Localising the global: the use of a postmodernist aesthetic in the fiction of Alain Mabanckou
- Authors: Ngulube, Innocent Akilimale
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- -- Blue, white, red , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- -- African psycho , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- -- Broken glass , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- -- Memoirs of a porcupine , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- -- The Lights of Pointe-Noire , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- -- Tomorrow I'll be twenty , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- Black bazaar , Postcolonialism in literature , African fiction (French) -- History and criticism , Postmodernism (Literature)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/167153 , vital:41442
- Description: This thesis explores the use of a postmodernist aesth etic in Alain Mabanckou’s oeuvre, namely Blue White Red, African Psycho, Broken Glass, Memoirs of a Porcupine, Black Bazaar, Tomorrow I’ll Be Twenty, The Lights of Pointe-Noire, and Black Moses. In particular, I show how and why this Afrodiasporic author localises strategies associated with Western postmodernist writing in an African postcolonial context. My central argument is that if postmodernism is a critique of modernity in the West, then it must also be a respon se to enforced modernity in the African postcolonial context. In mounting this argument, I conduct a close reading of Mabanckou’s novels from within the theoretical frameworks of postmodernism and postcolonialism. I demonstrate that Mabanckou’s writing adu mbrates the possibility of a postcolonial postmodernism. Since he is a French-Congolese citizen, his writing evinces aesthetic glocalisation. That is, as a postcolonial writer, he conceives of, and inflects, postmodernism differently from a Western writer, for his experiences of and responses to modernity differ from the latter’s. Far from replicating a politics of disillusionment and despair that informs, even characterises, Western postmodernist fiction, Mabanckou invests hi s African postcolonial writing with a politics of decolonis ation which problematises the effects of enforced modernity. Postmodernism, in other words, accords Mabanckou an ambivalent position from which he interrogates both Western modernity and its African version. Significantly, in this regard, Mabanckou’s writing presents both an extension of and a departure from the pioneering influence of the first generation of African writers such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Ngulube, Innocent Akilimale
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- -- Blue, white, red , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- -- African psycho , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- -- Broken glass , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- -- Memoirs of a porcupine , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- -- The Lights of Pointe-Noire , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- -- Tomorrow I'll be twenty , Mabanckou, Alain, 1966- Black bazaar , Postcolonialism in literature , African fiction (French) -- History and criticism , Postmodernism (Literature)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/167153 , vital:41442
- Description: This thesis explores the use of a postmodernist aesth etic in Alain Mabanckou’s oeuvre, namely Blue White Red, African Psycho, Broken Glass, Memoirs of a Porcupine, Black Bazaar, Tomorrow I’ll Be Twenty, The Lights of Pointe-Noire, and Black Moses. In particular, I show how and why this Afrodiasporic author localises strategies associated with Western postmodernist writing in an African postcolonial context. My central argument is that if postmodernism is a critique of modernity in the West, then it must also be a respon se to enforced modernity in the African postcolonial context. In mounting this argument, I conduct a close reading of Mabanckou’s novels from within the theoretical frameworks of postmodernism and postcolonialism. I demonstrate that Mabanckou’s writing adu mbrates the possibility of a postcolonial postmodernism. Since he is a French-Congolese citizen, his writing evinces aesthetic glocalisation. That is, as a postcolonial writer, he conceives of, and inflects, postmodernism differently from a Western writer, for his experiences of and responses to modernity differ from the latter’s. Far from replicating a politics of disillusionment and despair that informs, even characterises, Western postmodernist fiction, Mabanckou invests hi s African postcolonial writing with a politics of decolonis ation which problematises the effects of enforced modernity. Postmodernism, in other words, accords Mabanckou an ambivalent position from which he interrogates both Western modernity and its African version. Significantly, in this regard, Mabanckou’s writing presents both an extension of and a departure from the pioneering influence of the first generation of African writers such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Navigating Blackness in the African Diaspora
- Authors: Yates, Sarah
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Ellison, Ralph. Invisible man , Everett, Percival. Erasure , Wicomb, Zoe. Playing in the light , Bulawayo, NoViolet. We need new names , Africans in literature , Race in literature , African fiction (English) -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145720 , vital:38461
- Description: This thesis offers a comparative reading of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Percival Everett’s Erasure, Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light and NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names in order to explore the diversity of subjectivities included within the terms ‘African’ and ‘black’ and to argue for the necessity of renewed definitions of Africa(nness) and blackness which allow for diverse and fluid representations. The diverse historical and political contexts in which these novels are published, as well as the critical and theoretical discussions which surround them demonstrate an evolution in literary portrayals of identity politics. As the categories of race and nation become more fluid, so too do narrative forms. In particular, this thesis is interested in the textual strategies authors use to navigate the various ways in which depictions of blackness continue to be restricted by racism, stereotypes, and the dynamics of a global literary market. As portrayals and discussions of identity politics proliferate in popular culture, they become increasingly commodified, and therefore increasingly restricted by the market.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Yates, Sarah
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Ellison, Ralph. Invisible man , Everett, Percival. Erasure , Wicomb, Zoe. Playing in the light , Bulawayo, NoViolet. We need new names , Africans in literature , Race in literature , African fiction (English) -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145720 , vital:38461
- Description: This thesis offers a comparative reading of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Percival Everett’s Erasure, Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light and NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names in order to explore the diversity of subjectivities included within the terms ‘African’ and ‘black’ and to argue for the necessity of renewed definitions of Africa(nness) and blackness which allow for diverse and fluid representations. The diverse historical and political contexts in which these novels are published, as well as the critical and theoretical discussions which surround them demonstrate an evolution in literary portrayals of identity politics. As the categories of race and nation become more fluid, so too do narrative forms. In particular, this thesis is interested in the textual strategies authors use to navigate the various ways in which depictions of blackness continue to be restricted by racism, stereotypes, and the dynamics of a global literary market. As portrayals and discussions of identity politics proliferate in popular culture, they become increasingly commodified, and therefore increasingly restricted by the market.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
“Womxn like me are made”: politics and poetics in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen
- Authors: Wilken, Chelsey
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Rankine, Claudia, 1963- Citizen , Putuma, Koleka -- Collective amnesia , Black people -- Race identity , Black people in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145735 , vital:38462
- Description: This thesis utilises an interdisciplinary approach to understand the political significance of the experimental poetics used by Claudia Rankine in Citizen: An American Lyric and Koleka Putuma in Collective Amnesia. Rankine and Putuma offer contemporary reflections on what it means to occupy marginalised spaces in society. These artists experiment with formal and conventional aspects of literature to explore and create new definitions of what it means to be Black in society. Their works and techniques allow for thinking outside of dominant ideologies of race and posit alternative Black identities that are not found within canonical theory on Blackness. This project reflects on existing theories of Black subjectivity as evident in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and Aimé Césaire’s Notebook on the Return to My Native Land. While these theorists did not reject the role of Black women in Western civilisation, they should be read as a moment in a series of counter-discourse to the Black Other rather than the finite canon of Black subjectivity. The emergence of Rankine and Putuma’s experimental poetics works to disrupt the conflation of the Black subject with the Black heteronormative male. Using Michelle M. Wright’s Physics of Blackness as its primary theoretical framework, this project advocates alternative and disruptive readings of Blackness that potentially shift Blackness away from its conflation with nationalism, masculinity and heteronormativity. This thesis uses a dialogical approach between political theory and literature which allows for Citizen and Collective Amnesia to be read as acts of resistance to epistemological erasure and as articulations of the politics relevant to the poets’ lived experiences. Both the United States and South Africa have a history of institutionalised racial segregation, which allows Rankine and Putuma to be read in relation to one another. Where the Civil Rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle were both foregrounded as male-lead liberation movements contemporary social movements including #blacklivesmatter and #feesmustfall have initiated a return to the androcentric philosophies of Malcom X and Steve Biko, for example. As such Rankine and Putuma’s literature and art marks a reclamation of female empowerment and visibility in the face of a political rhetoric that continues to be masculine and nationalist in nature. In the absence of a space where Black female and queer bodies are adequately recognised, the poetry they write creates a space of self-representation and recognition.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Wilken, Chelsey
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Rankine, Claudia, 1963- Citizen , Putuma, Koleka -- Collective amnesia , Black people -- Race identity , Black people in literature
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145735 , vital:38462
- Description: This thesis utilises an interdisciplinary approach to understand the political significance of the experimental poetics used by Claudia Rankine in Citizen: An American Lyric and Koleka Putuma in Collective Amnesia. Rankine and Putuma offer contemporary reflections on what it means to occupy marginalised spaces in society. These artists experiment with formal and conventional aspects of literature to explore and create new definitions of what it means to be Black in society. Their works and techniques allow for thinking outside of dominant ideologies of race and posit alternative Black identities that are not found within canonical theory on Blackness. This project reflects on existing theories of Black subjectivity as evident in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and Aimé Césaire’s Notebook on the Return to My Native Land. While these theorists did not reject the role of Black women in Western civilisation, they should be read as a moment in a series of counter-discourse to the Black Other rather than the finite canon of Black subjectivity. The emergence of Rankine and Putuma’s experimental poetics works to disrupt the conflation of the Black subject with the Black heteronormative male. Using Michelle M. Wright’s Physics of Blackness as its primary theoretical framework, this project advocates alternative and disruptive readings of Blackness that potentially shift Blackness away from its conflation with nationalism, masculinity and heteronormativity. This thesis uses a dialogical approach between political theory and literature which allows for Citizen and Collective Amnesia to be read as acts of resistance to epistemological erasure and as articulations of the politics relevant to the poets’ lived experiences. Both the United States and South Africa have a history of institutionalised racial segregation, which allows Rankine and Putuma to be read in relation to one another. Where the Civil Rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle were both foregrounded as male-lead liberation movements contemporary social movements including #blacklivesmatter and #feesmustfall have initiated a return to the androcentric philosophies of Malcom X and Steve Biko, for example. As such Rankine and Putuma’s literature and art marks a reclamation of female empowerment and visibility in the face of a political rhetoric that continues to be masculine and nationalist in nature. In the absence of a space where Black female and queer bodies are adequately recognised, the poetry they write creates a space of self-representation and recognition.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
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