents a thesis that argues for a literary scholarship that “deploys theory as it is useful, rather than . . . using ‘theory’ to discipline ‘literature’ . . . a scholarship that is less monumental and institutionally proclaimed . . . that is less sure about its own grounds of working and its aims” (46). Brown argues that critics attempt to fit their predetermined frameworks onto texts, rather than reading “with” the text. In the chapters succeeding these establishing points, Brown visits various South African texts that fall somewhat outside of the traditional literary scope [End Page 173] (especially considering the usual emphasis on novels), in readings that emphasize their literariness. That is to say, reading “with” the text, rather than establishing a framework to fit onto the text. For example, Brown analyzes th
《寻找我的路:对南非文学的思考》作者:邓肯·布朗，夸祖鲁-纳塔尔省大学，2020年。x + 202页。ISBN 9781869144494。邓肯·布朗的《寻找我的路》从2020年的有利位置调查和评论了南非文学批评的现状和历史。它的目的是为接近新兴和成熟的南非文学提供更有效的途径。这本书的一个主要论点是，尽管南非文学本身蓬勃发展，但当代对其的批评却落后了，这一点尤其突出。正如书名所示，布朗利用自己作为职业学者的个人经历，为他的观点增加了可信度，他认为这门学科可以在哪里取得更大的成果。这种更加灵活和个性化的语气与当代批评的僵化形成了对比。在书中，布朗试图理清传统的、制度化的方法的一些局限性。在开篇几章中，布朗解释说，研究南非文学的一个中心问题是南非文学是否存在。在书的早期，布朗概述了大多数主要研究和南非文学的广泛性的缺点，特别是强调了它们在明确分类和统一简明的南非文学经典方面的失败。就种族隔离后的批评而言，统一批评的问题似乎更加明显。布朗引用了莱昂·德·科克的观点，认为在分裂时期，“作家(和评论家，我想补充一句)可以通过在世界上最大的危机点之一进行写作而获得一种严肃的重要性”(50)。可以说，从那以后，这个国家的文学批评再也没有找到另一个稳定的统一点。与此相反，文学和读者本身却蓬勃发展。对于目前的批评现状，布朗认为，人们过于关注理论的运用，而不是对文本本身的文学性进行解读。布朗提出了一篇论文，主张文学奖学金“利用有用的理论，而不是……”用‘理论’约束‘文学’……一项不那么具有纪念意义和制度性的奖学金……这就不太确定它自己的工作基础和目标”(46)。布朗认为，评论家试图将他们预先确定的框架应用到文本中，而不是“与”文本一起阅读。在这些建立点之后的章节中，布朗在强调其文学性的阅读中，访问了一些在传统文学范围之外的南非文本(特别是考虑到通常强调小说)。也就是说，“与”文本一起阅读，而不是建立一个框架来适应文本。例如，布朗分析了Nontsizi Mgqwetho的基督教赞美诗(izibongo)，这些诗最初发表于20世纪20年代，但直到2000年代才被重新发现。在他自己的阅读中，布朗把重点放在她的非洲基督教信仰上，以便“通过她诗意和预言性的演讲的质地和音色来解读”(86)。随后，布朗在研究亚当·阿什福斯的非虚构作品《玛德莫:一个被迷惑的人》(2000年)和《南非的巫术、暴力与民主》(2005年)时，同样强调了对信仰的解读。在这里，布朗主张“可信、同情而又批判地书写我们可能不认同的信仰”(89)。如前所述，布朗研究小说之外的地点，以寻找其文学价值。他声称，从某种意义上说，创造性非小说类文学已经成为南非最主要的文学类型。他在对Antjie Krog的采访中讨论了这一类型的意义，Antjie Krog在非小说类作品中创作了里程碑式的作品，如《我的骷髅国》(Country of My Skull, 1998)。布朗和克罗格推测，目前非小说类作品在南非的人气和文学价值激增。克罗格指出，“分离”的历史可能是原因，因为我们“如果不了解产生彼此幻想或虚构的现实，也许就无法开始重视彼此的幻想或虚构”(109)。布朗进一步走到传统文学文本之外，提倡对口头文学的研究。
{"title":"Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature by Duncan Brown (review)","authors":"Werner Labuschagne","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.12","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature by Duncan Brown Werner Labuschagne Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature BY DUNCAN BROWN U of KwaZulu-Natal P, 2020. x + 202 pp. ISBN 9781869144494. Duncan Brown’s Finding My Way surveys and comments on the state and history of South African literary criticism from the vantage point of 2020. It aims to provide more productive in-roads to approaching emerging and established South African literature. This is especially salient regarding one of the book’s main arguments, that whereas South African literature itself has been flourishing, the contemporary criticism thereof has been lagging behind. As the title suggests, Brown employs his own personal experience as a career academic to add credence to his perspective of where he believes the discipline could be more fruitful. This more flexible and individualized tone works as a counterpoint to the rigidness of contemporary criticism. In the book, Brown attempts to untangle some of the limiting aspects of the conventional, institutionalized approach. In the opening chapters, Brown explains that a central issue in studying South African literature is whether a South African literature exists in the first place. Early on, Brown outlines the shortcomings of most major studies and expansiveness of South African literature, especially highlighting their failure to definitively categorize and unify a concise South African literary canon. In terms of post-apartheid criticism, the problem of a unified criticism seems even more apparent. Brown references Leon de Kock to make the point that, during apart-heid, “writers [and critics, I would add] could take on a sense of grave importance by virtue of writing in and about one of the great crisis points in the world” (50). Literary criticism in the country has, arguably, not found another stable unifying point since. While, in contrast, the literature and readership itself has flourished. Regarding the state of current criticism, Brown posits that there is too much focus on utilizing theory, rather than reading into the literariness of the texts themselves. Brown presents a thesis that argues for a literary scholarship that “deploys theory as it is useful, rather than . . . using ‘theory’ to discipline ‘literature’ . . . a scholarship that is less monumental and institutionally proclaimed . . . that is less sure about its own grounds of working and its aims” (46). Brown argues that critics attempt to fit their predetermined frameworks onto texts, rather than reading “with” the text. In the chapters succeeding these establishing points, Brown visits various South African texts that fall somewhat outside of the traditional literary scope [End Page 173] (especially considering the usual emphasis on novels), in readings that emphasize their literariness. That is to say, reading “with” the text, rather than establishing a framework to fit onto the text. For example, Brown analyzes th","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136208930","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905366
Njeri Githire
ABSTRACT: This essay exposes the imagery of cannibalism as a critique of unfettered consumption and greed at the root of the exploitative structures in The Farming of Bones (1998). The essay contends that the symbolic tapestry of Edwidge Danticat’s second novel is woven around metaphors of consumption and excretion. In a bid to unpack the inner workings of a plantation system that reduced human beings to commodities, I tease out the novel’s layered reflection on these metaphors and their meaning. I demonstrate that the purported menace posed by Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic is but a deflection of the violence exerted on working bodies on a constant basis. A scheme that serves to mask the assault and plunder that are commonplace, the ascription of malevolent intent onto the immigrants strips them of their humanity and justifies their expulsion from the national territory. I further expose the strategies used by the exploited to counter the consuming carnage and restore dignity.
{"title":"Eating Bodies: Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones","authors":"Njeri Githire","doi":"10.2979/ral.2023.a905366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/ral.2023.a905366","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: This essay exposes the imagery of cannibalism as a critique of unfettered consumption and greed at the root of the exploitative structures in The Farming of Bones (1998). The essay contends that the symbolic tapestry of Edwidge Danticat’s second novel is woven around metaphors of consumption and excretion. In a bid to unpack the inner workings of a plantation system that reduced human beings to commodities, I tease out the novel’s layered reflection on these metaphors and their meaning. I demonstrate that the purported menace posed by Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic is but a deflection of the violence exerted on working bodies on a constant basis. A scheme that serves to mask the assault and plunder that are commonplace, the ascription of malevolent intent onto the immigrants strips them of their humanity and justifies their expulsion from the national territory. I further expose the strategies used by the exploited to counter the consuming carnage and restore dignity.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495344","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.14
Cajetan Iheka
Reviewed by: Relocating the Sacred: African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Hybridities by Niyi Afolabi Cajetan Iheka Relocating the Sacred: African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Hybridities BY NIYI AFOLABI SUNY Press, 2022. 366 pp. ISBN 9781438490717 cloth. Niyi Afolabi opens his fascinating study Relocating the Sacred: African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Identities with the story of his first trip to Brazil and the shock at the Africanist presence and religious consciousness in Bahia. Afolabi recalls his befuddlement at the common use of Yoruba language and consecration of Yoruba deities as spiritual anchors in Bahia. Afolabi’s confusion results from the denigration of the same cultural practices—indigenous language and spiritual practices—in Nigeria in the face of colonial modernity, a development that continues today. In Brazil, however, these African divinities are vibrant cultural [End Page 177] expressions mobilized for survival in a New World context steeped in violence for African descendants since slavery. Relocating the Sacred is a captivating study of traveling theory and praxis, of how Afro-Brazilians relocated religious and cultural practices to cope with the dehumanizing impacts of slavery and ongoing marginalization within a Brazil wracked by continuous legacies of slavery, colonialism, and globalization. Afolabi’s emphasis on “relocating” is a particular strength of his book as the term locates intentional agency in the hands of the Africans whose cultural heritage was not tabula rasa, as the colonizers would love to claim. The relocative thrust of the book reclaims a culturally rich society that the Afro-Brazilians were displaced from even as it emphasizes the work of syncretism that attended the migration of sacred practices to the Brazilian space. In Brazil, these sacred practices not only allowed for grappling with the traumas of forced displacement; they also offered a technology for dealing with the hauntings of the slavery past in the Brazilian state’s treatment of its Black citizens. As he has done in previous studies, Afolabi takes Brazil’s myth of racial democracy to task for excluding Afro-Brazilians in an equitable conceptualization of the nation and citizenry. As Afolabi asks in Relocating the Sacred, “why do these African cultural practices persist amidst the onslaught of globalization? Within a context of ongoing racial discrimination and demonization of Blackness, what roles exist for identifiable religious-cum-sacred rituals?” (3). Afolabi’s study argues “that the tension between the theory of racial democracy and the practice of white supremacy in Brazil opens the space for syncretism of cultures, including African sacred practices” (3). Afolabi locates three specific locations of culture for this syncretism, namely ritual altar, literature, and carnival culture. Each of the three sections of the book investigates each site of cultural production, showing how the “syncretism of African sacred practic
Niyi Afolabi的《重新安置神圣:非洲神灵与巴西文化杂交》，SUNY出版社，2022年。366页。ISBN 9781438490717布。Niyi Afolabi以他第一次巴西之旅的故事，以及对巴伊亚州非洲人的存在和宗教意识的震惊，开启了他迷人的研究《重新安置神圣:非洲神与巴西文化认同》。阿弗拉比回忆起他对巴伊亚普遍使用约鲁巴语言和将约鲁巴神奉为精神锚的困惑。阿弗拉比的困惑源于同样的文化习俗——土著语言和精神习俗——在尼日利亚面对殖民现代性时的诋毁，这种发展一直持续到今天。然而，在巴西，这些非洲神是充满活力的文化表达，为非洲后裔在奴隶制以来充满暴力的新世界背景下的生存而动员起来。《重新安置神圣》是一本关于旅行理论和实践的引人入胜的研究，讲述了巴西黑人如何重新安置宗教和文化习俗，以应对奴隶制的非人性化影响，以及在巴西持续受到奴隶制、殖民主义和全球化遗产的破坏。阿弗拉比对“重新安置”的强调是他的书中一个特别的优势，因为这个词把有意的代理权放在了非洲人的手中，而这些非洲人的文化遗产并不像殖民者喜欢宣称的那样是白板的。这本书的重新定位强调了一个文化丰富的社会，非洲裔巴西人被迫离开了这个社会，尽管它强调了宗教活动向巴西空间迁移的融合工作。在巴西，这些神圣的做法不仅有助于应对被迫流离失所的创伤;他们还提供了一种技术来处理巴西国家对待黑人公民的奴隶制过去的阴影。正如他在之前的研究中所做的那样，阿弗拉比将巴西种族民主的神话归咎于将非裔巴西人排除在公平的国家和公民概念之外。正如阿弗拉比在《重新安置神圣》一书中所问的那样，“为什么这些非洲文化习俗在全球化的冲击下依然存在?”在持续的种族歧视和黑人妖魔化的背景下，可识别的宗教和神圣仪式存在什么作用?(3). Afolabi的研究认为“巴西种族民主理论与白人至上实践之间的紧张关系为文化的融合打开了空间，包括非洲的神圣实践”(3)。Afolabi为这种融合定位了三个特定的文化位置，即仪式祭坛、文学和狂欢文化。书的三个部分中的每一部分都调查了文化生产的每个地点，展示了“非洲神圣实践的融合如何提供了一种应对持久种族主义的技术，提供了一种抵抗白人霸权的策略，并作为一种正在进行的非殖民化努力的工具”(3)。这本书的有力论点在十个细致、研究充分的章节中展开。第一章提供了一个必要的历史背景，以欣赏神圣的从非洲到巴西的迁移。这一章理所当然地将巴伊亚作为文化的十字路口——世俗和神圣，以及天主教和非洲宗教的交汇点——导致了协商的杂交。这一章展示了植根于巴伊亚州的文化组织和宗教习俗，包括Ile Aiye非洲嘉年华集团和Filhos de Gandhi，后者作为candomblaise的房子。这些组织通过“一贯地展示非洲价值观和非洲天主教主题”来促进神圣的迁移(46)。第二章博学而平衡，重新评价了法国人类学家皮埃尔·维杰的生活和事业，阿弗拉比认为他是“神谕之谜”和“神性矛盾的化身”(56)。在承认Verger对保存散居的约鲁巴文化的重要贡献和他的摄影才华的同时，Afolabi提请注意同样重要的殖民研究实践问题。Afolabi仔细研究了像Verger这样的外国人有特权进入大多数非洲人无法进入的神圣空间，Verger和其他研究人员对非洲知识的殖民征用，以及在这种知识生产的殖民经济中，非洲人被降格为“线人”。[End Page 178]如果Verger的作品在…
{"title":"Relocating the Sacred: African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Hybridities by Niyi Afolabi (review)","authors":"Cajetan Iheka","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.14","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Relocating the Sacred: African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Hybridities by Niyi Afolabi Cajetan Iheka Relocating the Sacred: African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Hybridities BY NIYI AFOLABI SUNY Press, 2022. 366 pp. ISBN 9781438490717 cloth. Niyi Afolabi opens his fascinating study Relocating the Sacred: African Divinities and Brazilian Cultural Identities with the story of his first trip to Brazil and the shock at the Africanist presence and religious consciousness in Bahia. Afolabi recalls his befuddlement at the common use of Yoruba language and consecration of Yoruba deities as spiritual anchors in Bahia. Afolabi’s confusion results from the denigration of the same cultural practices—indigenous language and spiritual practices—in Nigeria in the face of colonial modernity, a development that continues today. In Brazil, however, these African divinities are vibrant cultural [End Page 177] expressions mobilized for survival in a New World context steeped in violence for African descendants since slavery. Relocating the Sacred is a captivating study of traveling theory and praxis, of how Afro-Brazilians relocated religious and cultural practices to cope with the dehumanizing impacts of slavery and ongoing marginalization within a Brazil wracked by continuous legacies of slavery, colonialism, and globalization. Afolabi’s emphasis on “relocating” is a particular strength of his book as the term locates intentional agency in the hands of the Africans whose cultural heritage was not tabula rasa, as the colonizers would love to claim. The relocative thrust of the book reclaims a culturally rich society that the Afro-Brazilians were displaced from even as it emphasizes the work of syncretism that attended the migration of sacred practices to the Brazilian space. In Brazil, these sacred practices not only allowed for grappling with the traumas of forced displacement; they also offered a technology for dealing with the hauntings of the slavery past in the Brazilian state’s treatment of its Black citizens. As he has done in previous studies, Afolabi takes Brazil’s myth of racial democracy to task for excluding Afro-Brazilians in an equitable conceptualization of the nation and citizenry. As Afolabi asks in Relocating the Sacred, “why do these African cultural practices persist amidst the onslaught of globalization? Within a context of ongoing racial discrimination and demonization of Blackness, what roles exist for identifiable religious-cum-sacred rituals?” (3). Afolabi’s study argues “that the tension between the theory of racial democracy and the practice of white supremacy in Brazil opens the space for syncretism of cultures, including African sacred practices” (3). Afolabi locates three specific locations of culture for this syncretism, namely ritual altar, literature, and carnival culture. Each of the three sections of the book investigates each site of cultural production, showing how the “syncretism of African sacred practic","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136208911","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.04
Kelvin Acheampong
ABSTRACT: Feminism represents the battle for equal access to opportunities in society for males and females and, therefore, a necessary struggle for social justice. It is sometimes the case, however, that feminism degenerates into a battle against men, a tendency Mawuli Adzei refers to as “radical separatist feminism” (47). In African literature, this standpoint is reflected in the abject degradation of male characters, who are usually presented as the oppressors of women, enemies of women, barriers to women’s progress, and only without whom women would be able to achieve their highest potentials in society (Adzei 47). Against this backdrop, and using El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero as a primary text, this paper, while acknowledging the validity and necessity of the crusade for gender equity in African societies, contests the logic fueling male-bashing by foregrounding certain often-ignored variables in this debate: first, the faulty homogenization/essentialization of men and women (and by extension, the neglection of intersectionality) and, second, the constraints certain cultural expectations pose to men. I conclude by highlighting Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s point that—because feminism is potentially liberating for both women and men—we can all be feminists.
{"title":"The Curse of Manhood: Reflections on Male-Bashing in Radical Separatist Feminist African Literature","authors":"Kelvin Acheampong","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.04","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: Feminism represents the battle for equal access to opportunities in society for males and females and, therefore, a necessary struggle for social justice. It is sometimes the case, however, that feminism degenerates into a battle against men, a tendency Mawuli Adzei refers to as “radical separatist feminism” (47). In African literature, this standpoint is reflected in the abject degradation of male characters, who are usually presented as the oppressors of women, enemies of women, barriers to women’s progress, and only without whom women would be able to achieve their highest potentials in society (Adzei 47). Against this backdrop, and using El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero as a primary text, this paper, while acknowledging the validity and necessity of the crusade for gender equity in African societies, contests the logic fueling male-bashing by foregrounding certain often-ignored variables in this debate: first, the faulty homogenization/essentialization of men and women (and by extension, the neglection of intersectionality) and, second, the constraints certain cultural expectations pose to men. I conclude by highlighting Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s point that—because feminism is potentially liberating for both women and men—we can all be feminists.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136208927","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.16
Ellen A. Ahlness
Reviewed by: And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism by Barbara Boswell Ellen A. Ahlness And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism BY BARBARA BOSWELL Wits UP, 2020. xix + 229 pp. ISBN 9781776146185 paper. In Gcina Mhlophe’s short story, “The Toilet,” a young woman living under the dehumanizing and brutal conditions of apartheid struggles to pursue her drive for writing poetry. She discovers a toilet in a park that is for whites only and goes on to turn this segregated space into a sanctuary for her to work on her poetry. While she temporarily finds safety and privacy in her new haven, the victory does not last long; she later returns to her newfound space to find the toilet locked, her access barred. From this short story, Barbara Boswell takes her own text’s title: upon losing access, the protagonist of the short story defiantly heads to a bench and writes her story anyway. The determination captured within this line well-articulates the underlying drive that Boswell seems compelled to capture in her analysis of ten black women fiction writers. Throughout the book, Boswell seems driven to challenge the reduction of women, minority, and intersectional authors to genre writers—those whose powerful stories are nonetheless reduced to context-informed products—to develop in readers a greater appreciation for the worlds created within and across their published works. Depending on readers’ familiarity with South African writers, the discussed authors—Miriam Tlali, Lauretta Ngcobo, Farida Karodia, Agnes Sam, Zoë Wicomb, Sindiwe Magona, Bessie Head, Gcina Mhlophe, Yvette Christiansë, Rayda Jacobs, Kagiso Lesego Molope, and Zukiswa Wanner—may or may not be of high familiarity. Regardless of readers’ own familiarity, Boswell defends her position in discussing this varied selection of women: each represents some kind of “first” in literary history in the South African context and consequently has a unique influence on their political, social, and national landscapes. Yet even coming from the South African context, their impact is not bound by borders; their influence, Boswell positions, is also felt globally as seminal works developed from 1975 to 2012. [End Page 182] And Wrote My Story Anyway evolved out of Boswell’s PhD thesis, driven by a personal and intellectual curiosity: why did she, even as a literary scholar, see and know so few works of fiction by black women writers? This inquiry led to a deeper investigation of the structural conditions that cumulate to work against black women who would be published. The driving question that informs the book’s structure is a query into what can be learned: what can we—as readers, researchers, and scholars—learn from black women, who represent some of those most negatively impacted by apartheid and the legacy of colonialism? Boswell considers literary work as a theoretical body that suggests a direction for developing the foundations and premise
{"title":"And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism by Barbara Boswell (review)","authors":"Ellen A. Ahlness","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.16","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism by Barbara Boswell Ellen A. Ahlness And Wrote My Story Anyway: Black South African Women’s Novels as Feminism BY BARBARA BOSWELL Wits UP, 2020. xix + 229 pp. ISBN 9781776146185 paper. In Gcina Mhlophe’s short story, “The Toilet,” a young woman living under the dehumanizing and brutal conditions of apartheid struggles to pursue her drive for writing poetry. She discovers a toilet in a park that is for whites only and goes on to turn this segregated space into a sanctuary for her to work on her poetry. While she temporarily finds safety and privacy in her new haven, the victory does not last long; she later returns to her newfound space to find the toilet locked, her access barred. From this short story, Barbara Boswell takes her own text’s title: upon losing access, the protagonist of the short story defiantly heads to a bench and writes her story anyway. The determination captured within this line well-articulates the underlying drive that Boswell seems compelled to capture in her analysis of ten black women fiction writers. Throughout the book, Boswell seems driven to challenge the reduction of women, minority, and intersectional authors to genre writers—those whose powerful stories are nonetheless reduced to context-informed products—to develop in readers a greater appreciation for the worlds created within and across their published works. Depending on readers’ familiarity with South African writers, the discussed authors—Miriam Tlali, Lauretta Ngcobo, Farida Karodia, Agnes Sam, Zoë Wicomb, Sindiwe Magona, Bessie Head, Gcina Mhlophe, Yvette Christiansë, Rayda Jacobs, Kagiso Lesego Molope, and Zukiswa Wanner—may or may not be of high familiarity. Regardless of readers’ own familiarity, Boswell defends her position in discussing this varied selection of women: each represents some kind of “first” in literary history in the South African context and consequently has a unique influence on their political, social, and national landscapes. Yet even coming from the South African context, their impact is not bound by borders; their influence, Boswell positions, is also felt globally as seminal works developed from 1975 to 2012. [End Page 182] And Wrote My Story Anyway evolved out of Boswell’s PhD thesis, driven by a personal and intellectual curiosity: why did she, even as a literary scholar, see and know so few works of fiction by black women writers? This inquiry led to a deeper investigation of the structural conditions that cumulate to work against black women who would be published. The driving question that informs the book’s structure is a query into what can be learned: what can we—as readers, researchers, and scholars—learn from black women, who represent some of those most negatively impacted by apartheid and the legacy of colonialism? Boswell considers literary work as a theoretical body that suggests a direction for developing the foundations and premise","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136208935","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.07
Virginia Obioma Eze
ABSTRACT: This article explores the poetic metaphors and multi-signification in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease . The novel itself has been the focus of several readings, many of which pursue the humanistic and sociological orientations of the text as merely an instrument of communication about the post-independence sociopolitical and cultural realities of Achebe’s society. This manner of reading may be attributed to the birth of African literature and Afrocentrism, which many of the earlier writers, including Achebe, believe was a reaction to the poor Euro-American portrayal of Africa and Africans. But it forecloses the possibility of a grounded analytical methodology capable of opening up multiple possibilities of meanings in the text through the linguistic elements of literature. Relying on Paul Ricoeur’s depth semantic theory, this article explores the poetic metaphors of the text to unveil the multilayered meanings.
{"title":"Poetic Metaphor and Multi-Signification: A Rereading of Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease","authors":"Virginia Obioma Eze","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.07","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: This article explores the poetic metaphors and multi-signification in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease . The novel itself has been the focus of several readings, many of which pursue the humanistic and sociological orientations of the text as merely an instrument of communication about the post-independence sociopolitical and cultural realities of Achebe’s society. This manner of reading may be attributed to the birth of African literature and Afrocentrism, which many of the earlier writers, including Achebe, believe was a reaction to the poor Euro-American portrayal of Africa and Africans. But it forecloses the possibility of a grounded analytical methodology capable of opening up multiple possibilities of meanings in the text through the linguistic elements of literature. Relying on Paul Ricoeur’s depth semantic theory, this article explores the poetic metaphors of the text to unveil the multilayered meanings.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136208937","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.01
Chris Dunton
ABSTRACT: This paper takes as its starting-point observations made by Lindsey Green-Simms in her paper “The Emergent Queer.” Following an exploration of the term “emergent,” the paper addresses the fact that, as homophobic legislation has become entrenched in the majority of African countries, more and more LGBTQ+-themed writing is emerging from or on the continent. There follows some documentation on the experience of LGBTQ+ writers such as Jude Dibia and Logan February and on the advantages to these writers of expatriation. Turning to the literature itself, coverage of the creative corpus is not comprehensive. The author has not, for example, had a chance to consider the 2013 volume Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction , edited by Karen Martin and Makhosozana Xaba. But the central task of the paper is not to account for the relevant creative writing, but to focus on the body of critical work that addresses this and on texts that explore the historical and sociological context in which the creative corpus has been produced.
{"title":"Tuning into the Polyphony: The Emergence of LGBTQ+ Writing in Africa","authors":"Chris Dunton","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.01","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: This paper takes as its starting-point observations made by Lindsey Green-Simms in her paper “The Emergent Queer.” Following an exploration of the term “emergent,” the paper addresses the fact that, as homophobic legislation has become entrenched in the majority of African countries, more and more LGBTQ+-themed writing is emerging from or on the continent. There follows some documentation on the experience of LGBTQ+ writers such as Jude Dibia and Logan February and on the advantages to these writers of expatriation. Turning to the literature itself, coverage of the creative corpus is not comprehensive. The author has not, for example, had a chance to consider the 2013 volume Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction , edited by Karen Martin and Makhosozana Xaba. But the central task of the paper is not to account for the relevant creative writing, but to focus on the body of critical work that addresses this and on texts that explore the historical and sociological context in which the creative corpus has been produced.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136208907","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905365
Nikita Anand, Kumar Parag, Aditya Prakash
ABSTRACT: Buchi Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi (1985) is representative of African women’s subordination in “motherhood,” “body movements” (used for communication in the absence of any bridge language), and “marriage” after the arrival of a group of uninvited exclusively white people (albinos) from England in the land of Shavi, a land that was abundantly blessed with a robust matriarchal spirit and self-sustaining powers of African women. This article examines how African women novelists shaped heteronormative plots as a compulsory gendered perspective for articulating the politicized disappearance of African femininity left for organizing African manhood and the masculine principle of the social, political, and heterosexual in a community like Shavi. Extending old Shavian men’s vision, Queen Mother attempts to reawaken European visitors’, such as Flip, Mendoza, Ronje, Andria, and Ista, struggle for a heterosexual role and desire limited to their race so as to save Shavian women from the men’s sexual advances and to assist Shavian women in the preservation of African virtues such as hospitality, cooperation, equality, and love besides protection against Western and young Shavian men’s critical and oppressive attitudes. This article thus contributes to persistent discussions on heterosexuality, the masculinity-femininity division, and heterosexual imaginary.
{"title":"Heteronormative Plots and African Feminine Powers in Buchi Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi","authors":"Nikita Anand, Kumar Parag, Aditya Prakash","doi":"10.2979/ral.2023.a905365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/ral.2023.a905365","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: Buchi Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi (1985) is representative of African women’s subordination in “motherhood,” “body movements” (used for communication in the absence of any bridge language), and “marriage” after the arrival of a group of uninvited exclusively white people (albinos) from England in the land of Shavi, a land that was abundantly blessed with a robust matriarchal spirit and self-sustaining powers of African women. This article examines how African women novelists shaped heteronormative plots as a compulsory gendered perspective for articulating the politicized disappearance of African femininity left for organizing African manhood and the masculine principle of the social, political, and heterosexual in a community like Shavi. Extending old Shavian men’s vision, Queen Mother attempts to reawaken European visitors’, such as Flip, Mendoza, Ronje, Andria, and Ista, struggle for a heterosexual role and desire limited to their race so as to save Shavian women from the men’s sexual advances and to assist Shavian women in the preservation of African virtues such as hospitality, cooperation, equality, and love besides protection against Western and young Shavian men’s critical and oppressive attitudes. This article thus contributes to persistent discussions on heterosexuality, the masculinity-femininity division, and heterosexual imaginary.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495558","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 : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.02
Nada Ayad
ABSTRACT: Heeding Arabic literary scholar Waïl Hassan’s call for literary comparatist work that does not center the United States or Europe, in this article, I investigate two novels of the Global South set in the same political moment of decolonization. Examining the Egyptian writer Latifa al-Zayyat’s The Open Door (1960) and the Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela’s novel Lyrics Alley (2010), I study the significance of women’s sartorial choices, what these sartorial choices symbolize within the central marriage plots, and what both reveal about the charged political fabric in the country in which each text is set—the early years of the 1950s in which Egypt gained independence from British colonial rule but before Sudan’s independence from Anglo-Egyptian co-rule. I contend that Al-Zayyat’s work invites a dynamism to women’s writing history and reveals an indigenous epistemology, while Aboulela’s novel centers the quotidian only to uphold colonial supremacy.
{"title":"South-South Triangulations: Fabric, Marriage, and Decolonization in Latifa al-Zayyat’s The Open Door and Leila Aboulela’s Lyrics Alley","authors":"Nada Ayad","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.02","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: Heeding Arabic literary scholar Waïl Hassan’s call for literary comparatist work that does not center the United States or Europe, in this article, I investigate two novels of the Global South set in the same political moment of decolonization. Examining the Egyptian writer Latifa al-Zayyat’s The Open Door (1960) and the Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela’s novel Lyrics Alley (2010), I study the significance of women’s sartorial choices, what these sartorial choices symbolize within the central marriage plots, and what both reveal about the charged political fabric in the country in which each text is set—the early years of the 1950s in which Egypt gained independence from British colonial rule but before Sudan’s independence from Anglo-Egyptian co-rule. I contend that Al-Zayyat’s work invites a dynamism to women’s writing history and reveals an indigenous epistemology, while Aboulela’s novel centers the quotidian only to uphold colonial supremacy.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136208906","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：