Special Issue: Sketches of Black Europe in African and African Diasporic Narratives (original) (raw)
Related papers
Abibisem: Journal of African Culture and Civilization
In order to justify their annexation and subsequent subjugation and colonisation of Africa, the America and Asia, European imperalist nations had to depict Africa in a way that supported their missions. First, Africa had to be portaryed as a savage continent that needed the benevolence of the white man in order to attain civilisation. Second, Africa and the Americas had to be depicted as virgin lands that could provide all the raw materials that modern Europe needed for its indsutrial take-off. Third, one of the characteristics that was used in that project was that of the African man in genral and the "black" man in particular as a dangerous beast that is always in hot pursuit of the white woman's virginity. As a consequnence, the black man in Africa and in America had to be kept under constant check. This paper examines the problem whihc is represented by the fallacies put forth by Europe or the gap between the apologia and the reality in modern Europe's subjugat...
African Literature Still in the Dock: A Deconstructive Strategy for Eurocentric Hegemony
Studies in Literature and Language, 2015
Some academic circles still harbor the view that European literature remains the best that is written, with all subaltern literary work patronizingly assumed to be awkward, mediocre, or inferior. In particular, Eurocentric charges are levelled against African literature on the grounds that it is oral, mono-thematic, mono-structural, hybrid, and mimetic. This paper provides a vital awareness of the debilitating effects of this kind of Eurocentric hegemonic discourse, thus decolonizing African literature and counteracting European attacks on African literary norms and values. To this effect, the paper argues that a key way for African writers to correct the perpetual lopsided and distorted view of their work is to deconstruct the Western hegemonic discourse and reject the biased criteria, norms, and standards of the so-called great tradition.
2020
Drawing on a rich lineage of anti-discriminatory scholarship, art, and activism, Locating African European Studies engages with contemporary and historical African European formations, positionalities, politics, and cultural productions in Europe. Locating African European Studies reflects on the meanings, objectives, and contours of this field. Twenty-six activists, academics, and artists cover a wide range of topics, engaging with processes of affiliation, discrimination, and resistance. They negotiate the methodological foundations of the field, explore different meanings and politics of ‘African’ and ‘European’, and investigate African European representations in literature, film, photography, art, and other media. In three thematic sections, the book focusses on: - African European social and historical formations - African European cultural production - Decolonial academic practice Locating African European Studies features innovative transdisciplinary research, and will be of interest to students and scholars of various fields, including Black Studies, Critical Whiteness Studies, African American Studies, Diaspora Studies, Postcolonial Studies, African Studies, History, and Social Sciences. ISBN hbk: 9781138590328 ISBN ebk: 9780429491092 free sample: http://read.amazon.co.uk/?asin=B081B949XJ http://bit.do/LocAfrEuSt Preview: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429491092
The Contribution of Eurocentric Literature to the Emergence of African Post Colonial Literature
2018
This research paper is principally intended to comprehensively examine the contribution of Eurocentric literature to the emergence of African Post colonial Literature. Most Western critics had a firm belief that African literature was a reaction to the distorted image of Africa as portrayed in the Western Eurocentric literature. The present article thoroughly discusses the African reaction to the Eurocentric portrayal of Africa and the Africans which had often tended to portray all that is African in an extremely negative way to the Western reader. The research focuses on Algerian literature as a case study.
What is Africa to me now? The continent and its literary diasporas
Transition, issue 113, 2014
Artists attempt to capture the complexities of human nature through writing, painting, and other creative media. Academics, on the other hand, act on this impulse to understand the world by engaging in more mundane activities, such as holding conferences. And so it was that, eager to explore issues of representation, identity, and memory in the literatures of the African diasporas, we started to consider organizing an event at our home institution, the University of Liège, Belgium.