Beyond Empire and Nation: Postnational Arguments in the Fiction of Nuruddin Farah and B. Kojo LaingRodopi, 2004 - 168 sider The impact of nationalism on the emergence and development of African literature is now well documented. Globalization or the postnational state it seems to herald, the emblematic phenomenon of our era, has not received much attention. Using a cultural studies approach, Beyond Empire and Nation is a fascinating account of the process of globalization in African Literature. The book starts with an analysis of nationalist rhetoric and ideology as exemplified by works such as Things Fall Apart. Thereafter, it dedicates a chapter each to B. Kojo Laing's novels and Nuruddin Farah's Trilogy (Maps, Gifts, and Secrets) as articulations of a globalized, postnational reality. At the heart o the book is an analysis of a nuanced and complex experience of global modernity as Africans reassess the constants of nationalist discourse: culture, identity, locality, and territoriality. Ngaboh-Smart does not believe that the postnational phenomenon is necessarily detrimental to the national-state and argues that it may well be capable of generating a new form of individual agency, although he is critical of those writers who ignore the new power dynamic inherent in globalization. Moving beyond the "clash of cultures" paradigm, Ngaboh-Smart's account of the renegotiation of national identity and ideology is a significant contribution to the criticism of African literature and its link to global social processes. |
Innhold
| 1 | |
Gifts Narratives Identities and the Postcolonial | 29 |
Desire and the Limits of the Modern Nation | 51 |
CounterNationalist Narrative | 71 |
ReNarrating Identity | 99 |
Science and the Space of the Modern African Nation | 123 |
Conclusion | 147 |
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Beyond Empire and Nation: Postnational Arguments in the Fiction of Nuruddin ... Francis Ngaboh-Smart Ingen forhåndsvisning tilgjengelig - 2004 |
Vanlige uttrykk og setninger
½-Allotey ½-Allotey's Accra Achimota Wars Aeroplanes African fiction African Literatures African nations African writers Anna-Claude argue Armah articulate Askar authentic Ayi Kwei Armah Babo become Ben Okri Bosaaso Cambridge characters Chinua Achebe colonial conception Concrete Poetry context create criticism cultural Derek Wright discourse Duniya emphasizes epic example Ghana Ghanaian gift giving globalization Heinemann Hilaal History of Somalia human hybrid ideological Kalaman Kojo Kojo Laing Kropp-Dakubu Laing's language Léopold Sédar Senghor Levensvale linguistic London Loww Major Gentl Mauss meaning metaphor Misra modern modes Mogadiscio myth narrative narrator Nasiiba nationalist Ngugi Ngugi wa Thiong'o Nonno novel Nuruddin Farah Ogaden Osofo paradigm Poetry political poorer nations Portsmouth NH postcolonial postmodern potlatch reference relationship Research in African rhetoric Sackey Samatar Search Sweet Country Secrets seems Senghor sense sexual Sholoongo social society Somali Somali nation space symbol Taariq Tanga Third World tion Torro tradition Tukwan underscores Woman writing York
Populære avsnitt
Side 23 - It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.
Side 14 - The choice of language and the use to which language is put is central to a people's definition of themselves in relation to their natural and social environment, indeed in relation to the entire universe.
Side 39 - Human life, distinct from juridical existence, existing as it does on a globe isolated in celestial space, from night to day and from one country to another — human life cannot in any way be limited to the closed systems assigned to it by reasonable conceptions. The immense travail of recklessness, discharge, and upheaval that constitutes life could be expressed by stating that life starts only with the deficit of these systems; at least what it allows in the way of order and reserve has meaning...
Side 35 - To return to our investigation: the feeling of guilt, of personal obligation, had its origin, as we saw, in the oldest and most primItive personal relationship, that between buyer and seller, creditor and debtor: it was here that one person first encountered another person, that one person first measured himself against another.
Side 152 - A celebration of syncretism and hybridity per se if not articulated in conjunction with questions of hegemony and neo-colonial power relations, runs the risk of appearing to sanctify the fait accompli of colonial violence
Side 150 - Different social groups have distinct relationships to this anyway-differentiated mobility: some are more in charge of it than others: some initiate flows and movement, others don't: some are more on the receiving end of it than others: some are effectively imprisoned by it...
Side 32 - There is total service in the sense that it is indeed the whole clan that contracts on behalf of all, for all that it possesses and for all that it does, through the person of its chief. But this act of "service" on the part of the chief takes on an extremely marked agonistic character.
Side 52 - Criticism in short is always situated; it is skeptical, secular, reflectively open to its own failings. This is by no means to say that it is value-free. Quite the contrary, for the inevitable trajectory of critical consciousness is to arrive at some acute sense of what political, social, and human values are entailed in the reading, production, and transmission of every text.
Side xiv - The very concepts of homogenous national cultures, the consensual or contiguous transmission of historical traditions, or 'organic' ethnic communities — as the grounds of cultural comparativism — are in a profound process of redefinition.
Side 14 - To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization...