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Volume Editor:
What is center and periphery? How can centers and peripheries be recognized by their ontological and axiological features? How does the axiological saturation of a literary field condition aesthetics? How did these factors transform center-periphery relationships to the former metropolises of Romance literatures of the Americas and Africa? What are the consequences of various deperipheralization contexts and processes for poetics? Using theoretical sections and case studies, this book surveys and investigates the limits of globalization. Through explorations of the intercultural dynamics, the aesthetic contributions of former peripheries are examined in terms of the transformative nature of peripheries on centralities.
Volume Editor:
What is center and periphery? How can centers and peripheries be recognized by their ontological and axiological features? How does the axiological saturation of a literary field condition aesthetics? How did these factors transform center-periphery relationships to the former metropolises of Romance literatures of the Americas and Africa? What are the consequences of various deperipheralization contexts and processes for poetics? Using theoretical sections and case studies, this book surveys and investigates the limits of globalization. Through explorations of the intercultural dynamics, the aesthetic contributions of former peripheries are examined in terms of the transformative nature of peripheries on centralities.
Editorial Board / Council Member:
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Die Schriftenreihe ALE befasst sich mit der Erforschung der englischsprachigen Literaturen Afrikas in der Breite und Vielfalt ihrer Themen, Formen und soziohistorischen Kontexte. Gleichzeitig impliziert der Titel, dass der Forschungsgegenstand als Hinterlassenschaft des britischen Kolonialismus ein kulturell hybrides Phänomen ist, welches im weiteren Umfeld der Colonial Studies mitsamt deren postkolonialer Kritik und Revision anzusiedeln ist. Entsprechend sollen die relevanten Texte einerseits als Teil des Symbolsystems Literatur einschließlich seiner einschlägigen ästhetischen Verfahren verstanden werden, in anderer Hinsicht aber als Teil des Sozialsystems und damit der Selbstinterpretation wie Selbstverständigung von Gesellschaften über ihre gemeinsame Sinngebung zu sehen sind.
The series ALE is focused on researching all African literatures written in the English language, encompassing the breadth and multiplicity of their thematic, formal and socio-historical aspects. The title equally implies that the object of study is conceived as a consequence of British colonialism, thus making it into a cultural hybrid that is inscribed in the wider context of Colonial Studies including their postcolonial critique and revision. Accordingly the texts to be studied are not only understood as forming part of the symbolic system of literature and its aesthetic procedures, but in an equal measure as part of the social system where they belong with the process of societies making meaning of themselves.
The series ALE is focused on researching all African literatures written in the English language, encompassing the breadth and multiplicity of their thematic, formal and socio-historical aspects. The title equally implies that the object of study is conceived as a consequence of British colonialism, thus making it into a cultural hybrid that is inscribed in the wider context of Colonial Studies including their postcolonial critique and revision. Accordingly the texts to be studied are not only understood as forming part of the symbolic system of literature and its aesthetic procedures, but in an equal measure as part of the social system where they belong with the process of societies making meaning of themselves.
Abstract
Intermediality, a conflation of different artistic media into one event, is typically considered to have developed in the West. In this paper, we argue that intermediality existed in pre-colonial performance traditions across Africa, where various modes of artistic enactments merged into one were preferred to enactments partitioned into different generic categories. This study identifies multiple artistic genres inherent in Nigerian stand-up art, with specific reference to various sets of Ayo Makun’s AY Live wherein we identify the blending of joke-telling, theatre, cinema, song performance and dance within each show. We trace indigenous origins of this conflation of forms by illustrating how delineations between “types” of play, as seen in AY Live, did not exist in indigenous performances. This paper thus, extends research on intermediality and African popular culture by detailing the ways in which Nigerian stand-up enactments are packaged as total entertainment in the manner of pre-existing indigenous performances.
In:
Matatu
Journal for African Culture and Society
Matatu is a journal on African literatures and societies dedicated to interdisciplinary dialogue between literary and cultural studies, historiography, the social sciences and cultural anthropology.
Matatu is animated by a lively interest in African culture and literature (including the Afro-Caribbean) that moves beyond worn-out clichés of “cultural authenticity” and “national liberation” towards critical exploration of African modernities. The East African public transport vehicle from which Matatu takes its name is both a component and a symbol of these modernities: based on “Western” (these days usually Japanese) technology, it is a vigorously African institution; it is usually regarded with some anxiety by those travelling in it, but is often enough the only means of transport available; it creates temporary communicative communities and provides a transient site for the exchange of news, storytelling, and political debate.
Matatu is firmly committed to supporting democratic change in Africa, to providing a forum for interchanges between African and European critical debates, to overcoming notions of absolute cultural, ethnic, or religious alterity, and to promoting transnational discussion on the future of African societies in a wider world.
Matatu will be published as journal as of 2016. All back volumes are still available in print.
Matatu is animated by a lively interest in African culture and literature (including the Afro-Caribbean) that moves beyond worn-out clichés of “cultural authenticity” and “national liberation” towards critical exploration of African modernities. The East African public transport vehicle from which Matatu takes its name is both a component and a symbol of these modernities: based on “Western” (these days usually Japanese) technology, it is a vigorously African institution; it is usually regarded with some anxiety by those travelling in it, but is often enough the only means of transport available; it creates temporary communicative communities and provides a transient site for the exchange of news, storytelling, and political debate.
Matatu is firmly committed to supporting democratic change in Africa, to providing a forum for interchanges between African and European critical debates, to overcoming notions of absolute cultural, ethnic, or religious alterity, and to promoting transnational discussion on the future of African societies in a wider world.
Matatu will be published as journal as of 2016. All back volumes are still available in print.
Author:
Abstract
In Postcolonial literature, magic realism and science fiction are two sub-genres that have worked diligently to contest realism as a western novelistic tradition. In the South African context, the fantastic initiates a process of psychic liberation from old (White) world narrative domination and its cognitive codes. It recapitulates problems of historical consciousness in (post)apartheid cultures and interrogates inherited notions of imperial history. This paper reads two “fantastic” texts that belong to a similar post-colonial culture—South Africa—and strives to explain the ways in which these texts recapitulate, in both their narrative discourse and their thematic content, the “real” social and historical context in which (post)apartheid South African culture existed and thrived. Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying and Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City use magic realism and science fiction respectively to re-view and debunk inherited literary modes of colonial discourse and to work towards more authentic yet challenging “codes of recognition”. By so doing, they offer positive and liberating responses to new emerging cultural forms.
In:
Matatu
Author:
Abstract
This article reviews the incongruity, the superiority, and the relief theories of humour. Challenging the dominant notion of humour as a coping mechanism, it explores humour’s potential for positive transformation. It investigates the uses of humour in Nigeria, including its social and even unsuspected psychological functions. It also inquires into the problem of a seeming rising incidence of unhappiness among Nigerians despite their much-vaunted humorous nature and despite the relief theory of humour being the dominant perspective in humour studies. By spotlighting the synergy of activism and art in humour, subliminal tendencies, and Nigerians’ distinct comic intelligence, the article attempts a nuanced analysis of the production and consumption of humour, with an accent on the growing activist-oriented humour on social media platforms, particularly Twitter. In contrast to traditional stand-up comedy, this activist-oriented humour is found to be generally geared towards real-time impact through a combined deployment of words and actions. The research puts forward illustrative examples of how social media humour has surpassed other more orthodox comedic practices and thereby engendered remarkable social and political impacts in Nigeria.
In:
Matatu
Abstract
Francis Selormey’s The Narrow Path and Asare Konadu’s A Woman in Her Prime are two novels that add to the rich Ghanaian literary tradition through their exploration of human relationships and the roles men play in these relationships. Despite gaining a cult readership, these texts have largely been ignored by scholars. This paper examines the men in these texts to reveal the images of masculinities presented and show whether or not they follow society’s hegemonic model or create their own paths. This paper argues that the societies presented by these novels do not allow for a rejection of hegemony, and the male characters in these novels unknowingly follow society’s ideal masculine values. By using the theory of masculinities as a character study tool, the differences in the gender performance of the male characters in the pre-colonial and colonial eras are made clear and control is established as an ideology of the colonial era.
In:
Matatu
Author:
Abstract
Contemporary globalisation and urbanisation continue to play a significant role in how the youths (re)create and (re)define urban spaces in Africa. Major cities across the continent are becoming active sites for social and cultural transformation. With the economic slowdown and increased rate of unemployment, youths are seeking ways to adapt to these realities while at the same time staying true to their urban identity. The present study uses participatory observation to examine two of the emerging youth practices in Nairobi, which are, the baze and gengetone music, to underscore how the youths in Nairobi Eastlands engage these practices both as sites for bolstering their urban identity and as alternative spaces for earning a livelihood. The study reveals that both the baze and gengetone music are available platforms which city youths use to construct their urban identities while dealing with local social challenges such as alcoholism, drug abuse and negative ethnicity, as well as harsh economic realities such as unemployment and a high cost of living. Further examination shows that discourse spaces created by these practices afford them a chance to participate in matters of national interest where they can contest and challenge social orders that are oppressive.
In:
Matatu
Author:
Abstract
Kuduro is a style of dance and electronic music that emerged in Angola in the nineties, in a peculiar social context. Initially consumed and produced by young people from the periphery of the city of Luanda, it became a means of expression, entertainment, socialization and subsistence, through which they became autonomous and symbolically transformed their realities of scarcity. With access to communication technologies and movements of global dispersion of people and information, kuduro also spread to other countries and gained other meanings. Here, I analyze the characteristics of its context of origin, the conditions and implications of such dispersal, and disputes over the meanings of style.
In:
Matatu
Author:
Abstract
Knowledge and knowledge production play a significant role in the postcolonial project of de-traumatization and self-realization. However, such knowledge has often been couched within a Eurocentric epistemological framework. The postcolony is caught firmly within the orthodox which translates positivistic knowledge into the very definition of worldly progress—the idea of how a state attends to the welfare and well-being of its citizens through a development agenda. This essay engages the question: What might constitute an autonomous framework that could assist Africa and her thinkers and scholars in the development and validation of local forms of knowledge for social transformation? In this regard, I will examine the claims of Otto Neurath’s postpositivism and the dynamic pluralism of the Ifá sacred corpus of the Yorùbá, both within the framework of the epistemology of the South project. Both of these epistemological frameworks outline a pluralistic understanding of knowledge that could enable the reconfiguring of knowledge production in Africa.
In:
Matatu