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2018, The Bloomsbury Introduction to Postcolonial Writing: New Contexts, New Narratives, New Debates
Postcolonial life-writing comprises texts ranging from personal narratives by colonizers, travelers and the enslaved, to archival documents such as letters and journals, to recent accounts of individual and community life experiences. Scholars such as Sidonie Smith, Julia Watson, and Julie Rak have commented on the ‘boom’ in life-writing in the UK and North America in the last twenty-five years. Postcolonial writers have participated in this boom, creating luminous reworkings of the genre. Life narratives by writers such as Marjane Satrapi, Patrick Chamoiseau, Binyavanga Wainaina, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Lorna Goodison,,and Dionne Brand, to name a very few, tell new narratives of personal experience interwoven with global perspectives on colonialism, independence movements, and the emergence of postcolonial nations. I argue that postcolonial life-writing, embedded as it is in generic expectations of telling a ‘true’ story, can serve as a proving ground for some of the central debates and themes within postcolonial studies. These include: issues of truth and authenticity, reworkings of European genres, showing the gendered nature of nationalism, the importance of the bildungsroman, and as a narrative way to theorize history and memory.
The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2018
This essay reflects on the writing of lives and fictions in a South African context in light of the contents of this special issue, and draws parallels with some of the approaches adopted by the contributors. It discusses biography, autobiography, diaries, letters, and testimonies by or about Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, Eugene Marais, Njube son of Lobengula, Cecil Rhodes, and Olive Schreiner, and problematizes some of the key terms in thinking about postcolonial literatures. In doing so, it explores interconnections between the factual and the fictive in different forms of life writing, the expanded boundaries of biographizing, performances, and transformations of the self, the use of fictions to tell truths, issues with representation and referentiality, the appeal of a return to “the facts” in some circumstances, the position of readers, and how the relationship between “then” and “now” informs writing practices. The conclusion draws on Olive Schreiner’s literary credo to propose ...
JAAAS: Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies, 2020
In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of this forum contribution: The study of life writing and postcolonial theory have had a long, intimate, and mutually constitutive relationship. The desire to more comprehensively understand the (human) subjectivities of the (formerly) colonized through (their own) cultural self-expression has driven life-writing scholars to significantly expand their canon and their scholarly methods. The human and the non-human are onto-social conditions imposed on colonized and enslaved peoples. In the context of transoceanic studies, various conditions of unfreedom can be found which call attention to the prevalence of lives deemed non-human within the parameters of European Enlightenment. Substantial advances notwithstanding, the field is still grappling with what Lisa Lowe describes as the “economy of affirmation and forgetting that structures and formalizes the archives of liberalism.”[1] This short piece contends that recently emerging (tra...
Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2020
In this introduction to the special issue on “Illuminating Lives: The Biographical Impulse in Postcolonial Literatures”, we start by situating the genre of biographical fiction, which has become increasingly popular in postcolonial literatures and beyond, in relation to more “traditional” nonfictional biography. We then examine how postcolonial biofiction might be distinguished from its postmodern avatar, and we tentatively circumscribe some of the tendencies that appear to cluster more systematically in postcolonial biofiction than in other types of writings: the focus on individuals — including artist figures — either forgotten or marginalized in traditional history; the use of the biofictional as a veritable mode of knowledge that allows writers and their critics to explore the philosophical implications of examining human trajectories; and the presence of narrative fragmentation, which often problematizes the possibility of ever fully apprehending an individual life.
This article reviews the experiences with teaching Jill Ker Conway's autobiography The Road From Coorain (1989). The two weeks of lectures and seminars were part of a six-week introductory course to postcolonial Studies for first year undergraduates at the english Department at the university of Copenhagen. The lectures provided a theoretical and historical framework and the seminars consisted of close reading and discussion of the texts. i describe how four concepts which are central to postcolonial theory, discourse, identity, representation and agency, were used in readings of the text. The article takes its point of departure in discussions about the post-imperial time of writing, the creation of individual identity in dialogue with one's context, the ambiguous representation of aboriginal people and the agency involved in writing a life story which goes against the expected narrative. i discuss the difficulties of the course and provide recommendations for improvements for future iterations of the course. Despite occasional difficulties, i argue that autobiographies are useful sources for an introduction to postcolonial Studies.
English in Africa, 40 (1): 139-159., 2013
The Journal of Postcolonial Writing is an academic journal devoted to the study of literary and cultural texts produced in various postcolonial locations around the world. It explores the interface between postcolonial writing, postcolonial and related critical theories, and the economic, political and cultural forces that shape contemporary global developments. In addition to criticism focused on literary fiction, drama and poetry, we publish theoretically-informed articles on a variety of genres and media, including film, performance and other cultural practices, which address issues of relevance to postcolonial studies. In particular we seek to promote diasporic voices, as well as creative and critical texts from various national or global margins. The Journal of Postcolonial Writing also publishes • Special issues with a particular thematic or regional focus • Interviews with and profiles of postcolonial writers and theorists • Reviews of critical studies of contemporary writing • Selections of creative writing: poetry and short prose fiction • Archival material relevant to critical articles accepted for publication Our ambition is to foster a creative dialogue among theories and texts influenced by postcolonial preoccupations and debates, and a larger engagement of contemporary literary criticism with regional and local forces (ethnicities, alternative cultural practices, diffuse points of resistance etc). Our concern is thus not only with exploring contemporary forms of imperialism (political, financial, technological, ecological), but also – and especially – with promoting cultural texts and practices which successfully challenge these. The Journal of Postcolonial Writing is listed in the Thomson Reuters Arts & Humanities Citation Index.® All peer review is double blind and submissions are typically reviewed by two referees.
Dear Colleagues, we are pulling together an Edited Collection titled A 21st Century Look at Postcolonial Literature, and we would like to invite you to consider submitting one or more chapters. The submission deadline for chapter proposal abstracts is February 25, 2024. The submission deadline for full chapters is May 31, 2024.
Post-colonial writers can play a key role in bringing unity among the people. Colonised people are emerging out of the slavery and inhuman behaviour that the colonisers had towards them; so the writers from these nations can encourage them and affirm them with a good and bright future by promoting unity. The writes can also remind them of their glorious history and the wonderful life they had before the colonisation and thereby help them to remove the inferiority complex infused by the colonisers. This work is an attempt to analyse how a change can be brought about by elucidating the conditions that colonised had to go through based on Ngugi wa Thiong'o The Writer in Changing the Society.
Gelingt die Erneuerung als demokratische sozialistische Partei?, 2024
Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.2025.
Caietele Echinox, 2023
F. Daim, H. Meller, W. Pohl (eds.) Von den Hunnen zu den Türken – Reiterkrieger in Europa und Zentralasien (Halle [Saale]), 91-9., 2021
The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 1995
Lerner, K. Lee. A Concise Guide to Use and Analysis of Primary Sources. Government Information Quarterly. Elsevier, 2005. (DRAFT COPY). Originally publihed in: Lerner, K. Lee and Brenda.Wilmoth Lerner. Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security, Thomson Gale, 2005
Saber en la Complejidad. Revista de Educación y Cultura, 2024
Computers & Chemical Engineering, 2020
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023
Hippocampus, 2014
Journal of materials science. Materials in medicine, 2017
Journal of Threatened Taxa, 2021
Ponencia, 2024
International journal of bioorganic chemistry, 2019