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Cultural Texts of Resistance in Zimbabwe explores how ordinary citizens appropriate and deploy cultural texts such as internet memes, songs, political cartoons and social media discussions as vehicles to contest hegemonic narratives of the state and insert alternative ways of imagining the future of the nation. This book is a timely attempt to examine the multiple and complex dimensions of resistance in post-millennial Zimbabwe through analysing different cultural productions. It centres the voices of ordinary Zimbabweans by examining popular cultural texts that reflect their experiences and ways of living within the Zimbabwean crisis of the post-2000 period. The book argues that subversive cultural texts have become important tools that ordinary citizens appropriate to challenge the repressive political environment and imagine different ways of writing the nation. The book brings a fresh perspective to ongoing discussions on how popular cultural texts contribute to the narration of the nation, especially in the context of crisis.
This book explores literary representations of African immigrant experiences in Western countries, against the backdrop of colonial stereotypes and recent expressions of anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe and America. The book deploys the concept of coloniality of migrancy to explore how global coloniality continues to shape the identities and lived experiences of African immigrants as represented in African diasporic literatures. It considers the persistence of racist and discriminatory attitudes and patterns of thought that developed during slavery and colonialism, and asks to what extent it is possible for African immigrants to transcend race in their configuration of their identity. Five...
Examining this pressing field of study in an underexplored regional context, this book takes a refreshing new angle to deepen our understanding around the causes and effects of migration.
Premised on the disruption and lessons learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic, and in meticulous response to the impact of the pandemic on higher education – especially in South Africa – this collection of chapters spotlights the effects, consequences, and ramifications of an unprecedented pandemic in the areas of knowledge production, knowledge transfer and innovation. With the pandemic, the traditional way of teaching and learning was completely upended. It is within this context that this book presents interdisciplinary perspectives that focus on what the impact of Covid-19 implies for higher education institutions. Contributors have critically reflected from within their specific academic disciplines in their attempt to proffer solutions to the disruptions brought to the South African higher education space. Academics and education leaders have particularly responded to the objective of this book by focusing on how the academia could tackle the Covid-19 motivated disruption and resuscitate teaching, research, and innovation activities in South African higher education, and the whole of Africa by extension.
Exploring ethical approaches to inclusive development, this book navigates challenges and strategies, empowering readers to foster resilient, equitable communities in the ever evolving 21st century.
This volume calls for a Narratology of Diversity by investigating narratives of non-normative bodies and minds. It explores mental health representations in literature, including neurodiversity, the body-mind nexus, and embodied non-normativities, therein emphasizing the importance of understanding diverse psychological conditions as represented in narratives. The contributions include perspectives from a wide variety of scholars of European, North American, and comparative literature and culture. While post-classical narratology has evolved through phases of diversification and consolidation, this volume represents innovation in understanding narrative development to embrace new areas of social awareness, including gendered narratologies (specifically feminist and queer narratologies) and post-colonial criticism, paving the way for a more inclusive narratology.
Inventive new methods of audio-visual mediation and aesthetic activism have been giving shape, since at least the mid-2000s, to feelings of despair, disappointment, and rage at the injustice that South Africa’s colonial and apartheid histories continue to trail in their wake. Wayward Feeling reveals how racism, sexism, and other forms of structural disenfranchisement have continued to assert themselves in affective terms, and how these terms have been recast in spaces both public and intimate in "post-rainbow" times. Helene Strauss argues that the tension between aspiration and achievability has yielded modes of feeling that increasingly disrupt the thrall of post-apartheid nation-building and reconciliation myths, even as wide-spread attachment to the utopian ideals of the anti-apartheid struggle continues to shape dissenting political organising and cultural production. Drawing on a variety of audio-visual forms – including video installations, conceptual artwork, documentary film, live art, and sonic installations – Wayward Feeling examines some of the affective resources that people in contemporary South Africa have been drawing on to make difficult lives more bearable.
Recognising that these issues are addressed quite differently in the Global North, Suddhabrata Deb Roy connects flooding in northeastern India to the context of the broader politics surrounding climate change and climate justice in the Global South, making this book important and powerful reading for countering today’s climate emergency.
Pentecostalism is a growing movement in world Christianity. However, the growth of Pentecostalism in South Africa has faced some challenges, including the abuse of religion by some prophets. This book first names these prophets and the churches they lead in South Africa, and then makes use of literary and media analysis to analyse the religious practices by the prophets in relation to cultism. Additionally, the book analyses the “celebrity cult” and how it helps promote the prophets in South Africa. The purpose of this book is threefold: First, to draw parallels between the abuse of religion and cultism. Second, to illustrate that it is cultic tendencies, including the celebrity cult, that has given rise to many prophets in South Africa. Last, to showcase that the challenge for many of these prophets is that the Pentecostal tradition is actually anti-cultism, and thus there is a need for them to rethink their cultic tendencies in order for them to be truly relevant in a South African context.
This book is an in-depth study of the category "stranger" as represented in four contemporary Afrodiasporic novels of female authorship: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, Sefi Atta’s A Bit of Difference, NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers. Examined from an interdisciplinary perspective that brings together different approaches to the figure of the stranger and Affect Theory, the plurality of experiences of estrangement, disorientation and unbelonging portrayed in these texts allows expansion upon Sara Ahmed’s (2000) investigation of "stranger fetishism" and, in so doing, contributes to the recent call for a more nuanced understanding of...