Download or read book Playing the Market written by Anne Fuchs and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between Johannesburg’s Market Theatre and the economic and political forces of South Africa's apartheid regime was both complex and somewhat ambiguous. The theatre's two founders, Mannie Manim and Barney Simon, however, from idealistic beginnings managed to steer their experimental enterprise around pitfalls ranging from censorship, boycotts and recuperation by big business to the difficulties encountered in finding black authors, let alone black audiences. If the place occupied by the Market institution in apartheid society is emphasized throughout the present study, its contribution to the aesthetic of resistance is also underlined through detailed criticism of the plays and authors dominating the theatre. Pieter-Dirk Uys, Barney Simon's workshop plays and, among others, Black Consciousness plays are subjected to various methods of theatre performance analysis. The reckoning that had to come in the early 1990s revealed itself as globally positive; the reasons for this may be found in the updated concluding part of Playing the Market, which is composed of more general essays (including one on the vibrant Junction Avenue Theatre Company) on how the theatre scene in contemporary South Africa started to change. A postscript reveals more specific aspects of the Market situation in the late 1990s when its hegemony in the New South Africa was already being questioned.
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 Politics of the Female Body written by Ketu H. Katrak and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible to simultaneously belong to and be exiled from a community? Arguing that it is possible, the author uncovers the ways that the female body becomes a site of both oppression and resistance. She reveals common political and feminist alliances across geographic boundaries.
Download or read book Issues in African Literature written by Charles E. Nnolim and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2010 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The multitudinous nature of African literature has always been an issue but really not a problem, although its oral base has been used by expatriate critics to accuse African literature of thin plots, superficial characterisation, and narrative structures. African literature also, it is observed, is a mixed grill: it is oral; it is written in vernacular or tribal tongues; written in foreign tongues English, French, Portuguese and within the foreign language in which it is written, pidgin and creole further bend the already bent language giving African literature a further taint of linguistic impurity. African literature further suffers from the nature of its "newness" and this created problems for the critic. Because it is new, and because its critics are in simultaneous existence with its writers, we confront the problem of "instant analysis". Issues in African Literature continues the debate and tries to clarify contemporary burning issues in African literature, by focussing on particular areas where the debate has been most concerned or around which it has hovered and been persistent.
Download or read book The Novel in Africa and the Caribbean Since 1950 written by Simon Gikandi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Novel in Africa and the Caribbean since 1950 examines the institutional and social peculiarities that make fiction produced in Africa and the Atlantic World since 1950 important to the history of the novel in English.
Download or read book Research in African Literatures written by and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 496 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 Critical Practice written by Catherine Belsey and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book finds a way through often impenetrable recent theories, exploring key concepts of ideology, subjectivity and representation in the various forms put forward by different 'schools' of theorists.
Download or read book Critical Conversations in African Philosophy written by Alena Rettová and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this edited collection contributors examine key themes, sources and methods in contemporary African Philosophy, building on a wide-ranging understanding of what constitutes African philosophy, and drawing from a variety of both oral and written texts of different genres. Part one of the volume examines how African philosophy has reacted to burning issues, ranging from contemporary ethical questions on how to integrate technological advancements into human life; to one of philosophy’s prime endeavours, which is establishing the conditions of knowledge; to eternal ontological and existential questions on the nature of being, time, memory and death. Part two reflects on the (re)definition of philosophy from an African vantage point and African philosophy’s thrust to create its own canon, archive and resources to study African concepts, artefacts, practices and texts from the perspective of intellectual history. The volume aims to make a contribution to the academic debate on African philosophy and philosophy more broadly, challenging orthodox definitions and genres, in favour of a broadening of the discipline’s self-understanding and locales. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of African philosophy and comparative philosophy.
Download or read book Reading Buchi Emecheta written by Katherine Fishburn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1995-04-25 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first full-length study of Emecheta's fiction, Fishburn highlights the difficulties inherent in reading across cultures. She challenges the notion that all we need to understand African texts is a willingness to be open to them, arguing that too many of the cultural and critical preconceptions we bring to these texts interfere with our ability to understand them. Directly responding to Western feminist criticism written about Emecheta, this study argues that Emecheta herself is not a feminist in the Western sense and that her novels should not be construed as reflecting this political interest. In close readings of eight of her best known works, this study reveals a complex narrative voice which is far more supportive of Emecheta's own African culture and its tradition than has been recognized previously.
Download or read book Tradition and the Black Atlantic written by Henry Louis Gates Jr and published by Civitas Books. This book was released on 2010-08-24 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Tradition and the Black Atlantic is both a vibrant romp down the rabbit hole of cultural studies and an examination of the discipline's roots and role in contemporary thought. In this conversational tour through the halls of theory, Gates leaps from Richard Wright to Spike Lee, from Pat Buchanan to Frantz Fanon, and ultimately to the source of anticolonialist thought: the unlikely figure of Edmund Burke. Throughout Tradition and the Black Atlantic, Gates shows that the culture wars have presented us with a surfeit of either/ors -- tradition versus modernity; Eurocentrism versus Afrocentricism. Pointing us away from these facile dichotomies, Gates deftly combines rigorous scholarship with humor, looking back to the roots of cultural studies in order to map out its future course.
Download or read book W E B Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty first Century written by Reiland Rabaka and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century utilizes Du Bois's thought and texts to develop an informed critical theory of contemporary society. This book broadens the base of critical theory, making it more multicultural, transethnic, transgender, and non-Western European philosophy focused by placing it in dialogue with theory and phenomena that had been heretofore woefully neglected. Taking the preeminent black intellectual of the twentieth century as his primary point of departure, Reiland Rabaka identifies and analyzes several key contributions that Du Bois and the black racial tradition offer to those interested in redeveloping and racially revising contemporary critical social theory. With chapters on critical race theory, postcolonial theory, feminism, and Marxism, this volume builds bridges from Africana Studies to disparate discursive communities, accessibly demonstrating Du Bois's, and the black radical tradition's, contributions to, and the potential impact on, a wide-range of new social scientific research and radical political struggles.
Download or read book Postcolonial Francophone Autobiographies written by Edgard Sankara and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a cross-section of postcolonial Francophone writing from Africa and the Caribbean to highlight and compare their transnational reception.
Download or read book Odun written by Cristina Boscolo and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2009 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A poetic 'voice' scans the rhythm of academic research, telling of the encounter with odún; then the voice falls silent. What is then raised is the dust of a forgotten academic debate on the nature of theatre and drama, and the following divergent standpoints of critical discourses bent on empowering their own vision, and defining themselves, rather, as counterdiscourses. This, the first part of the book: a metacritical discourse, on the geopolitics (the inherent power imbalances) of academic writing and its effects on odún, the performances dedicated to the gods, ancestors, and heroes of Yorùbá history. But odún: where is it? and what is it? And the 'voice'? The many critical discourses have not really answered these questions. In effect, odún is many things. To enable the reader to see these, the study proceeds with an 'intermezzo' a frame of reference that sets odún, the festival, in its own historico-cultural ecoenvironment, identifying the strategies that inform the performance and constitute its aesthetic. It is a 'classical' yet, for odún, an innovative procedure. This interdisciplinary background equips the reader with the knowledge necessary to watch the performance, to witness its beauty, and to understand the 'half words' odún utters. And now the performance can begin. The 'voice' emerges one last time, to introduce the second section, which presents two case studies. The reader is led, day by day, through the celebrations -odún edì, Morèmi's story, and its realization in performance; then confrontation by the masks of the ancestors duing odún egúngún (particularly as held in Ibadan). The meaning of odún becomes clearer and clearer. Odún is poetry, dances, masks, food, prayer. It is play (eré) and belief (ìgbàgbó). It is interaction between the players (both performers and spectators). It is also politics and power. It contains secrets and sacrifices. It is a reality with its own dimension and, above all, as the quintessential site of knowledge, it possesses the power to transform. In short, it is a challenge - a challenge that the present book and its voices take up.
Download or read book Using Critical Theory written by Lois Tyson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-11-16 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explaining both why theory is important and how to use it, Lois Tyson introduces beginning students of literature to this often daunting area in a friendly and approachable style. The new edition of this textbook is clearly structured with chapters based on major theories that students are expected to cover in their studies. Key features include: coverage of major theories including psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, lesbian/gay/queer theories, postcolonial theory, African American theory, and a new chapter on New Criticism (formalism) practical demonstrations of how to use these theories on short literary works selected from canonical authors including William Faulkner and Alice Walker a new chapter on reader-response theory that shows students how to use their personal responses to literature while avoiding typical pitfalls new sections on cultural criticism for each chapter new ‘further practice’ and ‘further reading’ sections for each chapter a useful "next step" appendix that suggests additional literary titles for extra practice. Comprehensive, easy to use, and fully updated throughout, Using Critical Theory is the ideal first step for students beginning degrees in literature, composition and cultural studies.
Download or read book Bulletproof written by Jennifer Wenzel and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1856 and 1857, in response to a prophet’s command, the Xhosa people of southern Africa killed their cattle and ceased planting crops; the resulting famine cost tens of thousands of lives. Much like other millenarian, anticolonial movements—such as the Ghost Dance in North America and the Birsa Munda uprising in India—these actions were meant to transform the world and liberate the Xhosa from oppression. Despite the movement’s momentous failure to achieve that goal, the event has continued to exert a powerful pull on the South African imagination ever since. It is these afterlives of the prophecy that Jennifer Wenzel explores in Bulletproof. Wenzel examines literary and historical texts to show how writers have manipulated images and ideas associated with the cattle killing—harvest, sacrifice, rebirth, devastation—to speak to their contemporary predicaments. Widening her lens, Wenzel also looks at how past failure can both inspire and constrain movements for justice in the present, and her brilliant insights into the cultural implications of prophecy will fascinate readers across a wide variety of disciplines.
Download or read book Blackhood Against the Police Power written by Tryon P. Woods and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both significant and timely, Blackhood Against the Police Power addresses the punishment of “race” and the disavowal of sexual violence central to the contemporary “post-racial” culture of politics. Here the author asserts that the post-racial presents an antiblack animus that should be read as desiring the end of blackness and the black liberation movement’s singular ethical claims. The book redefines policing as a sociohistorical process of implementing antiblackness and, in so doing, redefines racism as an act of sexual violence that produces the punishment of race. It smartly critiques the way leading antiracist discourse is frequently complicit with antiblackness and recalls the original 1960s conception of black studies as a corrective to the deficiencies in today’s critical discourse on race and sex. The book explores these lines of inquiry to pinpoint how the history of racial slavery wraps itself in a new discourse of disavowal. In this way, Blackhood Against the Police Power responds to a range of texts, policies, practices, and representations complicit with the police power—from the Fourth Amendment and the movements to curtail stop-and-frisk policing and mass incarceration to popular culture treatments of blackness to the leading academic discourses on race and sex politics.
Download or read book Critical Perspectives on Abdulrazak Gurnah written by Tina Steiner and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-28 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume provides a wide- ranging introduction to the novelistic oeuvre of the prize- winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah. It addresses a gap in Gurnah scholarship by including chapters which discuss his earlier works that have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Drawing on a range of critical lenses including postcolonial theory, Indian Ocean studies, psychoanalytic theory, migration studies and gender studies, this book provides illuminating commentary on his novels. Attentive to the geographical and historical reach of the narratives, the chapters engage with recurring thematic concerns of departures and arrivals; of complex family relationships; and of precarious cosmopolitan hospitality in situations of changing power relations from the old Indian Ocean monsoon trading system to colonial and postcolonial contexts. The volume concludes with an author interview. It will be of great interest to researchers in the fields of Literary and Cultural Studies, especially Postcolonial Literature, African Studies and Indian Ocean Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of English Studies in Africa.
