Pub Date : 2023-03-12DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2023.2172357
Cédric Courtois
ABSTRACT This article focuses on the politics and poetics of (de)colonization that Namwali Serpell puts in place in her debut novel The Old Drift. It argues that she first of all addresses problematic (post)colonial representations particularly by explicitly referring to and debunking colonialist Percy M. Clark’s The Autobiography of an Old Drifter. Moreover, she allows for what Jacques Rancière has called a “re-configuration” of the “distribution of the sensible” by staging what Sara Ahmed has named “willful” characters who tackle the legacy of Scottish explorer David Livingstone, but who also live a historic moment for the Zambian nation, that of its decolonization/independence. Finally, it analyses the issues of Eurocentrism and Serpell’s willingness to decolonize the imaginary and the mind by focusing on alternative sources of historical knowledge: this enables both the characters and the readers to “wake up from the spell of Eurocentrism” in order to favour a form of “pluriversality”.
{"title":"Politics and poetics of (de)colonization in Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift (2019)","authors":"Cédric Courtois","doi":"10.1080/17449855.2023.2172357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2023.2172357","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article focuses on the politics and poetics of (de)colonization that Namwali Serpell puts in place in her debut novel The Old Drift. It argues that she first of all addresses problematic (post)colonial representations particularly by explicitly referring to and debunking colonialist Percy M. Clark’s The Autobiography of an Old Drifter. Moreover, she allows for what Jacques Rancière has called a “re-configuration” of the “distribution of the sensible” by staging what Sara Ahmed has named “willful” characters who tackle the legacy of Scottish explorer David Livingstone, but who also live a historic moment for the Zambian nation, that of its decolonization/independence. Finally, it analyses the issues of Eurocentrism and Serpell’s willingness to decolonize the imaginary and the mind by focusing on alternative sources of historical knowledge: this enables both the characters and the readers to “wake up from the spell of Eurocentrism” in order to favour a form of “pluriversality”.","PeriodicalId":44946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Postcolonial Writing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47517042","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 : 2023-03-06DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2023.2179496
Sleiman El Hajj
{"title":"Reclaiming Arab queerness, debunking white saviors: This Arab is queer, an anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab writers","authors":"Sleiman El Hajj","doi":"10.1080/17449855.2023.2179496","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2023.2179496","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Postcolonial Writing","volume":"59 1","pages":"409 - 412"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42737770","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 : 2023-03-04DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2023.2180772
Sayan Chattopadhyay
ABSTRACT Through Anuradha Roy’s novel Sleeping on Jupiter (2015), this article explores the complex relationship between neo-liberal capitalism and international charity, and how this creates and sustains sites of exploitation and violence in the Global South. It uses Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of the “premodern” to read Roy’s powerful critique of a new-age ashram in India where indigenous patriarchy, sexual exploitation, commodity production, and international charity seamlessly merge together. The article goes on to show how such sites of premodernity, like the ashram in Roy’s novel, cater to the problematic desire of international philanthropists to do good while remaining oblivious to the causes of destitution. The article concludes by focussing on the problems inherent in remembering and narrativizing the premodern. In doing so it exposes the fact that the super-exploitation underlying these sites of premodernity is ultimately the creation of neo-liberal capitalism and international charity coming from the Global North.
{"title":"Planting the weathervane: Neo-liberalism, international charity, and the premodern in Anuradha Roy’s Sleeping on Jupiter (2015)","authors":"Sayan Chattopadhyay","doi":"10.1080/17449855.2023.2180772","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2023.2180772","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Through Anuradha Roy’s novel Sleeping on Jupiter (2015), this article explores the complex relationship between neo-liberal capitalism and international charity, and how this creates and sustains sites of exploitation and violence in the Global South. It uses Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of the “premodern” to read Roy’s powerful critique of a new-age ashram in India where indigenous patriarchy, sexual exploitation, commodity production, and international charity seamlessly merge together. The article goes on to show how such sites of premodernity, like the ashram in Roy’s novel, cater to the problematic desire of international philanthropists to do good while remaining oblivious to the causes of destitution. The article concludes by focussing on the problems inherent in remembering and narrativizing the premodern. In doing so it exposes the fact that the super-exploitation underlying these sites of premodernity is ultimately the creation of neo-liberal capitalism and international charity coming from the Global North.","PeriodicalId":44946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Postcolonial Writing","volume":"59 1","pages":"215 - 227"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46522998","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 : 2023-03-03DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2023.2170756
Eugenia Ossana
ABSTRACT Within the landscape of contemporary Nigerian literature, the debut novel of Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer (2018), stands out for its blend of black humour, ethical aspersions, denouncement of patriarchal violence, and unreliable narration. Readers are bound to sympathize with two criminal sisters, despite the decidedly thorny situation they are immersed in: stunning Ayoola inadvertently kills her boyfriends and connives with her sister Korede, a nurse who effectively disposes of the corpses. This article will revisit some considerations of entropic humour and comic distance with a view to demonstrating why the sisters are granted a redeeming opportunity. Additionally, it will examine the effects of domestic trauma – mainly from an African-centred perspective – and a possible fictional unlearning of patriarchal narratives. Finally it will focus on the role of the narrator’s unreliability in order to underscore the additional ironical undercurrents of the novel’s layered plot.
{"title":"Of ties and lies: Ethical disruptions in Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister the Serial Killer (2018)","authors":"Eugenia Ossana","doi":"10.1080/17449855.2023.2170756","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2023.2170756","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Within the landscape of contemporary Nigerian literature, the debut novel of Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer (2018), stands out for its blend of black humour, ethical aspersions, denouncement of patriarchal violence, and unreliable narration. Readers are bound to sympathize with two criminal sisters, despite the decidedly thorny situation they are immersed in: stunning Ayoola inadvertently kills her boyfriends and connives with her sister Korede, a nurse who effectively disposes of the corpses. This article will revisit some considerations of entropic humour and comic distance with a view to demonstrating why the sisters are granted a redeeming opportunity. Additionally, it will examine the effects of domestic trauma – mainly from an African-centred perspective – and a possible fictional unlearning of patriarchal narratives. Finally it will focus on the role of the narrator’s unreliability in order to underscore the additional ironical undercurrents of the novel’s layered plot.","PeriodicalId":44946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Postcolonial Writing","volume":"59 1","pages":"228 - 241"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47891628","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 : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2023.2179508
Tanya Agathocleous
{"title":"Unseen city: The psychic lives of the urban poor","authors":"Tanya Agathocleous","doi":"10.1080/17449855.2023.2179508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2023.2179508","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Postcolonial Writing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49108386","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 : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2023.2179468
J. van Amelsvoort
{"title":"Planetary specters: Race, migration, and climate change in the 21st century","authors":"J. van Amelsvoort","doi":"10.1080/17449855.2023.2179468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2023.2179468","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Postcolonial Writing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49356006","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 : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2023.2179530
T. Osinubi
{"title":"Debt/law/realism: Nigerian writers imagine the state at independence","authors":"T. Osinubi","doi":"10.1080/17449855.2023.2179530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2023.2179530","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Postcolonial Writing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47339045","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}
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