KENYA AUTHOR · HISTORY AND CRITICISM · AFRICAN
Simon Gikandi
Most acclaimed
Novel in Africa and the Caribbean since 1950
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 missionary schools and metropolitan publishers to universities and small presses. How these structures provoke and respond to the literary trends and social peculiarities of Africa and the Caribbean impacts not only the writing and reading of novels in those regions, but also has a transformative effect on the novel as a global phenomenon. Together, the volume's 32 contributing experts tell a story about the close relationship between the novel and the project of decolonization, and explore the multiple ways in which novels enable readers to imagine communities beyond their own and thus made this form of literature a compelling catalyst for cultural transformation. The authors show that, even as the novel grows in Africa and the Caribbean as a mark of the elites' mastery of European form, it becomes the essential instrument for critiquing colonialism and for articulating the new horizons of cultural nationalism. Within this historical context, the volume examines works by authors such as Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, George Lamming, Jamaica Kincaid, V.S. Naipaul, Zoe Wicomb, J.M. Coetzee, and many others.
Writing in limbo
"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. On the one hand, Gikandi says, the Caribbean was central to Europe's conceptions of its own modernity, and Caribbean writers, in turn, borrowed European' modernist techniques to define their own decolonized identity. On the other hand, even though many texts from the Caribbean use narrative techniques and discursive practices that seem modern or postmodern, the ideology underlying their use is strongly revisionist. According to Gikandi, Caribbean literature simultaneously appropriates and subverts European notions of modernism and modernity." "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, Merle Hodge, Zee Edgell, and Michelle Cliff have attempted to confront European modernism. Gikandi also calls into question the universal claims of European modernism and modernity by examining the unique sets of problems these concepts generate once they have been transferred to the "margins" of the modern world. Because modernity, Gikandi asserts, is a colonial legacy, the concept of modernism in the Caribbean is invariably linked to the cultures and ideologies of colonialism and nationalism." "Writing in Limbo reveals how postcolonial literature and theory compel us to revise the protocols that govern the reading of modern literature. It will be welcomed by scholars in the fields of literary theory, postcolonial literature, cultural studies, and Caribbean studies."--Jacket.