African Literature in the Digital Age: Class and Sexual Politics in New Writing from Nigeria and Kenya, by Shola Adenekan

Abstract

One of the major developments in African literature in the twenty-first century has been the increased focus on emerging subfields such as environmental studies, queer studies, gender studies, disability studies, and so on. Another is the effect of digital technology on the production, dissemination, and consumption of literary forms. While pioneer texts tend to engage in much space-clearing to assert the uniqueness of their projects, Shola Adenekan’s African Literature in the Digital Age, the first book-length study of African literature’s relationship with new media, is motivated as much by the impulse to trace continuities with older literary practices as it is by the desire to foreground the newness of digital literature. The former is done by key concepts running through the book. In addition to the idea of networks, the book emphasises orature as an important connecting thread. Literary works in the digital age, the author argues, are more vocal about class and sexual identities because of their capacity to evade censorship by government and publishing infrastructures.