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28th May, 2024
Abstract: From Hegel’s (1822) description of Africa as a “… dark mantle of Night” and Kipling’s ... more Abstract:
From Hegel’s (1822) description of Africa as a “… dark mantle of Night” and Kipling’s (1899)
insistence on the savagery of Africans and the White Man’s Burden to civilize Africa, Western theory has
inundated
and orientated the African intellectual sphere such that Franz Fanon’s Black Skin White Mask still
holds true. From modernism (here exemplified with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness), post modernism and now
the much talk about the death of postmodernism and the rise of Digi modernism, Africa has been ignored,
such that the Hegelian “nocturnalization” of Africa still holds true especially in the sphere of digital theory.
Such discourse goes unnoticed due to the crumbs of technology making its way into Africa serv
ing as the
people’s opium in the face of digital orientalism, colonization and the third generation exploitation (data).
What is the image of Africa in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness? How does this denigrated image appear in
Western contemporary media and theo
ries? What theory or concept can aptly present African reality in the
digital age? The analyses in this study are realized through a review of critics of Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness, and a review of theory with attention to Frederick Jameson, Jean Francois
Lyotard and Alan
Kirby. The analyses deconstruct the relevance of contemporary western theory on Africa as well as
demonstrates the inapplicability of predigital African philosophies and theories to the dynamics of the digital
age, towards establishing a
case for Digi-Africanismas a concept that best presents the African reality in the digital era.
A considerable part of the history of Black peoples, as they dispersed from Africa through severa... more A considerable part of the history of Black peoples, as they dispersed from Africa through several agencies, has been marked by chronic, if not damaging representations. These have been largely denigratory based on false or falsified claims of imperial superiority, and as we will illustrate here, Black writers have over time reacted to this systemic distortion of their personality and identity by offering counter-narratives that also rally around the new media that guarantee more visibility and objectivity. What can be termed the Black struggle for authenticity is observable in imperial wars of dispossession, suppression of Black personality, submission of Blacks to external forces and their ideologies. The various forms of trauma logically resulted in similarly various forms of resistance. To highlight these facts today is not identical to playing the victim or perpetuating its discourse; neither is it tantamount to performing the blame game as is often the case. Rather, the emphasis is part of an ongoing quest to understand the Black predicament more affirmatively, and to entertain proactive reflections that would sustain the conversation for a less othered space, with the hope that at some point, an adequate therapy to the cankerworm would be arrived at. The experiences of slave trade and slavery, colonialism and persistent racism still scar the psyche of Africans, and whether rightly or otherwise, such vilifications still feed diagnostic debates in Africanist discourses. The word-slavery‖ tells so many stories, or at least ignites memories of a whole lot of things which the black race has had to deal with in order to project a dignified identity. This is because the reality of blacks all round the world has not changed so much from such memories and stories of past agony. In a representative way, we recall names such as Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) the former slave who bought his freedom and engaged in the battle for the abolition of slavery, Granville Sharp (1735-1813) who through the courts worked hard to free slaves, Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) who dedicated his adulthood to the fight against slavery, William Wilberforce (1759-1833) the parliamentary spokesperson who persistently tabled a bill for the abolition of slave trade till it was abolished in 1807. While recollection should be functionally motivating, it is also important for us to acknowledge the fact that slave trade and slavery did not end with the official abolition and criminalization of the activity. Dealers in the trade devised more subtle means to continue the-profitable‖ business, which is part of the reason for the present analysis.
The rise and proliferation of New Religious Movements and their puritanical non-conformist evange... more The rise and proliferation of New Religious Movements and their puritanical non-conformist evangelism poses a danger to the history and heritage of African tribes especially as far as the conflict between African Traditional Religion and extremist Christianity is concerned. While this phenomenon has started receiving attention from theologians, literary critics are somewhat mute as far this trend is concerned. This is so because few African literature works have addressed such thematic issues leading to lack of corpus for literary essays targeting New Religious Movements, cosmic wars as well as contextual theology. However, thanks to New Historicism, one can correlate works of fiction with non-fiction to assess the ramifications of these, thereby contributing to literary research. What are cosmic wars and how can contextual theology help evade them? What justice or injustice do extremist Christian denominations do to African Traditional Religion and Culture in African Tribes? How is contextual theology a way of ensuring social justice as far as religion is concerned in contemporary Africa? This study sets out to attempt a correlation between New Religious Movements and Cosmic Wars with reference toSamaAmbe'sCries of Restoration and co-texts. It seeks to establish that religious intolerance and the attack on ATR by NRMs is injustice and finally to propose contextual theology as a way out of cosmic wars and also a means for ensuring social justice as far as religion is concerned. The use of New Historicism as a critical theory permits the discussion of the Cries of Restoration and other documents that are considered as co-texts in the analysis that follow. Other concepts likeJuegensmeyers' Cosmic War Theory and Stephen Bevans's Models of contextual theology are also relevant to the study.
Human evolution and uncurbed greed for natural resources through the agency of colonialism enshri... more Human evolution and uncurbed greed for natural resources through the agency of colonialism enshrined in capitalism has waged as it were a war on the ecology across time and space. Capitalist endeavours like exploration, mining and industrialization (when taken to extreme) have left the earth at the mercy of the destruction of cosmic unity, destruction of biological niches with the consequence being a shattered ozone layer and consequent global warming. Concerned politicians, policy makers, social campaigners and critics have reacted through conferences like the First World Climate Conference held on 12-23 February 1979 in Geneva and sponsored by the WMO and the latest United Nations Climate Change Conference held from 30 November to 12 December 2015 in Paris. These conferences have produced conventions and other write-ups that have evidently fallen short of meeting their expectations. Taking the fight digital presents a new alternative especially through Green digital films. How does Jordan Vogt-Roberts and James Cameron expose the war by colonialists and capitalists on the ecology? What dynamics of protest and fight for the ecology are replete in Kong: Skull Island and Avatar? What is the way forward for global warming crusaders in the digital space? A critic of the two films and other secondary material provide data for the analysis done with Marxism, Ecocriticism and Dig modernism as major theories, towards providing answers to the questions raised above.
This paper sets out to investigate multiculturalism as a major cultural tenet in Chimamanda's Amm... more This paper sets out to investigate multiculturalism as a major cultural tenet in Chimamanda's Ammericanah; to identify and analyze the various sub sets of multiculturalism and proceed to establish the post-colonial implications of multiculturalism to the various migrant subjects presented in the novel. The novel,being a migrant novel and especially of the digital age is replete with a multiplicity of issues concerning multiculturalism. This paper will establish that multiple settings that transcend countries and continents,a blend of characters from various cultural backgrounds, conversations and exchange of ideas over the internet superhighway (hyperculture), multilingualism/ multivocality, and Afropolitanism are elements of multiculturalism in the novel. The post-colonial theory will be used to question the above elements of multiculturalism towards demonstrating the ambivalent nature of multiculturalism in the novel.
Papers by Banla Samuel Fonyuy
International Journal of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education
A considerable part of the history of Black peoples, as they dispersed from Africa through severa... more A considerable part of the history of Black peoples, as they dispersed from Africa through several agencies, has been marked by chronic, if not damaging representations. These have been largely denigratory based on false or falsified claims of imperial superiority, and as we will illustrate here, Black writers have over time reacted to this systemic distortion of their personality and identity by offering counter-narratives that also rally around the new media that guarantee more visibility and objectivity. What can be termed the Black struggle for authenticity is observable in imperial wars of dispossession, suppression of Black personality, submission of Blacks to external forces and their ideologies. The various forms of trauma logically resulted in similarly various forms of resistance. To highlight these facts today is not identical to playing the victim or perpetuating its discourse; neither is it tantamount to performing the blame game as is often the case. Rather, the emphasis is part of an ongoing quest to understand the Black predicament more affirmatively, and to entertain proactive reflections that would sustain the conversation for a less othered space, with the hope that at some point, an adequate therapy to the cankerworm would be arrived at. The experiences of slave trade and slavery, colonialism and persistent racism still scar the psyche of Africans, and whether rightly or otherwise, such vilifications still feed diagnostic debates in Africanist discourses. The word-slavery‖ tells so many stories, or at least ignites memories of a whole lot of things which the black race has had to deal with in order to project a dignified identity. This is because the reality of blacks all round the world has not changed so much from such memories and stories of past agony. In a representative way, we recall names such as Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) the former slave who bought his freedom and engaged in the battle for the abolition of slavery, Granville Sharp (1735-1813) who through the courts worked hard to free slaves, Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) who dedicated his adulthood to the fight against slavery, William Wilberforce (1759-1833) the parliamentary spokesperson who persistently tabled a bill for the abolition of slave trade till it was abolished in 1807. While recollection should be functionally motivating, it is also important for us to acknowledge the fact that slave trade and slavery did not end with the official abolition and criminalization of the activity. Dealers in the trade devised more subtle means to continue the-profitable‖ business, which is part of the reason for the present analysis.
28th May, 2024
Abstract: From Hegel’s (1822) description of Africa as a “… dark mantle of Night” and Kipling’s ... more Abstract:
From Hegel’s (1822) description of Africa as a “… dark mantle of Night” and Kipling’s (1899)
insistence on the savagery of Africans and the White Man’s Burden to civilize Africa, Western theory has
inundated
and orientated the African intellectual sphere such that Franz Fanon’s Black Skin White Mask still
holds true. From modernism (here exemplified with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness), post modernism and now
the much talk about the death of postmodernism and the rise of Digi modernism, Africa has been ignored,
such that the Hegelian “nocturnalization” of Africa still holds true especially in the sphere of digital theory.
Such discourse goes unnoticed due to the crumbs of technology making its way into Africa serv
ing as the
people’s opium in the face of digital orientalism, colonization and the third generation exploitation (data).
What is the image of Africa in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness? How does this denigrated image appear in
Western contemporary media and theo
ries? What theory or concept can aptly present African reality in the
digital age? The analyses in this study are realized through a review of critics of Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness, and a review of theory with attention to Frederick Jameson, Jean Francois
Lyotard and Alan
Kirby. The analyses deconstruct the relevance of contemporary western theory on Africa as well as
demonstrates the inapplicability of predigital African philosophies and theories to the dynamics of the digital
age, towards establishing a
case for Digi-Africanismas a concept that best presents the African reality in the digital era.
A considerable part of the history of Black peoples, as they dispersed from Africa through severa... more A considerable part of the history of Black peoples, as they dispersed from Africa through several agencies, has been marked by chronic, if not damaging representations. These have been largely denigratory based on false or falsified claims of imperial superiority, and as we will illustrate here, Black writers have over time reacted to this systemic distortion of their personality and identity by offering counter-narratives that also rally around the new media that guarantee more visibility and objectivity. What can be termed the Black struggle for authenticity is observable in imperial wars of dispossession, suppression of Black personality, submission of Blacks to external forces and their ideologies. The various forms of trauma logically resulted in similarly various forms of resistance. To highlight these facts today is not identical to playing the victim or perpetuating its discourse; neither is it tantamount to performing the blame game as is often the case. Rather, the emphasis is part of an ongoing quest to understand the Black predicament more affirmatively, and to entertain proactive reflections that would sustain the conversation for a less othered space, with the hope that at some point, an adequate therapy to the cankerworm would be arrived at. The experiences of slave trade and slavery, colonialism and persistent racism still scar the psyche of Africans, and whether rightly or otherwise, such vilifications still feed diagnostic debates in Africanist discourses. The word-slavery‖ tells so many stories, or at least ignites memories of a whole lot of things which the black race has had to deal with in order to project a dignified identity. This is because the reality of blacks all round the world has not changed so much from such memories and stories of past agony. In a representative way, we recall names such as Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) the former slave who bought his freedom and engaged in the battle for the abolition of slavery, Granville Sharp (1735-1813) who through the courts worked hard to free slaves, Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) who dedicated his adulthood to the fight against slavery, William Wilberforce (1759-1833) the parliamentary spokesperson who persistently tabled a bill for the abolition of slave trade till it was abolished in 1807. While recollection should be functionally motivating, it is also important for us to acknowledge the fact that slave trade and slavery did not end with the official abolition and criminalization of the activity. Dealers in the trade devised more subtle means to continue the-profitable‖ business, which is part of the reason for the present analysis.
The rise and proliferation of New Religious Movements and their puritanical non-conformist evange... more The rise and proliferation of New Religious Movements and their puritanical non-conformist evangelism poses a danger to the history and heritage of African tribes especially as far as the conflict between African Traditional Religion and extremist Christianity is concerned. While this phenomenon has started receiving attention from theologians, literary critics are somewhat mute as far this trend is concerned. This is so because few African literature works have addressed such thematic issues leading to lack of corpus for literary essays targeting New Religious Movements, cosmic wars as well as contextual theology. However, thanks to New Historicism, one can correlate works of fiction with non-fiction to assess the ramifications of these, thereby contributing to literary research. What are cosmic wars and how can contextual theology help evade them? What justice or injustice do extremist Christian denominations do to African Traditional Religion and Culture in African Tribes? How is contextual theology a way of ensuring social justice as far as religion is concerned in contemporary Africa? This study sets out to attempt a correlation between New Religious Movements and Cosmic Wars with reference toSamaAmbe'sCries of Restoration and co-texts. It seeks to establish that religious intolerance and the attack on ATR by NRMs is injustice and finally to propose contextual theology as a way out of cosmic wars and also a means for ensuring social justice as far as religion is concerned. The use of New Historicism as a critical theory permits the discussion of the Cries of Restoration and other documents that are considered as co-texts in the analysis that follow. Other concepts likeJuegensmeyers' Cosmic War Theory and Stephen Bevans's Models of contextual theology are also relevant to the study.
Human evolution and uncurbed greed for natural resources through the agency of colonialism enshri... more Human evolution and uncurbed greed for natural resources through the agency of colonialism enshrined in capitalism has waged as it were a war on the ecology across time and space. Capitalist endeavours like exploration, mining and industrialization (when taken to extreme) have left the earth at the mercy of the destruction of cosmic unity, destruction of biological niches with the consequence being a shattered ozone layer and consequent global warming. Concerned politicians, policy makers, social campaigners and critics have reacted through conferences like the First World Climate Conference held on 12-23 February 1979 in Geneva and sponsored by the WMO and the latest United Nations Climate Change Conference held from 30 November to 12 December 2015 in Paris. These conferences have produced conventions and other write-ups that have evidently fallen short of meeting their expectations. Taking the fight digital presents a new alternative especially through Green digital films. How does Jordan Vogt-Roberts and James Cameron expose the war by colonialists and capitalists on the ecology? What dynamics of protest and fight for the ecology are replete in Kong: Skull Island and Avatar? What is the way forward for global warming crusaders in the digital space? A critic of the two films and other secondary material provide data for the analysis done with Marxism, Ecocriticism and Dig modernism as major theories, towards providing answers to the questions raised above.
This paper sets out to investigate multiculturalism as a major cultural tenet in Chimamanda's Amm... more This paper sets out to investigate multiculturalism as a major cultural tenet in Chimamanda's Ammericanah; to identify and analyze the various sub sets of multiculturalism and proceed to establish the post-colonial implications of multiculturalism to the various migrant subjects presented in the novel. The novel,being a migrant novel and especially of the digital age is replete with a multiplicity of issues concerning multiculturalism. This paper will establish that multiple settings that transcend countries and continents,a blend of characters from various cultural backgrounds, conversations and exchange of ideas over the internet superhighway (hyperculture), multilingualism/ multivocality, and Afropolitanism are elements of multiculturalism in the novel. The post-colonial theory will be used to question the above elements of multiculturalism towards demonstrating the ambivalent nature of multiculturalism in the novel.
International Journal of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education
A considerable part of the history of Black peoples, as they dispersed from Africa through severa... more A considerable part of the history of Black peoples, as they dispersed from Africa through several agencies, has been marked by chronic, if not damaging representations. These have been largely denigratory based on false or falsified claims of imperial superiority, and as we will illustrate here, Black writers have over time reacted to this systemic distortion of their personality and identity by offering counter-narratives that also rally around the new media that guarantee more visibility and objectivity. What can be termed the Black struggle for authenticity is observable in imperial wars of dispossession, suppression of Black personality, submission of Blacks to external forces and their ideologies. The various forms of trauma logically resulted in similarly various forms of resistance. To highlight these facts today is not identical to playing the victim or perpetuating its discourse; neither is it tantamount to performing the blame game as is often the case. Rather, the emphasis is part of an ongoing quest to understand the Black predicament more affirmatively, and to entertain proactive reflections that would sustain the conversation for a less othered space, with the hope that at some point, an adequate therapy to the cankerworm would be arrived at. The experiences of slave trade and slavery, colonialism and persistent racism still scar the psyche of Africans, and whether rightly or otherwise, such vilifications still feed diagnostic debates in Africanist discourses. The word-slavery‖ tells so many stories, or at least ignites memories of a whole lot of things which the black race has had to deal with in order to project a dignified identity. This is because the reality of blacks all round the world has not changed so much from such memories and stories of past agony. In a representative way, we recall names such as Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) the former slave who bought his freedom and engaged in the battle for the abolition of slavery, Granville Sharp (1735-1813) who through the courts worked hard to free slaves, Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) who dedicated his adulthood to the fight against slavery, William Wilberforce (1759-1833) the parliamentary spokesperson who persistently tabled a bill for the abolition of slave trade till it was abolished in 1807. While recollection should be functionally motivating, it is also important for us to acknowledge the fact that slave trade and slavery did not end with the official abolition and criminalization of the activity. Dealers in the trade devised more subtle means to continue the-profitable‖ business, which is part of the reason for the present analysis.