Felix M Ndaka | University of the Witwatersrand (original) (raw)
Currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the African Centre for the Study of the United States. Holds a PhD in African Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand
Address: South Africa
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Papers by Felix M Ndaka
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2020
Focusing on NoViolet Bulawayo’s deployment of children’s play/ games and photography, this articl... more Focusing on NoViolet Bulawayo’s deployment of children’s play/ games and photography, this article reads We Need New Names (2013) as a text that represents African encounters and contacts with global modernity. It poses the children’s games and mobility as interpretive schemas that can be used to analyse intimate experi- ences of foreign spaces/powers in ways that centre childhood as an important site for grappling with larger social-political issues, at a time when national borders are becoming porous and permeable to globalizing formations. In addition, the article examines photo- graphy as an archive that mobilizes and disseminates power-laden narratives in hierarchical regimes of representation, and whose epis- temic violence can be traced to historical Africa–west encounters. While analysing the symbolic performances of these non-hegemonic characters and their experiencing of north–south and south–south encounters, this article also homes in on Bulawayo’s representation of how they engender forms of agency and resistance that trouble hegemonic representational and epistemic regimes.
Wagadu, 2017
This paper examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah (2013) and it's troubling of the silenc... more This paper examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah (2013) and it's troubling of the silencing and policing of black female migrants. Focusing on the salon/hairdressers and Ifemelu's blog, I argue that the former represents an intimate and politicized narrative space whose production and habitation invites us to engage with migrant/feminine interactions and non-normative feminine aesthetics. In addition, I read the virtual site of Ifemelu's blog as a space that transcends the circumscribed nature of interracial relations and dialogues. By portraying these spaces' cultivation of heterogeneity and polyvocality, Adichie's text advances an alternative politics of inhabiting racially and patriarchally hierarchized foreign spaces.
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2020
Focusing on NoViolet Bulawayo’s deployment of children’s play/ games and photography, this articl... more Focusing on NoViolet Bulawayo’s deployment of children’s play/ games and photography, this article reads We Need New Names (2013) as a text that represents African encounters and contacts with global modernity. It poses the children’s games and mobility as interpretive schemas that can be used to analyse intimate experi- ences of foreign spaces/powers in ways that centre childhood as an important site for grappling with larger social-political issues, at a time when national borders are becoming porous and permeable to globalizing formations. In addition, the article examines photo- graphy as an archive that mobilizes and disseminates power-laden narratives in hierarchical regimes of representation, and whose epis- temic violence can be traced to historical Africa–west encounters. While analysing the symbolic performances of these non-hegemonic characters and their experiencing of north–south and south–south encounters, this article also homes in on Bulawayo’s representation of how they engender forms of agency and resistance that trouble hegemonic representational and epistemic regimes.
Wagadu, 2017
This paper examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah (2013) and it's troubling of the silenc... more This paper examines Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah (2013) and it's troubling of the silencing and policing of black female migrants. Focusing on the salon/hairdressers and Ifemelu's blog, I argue that the former represents an intimate and politicized narrative space whose production and habitation invites us to engage with migrant/feminine interactions and non-normative feminine aesthetics. In addition, I read the virtual site of Ifemelu's blog as a space that transcends the circumscribed nature of interracial relations and dialogues. By portraying these spaces' cultivation of heterogeneity and polyvocality, Adichie's text advances an alternative politics of inhabiting racially and patriarchally hierarchized foreign spaces.