Aghogho Akpome | University of Zululand (original) (raw)

Papers in peer-reviewed journals by Aghogho Akpome

Gender and Behaviour, 2018

Since the turn of the 21st century, the experiences of transnational postcolonial migrants have b... more Since the turn of the 21st century, the experiences of transnational postcolonial migrants have become the concern of a growing number of African novels that thematize trans-border migration using diverse postmodernist narrative techniques. In this paper, I examine the use of the palimpsest as a literary device to (re)conceptualize home and belonging in the award-winning debut novel of Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo titled We Need New Names (2013). Bulawayo, like the female protagonist of the novel, was born in Zimbabwe and migrated to the United States as a teenager, a fact that invests her fictional narrative with autobiographical symbolism. Using critical narrative analysis and drawing on Salman Rushdie’s (1991) notion of ‘imaginary homelands’, I argue that Bulawayo represents home and social belonging through the narrative layering of spaces, memories and experiences across borders and times. On the one hand, the analysis reveals strong links between Bulawayo’s conception of homeliness and her portrayal of space within familial, communal and national frames. On the other, it foregrounds the salience of national identity and culture to the diasporic sense of (un)belonging and home. In these ways, Bulawayo’s imaginative narrative illustrates the important ways in which recent African novels perform the psycho-social complexities of postcolonial and postmodern trans-border migration.

Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 2018

This paper examines Jacob Dlamini’s two main historical works, Askari (2014) and Native Nostalgia... more This paper examines Jacob Dlamini’s two main historical works, Askari (2014) and Native Nostalgia (2009), for the ways in which they critique dominant South African memory practices while offering an alternative, and presumably more ethical, form of memoralisation which can also be read as a modality of temporality in the literary (re)historicisation of South Africa’s national history. In Askari, Dlamini’s recall of collaboration between traitors within the liberation movement and the apartheid security agencies disrupts the received narrative of South Africa’s transition from anti-apartheid struggle to democracy. Similarly, in his earlier book, Native Nostalgia, he provocatively uses nostalgia to challenge the apparent politicisation of official memory projects. Furthermore, both texts adroitly complicate the relationship between the past, present and future in ways that may be read as a re-temporalisation of South African national history by deconstructing notions of a teleological national transition from an apartheid to a post-apartheid dispensation. The paper draws on Chris Lorenz and Berber Bevernage’s (2013) as well as Homi Bhabha’s (1990) theories on the construction of national histories.

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2018

Since its launch in 1999, the annual Caine Prize for African short stories has assumed a dominant... more Since its launch in 1999, the annual Caine Prize for African short stories has assumed a dominant position on the continent’s literary landscape. It has been hailed for the exposure it provides for its winners who are mostly budding writers. Expectedly, it has also attracted stinging criticism, especially for what is perceived to be its legitimization of stereotypical narratives about Africa. In this article, I examine how the two winning entries of 2008 and 2011 represent contemporary African realities and in so doing reinforce the growing significance of the prize and the short story genre to modern African literary expression. I argue that, taken together, Henrietta Rose-Innes’ “Poison” (2007) and NoViolet Bulawayo’s “Hitting Budapest” (2010), both set in cities, contribute to problematic imaginings of African futures. Bulawayo does this through her representation of slum life and dystopian childhoods in Zimbabwe while Rose-Innes’s story speculates on the apocalyptic aftermath of a chemical explosion in post-apartheid South Africa. I highlight, also, how these two narratives reflect apparent relationships between the short story and the novel in contemporary African writing as well as the increasing role of the postcolonial city as a site from which unfavourable visions of postcolonial societies are generated.

Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, 2018

Child and youth protagonists in Habila's Measuring Time and Dangor's Bitter Fruit Helon Habila's ... more Child and youth protagonists in Habila's Measuring Time and Dangor's Bitter Fruit Helon Habila's Measuring Time (2007) and Achmat Dangor's Bitter Fruit (2001) deploy child and youth protagonists to offer nuanced and revealing perspectives on contemporary nationhood in Nigeria and South Africa respectively. By these means, these two important novels displace the adult-and mostly male-viewpoints that have dominated novelistic portrayals of postcolonial nationhood for decades. Using notions of the literary symbolism of childhood and the biological family as points of departure, this article analyses the portrayal of these protagonists in terms of their allegorical and metonymic representation of the nation as a social unit. This article explores the ways in which the subjectivities of the protagonists may reflect national anxieties in general and the problems of contemporary socio-political transition in particular. It highlights how the different pathways followed by Habila's and Dangor's characters may represent simultaneously dystopian and auspicious futures for Nigeria and South Africa while also bringing recent writing from two of Africa's eminent literary sites into a rare conversation that helps to extend our understanding of the continent's contemporary realities. Although Helon Habila's Measuring Time (2007) and Achmat Dangor's Bitter Fruit (2001) are not necessarily nationalist in outlook, they present marginal and nuanced perspectives on recent socio-political transitions in Nigeria and South Africa respectively by focusing on child and youth protagonists. They displace the adult-and mostly male-viewpoints that have dominated novelistic portrayals of postcolonial nationhood (see Hron 27-48). Told against historical and socio-political settings that are unambiguously national, and through allegorical and metonymic depictions of the family, each narrative maps the spaces, subjectivities, and temporalities of the nation in symbolic ways. The ubiquity of the trope of the biological family in national narratives and discourses across different regions and literary traditions is well documented (see Brennan; Bhabha; Boehmer). As Anne McClintock (63) demonstrates, [n]ations are frequently figured through the iconography of familial and domestic space. The term "nation" derives from "nation": to be born. We speak of nations as "motherlands" and "fatherlands". Foreigners "adopt" countries that are not their native homes, and are "naturalized" into the national family. We talk of the Family of Nations, of "homelands" and "native" lands. In Britain, immigration matters are dealt with at the Home Office; in the United States, the President and his wife are called the

Ubuntu : Journal of Conflict and Social Transformation, 2018

This article interrogates discourses of distrust and victimhood in An Ordinary Man (2007), the au... more This article interrogates discourses of distrust and victimhood in An Ordinary Man (2007), the autobiography of Paul Rusesabagina, hero of the award-winning feature film Hotel Rwanda. The aim of the article is to highlight the ways in which such discourses have been engendered by historical inequities between Hutus and Tutsis as well as by institutional practices that serve the self-preserving interests of the country’s ruling elites. The article also explores the demonstrable implications of these discourses on Hutu-Tutsi relations in particular, and the country’s on-going social and political reconstruction in general, as these are reflected in Rusesabagina’s narrative. The discussion is set within the context of a representative depiction of recent and not-too-recent developments with particular regard to the state and national politics in Rwanda.

Nordic Journal of African Studies , 2018

In this article, I interrogate the depiction of Lagos and its residents in the BBC's documentary,... more In this article, I interrogate the depiction of Lagos and its residents in the BBC's documentary, Welcome to Lagos for the ways in which these representations reflect, historicize, and critique cultural and economic responses to contemporary urbanization and globalization in Nigeria. Using a literary approach, I argue that it is implicated-by design or otherwise-in Western representations of Africa that continue to draw criticism for being reductive and negatively skewed. I show, in this regard, the ways in which the documentary's featured slums, the city of Lagos and the postcolonial nation as a whole are conflated as part of the film's overarching aesthetic and discursive strategy. A significant consequence of this conflation is that the image of the slum is made to operate as the default and totalized metonym not only of the city but also of the country. I demonstrate, furthermore, how the documentary reflects on Nigeria's recent socio-political transition from military dictatorship to civilian rule and how it highlights the role of politics (both during decolonization and after independence) in shaping the dynamics of modern urbanization in Nigeria in particular and in the global South in general.

Gender and Behaviour, 2017

In this paper, I explore the feminist activism represented by the creative and critical works of ... more In this paper, I explore the feminist activism represented by the creative
and critical works of the award-winning Nigerian writer, Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie. In a move that signalled her growing international
influence as a cultural critic, her 2012 essay, “Why We Should All Be
Feminists” was distributed to high school students across Sweden. Her
three accomplished novels feature female protagonists through whom
she provides powerful critiques of the androcentric social, cultural,
and political structures of the societies she focuses on. The novels are
Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) and Americanah
(2013). These are the major ways in which Adichie has made
substantial contributions to feminist activism both on a global scale
and in postcolonial societies. Using a narrative and socio-literary
framework, I examine the feminist critique offered in these works to
highlight Adichie’s contributions to current feminist literary activism
and scholarship.

English in Africa, 2017

This article explores the thematisation of contemporary socio-political transition in South Afric... more This article explores the thematisation of contemporary socio-political transition in South Africa in Achmat Dangor's award-winning novel, Bitter Fruit (2001). I argue that the novel can be read as a palimpsest of overlapping twilights and liminal states that simultaneously operate as tropes of the country's transition. In this regard, I interrogate Dangor's use of the in-between and/or fluid subject positions of characters – in terms of race, youthfulness and sexual orientation – to problematise post-TRC social affiliation in metonymic ways. I also demonstrate how Dangor's portrayal of the figure of the family, its disintegration and the transformation of individual members (especially of the main protagonists – Michael, Silas and Lydia) can be read in allegorical ways for the changes and possibilities of South Africa's post-1994 transition.

Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa, 2017

In this article, I analyse two recent African autobiographical works for the ways in which they p... more In this article, I analyse two recent African autobiographical works for the ways in which they provide counter-hegemonic national discourses in regard to Nigeria and South Africa. The texts are In the Shadow of a Saint (2001), Ken Wiwa's memoir and biographical homage to his father, the martyred Nigerian writer and activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and Native Nostalgia (2009) by the South African historian, Jacob Dlamini. The article highlights the different ways in which each author challenges official discourses of post-conflict national reconciliation through the re-imagining of national histories, the narrative reconstruction of social/cultural identity and the depiction of space. Furthermore, it highlights how the subgenre of postcolonial life-writing is deployed for purposes of literary (re)historicisation and socio-political critique while drawing attention to important divergences, convergences and connections between post-2000 writing from two of Africa's eminent literary sites—Nigeria and South Africa.

English Academy Review, 2017

In this article, I explore the representation of South Africa’s transition after the Truth and Re... more In this article, I explore the representation of South Africa’s transition after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Jacob Dlamini’s Native Nostalgia, a provocative account of the author’s childhood in a Johannesburg township during apartheid. I argue that Dlamini’s engagement with recent South African history and his (re)construction of black identity can be understood in counter-discursive ways as having the potential to subvert some of the official historical narratives that underpin the dominant political structures. Furthermore, I foreground how Dlamini uses his peculiar historiographical method to articulate strong scepticism towards, and anxieties about, the post-TRC socio-political order in which nostalgia for the past, disenchantment with the present and trepidation for the future all co-exist simultaneously in a state of nervous tension.

Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2017

This article explores the apparent influence of Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah on Chima... more This article explores the apparent influence of Chinua Achebe’s
Anthills of the Savannah on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s awardwinning
second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, with regard to the literary
re-historicization of the Nigerian Civil War, the representation of Biafra
and the renegotiation of post-independence Nigerian nationalism.
It foregrounds several compelling intertextual links – stylistic and
ideological – between the two works, and argues that Adichie’s
novel echoes, complements and transforms aspects of Achebe’s
thematization of post-independence and post-civil war Nigerian
nationalism. The article seeks to expand our understanding of
the evolution of literary renegotiations of nationhood across the
“generations” of Nigerian writing represented by Achebe and Adichie.
It also highlights the specific ways in which the works of both writers
might be linked.

Africa Spectrum, 2017

This article examines the depiction of three impoverished Lagosian slums in the controversial Bri... more This article examines the depiction of three impoverished
Lagosian slums in the controversial British Broadcasting Corporation
(BBC) documentary, Welcome to Lagos, which highlights the negative
impacts of globalised capitalism on urban culture in Nigeria’s commercial centre and biggest city. In recent times scholarship on postcolonial urbanisation has been marked by an important shift in focus from economic concerns to interest in the peculiar cultural dimensions of life in postcolonial cities. As this article argues, however, dominant depictions of postcolonial cities continue to highlight ways in which cultural responses to the harsh effects of late capitalism in such cities reflect economic strategies of what Mike Davis calls “informal survivalism.”

Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, 2017

In this article, I explore the ways in which District 9 reflects South Africa’s current socio-pol... more In this article, I explore the ways in which District 9 reflects South Africa’s current socio-political transition through the problematical representation of the film’s eponymous slum and its impoverished inhabitants as well as its protagonist, Wikus van der Merwe. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s influential ideas of biopolitics, I demonstrate the ways in which the film provides a compelling critique of the effects of neoliberal capitalism on post-apartheid transition and South Africa’s complex geopolitical landscape. In this regard, I analyze how the slum figures as a “zone of indistinction” where political and economic forces combine to produce the paradoxical conditions in which impoverished South Africans are included in a democratic social contract, but are simultaneously excluded from the socioeconomic benefits that it promises.

English in Africa, 2016

In this paper, I problematize the notion of the “post-transitional” (Samuelson 2008; Frenkel and ... more In this paper, I problematize the notion of the “post-transitional” (Samuelson
2008; Frenkel and MacKenzie 2010) as a way of theorizing and delineating
recent South African cultural expression. I argue that this idea relies –
whether intentionally or not – on a limiting conception of South Africa’s
contemporary socio-political history and transition in terms that are
inevitably linear and teleological. I propose that contemporary cultural
expression in South Africa (and indeed across Africa) may be productively
considered, in broad terms, as literatures of transition. This is an
overarching non-linear and non-teleological continuum embracing multiple
transitions that are not necessarily discrete or mutually exclusive, and that
can be delineated in connection with specific contexts and moments.
Without rejecting the general features and trends of recent South African
cultural expression identified under the problematical rubric of “posttransitional,”
I propose that the emergent post-2000 literatures be theorized
as “post-TRC.” This highlights the significance of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission as an influential point of reference without
ignoring the wider, non-linear, and non-teleological frame of on-going
multiple transitions – social, political, economic, and cultural.

Africa Spectrum, Apr 2015

This article explores perceptions and representations of Nigeria and Nigerians in the popular glo... more This article explores perceptions and representations of Nigeria and Nigerians in the popular global imaginary. It analyses selected popular media narratives in order to foreground contradictions and paradoxes in the ways in which the country and people of Nigeria are discursively constructed. By doing so, it interrogates stereotypes of corruption and criminality as well as myths of exceptionalism about Nigeria and Nigerians
originating from both within and outside the country. The analysis reveals that the generalised portrayal of Nigeria and Nigerians as exceptional social subjects is characterised by contradictions and inaccuracies in dominant representational practices and cannot be justified by the verifiable empirical information available on the country and its people.

Africa Insight, Jun 1, 2014

African Insight, Vol. 44 (1), June 2014

This article analyses a non-fictional narrative from Nigeria, In the Shadow of a Saint by Ken Wiw... more This article analyses a non-fictional narrative from Nigeria, In the Shadow of a Saint by Ken Wiwa, which thematises, among other things, the discursive negotiation of ethnic and national identity during periods of transition. I interrogate how marginal subjects from peripheral sites of nationalist expression – in this case Ogoniland in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta – are positioned within dominant national narratives, and how the author uses public memory in (re)imagining Nigerian history and Ogoni identity. The overarching objective of this inquiry is to make evident the specific ways in which Wiwa’s text (as a veritable form of cultural expression and literary historiography) portrays the (re)construction and naturalisation of ethnic and national subjects and their ‘others’ within particular periods of critical socio-political transformation.

African Studies, 73 (2) August 2014, Aug 1, 2014

In this article, I examine the autobiography of Paul Rusesabagina, An Ordinary Man, to interrogat... more In this article, I examine the autobiography of Paul Rusesabagina, An Ordinary Man, to interrogate the narrative construction of identity in contemporary Rwanda. My primary focus is the discursive and narrative dynamics involved in the problematical configuration of ethnic, class, and national identities prior to, and after the country's 1994 genocide. Regarding the contradictions in the way Rusesabagina attempts to articulate modern Rwandan identity (especially with respect to the perceived sameness and/or difference between Hutu and Tutsi), I argue that the dominant narratives of pre-colonial harmony he echoes are over-simplistic, homogenising and misleading in certain respects. This article thus seeks to problematise the prevailing idea -forcefully reinforced by Rusesabagina -that colonial interventions constitute the all-encompassing roots, rather than catalysers, of the endemic and seemingly irreconcilable differences that culminated in the genocide. My purpose in this regard is not to downplay colonialism's negative impact on social relations in Rwanda, but to foreground some of the often overlooked historical complexities that are revealed by Rusesabagina's valuable but as yet underexplored narrative.

English Academy Review, 31 (1), May 2014

Journal of Literary Studies, Volume 30, Issue 1, 2014, Feb 27, 2014

Gender and Behaviour, 2018

Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 2018

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2018

Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, 2018

Ubuntu : Journal of Conflict and Social Transformation, 2018

Nordic Journal of African Studies , 2018

Gender and Behaviour, 2017

English in Africa, 2017

Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa, 2017

English Academy Review, 2017

Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2017

Africa Spectrum, 2017

Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, 2017

English in Africa, 2016

Africa Spectrum, Apr 2015

Africa Insight, Jun 1, 2014

African Insight, Vol. 44 (1), June 2014

African Studies, 73 (2) August 2014, Aug 1, 2014

English Academy Review, 31 (1), May 2014

Journal of Literary Studies, Volume 30, Issue 1, 2014, Feb 27, 2014

Routledge Handbook of African Literature, 2019

In lieu of an abstract, here's the introduction . . . This chapter examines the use of ethnicit... more In lieu of an abstract, here's the introduction . . .

This chapter examines the use of ethnicity in the exploration of social subjectivities in selected African novels and memoirs published since the turn of the twenty-first21st century. In the opening part of the chapter, I argue that, in general, ethnicity is used in recent African writing in ways that are significantly different from many earlier texts, especially those that belong to the so-called first generation. In contrast to the largely cultural nationalist orientation of seminal African texts such as Chinua Achebe’s trilogy, ethnicity is deployed in recent writing, in ways that are much more fluid and ambivalent. In this regard, I argue that referents of ethnicity and indigenous African cultures can be understood in recent writing in different ways. They may operate as metonym and/or metaphor for other categories of identification and may sometimes conflate and contest the complex forms of social consciousness that characterize the postcolonial and postmodern contexts of identity (re)construction among African narrative subjects. I therefore approach references to the ‘ethnic’ in terms of narrative strategies that complicate a range of contemporary subjectivities including region, race, class, nation, gender and autochthony.

I consider representations of, as well as references to, indigenous African languages, customs as well as cultural practices and artefacts as de facto ethnic referents. It is these representations that I interrogate in two novels and two memoirs selected from across regions. The novels are Coconut (2007) by South Africa’s Kopano Matlwa and Purple Hibiscus (2003) by Nigeria’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, while the memoirs are An Ordinary Man (2006) by Rwandan former hotelier, Paul Rusesabagina and My First Coup D’etat (2012) by John Dramani Mahama, who was vice-president and president of Ghana. These texts are chosen for the range of social, political, geographical and historical situations they represent as well as for their impact and significance – literary and otherwise. The combination of novels and memoirs is an attempt to extend the analysis beyond narrow narrative and aesthetic modes. While each novel is examined for its representation of ethnicity (through its use of referents from a single ethnic group), the memoirs offer portrayals of narrative referents belonging to different groups in the context of national and inter-regional politics. Together, these four texts provide scope for a robust and productive inquiry into the new paths being charted by recent African literatures that reflect the continuing significance of ethnic sensibilities.

Africa and Beyond: Arts and Sustainable Development. Eds. Patrick Ebewo, Ingrid Stevens and Mzo Sirayi. Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 405-418.

Teaching English Today (online journal of the English Academy of Southern Africa), Nov 16, 2012

Teaching English Today: Online journal of the English Academy of Southern Africa., Nov 1, 2011

FocusNigeria (Online), Jan 12, 2011

SABC News online (South Africa), Feb 24, 2012

Nigerian-Newspaper.com, Jun 10, 2010

SABC Online (South Africa), May 29, 2012

The Sunday Independent (South Africa), Apr 28, 2013

Politicsweb.co.za, May 20, 2012

SABC News Online, Mar 14, 2012

SABC News Online, Aug 29, 2012

SABC News Online, Apr 18, 2013

ABSTRACT This paper maps the trajectory of post-1994 South African cultural expression in order t... more ABSTRACT This paper maps the trajectory of post-1994 South African cultural expression in order to highlight thresholds of shifts in the countrys narrative of nation between 2001 and 2009. It explores the various ways in which these shifts may be understood in the context of national transition and increasing trans-regional/(sub)continental movements with South Africa as their locus. The paper poses the following central questions: What factors have shaped cultural articulation following the monumental movement from repression to expression (Ndebele 57) heralded by the end of apartheid as well as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? In what ways have the perceived shifts in the national discourse been enacted across narrative genres? To answer these questions, the paper analyses Achmat Dangors novel, Bitter Fruit (2001), Niell Blomkamps award-winning feature film, District 9 (2009) and Jacob Dlaminis non-fictional Native Nostalgia (2009). The overarching objective is to make evident the specific ways in which narrative is implicated in the (re)construction of social categories within the context of national transformation and the accompanying movement of people, capital, power and privilege across rigid and fluid boundaries.

This paper explores recent youth political activism in post-apartheid South Africa, and argues th... more This paper explores recent youth political activism in post-apartheid South Africa, and argues that it is characterized by a crisis of ideological coherence. Focusing on the period since Julius Malema’s ascendancy to prominence in 2008, the paper demonstrates that youth involvement in politics has been predicated largely on contradictory and often incoherent ideological positioning. This, it is argued, reflects in often stark terms, the prevailing and problematical political psychology (opportunism, populism and spectacularism) of the country’s dominant ruling classes during what has been controversially termed ‘the second transition’. The paper focuses on particular activities (at various levels) of the ANC Youth League, the Young Communist League and South African Students Congress (SASCO) that are symptomatic of a departure from the critical intellectualism that was the hallmark of apartheid-era youth politics led by the older generation of leaders like Steve Biko, Robert Sobukwe, Chris Hani and Nelson Mandela.

Keywords: Youth, political ideology, ANC Youth League, SASCO, Young Communist League, post-apartheid South Africa, opportunism, populism, spectacularism

The New Age (South Africa), May 31, 2012

City Press (South Africa), Jul 14, 2013

Newsweek (Atlantic Edition), Nov 5, 2012

"Supporting Chinua Achebe's claim (Oct. 15) that ethnic Igbos were not reintegrated into Nigeria ... more "Supporting Chinua Achebe's claim (Oct. 15) that ethnic Igbos were not reintegrated into Nigeria after Biafra's defeat, Uzodinma Iweala declares that Igboland is characterized by dilapidated infrastructure possibly due to government neglect. While Achebe's claim presupposes the existence of a unified nation organized against one ethnic group, Iweala suggests that non-Igbo areas of the country have better public infrastructure. Everyone familiar with Nigeria knows that infrastructural decay is a national feature. Furthermore, it is no secret that the lack of any real sense of sociopolitical unity among Nigeria's disparate peoples remains a key reason for the country's underdevelopment.
Aghogho Akpome"

This paper explores perceptions and representations of Nigeria and Nigerians in the popular globa... more This paper explores perceptions and representations of Nigeria and Nigerians in the popular global imaginary. I analyse selected media and popular narratives/discourses in order to foreground contradictions and paradoxes in the ways in which the country and people of Nigeria are discursively constructed. I interrogate some popular discourses of dysfunction, stereotypes of corruption/criminality as well as myths of exceptionalism about Nigeria/ns that originate from both within and outside the country. The paper adopts an investigative approach based largely on narrative enquiry and I rely partly on notions of cultural representation/critique and partly on autoethnographic accounts. I conclude that the portrayal of Nigeria/ns as exceptional social subjects is characterised by contradictions and inaccuracies in the dominant representational practices and cannot be justified on the basis of the verifiable information available about the country and its people.

Routledge eBooks, Jan 26, 2022

Since its launch in 1999, the annual Caine Prize for African short stories has assumed a dominant... more Since its launch in 1999, the annual Caine Prize for African short stories has assumed a dominant position on the continent's literary landscape. It has been hailed for the exposure it provides for its winners who are mostly budding writers. Expectedly, it has also attracted stinging criticism, especially for what is perceived to be its legitimization of stereotypical narratives about Africa. In this article, I examine how the two winning entries of 2008 and 2011 represent contemporary African realities and in so doing reinforce the growing significance of the prize and the short story genre to modern African literary expression. I argue that, taken together, Henrietta Rose-Innes' "Poison" (2007) and NoViolet Bulawayo's "Hitting Budapest" (2010), both set in cities, contribute to problematic imaginings of African futures. Bulawayo does this through her representation of slum life and dystopian childhoods in Zimbabwe while Rose-Innes's story speculates on the apocalyptic aftermath of a chemical explosion in post-apartheid South Africa. I highlight, also, how these two narratives reflect apparent relationships between the short story and the novel in contemporary African writing as well as the increasing role of the postcolonial city as a site from which unfavourable visions of postcolonial societies are generated.

English in Africa

This paper explores the depiction of black African refugees in The Jungle, a 2017 play by two you... more This paper explores the depiction of black African refugees in The Jungle, a 2017 play by two young British playwrights, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson. The Jungle is a theatrical recreation of the lives of refugees from the migrant camp in Calais, from which hundreds of refugees made – and still make – often fatal attempts to enter the UK through the Channel Tunnel. The graphic images of the squalid living conditions of its residents – many of them from Africa – dominated the news, as did the dramatic manner in which the camp was dismantled in 2016. This paper is interested in the textual gestures and representational decisions of the playwrights in the written play that provide clues to the possible ways in which black Africans are thought of and constructed in the minds of Europeans. In this way, this inquiry contributes to analysing literary engagements with contemporary African migration to Europe provided from European points of view.

English in Africa, 2013

The title of this paper is inspired by a penetrating aphorism from Chinua Achebe's third nove... more The title of this paper is inspired by a penetrating aphorism from Chinua Achebe's third novel, Arrow of God, uttered by Ezeulu, the novel's central character: "the world is like a Mask dancing, if you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place" (Achebe 46). The masquerade, common in many parts of Africa, is believed in traditional religion to involve the temporary incarnation of certain spirits and/or deities by whom the human host of the mask is possessed, and whose performance is controlled by a spiritual and supernatural force (Isichei 253). The stage for a masquerade's performance is often the village square, and unlike the performance of controlled actors, the supernatural performer is not bound to one location but usually moves about in all directions, making it necessary for the audience also to change locations constantly (see Eze 99). Achebe's instructive life simile is particularly fitting for any exploration of selfhood and constructions of identity (whether individual or collective) in contemporary times. This is even more so for the postcolonial and postmodernist condition, characterized as they are by multiple subjectivities and sensibilities as well as evershifting, kaleidoscopic contexts.

Anthropological Quarterly, 2013

Chroniclers of the British Empire foreground the momentous shift in policy, from direct to indire... more Chroniclers of the British Empire foreground the momentous shift in policy, from direct to indirect rule, occasioned by developments in India in the year 1857. It was in this year that except 7,796 of the 139,000, sepoys of the Bengal Army in a spectacular uprising, known as the Sepoy Mutiny, turned against their British masters. Colonial authority was indeed challenged in that singular historical moment of the mutiny but, more significantly, the very logic and foundational ethic of the colonial project had been rendered banal. Responsibility for formulating anew the logic of colonial rule and thus redeeming Empire from its mid-nineteenth-century crisis fell on the best of British colonial minds. In their bid to rest the colonial project on a more enduring framework these colonial thinkers denounced the difference effacing pulse of the civilising mission by recommending instead, as an antidote, the recognition and protection of difference. Thus, the transition from direct to indirect rule epitomised, in terms of policy, the attempt to render the colonial enterprise as more secure. The figure of Sir Henry Maine was key in the intellectual endeavour to reconstitute the colonial architecture. His contribution was significant far beyond serving as the bedrock for a number of policy measures instituted throughout the British Empire from the 1857 crisis onwards, in that his works became compulsory reading for colonial administrators. In this short but enlightening book of three chapters that began their life as Du Bois memorial lectures, Mahmood Mamdani, maps the history of what he refers to as "a new form of colonial governmentality born in the aftermath of the mid-nineteenthcentury crisis of colonialism' (pp. 6). A critical exposition of the new logic and ethic of colonial rule as it evolved from the pen of Sir Henry Maine in India to that of the Dutch scholar Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, "whose object of reflection was the Dutch imperial project in Aceh in the East Indies" is offered in the first chapter (pp. 2). In the main, Maine wrote in response to the 1857 crisis of Empire in India. He begins his attempt to rehabilitate the colonial project by seeking first to diagnose the real cause of the crisis. And this he found to be the failure of analysis "a failure to understand the ASR_V3.indd 139 2013/12/17 9:42 AM

English Academy Review, 2015

Acta academica, Jul 28, 2023

In this article, I provide a literary analysis of the award-winning 2018 documentary, It Will Be ... more In this article, I provide a literary analysis of the award-winning 2018 documentary, It Will Be Chaos, to highlight the discursive significance of its portrayal of the black African refugees who survived the 2013 Lampedusa migrant shipwreck. The documentary by Italian filmmakers Lorena Luciano and Filippo Piscopo focuses on the turbulent journeys of African and Middle Eastern asylumseekers through the Mediterranean Sea at a time that marks the beginning of the so-called European refugee crisis. Though I focus especially on one of the main protagonists, Aregai Mehari, who survived the shipwreck, I also consider a significant difference in the portrayal of Aregai and that of a Syrian refugee family who are the film's other main protagonists. These representations, I argue, offer important clues for understanding the often problematic and unique ways in which the African refugee in particular, and Africa in general, figures in contemporary European imaginaries.

Gender and behaviour, Dec 1, 2017

In this paper, I explore the feminist activism represented by the creative and critical works of ... more In this paper, I explore the feminist activism represented by the creative and critical works of the award-winning Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In a move that signalled her growing international influence as a cultural critic, her 2012 essay, “Why We Should All Be Feminists” was distributed to high school students across Sweden. Her three accomplished novels feature female protagonists through whom she provides powerful critiques of the androcentric social, cultural, and political structures of the societies she focuses on. The novels are Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) and Americanah (2013). These are the major ways in which Adichie has made substantial contributions to feminist activism both on a global scale and in postcolonial societies. Using a narrative and socio-literary framework, I examine the feminist critique offered in these works to highlight Adichie’s contributions to current feminist literary activism and scholarship.

Imbizo

This article provides a fairly detailed overview of the trajectory of modern Nigerian literatures... more This article provides a fairly detailed overview of the trajectory of modern Nigerian literatures from their roots in the precolonial oral forms of cultural expression to what has been problematically described as “third-generation” Nigerian writing. It also traces the critical tradition of categorising modern Nigerian writing into three “generations.” I propose that current Nigerian writing as well as a cross-generational array of texts may be more productively described as post-military dictatorship (or simply “post-dictatorship”) cultural expression in view of the enduring influence of prolonged periods of military interventions on textual production in Nigeria well beyond the return to civilian rule in 1999. I demonstrate the workability of this term through concise references to selected works from two representative post-dictatorship writers.

Africa insight, Jun 1, 2014

Nordic Journal of African Studies, 2018

In this article, I interrogate the depiction of Lagos and its residents in the BBC’s documentary,... more In this article, I interrogate the depiction of Lagos and its residents in the BBC’s documentary, Welcome to Lagos for the ways in which these representations reflect, historicize, and critique cultural and economic responses to contemporary urbanization and globalization in Nigeria. Using a literary approach, I argue that it is implicated – by design or otherwise – in Western representations of Africa that continue to draw criticism for being reductive and negatively skewed. I show, in this regard, the ways in which the documentary’s featured slums, the city of Lagos and the postcolonial nation as a whole are conflated as part of the film’s overarching aesthetic and discursive strategy. A significant consequence of this conflation is that the image of the slum is made to operate as the default and totalized metonym not only of the city but also of the country. I demonstrate, furthermore, how the documentary reflects on Nigeria’s recent socio-political transition from military dicta...

Gender and behaviour, 2019

Since the turn of the 21 st century, the experiences of transnational postcolonial migrants have ... more Since the turn of the 21 st century, the experiences of transnational postcolonial migrants have become the concern of a growing number of African novels that thematize trans-border migration using diverse postmodernist narrative techniques. In this paper, I examine the use of the palimpsest as a literary device to (re)conceptualize home and belonging in the award-winning debut novel of Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo titled We Need New Names (2013). Bulawayo, like the female protagonist of the novel, was born in Zimbabwe and migrated to the United States as a teenager, a fact that invests her fictional narrative with autobiographical symbolism. Using critical narrative analysis and drawing on Salman Rushdie’s (1991) notion of ‘imaginary homelands’, I argue that Bulawayo represents home and social belonging through the narrative layering of spaces, memories and experiences across borders and times. On the one hand, the analysis reveals strong links between Bulawayo’s conception of home...

English in Africa, 2017

This article explores the thematisation of contemporary socio-political transition in South Afric... more This article explores the thematisation of contemporary socio-political transition in South Africa in Achmat Dangor’s award-winning novel, Bitter Fruit (2001). I argue that the novel can be read as a palimpsest of overlapping twilights and liminal states that simultaneously operate as tropes of the country’s transition. In this regard, I interrogate Dangor’s use of the in-between and/or fluid subject positions of characters – in terms of race, youthfulness and sexual orientation – to problematise post-TRC social affiliation in metonymic ways. I also demonstrate how Dangor’s portrayal of the figure of the family, its disintegration and the transformation of individual members (especially of the main protagonists – Michael, Silas and Lydia) can be read in allegorical ways for the changes and possibilities of South Africa’s post-1994 transition. Keywords : South Africa post-TRC transition, palimpsest, Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2018

Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 2018

This paper examines Jacob Dlamini's two main historical works, Askari (2014) and Native Nostalgia... more This paper examines Jacob Dlamini's two main historical works, Askari (2014) and Native Nostalgia (2009), for the ways in which they critique dominant South African memory practices while offering an alternative, and presumably more ethical, form of memoralisation which can also be read as a modality of temporality in the literary (re)historicisation of South Africa's national history. In Askari, Dlamini's recall of collaboration between traitors within the liberation movement and the apartheid security agencies disrupts the received narrative of South Africa's transition from anti-apartheid struggle to democracy. Similarly, in his earlier book, Native Nostalgia, he provocatively uses nostalgia to challenge the apparent politicisation of official memory projects. Furthermore, both texts adroitly complicate the relationship between the past, present and future in ways that may be read as a retemporalisation of South African national history by deconstructing notions of a teleological national transition from an apartheid to a post-apartheid dispensation. The paper draws on Chris Lorenz and Berber Bevernage's (2013) as well as Homi Bhabha's (1990) theories on the construction of national histories.

Africa Spectrum, 2015

This article explores perceptions and representations of Nigeria and Nigerians in the popular glo... more This article explores perceptions and representations of Nigeria and Nigerians in the popular global imaginary. It analyses selected popular media narratives in order to foreground contradictions and paradoxes in the ways in which the country and people of Nigeria are discursively constructed. By doing so, it interrogates stereotypes of corruption and criminality as well as myths of exceptionalism about Nigeria and Nigerians originating from both within and outside the country. The analysis reveals that the generalised portrayal of Nigeria and Nigerians as exceptional social subjects is characterised by contradictions and inaccuracies in dominant representational practices and cannot be justified by the verifiable empirical information available on the country and its people.

Africa Spectrum, 2017

This article examines the depiction of three impoverished Lagosian slums in the controversial Bri... more This article examines the depiction of three impoverished Lagosian slums in the controversial British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) documentary, Welcome to Lagos, which highlights the negative impacts of globalised capitalism on urban culture in Nigeria's commercial centre and biggest city. In recent times scholarship on postcolonial urbanisation has been marked by an important shift in focus from economic concerns to interest in the peculiar cultural dimensions of life in postcolonial cities. As this article argues, however, dominant depictions of postcolonial cities continue to highlight ways in which cultural responses to the harsh effects of late capitalism in such cities reflect economic strategies of what Mike Davis calls “informal survivalism.”

Africa Spectrum, 2013

Achmat Dangor's novel Bitter Fruit (2001), nominated for the prestigious Man Booker Prize in ... more Achmat Dangor's novel Bitter Fruit (2001), nominated for the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2004, is one of several important works of fiction that comment on the imperfections of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), offering a polemical critique of South Africa's on-going transition. In this article, I examine two significant ways in which Dangor's novel questions the work of the TRC. First, I posit that the story represents the TRC's model of transitional justice as being too determined by a “forgive and forget” approach that is inadequate as a means of providing reconciliation and thus fundamentally flawed. Second, I argue that, overall, the novel depicts the national reconciliation project as a mission that has in a way resulted in the appropriation of justice from – instead of its delivery to – some victims of Apartheid-era crimes. The aim of this article is not to present Dangor's fictional text as a one-dimensional reflection of complex social r...

Ubuntu : Journal of Conflict Transformation, 2018