Research in African Literatures最新文献

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Politiques de la Critique : Essai sur les limites et la réinvention de la critique francophone By Kasereka Kavwahirehi 批评的政治:一篇关于法语批评的局限性和再创造的文章,作者是Kasereka Kavwahirehi
3区 文学
Research in African Literatures Pub Date : 2023-03-01 DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.2.16
Stephanie Diane Tsakeu Mazan
{"title":"Politiques de la Critique : Essai sur les limites et la réinvention de la critique francophone By Kasereka Kavwahirehi","authors":"Stephanie Diane Tsakeu Mazan","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.53.2.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.2.16","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Politiques de la Critique : Essai sur les limites et la réinvention de la critique francophone by Kasereka Kavwahirehi Stephanie Diane Tsakeu Mazan Politiques de la Critique : Essai sur les limites et la réinvention de la critique francophone BY KASEREKA KAVWAHIREHI Hermann, 2021. 310 pp. ISBN 9791037008848 paper. Kasereka Kavwahirehi is a professor of Francophone literatures at the University of Ottawa. He has authored several essays on the practice of literature, philosophy, and religion in relation to politics in Africa. In his new book, Politiques de la critique : Essai sur les limites et la réinvention de la critique francophone [Politics of Criticism: Essay on the Limits and Reinvention of Francophone Criticism], he calls for the renewal of the policies of literary and cultural criticism in Francophone Africa by recommending a more political and communal practice of reading. He also deconstructs the compartmentalization of artistic productions as well as their subdivision into \"high\" and \"low\" cultures. Politiques de la critique also presents itself as the other side of What Is Literature? by Jean-Paul Sartre. In his famous essay, the father of existentialism interrogates the function of literature through the questions \"What is writing?,\" \"Why do we write?,\" \"For whom do we write?\" to reach the conclusion that the author who is socially situated cannot escape the world of meanings. Therefore, Sartre considers the writers who defend the purely poetic conception of art as accomplices of the bourgeois and racist system in place in his time. Kasereka Kavwahirehi's book, which formulates similar questions, examines the emancipatory function that Francophone criticism should play in the era of globalization. He deplores the fact that many works by Francophonists, which are still very often confined to routine practices inherited from the French school—dictated by the capitalist bourgeoisie—are intended exclusively for scholars in a continent where schooling is still for many an unaffordable privilege. Following in the footsteps of Sartre and many other thinkers who dispute the neutrality of literature, Kasereka Kavwahirehi challenges the neutrality of criticism in his new book organized around two main axes. The first section of the book, titled \"Défis de la critique à l'heure de la mondialisation\" 'Challenges of Criticism in the Age of Globalization,' recounts the history of criticism, which, since the 12th century, has positioned itself as a social machine of resistance. That orientation given to the practice of criticism, which has mainly challenged the political power since the Middle Ages, is unfortunately marginalized today by thinkers who find refuge behind the neutrality of literature in their analysis of texts. This first section of the essay is divided into three subsections. In the first section, \"Figures de la critique moderne\" 'Figures of modern criticism,' the essayist underlines how the insurrectionary and emancipator","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"161 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134950121","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}
引用次数: 0
Afropean Aporias: Problematic Cultural Hybridity in Léonora Miano's L'intérieur de la nuit and Fatou Diome's Le Ventre de l'Atlantique 非洲Aporias:Léonora Miano的L'interior de la nuit和Fatou Diome的Le ventre de l'atlantice中的问题文化杂交
IF 0.1 3区 文学
Research in African Literatures Pub Date : 2023-03-01 DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.2.03
C. Mackay
{"title":"Afropean Aporias: Problematic Cultural Hybridity in Léonora Miano's L'intérieur de la nuit and Fatou Diome's Le Ventre de l'Atlantique","authors":"C. Mackay","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.53.2.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.2.03","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Though still arguably marginal in the notoriously centralized French language literary landscape, texts produced by Afropean authors, meaning authors of sub-Saharan origin born or currently residing in Europe, now constitute a corpus of their own with well-known authors, including Alain Mabanckou, Léonora Miano, Abdourahman Waberi, and Fatou Diome, gaining in readership and reach. Central to their works is the consideration of culturally hybrid identities whose multi-belongingness across and beyond continental sub-Saharan and European spaces is depicted in an overwhelmingly positive light. This article diverges from past scholarship through its consideration of the difficult identarian compromise for the culturally hybrid protagonists in Miano's L'intérieur de la nuit and Diome's Le Ventre de l'Atlantique. Close reading of these texts, and namely of the experiences of their female Afropean protagonists, suggests a more nuanced, complex, and less positive vision of contemporary Afropeanity than that lauded by theorists concerning a celebrated, emancipatory, and overwhelmingly coveted condition of postmodernity.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"53 1","pages":"41 - 59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47220484","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}
引用次数: 0
Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature in English: Crossing Border, Transcending Boundaries by Magdalena Pfalzgraf (review) 当代津巴布韦英语文学的流动性:跨越边界,超越边界作者:马格达莱纳·法兹格拉夫(书评)
3区 文学
Research in African Literatures Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905369
Nhlanhla Dube
{"title":"Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature in English: Crossing Border, Transcending Boundaries by Magdalena Pfalzgraf (review)","authors":"Nhlanhla Dube","doi":"10.2979/ral.2023.a905369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/ral.2023.a905369","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature in English: Crossing Border, Transcending Boundaries by Magdalena Pfalzgraf Nhlanhla Dube Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature in English: Crossing Border, Transcending Boundaries BY MAGDALENA PFALZGRAF Routledge, 2022. 260 pp. ISBN 9780367637811 cloth. Zimbabwean literary criticism is effectively in the doldrums. This is not to say that creative writers are not producing exceptional content. Rather, the Zimbabwean academy is failing to diligently appraise and survey relevant and topical fields in the canon. The many nonplussed scholarly attempts that lack critical insight and bonhomie have only made the situation worse. Magdalena Pfalzgraf’s book Mobility in Contemporary Zimbabwean Literature is a breath of fresh air. Pfalzgraf’s monograph makes an astute contribution to literary scholarship focused on Zimbabwean literature. Pfalzgraf expatiates migration as the number one issue that has beleaguered both the nation and its literature since the early 2000s to date. [End Page 175] Pfalzgraf has characterized this period as being a state of “large scale out-migration” (5). The Zimbabwean crisis of the early 2000s led to a spike in migration as people made their way overseas to attempt to find clean running water, consistent electricity, and food. “Labor migration to South Africa was so pervasive that it became an engrained part of Zimbabwean life, and it also formed a collective imaginary which persists in contemporary representations of migration to South Africa” (25). Pfalzgraf explores how these struggles have been explored in creative fiction, and she honestly deliberates on their effects. Pfalzgraf starts off by pointing to the circuitous nature of migration and movement. “In the primary texts analysed here, we will come across numerous instances where being ‘on the move’ does not mean moving on, where movement is not necessarily mobilizing and where city dynamism is not always indicative of development. This contradictory dynamic is a central concern of this study” (2). Movement is thus anfractuous, and it does not result in liberation. The greener pastures sought by itinerants remain a dream deferred. This sometimes eventually results in migrants returning home in what has come to be called “diasporic return.” Zimbabwean literature thus becomes international in dimension. Writers also went abroad along with their compatriots. “The diasporic literary community is large and scattered across the globe: Chikwava and Huchu live in Britain, Bulawayo lives in the US and Lang in Australia, Mlalazi is based in Mexico” (9). Pfalzgraf points to the fact that we are beginning to see an internationalization of Zimbabwean literature. It is no longer enough to think of the canon of Zimbabwean literature as that which is only produced within its national geographical borders. And in turn, Zimbabweans do shape their new homes abroad and this can be seen in the “Hararization of London” (208","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495369","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}
引用次数: 0
The Dead End of Representation: Suzanne Césaire Discusses Roger Caillois 代表的死胡同:苏珊娜·卡萨伊讨论罗杰·卡伊洛斯
3区 文学
Research in African Literatures Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905367
Hugo Salas
{"title":"The Dead End of Representation: Suzanne Césaire Discusses Roger Caillois","authors":"Hugo Salas","doi":"10.2979/ral.2023.a905367","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/ral.2023.a905367","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: On account of her particular reading of surrealism, this essay contends that Suzanne Césaire’s intellectual production is best understood not as heralding later strains of thought (such as Glissant’s or ecocriticism), but as part of the diverse practices of critical theory contemporary to her. To support this thesis, this article studies the coincidences and differences between her ideas on the notion of mimicry and those of Roger Callois, leading to a more complex understanding of her cardinal notion of camouflage.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495571","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}
引用次数: 0
The Curse of Manhood: Reflections on Male-Bashing in Radical Separatist Feminist African Literature 男子气概的诅咒:对激进分离主义女性主义非洲文学中对男性的抨击的反思
3区 文学
Research in African Literatures Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905360
Kelvin Acheampong
{"title":"The Curse of Manhood: Reflections on Male-Bashing in Radical Separatist Feminist African Literature","authors":"Kelvin Acheampong","doi":"10.2979/ral.2023.a905360","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/ral.2023.a905360","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: Feminism represents the battle for equal access to opportunities in society for males and females and, therefore, a necessary struggle for social justice. It is sometimes the case, however, that feminism degenerates into a battle against men, a tendency Mawuli Adzei refers to as “radical separatist feminism” (47). In African literature, this standpoint is reflected in the abject degradation of male characters, who are usually presented as the oppressors of women, enemies of women, barriers to women’s progress, and only without whom women would be able to achieve their highest potentials in society (Adzei 47). Against this backdrop, and using El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero as a primary text, this paper, while acknowledging the validity and necessity of the crusade for gender equity in African societies, contests the logic fueling male-bashing by foregrounding certain often-ignored variables in this debate: first, the faulty homogenization/essentialization of men and women (and by extension, the neglection of intersectionality) and, second, the constraints certain cultural expectations pose to men. I conclude by highlighting Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s point that—because feminism is potentially liberating for both women and men—we can all be feminists.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495347","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}
引用次数: 0
Eating Bodies: Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones 吃尸体:Edwidge Danticat的《骨头的农场》
3区 文学
Research in African Literatures Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.10
Njeri Githire
{"title":"Eating Bodies: Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones","authors":"Njeri Githire","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.10","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: This essay exposes the imagery of cannibalism as a critique of unfettered consumption and greed at the root of the exploitative structures in The Farming of Bones (1998). The essay contends that the symbolic tapestry of Edwidge Danticat’s second novel is woven around metaphors of consumption and excretion. In a bid to unpack the inner workings of a plantation system that reduced human beings to commodities, I tease out the novel’s layered reflection on these metaphors and their meaning. I demonstrate that the purported menace posed by Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic is but a deflection of the violence exerted on working bodies on a constant basis. A scheme that serves to mask the assault and plunder that are commonplace, the ascription of malevolent intent onto the immigrants strips them of their humanity and justifies their expulsion from the national territory. I further expose the strategies used by the exploited to counter the consuming carnage and restore dignity.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136208909","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}
引用次数: 0
Heteronormative Plots and African Feminine Powers in Buchi Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi 布吉·埃米切塔《强奸沙维》中的异性恋情节与非洲女性力量
3区 文学
Research in African Literatures Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.09
Nikita Anand, Kumar Parag, Aditya Prakash
{"title":"Heteronormative Plots and African Feminine Powers in Buchi Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi","authors":"Nikita Anand, Kumar Parag, Aditya Prakash","doi":"10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.09","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: Buchi Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi (1985) is representative of African women’s subordination in “motherhood,” “body movements” (used for communication in the absence of any bridge language), and “marriage” after the arrival of a group of uninvited exclusively white people (albinos) from England in the land of Shavi, a land that was abundantly blessed with a robust matriarchal spirit and self-sustaining powers of African women. This article examines how African women novelists shaped heteronormative plots as a compulsory gendered perspective for articulating the politicized disappearance of African femininity left for organizing African manhood and the masculine principle of the social, political, and heterosexual in a community like Shavi. Extending old Shavian men’s vision, Queen Mother attempts to reawaken European visitors’, such as Flip, Mendoza, Ronje, Andria, and Ista, struggle for a heterosexual role and desire limited to their race so as to save Shavian women from the men’s sexual advances and to assist Shavian women in the preservation of African virtues such as hospitality, cooperation, equality, and love besides protection against Western and young Shavian men’s critical and oppressive attitudes. This article thus contributes to persistent discussions on heterosexuality, the masculinity-femininity division, and heterosexual imaginary.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"95 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136208917","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}
引用次数: 0
Kindred Spirits: Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison by Christopher N. Okonkwo (review) 《志趣相照:奇努亚·阿契贝和托妮·莫里森》克里斯托弗·n·奥孔科沃著(书评)
3区 文学
Research in African Literatures Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905371
Adewuyi Aremu Ayodeji
{"title":"Kindred Spirits: Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison by Christopher N. Okonkwo (review)","authors":"Adewuyi Aremu Ayodeji","doi":"10.2979/ral.2023.a905371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/ral.2023.a905371","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Kindred Spirits: Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison by Christopher N. Okonkwo Adewuyi Aremu Ayodeji Kindred Spirits: Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison BY CHRISTOPHER N. OKONKWO U of Virginia P, 2022. xii + 297 pp. ISBN 9780813947112 e-book. Projecting the seemingly unforeseeable yet shared village-centric tropes in three novels each by Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison, Kindred Spirits yields a reimagining of both literary greats as kindred spirits. For Christopher N. Okonkwo, “[t]hose profound parallels in their personal and professional histories, artistic visions, and works warrant imagining them as kindred spirits” (6). Though separated by spatial and temporal barriers, both Achebe and Morrison are said to (re)connect culturally and intellectually via the mutual history of blackness. The four-chapter book “critically reconnects and celebrates” the duo of the Nigerian novelist and Man Booker Prize–winner Chinua Achebe and the African American writer and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison (3–4). Okonkwo, who contrives the book as “merely the beginning of a rigorous and sustained Achebe-Morrison comparative scholarship,” anchors it on an overarching twofold goal: first, “to direct attention to certain disciplinarily significant relations between both authors”; second, “to synthesize a theoretical model with which . . . to elucidate the compelling inter-textualities of their fiction” (3). Unarguably, part of the book’s aim is recognizing and celebrating Morrison’s undeniable but unsung intellectual investment in, and indebtedness to, modern African literature and writers like Wole Soyinka, Ama Ata Aidoo, Cyprian Ekwens, and, particularly, Chinua Achebe. [End Page 180] Okonkwo demonstrates a thoroughness of Achebe-Morrison scholarship by drawing on scholars such as Edward Said, V. Y. Mudimbe, M. M. Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, Toyin Falola, Isidore Okpewho, Nkiru Nzegwu, Michel Foucault, etc., for historical, theoretical, and critical coverage of the study. He carefully sets the theoretical basis of the book in chapter one where he purposefully articulates the tenets of villagism by first repurposing Toni Morrison’s 1984 groundbreaking essay “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation.” Morrison, in the essay, has proposed the presence of the ancestor or an ancestral figure. This proposition effloresces into villagism, which entails the idea that the village is not just a cultural context but also a theoretical model fit to tease out the similarities in the six trilogies of Achebe and Morrison. Characterization and aesthetics are the two ways, Okonkwo discerns, through which village tropes like “the ancestor,” “the past,” “generations,” generational “change,” and “the tragic” (41) manifest in the trilogies. As well as building on the contributions of West African scholars such as Ernest Emenyonu, George Nyamndi, Wendy Griswold, and Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi on the emergence of the village novel tradition in West Africa, Okonkwo heavily alludes to Achebe’s an","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"230 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495346","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}
引用次数: 0
Tuning into the Polyphony: The Emergence of LGBTQ+ Writing in Africa 调音进入复调:LGBTQ+写作在非洲的出现
3区 文学
Research in African Literatures Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905357
Chris Dunton
{"title":"Tuning into the Polyphony: The Emergence of LGBTQ+ Writing in Africa","authors":"Chris Dunton","doi":"10.2979/ral.2023.a905357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/ral.2023.a905357","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: This paper takes as its starting-point observations made by Lindsey Green-Simms in her paper “The Emergent Queer.” Following an exploration of the term “emergent,” the paper addresses the fact that, as homophobic legislation has become entrenched in the majority of African countries, more and more LGBTQ+-themed writing is emerging from or on the continent. There follows some documentation on the experience of LGBTQ+ writers such as Jude Dibia and Logan February and on the advantages to these writers of expatriation. Turning to the literature itself, coverage of the creative corpus is not comprehensive. The author has not, for example, had a chance to consider the 2013 volume Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction , edited by Karen Martin and Makhosozana Xaba. But the central task of the paper is not to account for the relevant creative writing, but to focus on the body of critical work that addresses this and on texts that explore the historical and sociological context in which the creative corpus has been produced.","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"270 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495349","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}
引用次数: 0
Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature by Duncan Brown (review) 《寻找我的路:对南非文学的反思》,邓肯·布朗著(书评)
3区 文学
Research in African Literatures Pub Date : 2023-01-01 DOI: 10.2979/ral.2023.a905368
Werner Labuschagne
{"title":"Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature by Duncan Brown (review)","authors":"Werner Labuschagne","doi":"10.2979/ral.2023.a905368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/ral.2023.a905368","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature by Duncan Brown Werner Labuschagne Finding My Way: Reflections on South African Literature BY DUNCAN BROWN U of KwaZulu-Natal P, 2020. x + 202 pp. ISBN 9781869144494. Duncan Brown’s Finding My Way surveys and comments on the state and history of South African literary criticism from the vantage point of 2020. It aims to provide more productive in-roads to approaching emerging and established South African literature. This is especially salient regarding one of the book’s main arguments, that whereas South African literature itself has been flourishing, the contemporary criticism thereof has been lagging behind. As the title suggests, Brown employs his own personal experience as a career academic to add credence to his perspective of where he believes the discipline could be more fruitful. This more flexible and individualized tone works as a counterpoint to the rigidness of contemporary criticism. In the book, Brown attempts to untangle some of the limiting aspects of the conventional, institutionalized approach. In the opening chapters, Brown explains that a central issue in studying South African literature is whether a South African literature exists in the first place. Early on, Brown outlines the shortcomings of most major studies and expansiveness of South African literature, especially highlighting their failure to definitively categorize and unify a concise South African literary canon. In terms of post-apartheid criticism, the problem of a unified criticism seems even more apparent. Brown references Leon de Kock to make the point that, during apart-heid, “writers [and critics, I would add] could take on a sense of grave importance by virtue of writing in and about one of the great crisis points in the world” (50). Literary criticism in the country has, arguably, not found another stable unifying point since. While, in contrast, the literature and readership itself has flourished. Regarding the state of current criticism, Brown posits that there is too much focus on utilizing theory, rather than reading into the literariness of the texts themselves. Brown presents a thesis that argues for a literary scholarship that “deploys theory as it is useful, rather than . . . using ‘theory’ to discipline ‘literature’ . . . a scholarship that is less monumental and institutionally proclaimed . . . that is less sure about its own grounds of working and its aims” (46). Brown argues that critics attempt to fit their predetermined frameworks onto texts, rather than reading “with” the text. In the chapters succeeding these establishing points, Brown visits various South African texts that fall somewhat outside of the traditional literary scope [End Page 173] (especially considering the usual emphasis on novels), in readings that emphasize their literariness. That is to say, reading “with” the text, rather than establishing a framework to fit onto the text. For example, Brown analyzes th","PeriodicalId":21021,"journal":{"name":"Research in African Literatures","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135495351","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}
引用次数: 1
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