Globalectics
Theory and the Politics of Knowing
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- 23,99 €
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- 23,99 €
Publisher Description
A masterful writer working in many genres, Ngugi wa Thiong'o entered the East African literary scene in 1962 with the performance of his first major play, The Black Hermit, at the National Theatre in Uganda. In 1977 he was imprisoned after his most controversial work, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), produced in Nairobi, sharply criticized the injustices of Kenyan society and unequivocally championed the causes of ordinary citizens. Following his release, Ngugi decided to write only in his native Gikuyu, communicating with Kenyans in one of the many languages of their daily lives, and today he is known as one of the most outspoken intellectuals working in postcolonial theory and the global postcolonial movement.
In this volume, Ngugi wa Thiong'o summarizes and develops a cross-section of the issues he has grappled with in his work, which deploys a strategy of imagery, language, folklore, and character to "decolonize the mind." Ngugi confronts the politics of language in African writing; the problem of linguistic imperialism and literature's ability to resist it; the difficult balance between orality, or "orature," and writing, or "literature"; the tension between national and world literature; and the role of the literary curriculum in both reaffirming and undermining the dominance of the Western canon. Throughout, he engages a range of philosophers and theorists writing on power and postcolonial creativity, including Hegel, Marx, Lévi-Strauss, and Aimé Césaire. Yet his explorations remain grounded in his own experiences with literature (and orature) and reworks the difficult dialectics of theory into richly evocative prose.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this knowledgeable exploration of the meaning of global literature and post-colonialism, and their role in shaping minds, Thiong'o , a playwright and novelist in exile from his native Kenya, draws on his experience of studying literature in a British-centered curriculum while his country fought for independence. After discovering Marx's theories of class struggle, he realized how meaningful it could be to view literature through the prism of the colonial experience, as readings of Conrad's Heart of Darkness show. After joining the English faculty at the University of Nairobi, Thiong'o coauthored a paper calling for the department to change its name to Literature, and for the curriculum to emphasize African literature over British. Examining the works of such authors as Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, he finds that they've incorporated themes and ideas from Western literature, while using the traditions in their native cultures as a framework. Writing about the practicalities of teaching world literature, from selecting texts to dismantling the false idea that literature from oral cultures is less worthy of study than that from written ones, he proposes the term "globalectics," which allows readers to see the connections between works from different time periods and places. In an ever-shrinking world, this book demonstrates the need to understand the similarities and differences in the stories we tell each other.
