Download or read book Scars of Conquest masks of Resistance written by Tejumola Olaniyan and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1995 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining in detail the dramas of Baraka, Soyinka, Walcott and Shange, this study describes how these black writers are preoccupied with the invention of a postimperial cultural identity. It charts the foundations of an important aesthetic form, the drama of the African diaspora.
Download or read book Black Theatre written by Paul Carter Harrison and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2002-11-08 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generating a new understanding of the past—as well as a vision for the future—this path-breaking volume contains essays written by playwrights, scholars, and critics that analyze African American theatre as it is practiced today.Even as they acknowledge that Black experience is not monolithic, these contributors argue provocatively and persuasively for a Black consciousness that creates a culturally specific theatre. This theatre, rooted in an African mythos, offers ritual rather than realism; it transcends the specifics of social relations, reaching toward revelation. The ritual performance that is intrinsic to Black theatre renews the community; in Paul Carter Harrison's words, it "reveals the Form of Things Unknown" in a way that "binds, cleanses, and heals."
Download or read book Performing Blackness written by Kimberley W. Benston and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Performing Blackness offers a challenging interpretation of black cultural expression since the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Exploring drama, music, poetry, sermons, and criticism, Benston offers an exciting meditation on modern black performance's role in realising African-American aspirations for autonomy and authority. Artists covered include: * John Coltrane * Ntozake Shange * Ed Bullins * Amiri Baraka * Adrienne Kennedy * Michael Harper. Performing Blackness is an exciting contribution to the ongoing debate about the vitality and importance of black culture.
Download or read book Theatre and Postcolonial Desires written by Awam Amkpa and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-06 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the themes of colonial encounters and postcolonial contests over identity, power and culture through the prism of theatre. The struggles it describes unfolded in two cultural settings separated by geography, but bound by history in a common web of colonial relations spun by the imperatives of European modernity. In post-imperial England, as in its former colony Nigeria, the colonial experience not only hybridized the process of national self-definition, but also provided dramatists with the language, imagery and frame of reference to narrate the dynamics of internal wars over culture and national destiny happening within their own societies. The author examines the works of prominent twentieth-century Nigerian and English dramatists such as Wole Soyinka, Femi Osofisan, Davd Edgar and Caryl Churchill to argue that dramaturgies of resistance in the contexts of both Nigerian as well as its imperial inventor England, shared a common allegiance to what he describes as postcolonial desires. That is, the aspiration to overcome the legacies of colonialism by imagining alternative universes anchored in democratic cultural pluralism. The plays and their histories serve as filters through which Ampka illustrates the operation of what he calls 'overlapping modernities' and reconfigures the notions of power and representation, citizenship and subjectivity, colonial and anticolonial nationalisms and postcoloniality. The dramatic works studied in this book embodied a version of postcolonial aspirations that the author conceptualises as transcending temporal locations to encompass varied moments of consciousness for progressive change, whether they happened during the hey day of English imperialism in early twentieth-century Nigeria, or in response to the exclusionary politics of the Conservative Party in Thatcherite England. Theatre and Postcolonial Desires will be essential reading for students and researchers in the areas of drama, postcolonial and cultural studies.
Download or read book Identities in Flux written by Niyi Afolabi and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on historical and cultural approaches to race relations, Identities in Flux examines iconic Afro-Brazilian figures and theorizes how they have been appropriated to either support or contest a utopian vision of multiculturalism. Zumbi dos Palmares, the leader of a runaway slave community in the seventeenth century, is shown not as an anti-Brazilian rebel but as a symbol of Black consciousness and anti-colonial resistance. Xica da Silva, an eighteenth-century mixed-race enslaved woman who "married" her master and has been seen as a licentious mulatta, questions gendered stereotypes of so-called racial democracy. Manuel Querino, whose ethnographic studies have been ignored and virtually unknown for much of the twentieth century, is put on par with more widely known African American trailblazers such as W. E. B. Du Bois. Niyi Afolabi draws out the intermingling influences of Yoruba and Classical Greek mythologies in Brazilian representations of the carnivalesque Black Orpheus, while his analysis of City of God focuses on the growing centrality of the ghetto, or favela, as a theme and producer of culture in the early twenty-first-century Brazilian urban scene. Ultimately, Afolabi argues, the identities of these figures are not fixed, but rather inhabit a fluid terrain of ideological and political struggle, challenging the idealistic notion that racial hybridity has eliminated racial discrimination in Brazil.
Download or read book Wole Soyinka Literature Activism and African Transformation written by Bola Dauda and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely and expansive biography of Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer, Nobel laureate, and social activist, shows how the author's early years influence his life's work and how his writing, in turn, informs his political engagement. Three sections spanning his life, major texts, and place in history, connect Soyinka's legacy with global issues beyond the borders of his own country, and indeed beyond the African continent. Covering his encounters with the widespread rise of kleptocratic rule and international corporate corruption, his reflection on the human condition of the North-South divide, and the consequences of postcolonialism, this comprehensive biography locates Wole Soyinka as a global figure whose life and works have made him a subject of conversation in the public sphere, as well as one of Africa's most successful and popular authors. Looking at the different forms of Soyinka's work--plays, novels, and memoirs, among others--this volume argues that Soyinka used writing to inform, mobilize, and sometimes incite civil action, in a decades-long attempt at literary social engineering.
Download or read book Long Dreams in Short Chapters written by Wumi Raji and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2009 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned with, in the main, the whole question of the transformation of the identities of the different peoples of postcolonial Africa. Even so, it is clear that the issues raised would resonate clearly in similar contexts in other parts of the world. Long Dreams in Short Chapters is a remarkable achievement, a brilliant and magisterial remapping of the African text in its literary, cultural, and political dimensions. Author Wumi Raji's globalist and transnational sensitivities make this book an effortless unpacking of the complexities of the African literary process and it is a landmark contribution to African thought.
Download or read book A Companion to African Cinema written by Kenneth W. Harrow and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-12-27 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative guide to African cinema with contributions from a team of experts on the topic A Companion to African Cinema offers an overview of critical approaches to African cinema. With contributions from an international panel of experts, the Companion approaches the topic through the lens of cultural studies, contemporary transformations in the world order, the rise of globalization, film production, distribution, and exhibition. This volume represents a new approach to African cinema criticism that once stressed the sociological and sociopolitical aspects of a film. The text explores a wide range of broad topics including: cinematic economics, video movies, life in cinematic urban Africa, reframing human rights, as well as more targeted topics such as the linguistic domestication of Indian films in the Hausa language and the importance of female African filmmakers and their successes in overcoming limitations caused by gender inequality. The book also highlights a comparative perspective of African videoscapes of Southern Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Côte d’Ivoire and explores the rise of Nairobi-based Female Filmmakers. This important resource: Puts the focus on critical analyses that take into account manifestations of the political changes brought by neocolonialism and the waning of the cold war Explores Examines the urgent questions raised by commercial video about globalization Addresses issues such as funding, the acquisition of adequate production technologies and apparatuses, and the development of adequately trained actors Written for film students and scholars, A Companion to African Cinema offers a look at new critical approaches to African cinema.
Download or read book Critical Engagements on African Literature written by Abba A. Abba and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the critical examination of Isidore Diala’s award-winning poetry and drama, the essays in this collection offer fresh insights on the complex methodological and theoretical patterns underlying the readings of African literary landscapes. This is the first book to devote considerable attention to the study of Diala’s creative works The Pyre (drama) and The Lure of Ash (poetry). The majority of the contributors here are selected from among the finest of Diala’s former teachers, colleagues and students who know him very closely. The collection addresses fertile areas of African literary expression, such as the relationship between literature and national history, African ritual aesthetics; affirmation, denial and ambivalence as products of social constructions; and exile, migration and home-coming. Contributions also explore poetry and poetic truths; semiotics; anticolonial revolutions and postcolonial implosions; oil politics; discontent and militancy; and feminism and gender politics. The book stands out among its peers, and offers great insights to scholars, researchers and teachers working in the fields of African literature, cultures and aesthetics.
Download or read book Religion Diaspora and Cultural Identity written by J.W. Pulis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the religions of the Caribbean have been a subject of popular media, there have been few ethnographic publications. This text is a much-needed and long overdue addition to Caribbean studies and the exploration of ideas, beliefs, and religious practices of Caribbean folk in diaspora and at home. Drawing upon ethnographic and historical research in a variety of contexts and settings, the contributors to this volume explore the relationship between religious and social life. Whether practiced at home or abroad, the contributors contend that the religions of Caribbean folk are dynamic and creative endeavors that have mediated the ongoing and open-ended relation between local and global, historical and contemporary change.
Download or read book Reimagining the Caribbean written by Valérie K. Orlando and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together scholars working in different languages—Creole, French, English, Spanish—and modes of cultural production—literature, art, film, music—to suggest how best to model courses that impart the rich, vibrant, and multivalent aspects of the Caribbean in the classroom. Essays focus on discussing how best to cross languages, histories, and modes of discourse. Instead of relying on available paradigms that depend on Western ways of thinking, the essays recommend methods to develop a pan-Caribbean perspective in relation to notions of the self, uses of language, gender hierarchies, and ideas of nationhood. Contributors represent various disciplines, work in one of the several languages of the Caribbean, and offer essays that reflect different cadres of expertise.
Download or read book Whiting Up written by Marvin McAllister and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2011-12-05 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early 1890s, black performer Bob Cole turned blackface minstrelsy on its head with his nationally recognized whiteface creation, a character he called Willie Wayside. Just over a century later, hiphop star Busta Rhymes performed a whiteface supercop in his hit music video "Dangerous." In this sweeping work, Marvin McAllister explores the enduring tradition of "whiting up," in which African American actors, comics, musicians, and even everyday people have studied and assumed white racial identities. Not to be confused with racial "passing" or derogatory notions of "acting white," whiting up is a deliberate performance strategy designed to challenge America's racial and political hierarchies by transferring supposed markers of whiteness to black bodies--creating unexpected intercultural alliances even as it sharply critiques racial stereotypes. Along with conventional theater, McAllister considers a variety of other live performance modes, including weekly promenading rituals, antebellum cakewalks, solo performance, and standup comedy. For over three centuries, whiting up as allowed African American artists to appropriate white cultural production, fashion new black identities through these "white" forms, and advance our collective ability to locate ourselves in others.
Download or read book Monarchs Missionaries and African Intellectuals written by Bhekizizwe Peterson and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-08-01 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of the work in the field of African studies still relies on rigid distinctions of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘resistance’, ‘indigenous’ and ‘foreign’. This book moves well beyond these frameworks to probe the complex entanglements of different intellectual traditions in the South African context, by examining two case studies. The case studies constitute the core around which is woven this intriguing story of the development of black theatre in South Africa in the early years of the century. It also highlights the dialogue between African and African-American intellectuals, and the intellectual formation of the early African elite in relation to colonial authority and how each affected the other in complicated ways. The first case study centres on Mariannhill Mission in KwaZulu-Natal. Here the evangelical and pedagogical drama pioneered by the Rev Bernard Huss, is considered alongside the work of one of the mission’s most eminent alumni, the poet and scholar, B.W. Vilakazi. The second moves to Johannesburg and gives a detailed insight into the working of the Bantu Dramatic Society and the drama of H.I.E. Dhlomo in relation to the British Drama League and other white liberal cultural activities.
Download or read book How Trauma Resonates Art Literature and Theoretical Practice written by Mark Callaghan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2014. What emerged from the 3rd Global Conference on Trauma Theory and Practice was a lively and informed view of the different ways our history, personal experiences, education, and forms of entertainment are shaped by trauma and its resultant interpretations. This volume comprises numerous academic papers concerning essential subjects in relation to trauma, from literary representations of and responses to war-related trauma, to the articulating of suffering and other traumatic legacies of colonialism. Key scholars, including Cathy Caruth and Ann E. Kaplan, are employed to develop these important research areas, as conference participants provide new insights into artistic representations of trauma and their subsequent analysis. Significant time is also dedicated to papers concerning post-traumatic growth and the role of psycho-spiritual transformation in the process, outcomes, and management of trauma. Using clinical examples, valuable research concerning the creation of safe learning environments for traumatized children is also discussed, along with additional research concerning Sandplay therapy and the theoretical and empirical aspects of time.
Download or read book Narrative Rewritings and Artistic Praxis in Derek Walcott s Works written by Mattia Mantellato and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-08-18 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on Derek Walcott’s literary and artistic wor(l)d. Western postcolonial critique has depicted the Nobel Prize laureate as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century world. This, however, devalues his fundamental contribution to the realm of Caribbean theatre and art. The text examines Walcott’s multimodal production, a combination of West Indian folkloric forms and Western-oriented structures and themes, by discussing three of his works—two plays, The Joker of Seville and Pantomime, and a long poem, Tiepolo’s Hound. These epitomise respectively a response to Spanish, English, and French cultural legacies in the New World as postcolonial re-writings of Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe, and Camille Pissarro’s stories. Following Quijano and Mignolo’s decolonial approaches and Riane Eisler’s partnership perspective, the book uncovers the strategies used by Walcott to respond to the colonial matrix of power.
Download or read book Black Women Playwrights written by Carol P. Marsh-Lockett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Africa Writes Back to Self written by Evan M. Mwangi and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-07-02 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The profound effects of colonialism and its legacies on African cultures have led postcolonial scholars of recent African literature to characterize contemporary African novels as, first and foremost, responses to colonial domination by the West. In Africa Writes Back to Self, Evan Maina Mwangi argues instead that the novels are primarily engaged in conversation with each other, particularly over emergent gender issues such as the representation of homosexuality and the disenfranchisement of women by male-dominated governments. He covers the work of canonical novelists Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, NguÅgiÅ wa Thiong'o, and J. M. Coetzee, as well as popular writers such as Grace Ogot, David Maillu, Promise Okekwe, and Rebeka Njau. Mwangi examines the novels' self-reflexive fictional strategies and their potential to refigure the dynamics of gender and sexuality in Africa and demote the West as the reference point for cultures of the Global South.
