Pub Date : 2023-04-11DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2023.2193467
Jamie McGregor
Abstract J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings shows a remarkable tendency to withhold information from its readers, apparently as a deliberate narrative strategy that aims to reflect the limited point-of-view of primary characters and thereby heighten the realism of its presentation. This paper discusses four examples of this strategy, beginning with one that (uniquely) cannot be verified by external confirmation: the suggestion that Aragorn secretly witnesses the coming of the Ent-wood to Helm’s Deep. The second case concerns the true identity of Gandalf as an incarnate angel, a detail hidden from most of the characters, and hence from the narrative. The remaining examples concern the treatment of erotic relationships: the long engagement of Arwen and Aragorn, a private family matter from which most characters (and consequently the reader) are excluded, and Sam’s courting of Rosie, revealed only in the closing chapter despite its direct influence on the way Sam behaves when first introduced.
{"title":"Subtlety, Understatement and Omission in The Lord of the Rings","authors":"Jamie McGregor","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2023.2193467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2023.2193467","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings shows a remarkable tendency to withhold information from its readers, apparently as a deliberate narrative strategy that aims to reflect the limited point-of-view of primary characters and thereby heighten the realism of its presentation. This paper discusses four examples of this strategy, beginning with one that (uniquely) cannot be verified by external confirmation: the suggestion that Aragorn secretly witnesses the coming of the Ent-wood to Helm’s Deep. The second case concerns the true identity of Gandalf as an incarnate angel, a detail hidden from most of the characters, and hence from the narrative. The remaining examples concern the treatment of erotic relationships: the long engagement of Arwen and Aragorn, a private family matter from which most characters (and consequently the reader) are excluded, and Sam’s courting of Rosie, revealed only in the closing chapter despite its direct influence on the way Sam behaves when first introduced.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45634086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-11DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2023.2193468
Gareth Cornwell
Abstract Malcolm Cowley’s hypothesis about the importance of Ernest Hemingway’s WWI wounding to an understanding of his work provides the point of departure for this essay. Richard Ford’s memoir, Between Them: Remembering My Parents (2017), provides revealing information about the importance in Ford’s life of the early death of his father. After discussing the more immediate autobiographical material in Ford’s first novel, A Piece of My Heart (1976), I go on to show how the template created by the wound of Parker Ford’s death informs several stories in Rock Springs and subsequent fiction.
{"title":"A Piece of My Self: The ‘Wound’ in the Writing of Richard Ford","authors":"Gareth Cornwell","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2023.2193468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2023.2193468","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Malcolm Cowley’s hypothesis about the importance of Ernest Hemingway’s WWI wounding to an understanding of his work provides the point of departure for this essay. Richard Ford’s memoir, Between Them: Remembering My Parents (2017), provides revealing information about the importance in Ford’s life of the early death of his father. After discussing the more immediate autobiographical material in Ford’s first novel, A Piece of My Heart (1976), I go on to show how the template created by the wound of Parker Ford’s death informs several stories in Rock Springs and subsequent fiction.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47489176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-11DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2023.2193473
Judith Simon
Abstract In her fourth novel, Green Lion (2015), Henrietta Rose-Innes depicts nature’s precariousness in a commercial-driven city. The novel focuses on how, in the Anthropocene epoch, destructive human activities such as property development and hunting have emptied the city of Cape Town’s peri-urban areas of wildlife, to the extent that Sekhmet is the last surviving black-maned lioness in the world. In response to this overwhelming loss, Green Lion turns its attention to what remains in nature, depicting what Fredric Jameson identifies as an ‘imaginary regression to the past and to older pre-rational forms of thought’ (64). The novel thus foregrounds the ecocritical concept of age-old interconnections between human and nonhuman life through its depiction of the transformative shamanistic relationship between the protagonist, Con Marais, animal activist Mossie and Sekhmet. In this article, I elucidate the change of state and ferality that this transformative relationship elicits in Con, and I extend the notion of ferality to encompass its ecological connotations.
{"title":"Sekhmet and the Shaman: Extinction, Ferality and Trans-species Connections in Henrietta Rose-Innes’ Green Lion","authors":"Judith Simon","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2023.2193473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2023.2193473","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In her fourth novel, Green Lion (2015), Henrietta Rose-Innes depicts nature’s precariousness in a commercial-driven city. The novel focuses on how, in the Anthropocene epoch, destructive human activities such as property development and hunting have emptied the city of Cape Town’s peri-urban areas of wildlife, to the extent that Sekhmet is the last surviving black-maned lioness in the world. In response to this overwhelming loss, Green Lion turns its attention to what remains in nature, depicting what Fredric Jameson identifies as an ‘imaginary regression to the past and to older pre-rational forms of thought’ (64). The novel thus foregrounds the ecocritical concept of age-old interconnections between human and nonhuman life through its depiction of the transformative shamanistic relationship between the protagonist, Con Marais, animal activist Mossie and Sekhmet. In this article, I elucidate the change of state and ferality that this transformative relationship elicits in Con, and I extend the notion of ferality to encompass its ecological connotations.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47239204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2023.2128547
{"title":"Notes on Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2023.2128547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2023.2128547","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135755238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-15DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2023.2129166
Lizelle Smit
Abstract There are lacunae in South African scholarship regarding nineteenth-century lesbianism. To address this gap in part, this article examines the sexual identity of Elizabeth Maria (Betty) Molteno (1852–1927) and her two partners, Sarah Hall and Alice Greene. Molteno, the eldest child of the first Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (South Africa), J.C. Molteno, was a teacher, poet, vegetarian, anti-capitalist, and was involved in various political and humanitarian causes. This article specifically examines the lesbian discourse emerging from the letters and diaries written by Molteno and her partners, examining how, in the absence of a visible South African female homosexual discourse, they crafted their own language and understanding of their sexuality. I illustrate how Molteno, who was relatively voiceless regarding her sexual desire during her teenage years, gained voice and intoned agency in her writing while in a relationship with Sarah Hall, finally emerging as an authoritative partner in her thirty-year-long relationship with Alice Greene. Significant discursive practices emerged between Molteno and each of her partners. The nineteenth-century lesbian discourse they created mimicked in language and power dynamics the discourses configuring heterosexual relationships of the nineteenth century and borrowed from familial frameworks. Their relational experience of God while being with their partners became an important aspect of this discourse, while the mother/daughter trope employed by Molteno and Greene to define their early relationship illustrates their wish to locate their desire in familiar and familial female discursive frameworks.
{"title":"Betty Molteno and the Creation of a South African Nineteenth-Century Lesbian Discourse","authors":"Lizelle Smit","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2023.2129166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2023.2129166","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract There are lacunae in South African scholarship regarding nineteenth-century lesbianism. To address this gap in part, this article examines the sexual identity of Elizabeth Maria (Betty) Molteno (1852–1927) and her two partners, Sarah Hall and Alice Greene. Molteno, the eldest child of the first Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (South Africa), J.C. Molteno, was a teacher, poet, vegetarian, anti-capitalist, and was involved in various political and humanitarian causes. This article specifically examines the lesbian discourse emerging from the letters and diaries written by Molteno and her partners, examining how, in the absence of a visible South African female homosexual discourse, they crafted their own language and understanding of their sexuality. I illustrate how Molteno, who was relatively voiceless regarding her sexual desire during her teenage years, gained voice and intoned agency in her writing while in a relationship with Sarah Hall, finally emerging as an authoritative partner in her thirty-year-long relationship with Alice Greene. Significant discursive practices emerged between Molteno and each of her partners. The nineteenth-century lesbian discourse they created mimicked in language and power dynamics the discourses configuring heterosexual relationships of the nineteenth century and borrowed from familial frameworks. Their relational experience of God while being with their partners became an important aspect of this discourse, while the mother/daughter trope employed by Molteno and Greene to define their early relationship illustrates their wish to locate their desire in familiar and familial female discursive frameworks.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"66 1","pages":"24 - 44"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47196998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2023.2128502
S. Bosman
Abstract Niq Mhlongo’s Paradise in Gaza (2020) uses images related to soil to emphasize the novel’s concern with the transmission of indigenous knowledge and the relationship between a sense of humanity and land ownership. Mhlongo’s novel not only explores the quotidian and practical relationship between its characters and the land they occupy and cultivate, but also suggests a transcendental and spiritual relationship between them. With reference to work by Maurice Halbwachs, James E. Young, and Viet Thanh Nguyen, I argue that Mhlongo’s inscription of soil reflects an authorial concern with the entanglements amongst collected memories, just memories, the transmission of culture, land ownership and human dignity. I present a close reading of key passages from the novel using Sarah Nuttall’s notion of entanglement to demonstrate these relationships. Ultimately, I argue that Paradise in Gaza is not only an exploration of African life in a historical setting, but that it also presents an argument for the need for some form of land restitution in contemporary South Africa while recognizing the complexities inherent in any such process.
{"title":"‘[T]o Make us Complete as Human Beings’: Soil as the Bedrock of Collected Memories in Niq Mhlongo’s Paradise in Gaza","authors":"S. Bosman","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2023.2128502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2023.2128502","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Niq Mhlongo’s Paradise in Gaza (2020) uses images related to soil to emphasize the novel’s concern with the transmission of indigenous knowledge and the relationship between a sense of humanity and land ownership. Mhlongo’s novel not only explores the quotidian and practical relationship between its characters and the land they occupy and cultivate, but also suggests a transcendental and spiritual relationship between them. With reference to work by Maurice Halbwachs, James E. Young, and Viet Thanh Nguyen, I argue that Mhlongo’s inscription of soil reflects an authorial concern with the entanglements amongst collected memories, just memories, the transmission of culture, land ownership and human dignity. I present a close reading of key passages from the novel using Sarah Nuttall’s notion of entanglement to demonstrate these relationships. Ultimately, I argue that Paradise in Gaza is not only an exploration of African life in a historical setting, but that it also presents an argument for the need for some form of land restitution in contemporary South Africa while recognizing the complexities inherent in any such process.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"66 1","pages":"45 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48523435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-26DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2023.2128542
Joyce Nyairo
Abstract Nikushike namna gani? (How should I hold you?) The questions that women ask motorbike taxis operators are just one of the many ways that this new mode of transportation in both urban and rural Kenya have become a vehicle for laughter, outrage, (in)dignity and wealth. This paper focuses on moments of delight in the danger-filled work of motorbike taxi operators in Kenya. How much joy do boda boda (motorbike taxis) generate in modern Kenya? The delight is measured, not simply in terms of the varied financial and psycho-social accumulation that is made possible in this industry, but also in terms of the tone of the public conversations that have been triggered by the boda boda phenomena. I interrogate the grammar that has grown out of this mode of transportation, the platforms through which this grammar circulates and the tenor of the voices of thought-leaders and policymakers as they engage the conundrum of public transport. An examination of women’s engagements with boda bodas reveals a long arc that stretches from moral panic borne of knee-jerk recourses to both ethnic mores and pious religion – which often conspire to policewomen’s bodies – to reclamation and release in moments of freedom that are performed in several ways, including the erasure of the borders of personal space. Beyond the political economies of wealth and poverty in Africa, this paper is concerned with demonstrating cultural performativity in the context of post-colonial modernity and answering key questions about how national identities are forged and reinforced in a series of rapidly circulating discourses that underline commonalities far more than they entrench the differences that many see as both indelible and emblematic of the modern African state.
抽象Nikushike namna gani?(我该怎么理解你?)女性问摩托车出租车运营商的问题只是肯尼亚城乡这种新交通方式成为欢笑、愤怒、尊严和财富的载体的众多方式之一。本文聚焦于肯尼亚摩托车出租车运营商在充满危险的工作中的喜悦时刻。在现代肯尼亚,摩托车出租车能带来多少欢乐?这种喜悦是衡量的,不仅是从这个行业可能产生的各种金融和心理社会积累来看,还从boda-boda现象引发的公众对话的基调来看。我质疑这种交通方式产生的语法,这种语法传播的平台,以及思想领袖和政策制定者在解决公共交通难题时的声音。对女性与boda-bodas交往的研究揭示了一条漫长的弧线,从下意识的资源引发的道德恐慌,到种族习俗和虔诚的宗教——这往往会对女性的身体进行监管——再到在自由时刻的开垦和释放,这些自由时刻以多种方式进行,包括消除个人空间的边界。除了非洲的贫富政治经济之外,本文关注的是在后殖民现代性的背景下展示文化表演性,并回答关于国家身份是如何在一系列快速传播的话语中形成和强化的关键问题,这些话语强调的是共同点,而不是巩固的差异,许多人认为这些差异既是现代非洲国家不可磨灭的象征。
{"title":"The Boda Boda (R)age: Economies of Affection in the Motorbike Taxis of Kenya","authors":"Joyce Nyairo","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2023.2128542","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2023.2128542","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Nikushike namna gani? (How should I hold you?) The questions that women ask motorbike taxis operators are just one of the many ways that this new mode of transportation in both urban and rural Kenya have become a vehicle for laughter, outrage, (in)dignity and wealth. This paper focuses on moments of delight in the danger-filled work of motorbike taxi operators in Kenya. How much joy do boda boda (motorbike taxis) generate in modern Kenya? The delight is measured, not simply in terms of the varied financial and psycho-social accumulation that is made possible in this industry, but also in terms of the tone of the public conversations that have been triggered by the boda boda phenomena. I interrogate the grammar that has grown out of this mode of transportation, the platforms through which this grammar circulates and the tenor of the voices of thought-leaders and policymakers as they engage the conundrum of public transport. An examination of women’s engagements with boda bodas reveals a long arc that stretches from moral panic borne of knee-jerk recourses to both ethnic mores and pious religion – which often conspire to policewomen’s bodies – to reclamation and release in moments of freedom that are performed in several ways, including the erasure of the borders of personal space. Beyond the political economies of wealth and poverty in Africa, this paper is concerned with demonstrating cultural performativity in the context of post-colonial modernity and answering key questions about how national identities are forged and reinforced in a series of rapidly circulating discourses that underline commonalities far more than they entrench the differences that many see as both indelible and emblematic of the modern African state.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"66 1","pages":"109 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49439318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-25DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2023.2128545
D. Kiguru
Abstract Nairobi as a city has been a prominent feature in many literary works set in Kenya from the pre-independence period, when the city started taking form, to the present. The city has also continued its presence in futuristic literary representations from Kenya. This article is concerned with Nairobi as a city and its representations within short stories in the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. It analyses selected prize-winning and shortlisted stories in a literary project that aims to map the Nairobi city space, exploring both its precarity as well as its stability as presented through literature. Through the characters in these prized stories, the article foregrounds the journey motif as a tool used by the writers to explore and present the postcolonial city though contemporary lenses, paying particular attention to the significance of the chaos and informality used to describe the city. The article seeks to read the postcolonial African city in its complexities outside of the conventional binary lenses of local versus global, rural versus urban, and modern versus traditional. It acknowledges the significance of an international literary prize not only in shaping creative narratives but also in capturing the ‘spirit of the moment’. Through an analysis of these short stories under the larger umbrella of an international literary prize, this article attempts a reading of the creative representations of a city exploring the multi-layered nature of both text and physical space.
{"title":"Journeying through Nairobi: Mapping the City through Prize-Winning Stories","authors":"D. Kiguru","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2023.2128545","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2023.2128545","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Nairobi as a city has been a prominent feature in many literary works set in Kenya from the pre-independence period, when the city started taking form, to the present. The city has also continued its presence in futuristic literary representations from Kenya. This article is concerned with Nairobi as a city and its representations within short stories in the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. It analyses selected prize-winning and shortlisted stories in a literary project that aims to map the Nairobi city space, exploring both its precarity as well as its stability as presented through literature. Through the characters in these prized stories, the article foregrounds the journey motif as a tool used by the writers to explore and present the postcolonial city though contemporary lenses, paying particular attention to the significance of the chaos and informality used to describe the city. The article seeks to read the postcolonial African city in its complexities outside of the conventional binary lenses of local versus global, rural versus urban, and modern versus traditional. It acknowledges the significance of an international literary prize not only in shaping creative narratives but also in capturing the ‘spirit of the moment’. Through an analysis of these short stories under the larger umbrella of an international literary prize, this article attempts a reading of the creative representations of a city exploring the multi-layered nature of both text and physical space.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"66 1","pages":"124 - 137"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41451432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-25DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2023.2128532
Charles Kebaya
Abstract Over the last two decades, social protests in Kenya have shifted to using art. Social protests involving art, such as the ‘State-Burial-ballot-Revolution’ and ‘Occupy-Parliament Movement,’ among others, have been witnessed in the country in the recent past. These artistic productions interpellate the spaces they interact with – the street, parliament, buildings, perimeter fences and public arenas – to denounce various issues, such as corruption, extra-judicial killings, political greed and other social injustices afflicting the nation. Espousing concepts of the carnivalesque by Mikhail Bakhtin, this article analyzes street art – street theatre and graffiti – utilized in Nairobi’s streets. In examining the literary aesthetics embedded in these innovative creative works, this article shows the significant potential of street art to stake, reclaim and reconfigure civil advocacy and, in the process, spur civic participation in various issues affecting the country today.
{"title":"Street Art and the Reconfiguration of Civic Advocacy in Nairobi City","authors":"Charles Kebaya","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2023.2128532","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2023.2128532","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Over the last two decades, social protests in Kenya have shifted to using art. Social protests involving art, such as the ‘State-Burial-ballot-Revolution’ and ‘Occupy-Parliament Movement,’ among others, have been witnessed in the country in the recent past. These artistic productions interpellate the spaces they interact with – the street, parliament, buildings, perimeter fences and public arenas – to denounce various issues, such as corruption, extra-judicial killings, political greed and other social injustices afflicting the nation. Espousing concepts of the carnivalesque by Mikhail Bakhtin, this article analyzes street art – street theatre and graffiti – utilized in Nairobi’s streets. In examining the literary aesthetics embedded in these innovative creative works, this article shows the significant potential of street art to stake, reclaim and reconfigure civil advocacy and, in the process, spur civic participation in various issues affecting the country today.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"66 1","pages":"95 - 108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42397838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-20DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2023.2128525
Nicklas Hållén
Abstract This article looks at the relatively recent tendency to aestheticize life in Nairobi’s working-class and informal neighbourhoods in different forms of art and media. It focuses on two case studies – Steve Bloom’s photobook, Trading Places: The Merchants of Nairobi (2009) and the first issue of the Kenyan literary magazine Kwani? (2003). These are compared to the collectively performed poem ‘Mistaken Identity’ (2019) by a group of poets from the neighbourhood of Kayole, to show that the street aesthetics in the two cases rest on distance, while the meaning-making in the poem rests on proximity. Distance in this context takes several forms, such as the gap between socio-economic classes and actual physical distance, but I register it on the level of epistemology. The poem also articulates a form of epistemological proximity between, first, the forms of meaning-making that can be seen in both the text and the visual and performative components of the video, and, second, the place that is portrayed. Rather than arguing that proximity is preferable to distance as a basis of meaning-making, this article attempts to theorize the emergence of a specific aesthetic. This aesthetic presents itself as an aesthetic because the particular forms of social stratification and concomitant social distance between communities and neighbourhood (which have emerged in Nairobi since 2000) allow an economic, political and cultural elite to re-discover the city, which they experience as simultaneously strange and familiar.
{"title":"Nairobi Street-Aesthetics: Distance and Proximity in the Aesthetics of Everyday Life in the Green City","authors":"Nicklas Hållén","doi":"10.1080/00138398.2023.2128525","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2023.2128525","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article looks at the relatively recent tendency to aestheticize life in Nairobi’s working-class and informal neighbourhoods in different forms of art and media. It focuses on two case studies – Steve Bloom’s photobook, Trading Places: The Merchants of Nairobi (2009) and the first issue of the Kenyan literary magazine Kwani? (2003). These are compared to the collectively performed poem ‘Mistaken Identity’ (2019) by a group of poets from the neighbourhood of Kayole, to show that the street aesthetics in the two cases rest on distance, while the meaning-making in the poem rests on proximity. Distance in this context takes several forms, such as the gap between socio-economic classes and actual physical distance, but I register it on the level of epistemology. The poem also articulates a form of epistemological proximity between, first, the forms of meaning-making that can be seen in both the text and the visual and performative components of the video, and, second, the place that is portrayed. Rather than arguing that proximity is preferable to distance as a basis of meaning-making, this article attempts to theorize the emergence of a specific aesthetic. This aesthetic presents itself as an aesthetic because the particular forms of social stratification and concomitant social distance between communities and neighbourhood (which have emerged in Nairobi since 2000) allow an economic, political and cultural elite to re-discover the city, which they experience as simultaneously strange and familiar.","PeriodicalId":42538,"journal":{"name":"ENGLISH STUDIES IN AFRICA","volume":"66 1","pages":"76 - 94"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46574563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}