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This book is a collection of essays on Yvonne Owuor’s writings, mainly her most acclaimed novel, Dust as well as Dragonfly Sea and her short story “Weight of Whispers”. While the chapters in this book grapple with diverse themes, they generally converge on Owuor’s preoccupation with different forms of violence that has dominated Kenya’s postcolonial experiences, especially those around the politics of power and the roles of regional, ethnic, and gender identities in influencing such politics. Many of the chapters in this book problematize the violence of genocide, trauma, and flight as they are variously and singularly underpinned by silences that signal the failure of adequate avenues for articulation of what impact such violence has on its victims. Other chapters focus on the style of Owuor’s writing, thereby highlighting the many literary innovations that Owuor crafts in order to effectively carry the weight of her concerns. This book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of Literature, Politics, History, and Sociology. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies.
This book is a collection of essays on Yvonne Owuor's writings, mainly her most acclaimed novel, Dust as well as Dragonfly Sea and her short story "Weight of Whispers". It was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies.
From St. Augustine and early Ethiopian philosophers to the anti-colonialist movements of Pan-Africanism and Negritude, this encyclopedia offers a comprehensive view of African thought, covering the intellectual tradition both on the continent in its entirety and throughout the African Diaspora in the Americas and in Europe. The term "African thought" has been interpreted in the broadest sense to embrace all those forms of discourse - philosophy, political thought, religion, literature, important social movements - that contribute to the formulation of a distinctive vision of the world determined by or derived from the African experience. The Encyclopedia is a large-scale work of 350 entries covering major topics involved in the development of African Thought including historical figures and important social movements, producing a collection that is an essential resource for teaching, an invaluable companion to independent research, and a solid guide for further study.
A History of World Literature is a fully revised and expanded edition of The Routledge Concise History of World Literature (2012). This remarkably broad and informative book offers an introduction to “world literature.” Tracing the term from its earliest roots and situating it within a number of relevant contexts from postcolonialism, decoloniality, ecocriticism, and book circulation, Theo D’haen in ten tightly-argued but richly-detailed chapters examines: the return of the term “world literature” and its changing meaning; Goethe’s concept of Weltliteratur and how this relates to current debates; theories and theorists who have had an impact on world literature; and how world literature is taught around the world. By examining how world literature is studied around the globe, this book is the ideal guide to an increasingly popular and important term in literary studies. It is accessible and engaging and will be invaluable to students of world literature, comparative literature, translation, postcolonial and decoloniality studies, and materialist approaches, and to anyone with an interest in these or related topics.
The book presents a thorough study of the changing landscape of state-diaspora relations in Africa, as well as a robust analysis of diaspora engagement policies being pursued across the continent. As the Africa diaspora strengthens its socio-economic and political clout, countries of origin in Africa have sought to engage their citizens living abroad. Over the past decade, the role of diaspora in the homeland development has become a core tenet of national strategies and policies. Against the backdrop of expanding globalization and deepening regional integration, the book presents a thorough study of the changing landscape of state-diaspora relations in Africa, as well as a robust analysis of diaspora engagement policies being pursued across the continent as states seek to extend rights to and extract obligations from their global citizens.
Negotiating Sexual Idioms: Image, Text, Performance affords new theoretical approaches and insights into the complexity of sexual discourse pervading contemporary cultures, exploring sexuality’s role in dominant conceptualisations of self and society, in patterns of political belonging and exclusion, and in societal transformations. Opening with a substantial critical introduction, this collection of twelve essays and creative pieces contributes to significant current debates regarding sexual rights and their violation, queer theory and identity politics, sexual fantasy formations and strategies of pleasure, and the celebration of sexual diversity, topics explored through a variety of disc...
The book examines popular fiction columns, a dominant feature in Kenyan newspapers, published in the twentieth century and examines their historical and cultural impact on Kenyan politics. The book interrogates how popular cultural forms such as popular fiction engage with and subject the polity to constant critique through informal but widely recognized cultural forms of censure. The book further explores the ways we see and experience how the African subaltern, through the everyday, negotiate their rights and obligations with the self, society and the state. Through these columns and their writers, the book examines the tensions that characterize such relationships, how the formal and informal interpenetrate, how the past and present are reconciled, and how the local and transnational collide but also collude in the making of the Kenyan identity.
In Kenya, cultural and natural heritage has a particular value. Its pre-historic heritage not only tells the story of man's origin and evolution but has also contributed to the understanding of the earth's history: fossils and artefacts spanning over 27 million years have been discovered and conserved by the National Museums of Kenya (NMK). Alongside this, the steady rise in the market value of African art has also affected Kenya. Demand for African tribal art has surpassed that for antiquities of Roman, Byzantine, and Egyptian origin, and in African countries currently experiencing conflicts, this activity invariably attracts looters, traffickers and criminal networks. This book brings toge...
This edited volume provides a wide- ranging introduction to the novelistic oeuvre of the prize- winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah. It addresses a gap in Gurnah scholarship by including chapters which discuss his earlier works that have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Drawing on a range of critical lenses including postcolonial theory, Indian Ocean studies, psychoanalytic theory, migration studies and gender studies, this book provides illuminating commentary on his novels. Attentive to the geographical and historical reach of the narratives, the chapters engage with recurring thematic concerns of departures and arrivals; of complex family relationships; and of precarious cosmopolitan hospitality in situations of changing power relations from the old Indian Ocean monsoon trading system to colonial and postcolonial contexts. The volume concludes with an author interview. It will be of great interest to researchers in the fields of Literary and Cultural Studies, especially Postcolonial Literature, African Studies and Indian Ocean Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of English Studies in Africa.
Re-examines this unresolved murder in Kenya and the underlying role of rumour, the media and inter-state relations on how the death has been reported and investigated.