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Punishing the Black Body examines the punitive and disciplinary technologies and ideologies embraced by ruling white elites in nineteenth-century Barbados and Jamaica. Among studies of the Caribbean on similar topics, this is the first to look at the meanings inscribed on the raced, gendered, and classed bodies on the receiving end of punishment. Dawn P. Harris uses theories of the body to detail the ways colonial states and their agents appropriated physicality to debase the black body, assert the inviolability of the white body, and demarcate the social boundaries between them. Noting marked demographic and geographic differences between Jamaica and Barbados, as well as any number of chang...
On January 1, 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared the independence of Haiti, thus bringing to an end the only successful slave revolution in history and transforming the colony of Saint-Domingue into the second independent state in the Western Hemisphere. The historical significance of the Haitian Revolution has been addressed by numerous scholars, but the importance of the Revolution as a cultural and political phenomenon has only begun to be explored. Although the path-breaking work of Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Sibylle Fischer has illustrated the profound silences surrounding the Haitian Revolution in Western historiography and in Caribbean cultural production in the aftermath of the R...
An examination of the attempt by Western-educated African intellectuals to create a 'better Africa' through connecting nationalism to knowledge, from the anti-colonial movement to the present-day. This book is about how African intellectuals, influenced primarily by nationalism, have addressed the inter-related issues of power, identity politics, self-assertion and autonomy for themselves and their continent, from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Their major goal was to create a 'better Africa' by connecting nationalism to knowledge. The results have been mixed, from the glorious euphoria of the success of anti-colonial movements to the depressingcircumstances of the African condition as w...
This special issue focuses on literary texts by African writers in which the protagonist returns to his/her 'original' or ancestral 'home' in Africa from other parts of the world. Ideas of return - intentional and actual - have been a consistent feature of the literature of Africa and the African diaspora: from Equiano's autobiography in 1789 to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 novel 'Americanah'. African literature has represented returnees in a range of locations and dislocations including having a sense of belonging, being alienated in a country they can no longer recognize, or experiencing a multiple sense of place. Contributors, writing on literature from the 1970s to the present, examine the extent to which the original place can be reclaimed with or without renegotiations of 'home'. Articles on Nuruddin Farah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Pede Hollist, Ayi Kwei Amah, Dinaw Mengestu, Benjamin Kwakye. Interview with Tendai Huchu. Featured Articles by Bernth Lindfors, Eustace Palmer & Helen Chukwuma. Literary supplement : four poems by Tsitsi Ella Jaji .
Manifestations of Masculine Magnificence: Divinity in Africana Life, Lyrics, and Literature is a remarkable study and the first of its kind. Teresa N. Washington eschews popular culture’s pimp myths and thug sagas and traces the Africana man’s power, creativity, and consciousness to his inherent divinity. Manifestations of Masculine Magnificence takes the reader to the source of power with an analysis of African Divinities and divine technologies. Washington explores the permanence and proliferation of African Gods from oppressive plantations to the empowering proclamations of such leaders as W. D. Fard, Marcus Garvey, Father Divine, and Allah, the Father. Washington analyzes the summons...
During his lifetime, Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)--grandson of a Caribbean slave and author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo--faced racial prejudice in his homeland of France and constantly strove to find a sense of belonging. For him, "Monte Cristo" was a symbol of this elusive quest. It proved equally elusive for those struggling to overcome slavery and its legacy in the former French colonies. Exiled to the margins of society, 19th and 20th century black intellectuals from the Caribbean and Africa drew on Dumas' work and celebrity to renegotiate their full acceptance as French citizens. Their efforts were influenced by earlier struggles of African Americans in the decades after the Civil War, who celebrated Dumas as a black American hero.
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Encompassing the time period from the colonial era to the present day, this book critically examines the changing nature of African politics and the factors that underpin such changes. We argue in the volume that many of the problems that plague contemporary politics (ethnicity, governance, conflict, bad economic policies, the absence of dialogue and other social issues) have their roots in the fifteen years after the Second World War, just prior to independence (1945–1960). Because these issues had been grossly mismanaged by the colonial enterprise, those fifteen years could arguably be characterized as the incubation period for the dysfunction that has stymied African politics since inde...
"Very refreshing in the understanding of Caribbean literature . . . Succeeds in blending close readings of specific texts with a constant awareness of the larger picture. . . . From a theoretical complexity that calls on Glissant, Fanon, Ngugi, Benito-Rojo among others, this profoundly human exploration of autofiction and advocacy in Francophone Caribbean literature study does not succumb to the temptation of theory; that is, she does not demand texts illustrate a rigid theoretical frame; the reverse is true throughout the study."—Cilas Kemedjio, University of Rochester Larrier breaks new ground in analyzing first-person narratives by five Francophone Caribbean writers—Joseph Zobel, Patr...
The study of masculinities and gender identity in contemporary literature is relatively new and, with each year of this millennium, gains momentum. Indeed, as the women’s movement becomes forceful in developing nations, the question of tolerance to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transvestites undergoes a similar process. At a time when women refuse to be subjected to war crimes, when they begin entering the workforce and realize the need to support their families independently, and when they refuse to remain in abusive marriages or remain silent in countries, where governments ignore their needs, men and women are questioning the meaning of gender in their culture and often seek alternativ...