Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Memories of Violence in Peru and the Congo
The book presents an intertextual and comparative analysis of memories of violence in Peruvian and Congolese Literature. Examining a variety of novels that offer insightful representations of violence in their respective historical settings, the author argues that similar historical experiences between Latin America and Africa engender ethical/aesthetic responses and enhance trans-continental critical dialogues in comparative literary studies. In the same way that the drama of the Congo has become the symbolic open wound of (post)colonial dispensation in Africa, Spanish conquest in Latin America also produced spaces where the legacy of colonialism is strongly visible and memorable, providing...
State/Society
In this remarkably meticulous work, Gilbert Shang Ndi succeeds in bringing together the aesthetic and political dimensions of the texts and in broadening interpretative perspectives in very convincing analyses. Each author is handled in his peculiarity and the theoretical ambitions of the project contribute to fruitful and innovative readings of major African literature texts by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Ahmadou Kourouma, Ayi Kwei Armah and Sony Labou Tansi. --Prof. Xavier Garnier, U. de Paris-Sorbonne III **This title is based on a Dissertation. (Series: Contributions in African Research / Beitr�¤ge zur Afrikaforschung, Vol. 77) [Subject: African Studies, Literary Criticism]
The Radio and Other Stories
On moving into a new apartment abroad in his Bavarian hometown, the narrator realises that some of his possessions and elements of his new neighbourhood open a window into a flurry of memories, serving as allegorical threads to his childhood, self-consciousness and discovery of the world. What begins as a personal narrative quickly cedes to a social archaeology, inviting the reader/listener on a homegoing journey in the backdrop of Cameroon’s tottering democratic trajectory. Modulated with poetry and music, The Radio tunes in to diaspora, home, nation, education, existence, religion as well as Mbum popular culture, showcasing creative re-appropriation and re-mixing of global trends and icons in specific communities.
Letter from America
Inspired by Alistair Cooke’s masterpiece “Letter from America” (1934-2004) that depicted the transformation of British culture in the United States of America, Ndi-Shang’s text redefines ‘America’, focusing on the melting pot engendered by African, indigenous, European and Asian cultures in Latin America through the case of Peru, the erstwhile epicentre of Spanish empire in Latin America. It is a reflection on the triangular relationship between Africa, Europe and America against the backdrop of slavery and (neo-)colonialism which continue to define intimate experiences, daily interactions, personal trajectories and human relations in a ‘globalized world’. Ndi-Shang probes into the legacies of racial inequalities but also the possibilities of a new ethic of encounter amongst human beings/cultures. The text is based on an intricate interweaving of the humorous with the tragic, the personal with the global, the historical with the current and the real with the creative.
Re-writing Pasts, Imagining Futures
The papers in this volume focus on fiction and theatre in their traditional forms as well as in their encounters with novel and innovative forms and avenues of dissemination. As a cultural practice that emerged from a process of protest and contestation of hegemony, it is understandable that one main concern in African literature and literary criticism is the resistance against the emergence of marginalizing centers in formerly or currently marginalized societies with regard to discourses, aesthetics and media of creation. These new centers that sometimes undermine the strategic/tactical exploitation of the relative advantage procured by each medium run the risk of leading to new forms of st...
Of Worlds and Artworks
The present volume brings together contributions which explore artworks – including literature, visual arts, film and performances – as dynamic sites of worlding. It puts emphasis on the processes of creating or doing worlds, implying movement as opposed to the boundary drawing of area studies. From such a processual perspective, Africa is not a delineated area, but emerges in a variety of relations which can reach across the continent, but also the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic or Europe. Contributors are: Thierry Boudjekeu, Elena Brugioni, Ute Fendler, Sophie Lembcke, Gilbert Ndi Shang, Samuel Ndogo, Duncan Tarrant, Kumari Issur, CJ Odhiambo, Michaela Ott, Peter Simatei, Clarissa Vierke, Chinelo J. Enemuo.
Tracks and Traces of Violence
Tracks and Traces of Violence explores the social conditions, political contexts, and cultural spaces of violence in Africa. It is comprised of accounts that underpin the visible and hidden 'tracks and traces' of violence in the memories of traumatized individuals and groups. It also interrogates the gaps, silences, and vacuities of/in these memories, as well as the role they play in shaping the facial contours of our modern societies. Weaving together views from literature, anthropology, art, cultural studies, and museum studies, this book provides deeper insight into the meanings of violent socialities, spatialities, and temporalities, as well as into how they materialize in poetry, fiction, art, and popular culture. (Series: Contributions to African Research / Beitrage zur Afrikaforschung, Vol. 80) [Subject: African Studies, Sociology, Art, Literature, Anthropology]
African Migration Narratives
Examines the representations of migration in African literature, film, and other visual media, with an eye to the stylistic features of these works as well as their contributions to debates on migration
Decolonial Aesthetics II
This book features writing by 17 authors from Germany and from African and Latin American countries on highly diverse aesthetic phenomena as seen from their own different points of view. The texts in this volume all deal with the imperative of ‘decolonization’: they try to highlight aesthetic strategies for the (re)discovery of unthematized, misappropriated, transcultural and even transcontinental histories and memories and aesthetic practices that are absent from or too little perceived within national consciousnesses. Novels, poems and musical performances from the East African region are analysed as intertwined histories of the Indian Ocean and its different languages. Artworks of the Black Atlantic and perceptions of Africa are discussed from, for example, Brazilian perspectives. Within the German context, decolonisation strategies in exhibition practices in ethnological or art museums developed by Nigerian artists are evaluated; new terms such as ‘dividuation’ are proposed to describe these contemporary composite-cultural entanglements, and so on. A stimulating, wide-ranging and heterogeneous portrait of contemporary interwoven world cultures!
A Relational View on Cultural Complexity
This book explores the conceptual and practical implications of applying a relational view to cultural complexity. The authors take the findings of an international and interdisciplinary Delphi study on transcultural competence as a starting point and offer further analysis and interpretation from their specific perspectives. Written by experts from a variety of disciplines, the book discusses the potential contributions of a relational approach to understanding and strengthening individuals and organizations in their contexts. Through various conceptual chapters, case studies and field reports, it explores the role and nature of commonalities for cooperation in contexts of cultural complexi...
