How Things Will Go: Genre, Infrastructure, and Hope in Welcome to Lagos

IF 0.4 2区文学 0 LITERATURE

ARIEL-A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH LITERATURE Pub Date : 2023-07-01 DOI:10.1353/ari.2023.a905708

Rebecca Oh

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract:This article examines how two structuring forms, infrastructure and genre, facilitate and distribute affects of hopeful futurity in Chibundu Onuzo's 2017 novel Welcome to Lagos. I argue that genre acts as the infrastructure of infrastructure, an underlying connective logic that shapes how infrastructures are encountered and perceived. In turn, infrastructures materialize generic expectations about the world. Welcome to Lagos' comic form, which aestheticizes contingency and fortune, shapes the way characters relate to informal infrastructures like underbridges and abandoned buildings. Such discarded spaces reinforce a view of the city as a space rife with opportunity. In contrast to more pessimistic views of the postcolonial city, Welcome to Lagos' comedy and infrastructure foreground how access to resources and materials are unpredictably distributed, in turn making feelings of hopeful or open futurity more available to the urban poor. Ultimately, I argue that affects like hope index the lived force of genre and infrastructure as structuring forms, and that genre and infrastructure are useful for theorizing postcolonial affect.

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事情会如何发展：欢迎来到拉各斯的流派、基础设施和希望

摘要：本文探讨了Chibundu Onuzo 2017年的小说《欢迎来到拉各斯》中，基础设施和类型这两种结构形式是如何促进和分布对未来充满希望的影响的。我认为，类型是基础设施的基础设施，是一种潜在的连接逻辑，它塑造了如何遇到和感知基础设施。反过来，基础设施实现了对世界的普遍期望。欢迎来到拉各斯的漫画形式，它将偶然性和财富审美化，塑造了人物与灌木丛和废弃建筑等非正式基础设施的关系。这些废弃的空间强化了人们对这座城市充满机遇的看法。与对后殖民城市更悲观的看法相反，《欢迎来到拉各斯》的喜剧和基础设施前景显示，资源和材料的获取是如何不可预测地分配的，这反过来又让城市穷人更容易感受到希望或开放的未来。最终，我认为，像希望这样的影响将类型和基础设施的生命力作为结构形式，类型和基础结构对于后殖民影响的理论化是有用的。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

ARIEL-A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH LITERATURE LITERATURE-

CiteScore

0.70

自引率

0.00%

发文量