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- Convenors:
-
Vassil Anastassov
(Independent scholar)
Edona Llukaçaj
Send message to Convenors
- Location:
- B1 0.08
- Sessions:
- Thursday 18 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
The panel deals with the controversial ways in which literature represents the problems of colonization and decolonization of Africa.It offers analyses from both African and non-African perspective in the search of the most possible objective picture of the history of the "black" continent.
Long Abstract:
The panel sheds new light on the controversial problems of colonization/decolonization as presented in both African and non-African literature. It attempts to shed light on how colonization and decolonization affected both its agents and subjects as well as its impact in our modern world.
More specifically, it offers a new discussion on the heated debate, ignited by Chinua Achebe regarding the "racism" of Joseph Conrad, with reference to his novel "Things Fall Apart". Additionally, it looks into the perspective of Le Clézio in "Onitcha" in the attempt to represent as objectively as possible the non-African position on colonization.
The problems of colonization, decolonization and its achievement, on the other hand, are being analyzed from the point of view of a variety of authors from various parts of Africa and who encountered colonialism at different times. The personal story and fiction of authors such as Olaudah Equino, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Achmant Dangor will be taken in consideration from e different perspective in the attempt to offer a more realistic perspective of the impact of colonization and decolonization in the structuring of our modern lives.
Key words: Colonialism, Racism, Binarism, Deconstruction, Postcolonialism
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 18 July, 2019, -Vassil Anastassov (Independent scholar)
Paper short abstract:
The panel sheds new light on the controversial problems of colonization/decolonization as presented in both African and Non-African literatures. It triggers a new perspective on the debate, ignited by Chinua Achebe regarding the "racism" of Joseph Conrad.
Paper long abstract:
The paper gets back to the old, heated debate, ignited by Chinua Achebe, on the "racist" character of Joseph Conrad's representation of colonial Africa in "Heart of Darkness". The research refers to the binarism of "black" and "white" or "dark" and "bright" in the novel, as used by Achebe in support of his criticism of Conrad. It further deconstructs the triviality of the antagonism by pointing at these moments in the work of the British-Polish writer that reveal his intention to offer a relatively objective analysis of 19 century "white" colonialism in Africa. The claim is that Joseph Conrad did not draw a polarized "black": "non-black" image of the world, but, instead, assumed a historically equal beginning for humanity, eagerly asking himself about the reasons for the existing drastic imbalance. All of the above sheds new light on both the message of "Heart of Darkness” and the criticism of Chinua Achebe, relocating the whole dispute on a different plain, with parallels to the Nigerian writer's "Things Fall Apart" and Le Clézio's "Onitsha".
Edona Llukaçaj
Paper short abstract:
This paper, after establishing three main phases in Ngugi wa Thiongo's career, focuses on his memoirs, especially Wrestling with the Devil (2018), maintaining that the story of this writer and activist sheds light on the historical developments of Kenya, highlighting its historical veracity.
Paper long abstract:
In his last novel Exit West, Mohsin Hamid would state "We are all migrants through time," reminding his reader of the quintessential element of life. In compliance with one of the implications of this claim, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, probably the most renowned living African writer, seems to have gone once more through a time voyage. Indeed, although Ngugi's focus in his writings has always been the problems inherited from colonization in his native Kenya and the whole African continent, aiming factual decolonization and development through the decolonization of the mind, the genres and modes in which he has contributed are multiple. While the beginning of his career was marked by fictional works partly-rooted in personal experiences and written in English, during the following years Ngugi's fiction was written in his native Gikuyu to fictionalize his vociferously defended ideas for the actual progress of the African continent and people. During this last decade, Ngugi seems to have entered a new phase in his career, an autobiographical one. Taking these in consideration, this paper, after establishing three main phases in Ngugi's career aims to look at his memoirs, especially Wrestling with the Devil (2018), focusing on how the story of this writer and activist sheds light on the historical developments of Kenya and maintaining the historical veracity of his story.
Melike Yilmaz (McMaster University)
Paper short abstract:
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Paper long abstract:
The West African coastal region where the transatlantic slave trade is most intense extends from Nigeria to Benin Republic and Togo to Ghana (former Gold Coast). Slaves were taken from the inner regions to the coastal areas to be traded as a result of the inability of the Europeans to explore the inner regions because of their poor understanding of the African landscape, the people and also due to natural conditions and diseases (such as malaria, etc.) Africans were enslaved in a variety of ways. Consequently, in many published works, the process of capturing the slaves from the villages to the point of sale (Coast) is not explained in detail. In this study, we will focus on two literary works, one of which is the narratives of a kidnapped slave - in The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano - and the other is a contemporary masterpiece - The Book of Negroes. With these works, we will mainly focus on the forceful removal of slaves from inner parts of West Africa.
Maria Luísa Leal (Universidad de Extremadura)
Paper short abstract:
By the close reading of a complex novel written in 2011, we discover an African perspective on decolonization and the changes brought about by the forced movement of return in characters marked by displacement and uprooting.
Paper long abstract:
"Return" implies belonging, one returns to one's space. The great truth of this novel is that this space does not exist, the contact of characters in any space of Angola or Portugal is always marked by conflicts. Varying the narrative perspective through a choir of narrators, the author achieves a representation of space that allows us to question the national identity of Angolans and Portuguese both at the time of return (1975) and in a later globalized world. Racism, patriarchy, feminine voice or violence are some of the themes represented in the novel plot and, above all, in space as a narrative category where the symbolic dimension of fiction and the game of realistic referentiality cross and hybridise the gaze.
Francisco Ewerton Almeida Santos (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
Paper short abstract:
The paper analyzes the novel The Real Life of Domingos Xavier, by José Luandino Vieira, and his film adaptation Sambizanga, directed by Sarah Maldoror, works produced in the context of the struggle for the decolonization of Angola, of which both writer and filmmaker were militants.
Paper long abstract:
This paper aims to analyze the relationship between literature and cinema in Angola by addressing Luandino Vieira 's novel The Real Life of Domingos Xavier (1961), his adaptation of Sambizanga (1972) by Sarah Maldoror. To this end, the context of the struggle for the decolonization of Angola, in which book and film, as well as the third-world cinema of the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century, will be addressed. We will note how the anticolonialist ideology of works is reflected in the representation of the world through the eyes of the subaltern subject. In addition, it will be investigated how the recovery of popular oral forms, their relation with the African telluric mysticism and their insertion in a project of nation, in narratives that allegorize a teleological conception of the national history: tellus and telos. Thus, it will be carried through the fields of the Studies of the adaptation, Subaltern and postcolonial Studies.
Torin Spangler (Brown University)
Paper short abstract:
The present paper will analyze two short stories by Luandino Vieira and Manuel Rui, examining the ways in which each author reveals the contours of urban racial and economic segregation in the cities of Luanda and Huambo on the eve of Angola's Liberation War.
Paper long abstract:
Given the lack of a formal code of residential racial segregation in the Portuguese colonies along the lines of Apartheid South Africa, or the Jim Crow South in the United States, the myth of relative racial harmony in Portugal's African colonies has proved difficult to dismantle, generating romanticized images of colonial cities that, to some extent, persist to this day. Nevertheless, early on in Angola's anti-colonial struggle, Luandino Vieira and Manuel Rui demonstrated a keen understanding of the relationship between race, class and politics - namely, the Indigenous Code and colonial urban planning policies - which had a clear impact on patterns of de facto (and de jure) racial segregation in cities like Luanda and Huambo. We will observe how, in each of the short stories under analysis, Vieira and Rui both explore the historical trajectory of urban segregation in Angola prior to 1961. Likewise, both authors demonstrate how, despite the official abolition of the Indigenous Code in that same year, the outbreak of anti-colonial activity and the subsequent labeling of many black urban residents as potential "terrorists" would lead to a worsening rather than an improvement of interracial relations. While Vieira's and Rui's stories evidently represent the authors' literary and political objectives, when one reads the texts side-by-side with more recent historical and sociological research on the sociopolitical phenomena they dialogue with, it is nonetheless impressive how clearly the literary geographies of each author reflect the empirical universe they are meant to represent.