Download or read book Mediating Violence from Africa written by George MacLeod and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2023-10 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mediating Violence from Africa explores how African and non-African Francophone authors, filmmakers, editors, and scholars have packaged, interpreted, and filmed the violent histories of post-Cold War Francophone Africa. This violence, much of which unfolded in front of Western television cameras, included the use of child soldiers facilitated by the Soviet Union's castoff Kalashnikov rifles, the rise of Islamist terrorism in West Africa, and the horrific genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Through close readings of fictionalized child-soldier narratives, cinematic representations of Islamist militants, genocide survivor testimony, and Western scholarship, George S. MacLeod analyzes the ways Francophone African authors and filmmakers, as well as their editors and scholarly critics, negotiate the aesthetic, political, cultural, and ethical implications of making these traumatic stories visible. MacLeod argues for the need to periodize these productions within a "post-Cold War" framework to emphasize how shifts in post-1989 political discourse are echoed, contested, or subverted by contemporary Francophone authors, filmmakers, and Western scholars. The questions raised in Mediating Violence from Africa are of vital importance today. How the world engages with and responds to stories of recent violence and loss from Africa has profound implications for the affected communities and individuals. More broadly, in an era in which stories and images of violence, from terror attacks to school shootings to police brutality, are disseminated almost instantly and with minimal context, these theoretical questions have implications for debates surrounding the ethics of representing trauma, the politicization of memory, and Africa's place in a global (as opposed to a postcolonial or Euro-African) economic and political landscape.

Download or read book Violence in Francophone African and Caribbean Women s Literature written by Chantal Kalisa and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chantal Kalisa examines the ways in which women writers lift taboos imposed on them by their society and culture and challenge readers with their unique perspectives on violence. Comparing women from different places and times, Kalisa treats types of violence such as colonial, familial, linguistic, and war-related, specifically linked to dictatorship and genocide. She examines Caribbean writers Michele Lacrosil, Simone Schwartz-Bart, Gisèle Pineau, and Edwidge Danticat, and Africans Ken Begul, Calixthe Beyala, Nadine Bar, and Monique Ilboudo. She also includes Sembène Ousmane and Frantz Fanon.

Download or read book African Drama and Performance written by John Conteh-Morgan and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2004-10 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title explores the diversity of the performing arts in Africa and the diaspora, from studies of major dramatic authors and formal literary dramas to improvisational theatre and popular video films.

Download or read book Imaginary Spaces of Power in Sub Saharan Literatures and Films written by Alix Mazuet and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-25 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays is unlike others in the field of African studies, for it is based on three very precisely delineated focal points: a particular geographical region, the sub-Sahara; specific modes of cultural production, literature and cinema; and a focus on works of French expression. This three-fold approach to exploring the relationships between power and culture in a non-Western environment greatly contributes to making this book unique from a variety of perspectives: African, Francophone and postcolonial studies, as well as cross-disciplinary, cultural, transnational and diasporic studies. Moreover, the book offers deft and innovative analyses that move beyond the rhetoric of crises on the African continent we so very often hear of, so as to present a critical reflection on the subject at hand that is specific to the sub-Sahara and at the same time intimately linked to global culture, economy and politics. The authors’ three-fold approach also presupposes that disciplinary compartmentalization increases power conflicts in academia. If only in part, compartmentalization is the result of antagonistic and competitive relations between specialization and multidisciplinary education. This book is thus a modest attempt at presenting an alternative to excessively fixed and homogeneous academic frontiers while considering that disciplinary expertise remains a must. Keeping in mind that an increasing number of scholars in Anglophone Postcolonial studies and Francophone African studies have been attempting for quite some time now to open interstices and build crossroads that can better connect them to each other, keeping in mind that these scholars work at revealing mechanisms by which any antagonistic discourses can mix, influence, act upon or react to one another, this book seeks to take a constructive step in establishing enduring grounds for multidisciplinary, cross-disciplinary and transnational academic research and collaboration.

Download or read book A Companion to African Philosophy written by Kwasi Wiredu and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of newly commissioned essays provides comprehensive coverage of African philosophy, ranging across disciplines and throughout the ages. Offers a distinctive historical treatment of African philosophy. Covers all the main branches of philosophy as addressed in the African tradition. Includes accounts of pre-colonial African philosophy and contemporary political thought.

Download or read book Forbidden Grounds written by Richard A. Epstein and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 980 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This controversial book presents a powerful argument for the repeal of anti-discrimination laws within the workplace. These laws--frequently justified as a means to protect individuals from race, sex, age, and disability discrimination--have been widely accepted by liberals and conservatives alike since the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and are today deeply ingrained in our legal culture. Richard Epstein demonstrates that these laws set one group against another, impose limits on freedom of choice, undermine standards of merit and achievement, unleash bureaucratic excesses, mandate inefficient employment practices, and cause far more invidious discrimination than they prevent. Epstein urges a return to the common law principles of individual autonomy that permit all persons to improve their position through trade, contract, and bargain, free of government constraint. He advances both theoretical and empirical arguments to show that competitive markets outperform the current system of centralized control over labor markets. Forbidden Grounds has a broad philosophical, economic, and historical sweep. Epstein offers novel explanations for the rational use of discrimination, and he tests his theory against a historical backdrop that runs from the early Supreme Court decisions, such as Plessy v. Ferguson which legitimated Jim Crow, through the current controversies over race-norming and the 1991 Civil Rights Act. His discussion of sex discrimination contains a detailed examination of the laws on occupational qualifications, pensions, pregnancy, and sexual harassment. He also explains how the case for affirmative action is strengthened by the repeal of employment discrimination laws. He concludes the book by looking at the recent controversies regarding age and disability discrimination. Forbidden Grounds will capture the attention of lawyers, social scientists, policymakers, and employers, as well as all persons interested in the administration of this major

Download or read book Dictionary of African Biography written by Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong and published by . This book was released on 2012-02-02 with total page 3382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pharaohs to Fanon, Dictionary of African Biography provides a comprehensive overview of the lives of the men and women who shaped Africa's history. Unprecedented in scale, DAB covers the whole continent from Tunisia to South Africa, from Sierra Leone to Somalia. It also encompasses the full scope of history from Queen Hatsheput of Egypt (1490-1468 BC) and Hannibal, the military commander and strategist of Carthage (243-183 BC), to Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana (1909-1972), Miriam Makeba and Nelson Mandela of South Africa (1918 -).

Download or read book Heritage and Ruptures in Indian Literature Culture and Cinema written by Cornelius Crowley and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the millennial history of the Indian subcontinent. Through the various methods adopted, the objects and moments examined, it questions various linguistic, literary and artistic appropriations of the past, to address the conflicting comprehensions of the present and also the figuring/imagining of a possible future. The volume engages with this general cultural condition, in relation both to the subcontinent’s current “synchronic” reality and to certain aspects of the culture’s underlying diachronic determinations. It also reveals how the multiple heritages are negotiated through the subcontinent’s long-term sedimentational history. It scrutinizes both conservative interpretations of heritage and a possibly incremental enrichment, and the additional possibility of a mode of appropriation open to a dialectic of creative destruction, in which the patrimonial imperative is challenged, leaving room for processes of renewal and rejuvenation. The collection is organized around four major topics: Orientalism, addressed by way of the Tamil Epic Manimekalai, through the evocation of the Hastings Circle and views on a possible Hindu-Muslim unity sketched out by Sayyid Ahmed Khan; modernism in Indian and Burmese texts written in English; pictorial art, through a consideration of the work of British Asian and Indian film directors; and, finally, the current state of a body of critical thinking on gender.

Download or read book Ousmane Sembene and the Politics of Culture written by Lifongo J. Vetinde and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-11-12 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Undoubtedly one of Africa’s most influential first generation of writers and filmmakers, Ousmane Sembene's creative works of fiction as well as his films have been the subject of a considerable number of scholarly articles. The schemas of reading applied to Sembene's oeuvre (novels, short stories and films) have, in the main, focused either on his militant posture against colonialism, his disenchantment with African leadership, or his infatuation with documenting the past in an attempt to present a balanced and nuanced view of African history. While these studies, unquestionably contribute to a better understanding of his works, they collectively ignore Sembene’s relentless preoccupation with culture in his entire career as a writer and filmmaker. The collection of essays in Sembene and the Politics of Culture sets out to fill that gap as the contributors at once foreground Sembene’s fixation on the centrality of culture in the articulation of the discourse of national consciousness and reevaluate his intellectual and artistic legacy within an overarching framework of African liberation. The contributors critically reassess the ideological underpinnings of Sembene’s thoughts, his role as one of the foundational pillars of African cultural production, and his relevance in current discourses of nationhood. They do so through a wide variety of interdisciplinary approaches that draw on linguistics, feminist theory, film theory, historiography, Marxist criticism, psychoanalysis and a host of other approaches that give novel insights in the critical analysis of the works under study. In the part entitled “Testimonies," a collection of conversations with people who worked closely with Sembene, each of the interlocutors provide illuminating insights into the man's life and work. The variety of themes and critical approaches in this critical anthology will certainly be of interest not only to students and scholars of African literature and cinema at various levels of intellectual and cultural sophistication but also anyone interested in the analysis of the nexus between power, culture, and the discourse of liberation.

Download or read book Contemporary Francophone African Writers and the Burden of Commitment written by Odile Cazenave and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2011-02-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By looking at engagée literature from the recent past, when the francophone African writer was implicitly seen as imparted with a mission, to the present, when such authors usually aspire to be acknowledged primarily for their work as writers, Contemporary Francophone African Writers and the Burden of Commitment addresses the currrent processes of canonization in contemporary francophone African literature. Odile Cazenave and Patricia Célérier argue that aesthetic as well as political issues are now at the forefront of debates about the African literary canon, as writers and critics increasingly acknowledge the ideology of form. Working across genres but focusing on the novel, the authors take up the question of renewed forms of commitment in this literature. Their selected writers range from Mongo Beti, Ousmane Sembène, and Aminata Sow Fall to Boubacar Boris Diop, Véronique Tadjo, Alain Mabanckou, and Léonora Miano, among others.

Download or read book Afroeurope ns written by Marta Sofía López and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this groundbreaking collection constitute a pioneering attempt at establishing a comparative agenda for the study of black literatures and identities in the context of the European Union. Drawing from a wide variety of critical perspectives and methodologies, from Post-colonial or Diaspora Studies to Sociology or Ethnography, contributors to the volume analyze black diasporic communities and their cultural productions in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom, paying particular attention to women afrosporic writers.

Download or read book From Cyrus to Alexander written by Pierre Briant and published by Eisenbrauns. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 1218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around 550 B.C.E. the Persian people--who were previously practically unknown in the annals of history--emerged from their base in southern Iran (Fars) and engaged in a monumental adventure that, under the leadership of Cyrus the Great and his successors, culminated in the creation of an immense Empire that stretched from central Asia to Upper Egypt, from the Indus to the Danube. The Persian (or Achaemenid, named for its reigning dynasty) Empire assimilated an astonishing diversity of lands, peoples, languages, and cultures. This conquest of Near Eastern lands completely altered the history of the world: for the first time, a monolithic State as vast as the future Roman Empire arose, expanded, and matured in the course of more than two centuries (530-330) and endured until the death of Alexander the Great (323), who from a geopolitical perspective was "the last of the Achaemenids." Even today, the remains of the Empire-the terraces, palaces, reliefs, paintings, and enameled bricks of Pasargadae, Persepolis, and Susa; the impressive royal tombs of Naqsh-i Rustam; the monumental statue of Darius the Great-serve to remind visitors of the power and unprecedented luxury of the Great Kings and their loyal courtiers (the "Faithful Ones"). Though long eclipsed and overshadowed by the towering prestige of the "ancient Orient" and "eternal Greece," Achaemenid history has emerged into fresh light during the last two decades. Freed from the tattered rags of "Oriental decadence" and "Asiatic stagnation," research has also benefited from a continually growing number of discoveries that have provided important new evidence-including texts, as well as archaeological, numismatic, and iconographic artifacts. The evidence that this book assembles is voluminous and diverse: the citations of ancient documents and of the archaeological evidence permit the reader to follow the author in his role as a historian who, across space and time, attempts to understand how such an Empire emerged, developed, and faded. Though firmly grounded in the evidence, the author's discussions do not avoid persistent questions and regularly engages divergent interpretations and alternative hypotheses. This book is without precedent or equivalent, and also offers an exhaustive bibliography and thorough indexes. The French publication of this magisterial work in 1996 was acclaimed in newspapers and literary journals. Now Histoire de l'Empire Perse: De Cyrus a Alexandre is translated in its entirety in a revised edition, with the author himself reviewing the translation, correcting the original edition, and adding new documentation. Pierre Briant, Chaire Histoire et civilisation du monde achémenide et de l'empire d'Alexandre, Collège de France, is a specialist in the history of the Near East during the era of the Persian Empire and the conquests of Alexander. He is the author of numerous books. Peter T. Daniels, the translator, is an independent scholar, editor, and translator who studied at Cornell University and the University of Chicago. He lives and works in New York City.

Download or read book Postcolonial Criticism and Representations of African Dictatorship written by Cecile Bishop and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The figure of the dictator looms large in representations of postcolonial Africa. Since the late 1970s, writers, film-makers and theorists have sought to represent the realities of dictatorship without endorsing the colonialist cliches portraying Africans as incapable of self-government. Against the heavily-politicized responses provoked by this dilemma, Bishop argues for a form of criticism that places the complexity of the reader's or spectator's experiences at the heart of its investigations. Ranging across literature, film and political theory, this study calls for a reengagement with notions - often seen as unwelcome diversions from political questions - such as referentiality, genre and aesthetics. But rather than pit 'political' approaches against formal and aesthetic procedures, the author presents new insights into the interplay of the political and the aesthetic. Cecile Bishop is a Junior Research Fellow in French at Somerville College, Oxford.

Download or read book The Surface Breaks a reimagining of The Little Mermaid written by Louise O'Neill and published by Scholastic UK. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deep beneath the sea off the cold Irish coast, Gaia is a young mermaid who dreams of being human... but at what terrible price? Hans Christian Andersen's dark original fairy tale is reimagined through a searing feminist lens, with the stunning, scalpel-sharp writing and world building that has won Louise her legions of devoted fans.

Download or read book Decades of Disparity written by Human Rights Watch (Organization) and published by Human Rights Watch. This book was released on 2009 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using national drug arrest data from 1980 to 2007, this report illuminates the persistence and extent of racial disparities in the so-called?war on drugs? in the United States. Although blacks and whites engage in drug offenses at roughly comparable rates, blacks have been consistently arrested for drug offenses at rates that are from 2.8 to 5.5 times higher nationwide than white drug arrest rates. In addition, this report reveals that among individual states, black drug arrest rates in a single year, 2006, ranged from 2 to 11.3 times higher than white rates. Finally, the report shows that since 1980, the preponderance of drug arrests have been for possession, not sales. Millions of Americans have acquired a criminal record because they engaged in the minor non-violent offense of drug possession. Human Rights Watch calls on the United States to revise its drug control policies to reduce reliance on criminal prosecution and address these troubling racial disparities.

Download or read book Research in African Literatures written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 1- , spring 1970- , include "A Bibliography of American doctoral dissertations on African literature," compiled by Nancy J. Schmidt.

Download or read book Exemplary Violence written by Alberto Villate-Isaza and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-12 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exemplary Violence explores the violent colonial history of the New Kingdom of Granada (modern-day Colombia and Venezuela) by examining three seventeenth-century historical accounts—Pedro Simón’s Noticias historiales, Juan Rodríguez Freile’s El carnero, and Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita’s Historia general—each of which reveals the colonizer’s reliance on the threat of violence to sustain order.