Reconceiving Identities in Political Economy comprises one volume in an unprecedented three-volume set, collectively subtitled Decolonial Reconstellations. Together with Volume One (Dynamics of Deep Time and Deep Place) and Volume Two (Dissolving Master Narratives), it gathers thinkers from across world regions and disciplines who reconfigure critical global thought.Collaboratively conceived, the volumes are founded on the observation that we cannot fully uproot the episte...

Dissolving Master Narratives comprises one volume in an unprecedented three-volume set, collectively subtitled Decolonial Reconstellations. Together with Volume One (Dynamics of Deep Time and Deep Place) and Volume Three (Reconceiving Identities in Political Economy), it gathers thinkers from across world regions and disciplines who reconfigure critical global thought.Collaboratively conceived, the volumes are founded on the observation that we cannot fully uproot the epis...

Dynamics of Deep Time and Deep Place comprises one volume in an unprecedented three-volume set, collectively subtitled Decolonial Reconstellations. Together with Volume Two (Dissolving Master Narratives) and Volume Three (Reconceiving Identities in Political Economy), it gathers thinkers from across world regions and disciplines who reconfigure critical global thought.Collaboratively conceived, the volumes are founded on the observation that we cannot ful...

This collection explores the complexities of black existence, and intellectual and cultural life in the work and legacies of centenarian writers, Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Cyril Lincoln Nyembezi and Es’kia Mphahlele

The power of theatrical performance is universal, but the style and concerns of theatre are specific to individual cultures. This volume in the Global Theatre Perspectives series presents a reconstructed ancient performance text, four one-act indigenous African plays and five modern dramas from various regions of Africa and the Caribbean Diaspora.Because these plays span centuries and are the work of artists from diverse cultures, readers can see elements that occur across...

This collection of essays reflects on the life and work of Ngugi wa Thiong'o, who celebrated his 80th birthday in 2018. Drawing from a wide range of contributors, including writers, critics, publishers and activists, the volume traces the emergence of Ngugi as a novelist in the early 1960s, his contribution to the African culture of letters at its moment of inception, and his global artistic life in the twenty-first century. Here we have both personal andcritical reflections on the differe...

The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English Since 1945 challenges the conventional belief that the English-language literary traditions of East Africa are restricted to the former British colonies of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Instead, these traditions stretch far into such neighboring countries as Somalia and Ethiopia.Simon Gikandi and Evan Mwangi assemble a truly inclusive list of major writers and trends. They begin with a chronology of key historical eve...

Why did the novel take such a long time to emerge in the colonial world? And, what cultural work did it come to perform in societies where subjects were not free and modes of social organization diverged from the European cultural centers where the novel gained its form and audience? Answering these questions and more, Volume 11, The Novel in Africa and the Caribbean since 1950 explores the institutions of cultural production that exerted influence in late colonialism, from missio...

The transcript from this historic trial, long thought destroyed or hidden, unearths a piece of the British colonial archive at a critical point in the Mau Mau Rebellion. Its discovery and landmark publication unsettles an already contentious Kenyan history and its reverberations in the postcolonial present.Perhaps no figure embodied the ambiguities, colonial fears, and collective imaginations of Kenya’s decolonization era more than Dedan Kimathi, the self-proclaime...

It would be easy to assume that, in the eighteenth century, slavery and the culture of taste--the world of politeness, manners, and aesthetics--existed as separate and unequal domains, unrelated in the spheres of social life. But to the contrary, Slavery and the Culture of Taste demonstrates that these two areas of modernity were surprisingly entwined. Ranging across Britain, the antebellum South, and the West Indies, and examining vast archives, including portraits, period painti...

The most comprehensive reference work on African literature to date, this book covers all the key historical and cultural issues in the field. The Encyclopedia contains over 600 entries covering criticism and theory, African literature's development as a field of scholarship, and studies of established and lesser-known writers and their texts. While the greatest proportion of literary work in Africa has been a product of the twentieth century, the Encyclopedia also covers...

In Simon Gikandi's view, Caribbean literature and postcolonial literature more generally negotiate an uneasy relationship with the concepts of modernism and modernity—a relationship in which the Caribbean writer, unable to escape a history encoded by Europe, accepts the challenge of rewriting it. Drawing on contemporary deconstructionist theory, Gikandi looks at how such Caribbean writers as George Lamming, Samuel Selvon, Alejo Carpentier, C. L. R. James, Paule Marshall, M...