Reclaiming space, mastering time in African postcolonial fiction
The theme of this chapter is contextualized by an
introduction which analyzes what is meant by postcolonial African literature,
focusing on the map of time and space where it appeared and flourished as a
revolutionary re-positioning of the mind against the universalism of European
canons. Postcolonialism is not just a mode of writing but an epistemological
approach and a vision of the world that ceases to rotate around the imperial
metropolis and becomes unprecedently multicentric. The relevance of time and space
in African postcolonial discourse derives from the fact that since its inception,
postcolonial theory and practice have been political and rooted in political
analysis and history – so that the whole of postcolonial literature talks politics.
The chapter then moves into an analysis of the works of five important African
writers – Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm (1883),
Sol Plaatjeʼs Mhudi (1930), Chinua Achebeʼs Things Fall
Apart (1958), Ken Saro-Wiwaʼs
Sozaboy (1985), and
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichieʼs Americanah (2013). If realism might be considered as an ongoing
experiment in the art of representation, for the African writer it is more
philosophical and political than ethical and aesthetic, and the goal is never
mimetic but rather representational of a new and different landscape.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction: Thinking postcolonial realism in Africa
- 2.Schreiner’s chronotope as anti-colonial critique
- 3.Past and present in African history: Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi
- 4.Living at the crossroads: Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
- 5.“Water don pass gari”: Matters have come to an end
- 6.A serious Americanah
- 7.Conclusion
-
Works cited
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Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Tracey, Maire, Simon Stanton-Sharma, Sanja Nivesjö, Emma Barnes & Jade Munslow Ong
2023.
The making of
All That Is Buried
: dialog, chronotope and decoloniality
.
Media Practice and Education ► pp. 1 ff.
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