Event overview
Goldsmiths Literature Seminar
Amy Rushton
In postcolonial thinking, the emergence of the post-independence novel in sub-Saharan Africa is synonymous with the project of constructing national identity. Writers such as Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o began their literary careers in this era, frequently using their work to examine what it meant to suddenly ‘be Nigerian’, ‘be Kenyan’, even to ‘be African’.
By the late 1960s, the civil wars and ethnic conflicts that were to dominate much of the continent in the latter half of the twentieth century began to take hold. Such conflict inevitably threw the nationalist project into turmoil: how can one speak of national or even Pan-African identity when a nation is at war with itself?
What has been little explored is the link between the dominance of civil war and the ‘literary drought’ that apparently took hold in sub-Saharan Africa from the late 1970s until early into this century. Based on my current research, there are two major disruptions that the prevalence of ethnic conflict has caused in literary writing across sub-Saharan Africa: i) the undermining of the ideological project of nationalism that is a significant part of the post-independence novel's development; ii) the material effects of civil war on the novel form, specifically regarding production and publishing.
This paper shall focus on the former point regarding the undermining of the nationalist project by addressing how contemporary fiction portrays ethnic conflict. This overview will include texts by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria), Zoe Wicombe (South Africa), Jose Eduardo Agualusa (Angola) and Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya).
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 29 Oct 2009 | 6:30pm - 8:00pm |
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