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Some philosophers on the African continent and beyond are convinced that consensus, as a polity, represents the best chance for Africa to fully democratise. In Consensus as Democracy in Africa, Bernard Matolino challenges the basic assumptions built into consensus as a social and political theory. Central to his challenge to the claimed viability of consensus as a democratic system are three major questions: Is consensus genuinely superior to its majoritarian counterpart? Is consensus itself truly a democratic system? Is consensus sufficiently different from the one-party system? In taking up these issues and others closely associated with them, Matolino shows that consensus as a system of democracy encounters several challenges that make its viability highly doubtful. Matolino then attempts a combination of an understanding of an authentic mode of democracy with African reality to work out what a more desirable polity would be for the continent.
"Postcolonial Polysystems: The Production and Reception of Translated Children s Literature in South Africa" is an original and provocative contribution to the field of children s literature research and translation studies. It draws on a variety of methodologies to provide a perspective, both product- and process-oriented, on the ways in which translation contributes to the production of children s literature in South Africa, with a special interest in language and power, as well as post- and neocolonial hybridity. The book explores the forces that affect the use of translation in producing children s literature in various languages in South Africa, and shows how some of these forces precipitate in the selection, production and reception of translated children s books in Afrikaans and English. It breaks new ground in its interrogation of aspects of translation theory within the multilingual and postcolonial context of South Africa, as well as in its innovative experimental investigation of the reception of domesticating and foreignising strategies in translated picture books. The book has won the 2013 EST Young Scholar Prize."
Hollywood and Africa - recycling the Dark Continent myth from 19082020 is a study of over a century of stereotypical Hollywood film productions about Africa. It argues that the myth of the Dark Continent continues to influence Western cultural productions about Africa as a cognitive-based system of knowledge, especially in history, literature and film. Hollywood and Africa identifies the colonial mastertext of the Dark Continent mythos by providing a historiographic genealogy and context for the terms development and consolidation. An array of literary and paraliterary film adaptation theories are employed to analyse the deep genetic strands of HollywoodAfrica film adaptations. The mutations of the Dark Continent mythos across time and space are then tracked through the classical, neoclassical and new wave HollywoodAfrica phases in order to illustrate how Hollywood productions about Africa recycle, revise, reframe, reinforce, transpose, interrogate and even critique these tropes of Darkest Africa while sustaining the colonial mastertext and rising cyberactivism against Hollywoods whitewashing of African history.
Women, visibility and morality in Kenyan popular media explores familiar constructions of femininity to assess ways in which it circulates in discourse, both stereotypically and otherwise. It assesses the meanings of such discourses and their articulations in various public platforms in Kenya. The book draws together theoretical questions on ‘pre-convened’ scripts that contain or condition how women can circulate in public. The book asks questions about particular interpretations of women’s bodies that are considered transgressive or unruly and why these bodies become significant symbolic sites for the generation of knowledge on morality and sexuality. The book also poses questions about genre and representations of femininity. The assertion made is that for knowledges of femininity to circulate effectively, they must be melodramatic, spectacular and scandalous. Ultimately, the book asks how such a theorisation of popular modes of representation enable a better understanding of the connections between gender, sexuality and violence in Kenya.
This is the sixteenth issue in the FAO series of worldwide annotated and illustrated catalogues of major groups of organisms that enter marine fisheries. It contains the 159 species in 15 genera known from the serranid subfamily Epinephelinae, including one species new to science. There is an introductory section with general remarks on habitat and fisheries of the family, a glossary of technical terms, an illustrated key to each genus and all species, and a detailed account for all species. Species accounts include an illustration of each species, scientific and vernacular names, and information on habitat, biology, fisheries, size, relevant literature, and distribution.
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Recently, the salient idea of personhood in the tradition of African philosophy has been objected to on various grounds. Two such objections stand out – the book deals with a lot more. The first criticism is that the idea of personhood is patriarchal insofar as it elevates the status of men and marginalises women in society. The second criticism observes that the idea of personhood is characterised by speciesism. The essence of these concerns is that personhood fails to embody a robust moral-political view. African Personhood and Applied Ethics offers a philosophical explication of the ethics of personhood to give reasons why we should take it seriously as an African moral perspective that can contribute to global moral-political issues. The book points to the two facets that constitute the ethics of personhood – an account of (1) moral perfection and (2) dignity. It then draws on the under-explored view of dignity qua the capacity for sympathy inherent in the moral idea of personhood to offer a unified account of selected themes in applied ethics, specifically women, animal and development.
Reading the animal text in the landscape of the damned looks at the diverse texts of our everyday world relating to nonhuman animals and examines the meanings we imbibe from them. It describes ways in which we can explore such artefacts, especially from the perspective of groups and individuals with little or no power. This work understands the oppression of nonhuman animals as being part of a spectrum incorporating sexism, racism, xenophobia, economic exploitation and other forms of oppression. The enquiry includes, physical landscapes, the law, women’s rights, history, slavery, language use, economic coercion, farming, animal experimentation and much more. Reading the animal text in the landscape of the damned is an academic work but is accessible, theoretically based but robustly practical and it encourages the reader to take this enquiry further for both themselves and for others.
A guide to over 400 species of the fishes along the coast of southern Africa, this work features over 600 original paintings showing changes with growth and sexual differences in colour of many of the fishes. The species accounts include descriptions and other information for identification and comparison of similar species.
Beyond the Political Spider: Critical Issues in African Humanities by Kwesi Yankah is the first title in the newly established African Humanities Association (AHA) publication series. By integrating his own biography into a critique of the global politics of knowledge production, Yankah, through a collection of essays, interrogates critical issues confronting the Humanities that spawn intellectual hegemonies and muffle African voices. Using the example of Ghana, he brings under scrutiny, amongst others, endemic issues of academic freedom, gender inequities, the unequal global academic order, and linguistic imperialism in language policies in governance. In the face of these challenges, the author deftly navigates the complex terrain of indigenous knowledge and language in the context of democratic politics, demonstrating that agency can be liberatory when emphasising indigenous knowledge, especially expressed through the idiom of local languages and symbols, including Ananse, the protean spider, folk hero in Ghana and most parts of the pan-African world.