Gendered Violence and Human Rights in Black World Literature and Film
Gendered Violence and Human Rights in Black World Literature and Film

Author: Naomi Nkealah

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-03-30

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1000367770

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book investigates how the intersection between gendered violence and human rights is depicted and engaged with in Africana literature and films. The rich and multifarious range of film and literature emanating from Africa and the diaspora provides a fascinating lens through which we can understand the complex consequences of gendered violence on the lives of women, children and minorities. Contributors to this volume examine the many ways in which gendered violence mirrors, expresses, projects and articulates the larger phenomenon of human rights violations in Africa and the African diaspora and how, in turn, the discourse of human rights informs the ways in which we articulate, interrogate, conceptualise and interpret gendered violence in literature and film. The book also shines a light on the linguistic contradictions and ambiguities in the articulation of gendered violence in private spaces and war. This book will be essential reading for scholars, critics, feminists, teachers and students seeking solid grounding in exploring gendered violence and human rights in theory and practice.

Feminism and Modernity in Anglophone African Women’s Writing
Feminism and Modernity in Anglophone African Women’s Writing

Author: Dobrota Pucherová

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-07-29

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1000620298

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book re-reads the last 60 years of Anglophone African women’s writing from a transnational and trans-historical feminist perspective, rather than postcolonial, from which these texts have been traditionally interpreted. Such a comparative frame throws into relief patterns across time and space that make it possible to situate this writing as an integral part of women’s literary history. Revisiting this literature in a comparative context with Western women writers since the 18th century, the author highlights how invocations of "tradition" have been used by patriarchy everywhere to subjugate women, the similarities between women’s struggles worldwide, and the feminist imagination it produced. The author argues that in the 21st century, African feminism has undergone a major epistemic shift: from a culturally exclusive to a relational feminism that conceptualizes African femininity through the risky opening of oneself to otherness, transculturation, and translation. Like Western feminists in the 1960s, contemporary African women writers are turning their attention to the female body as the prime site of women’s oppression and freedom, reframing feminism as a demand for universal human rights and actively shaping global discourses on gender, modernity, and democracy. The book will be of interest to students and researchers of African literature, but also feminist literary scholars and comparatists more generally.

Justice and Human Rights in the African Imagination
Justice and Human Rights in the African Imagination

Author: Chielozona Eze

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-04-15

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1000376257

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Justice and Human Rights in the African Imagination is an interdisciplinary reading of justice in literary texts and memoirs, films, and social anthropological texts in postcolonial Africa. Inspired by Nelson Mandela and South Africa’s robust achievements in human rights, this book argues that the notion of restorative justice is integral to the proper functioning of participatory democracy and belongs to the moral architecture of any decent society. Focusing on the efforts by African writers, scholars, artists, and activists to build flourishing communities, the author discusses various quests for justice such as environmental justice, social justice, intimate justice, and restorative justice. It discusses in particular ecological violence, human rights abuses such as witchcraft accusations, the plight of people affected by disability, homophobia, misogyny, and sex trafficking, and forgiveness. This book will be of interest to scholars of African literature and films, literature and human rights, and literature and the environment.

Insidious Trauma in Eastern African Literatures and Cultures
Insidious Trauma in Eastern African Literatures and Cultures

Author: Norman Saadi Nikro

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-07-15

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 104008673X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book investigates the thematic and conceptual dimensions of insidious trauma in contemporary eastern African literatures and cultural productions. The book extends our understanding of trauma beyond people’s immediate and conventional experiences of disastrous events and incidents, instead considering how trauma is sustained in the aftermaths, continuing to impact livelihoods, and familial, social, and gender relationships. Drawing on different circumstances and experiences across and between the eastern African region, the book explores how emerging cultural practices involve varying modes of narrating, representing, and thematising insidious trauma. In doing so, the book considers different forms and practices of cultural production, including fashion, social media, film, and literature, in order to uncover how human subjects and cultural artefacts circulate through modalities of social, cultural and political ecologies. Transdisciplinary in scope and showcasing the work of experts from across the region, this book will be an important guide for researchers across literature, media studies, sociology, and trauma studies.

The Literature and Arts of the Niger Delta
The Literature and Arts of the Niger Delta

Author: Tanure Ojaide

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2021-04-19

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1000379051

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines the depiction of the Delta region of Nigeria through literature and other cultural art forms. The Niger Delta has been thrust into the global limelight due to resource extraction and conflict, but it is also a region with a rich culture, environment, and heritage. The creative imagination of the area’s artists has been fuelled by the area’s pressing concerns of indigenous peoples, minority discourse, environmental degradation, climate change, multinational corporations' greed, dictatorship, and people’s struggle for control of their resources. Taking a holistic approach to the Niger Delta experience, this book showcases artistic responses from literature, visual arts, and performances (such as masquerades, dances, and festivals). Chapters cover authors, artists, and performers such as Ben Okri, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Isidore Okpewho, J.P. Clark, and Bruce Onobrakpeya, as well as topics like the famous Benin bronze figures and Urhobo Udje dance. Affirming the wealth and diversity of the region which continues to inspire creative artistic productions, The Literature and Arts of the Niger Delta will be of interest to researchers of African literature, arts, and other cultural productions.

Africa and the Global System of Capital Accumulation
Africa and the Global System of Capital Accumulation

Author: Emmanuel O Oritsejafor

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-04-17

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1000384586

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Africa and the Global System of Capital Accumulation offers a groundbreaking analysis of the strategic role Africa plays in the global capitalist economy. The exploitation of Africa’s rich resources, as well as its labor, make it possible for major world powers to sustain their authority over their own middle-class populations while rewarding African collaborators in leadership positions for subjecting their populations into poverty and desperation. Middle-class obsessions such as computers, mobile phones, cars and the petroleum that fuels them, diamonds, chocolate – all of these products require African resources that are typically obtained by child or slave labor that helps to generate billionaires out of foreign investors while impoverishing most Africans. Oritsejafor and Cooper demonstrate that "primitive accumulation," believed by both Adam Smith and Karl Marx to be a process that precedes capitalism, is actually an integral part of capitalism. They also validate the thesis that capitalism incorporates racism as an organizing tool for the exploitation of labor in Africa and on a global scale. Case studies are presented on Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Congo, Tanzania, Somalia, Angola, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe, and South Sudan. There are also chapters analyzing the interests of Russia and China in Africa. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of African politics, development, and economics.

The East African Community
The East African Community

Author: Jean-Marc Trouille

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-24

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 1000389774

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book brings together African and European experts from a variety of disciplines to examine the origins and current state of the East African Community (EAC). Over the course of the book, the authors analyse the rich tapestry of intraregional relations in East Africa, the EAC’s similarities with the European Union and the future challenges faced by the organisation. Widely regarded as the most advanced and successful regional integration scheme in Africa, the EAC is an intergovernmental organisation consisting of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda and, since 2016, South Sudan. It is the oldest among Africa’s regional economic communities, and among the continent’s most promising growth areas, with a long history of integration, punctuated by several false starts and traumas that have profoundly affected its body politics. When initially set up, the EAC model bore a striking resemblance to the process undergone by the European Union. Now, as the EAC continues to establish its own identity, this book argues that whilst Europe’s history may provide useful insights for EAC member states, the EAC experience could in turn also offer lessons for the European Union. Covering key dimensions such as integration, co-operation, development, trade and investments, this book highlights the intricate and complex relationships between East African states, and it will be of interest to researchers working on economic development, international relations, peace and security and African studies.

Identification and Citizenship in Africa
Identification and Citizenship in Africa

Author: Séverine Awenengo Dalberto

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-09

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 1000380033

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the context of a global biometric turn, this book investigates processes of legal identification in Africa ‘from below,’ asking what this means for the relationship between citizens and the state. Almost half of the population of the African continent is thought to lack a legal identity, and many states see biometric technology as a reliable and efficient solution to the problem. However, this book shows that biometrics, far from securing identities and avoiding fraud or political distrust, can even participate in reinforcing exclusion and polarizing debates on citizenship and national belonging. It highlights the social and political embedding of legal identities and the resilience of the documentary state. Drawing on empirical research conducted across 14 countries, the book documents the processes, practices, and meanings of legal identification in Africa from the 1950s right up to the biometric boom. Beyond the classic opposition between surveillance and recognition, it demonstrates how analysing the social uses of IDs and tools of identification can give a fresh account of the state at work, the practices of citizenship, and the role of bureaucracy in the writing of the self in African societies. This book will be of an important reference for students and scholars of African studies, politics, human security, and anthropology and the sociology of the state.

Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding in Africa
Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding in Africa

Author: Jacinta Maweu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-03-29

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 100036142X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores the role and place of popular, traditional and digital media platforms in the mediatization, representation and performance of various conflicts and peacebuilding interventions in the African context. The role of the media in conflict is often depicted as either ‘good’ (as symbolized by peace journalism) or ‘bad’ (as exemplified by war journalism), but this book moves beyond this binary to highlight the ‘in-between’ role that the media often plays in times of conflict. The volume does not only focus on the relationship between mass media, conflict and peacebuilding processes but it broadens its scope by critically analysing the dynamic and emergent roles of popular and digital media platforms in a continent where the semi-literate and oral communities still rely heavily on popular communication platforms to get news and information. Whilst social media platforms have been hailed for their assumed democratic and digital dividends, this book does not only focus on these positive aspects but also shines a light on dark forms of participation which are fuelling racial, gender, ethnic, political and religious conflicts in highly polarized and stratified societies. Highlighting the many ways in which traditional, digital and popular media can be used to both escalate conflicts and promote peacebuilding, this volume will be a useful resource for students, researchers and civil society groups interested in peace and conflict studies, journalism and media studies in different contexts within Africa.