Papers by Nikitta Dede Adjirakor
University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers 27, BIGSASworks! 10, 2021
This article follows a decolonial perspective to suggest that fieldwork can be a useful tool in r... more This article follows a decolonial perspective to suggest that fieldwork can be a useful tool in reconfiguring African literary studies. Drawing from the positive reception to her Ghanaian nationality in Tanzania, she writes that fieldwork can produce possibilities for relocating Africa in African studies by centering the lived experiences of interlocutors. Her paper asserts an ethical responsibility of researchers towards their interlocutors to produce knowledge that is collaboratively drawn, seeing the field not only as a site of data extraction but also of theorization and intellectual knowledge production. Her paper also reveals a complicated relationship with her institution based in the west which was received negatively by her interlocutors as a process of re-colonisation.
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Research in African Literatures, 2017
Departing from the popular approach of reading hip-hop from a sociological and contextual perspec... more Departing from the popular approach of reading hip-hop from a sociological and contextual perspective, this article considers it as a consciously created aesthetic text. It argues that hip-hop strategically constructs an effect of reality based on its own figurations that, although it may build on social reality, is not simply a mirror of it. My aim is to show through a close reading of one hip-hop song from Kenya how hip-hop creates a reality within its own semiotic space. To this end, I focus on how the urban African space is developed textually through different elements such as the rapper's persona, language, and topoi within the text. By looking at how the artiste uses recurring leitmotifs, figures, and hip-hop discursive strategies, I show how the narrative of the city within the text is not simply a reflection of a context but rather an artistic construct.
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Complete issue of journal by Nikitta Dede Adjirakor
University of Bayreuth African Studies Working Papers. BIGSASworks!, 2021
This tenth edition of BIGSASworks! explores different theoretical and methodological approaches t... more This tenth edition of BIGSASworks! explores different theoretical and methodological approaches to fieldwork experiences, practices, and challenges in African Studies. Employing multidisciplinary perspectives and lenses that include intersectionality, decolonization and reflexivity, the contributors discuss how fieldwork can question, upend and reconfigure the research experience. All contributions are underlined by a critical reflection on positionality, exploring the intersections between different positions emanating from parenting, age, marriage, race, motherhood, nationality, diaspora, language, and religion. In particular, there is a conscious reflection on often marginalized positions and perspectives in the field, underscored by a critical reflection of the positions of the contributors as attached to institutions in the global north, in relation to their work in the global south. The contributors reinforce the need for critical reflections on the practice of fieldwork in African studies, underscoring the intersections between lived experience and the research process.
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Papers by Nikitta Dede Adjirakor
Complete issue of journal by Nikitta Dede Adjirakor