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- Stream:
- Literature, media and the visual arts
- Location:
- G2
- Start time:
- 12 September, 2006 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
to follow
Long Abstract:
Individual papers by:
Liz Gunner
Tom Odhiambo
Accepted papers:
Session 1Liz Gunner (University of Johannesburg)
Paper long abstract:
Taking as a starting point, James Ferguson’s (1999) definition of 'Cosmopolitanism' as 'worldliness at home' my paper discusses ways in which forms of orature have created a place for themselves in modern consciousness through a variety of transformative and in some cases 'tricksterish' means. I argue that modern, new and emergent performance genres often mask or draw from older forms as they become the vehicles for modern subjectivities in many societies in Africa. Then, drawing my examples largely from South African performance genres, and in particular from the genre known as 'imbube' or 'nightsong' I discuss how this form becomes a means whereby, in a contested and tension-filled social space, performers and audiences can test and negotiate their identities, shape and reshape them within a wider forum where forms of the local and the cosmopolitan, citizenship, gender and power are constantly being negotiated. I will explore in what way such performativities of identity can be seen as 'resistant', innovative or merely part of what Mbembe has called 'mutual zombification' in post-1994 South Africa.
Tom Odhiambo (University of Nairobi)
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses the role played by the popular pan-African publication Drum magazine in the promotion of a 'decolonizing' political discourse in the 1950s and 1960s. The paper argues that Drum was a significant popular media tool through which African leaders of the pre-independence and the early independence years articulated their vision of a multiracial and multicultural society. Through interviews, speeches and letters appearing in the pages of Drum one discerns an attempt by the various African leaders such as jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkurumah, Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere to construct a transnational postcolonial African image of peaceful co-existence between different races and nations.