Swahili Beyond the Boundaries: Literature, Language, and Identity
- ISBN-10
- 0896802523
- ISBN-13
- 9780896802520
- Category
- Literature and society
- Pages
- 206
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2007
- Publisher
- Ohio University Press
- Author
- Alamin Mazrui
Description
Africa is a marriage of cultures: African and Asian, Islamic and Euro-Christian. Nowhere is this fusion more evident than in the formation of Swahili, Eastern Africa's lingua franca, and its cultures. Swahili Beyond the Boundaries: Literature, Language, and Identity addresses the moving frontiers of Swahili literature under the impetus of new waves of globalization in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These momentous changes have generated much theoretical debate on several literary fronts, as Swahili literature continues to undergo transformation in the mill of human creativity. Swahili literature is a hybrid that is being reconfigured by a conjuncture of global and local forces. As the interweaving of elements of the colonizer and the colonized, this hybrid formation provides a representation of cultural difference that is said to constitute a "third space," blurring existing boundaries and calling into question established identitarian categorizations. This cultural dialectic is clearly evident in the Swahili literary experience as it has evolved in the crucible of the politics of African cultural production. However, Swahili Beyond the Boundaries demonstrates that, from the point of view of Swahili literature, while hybridity evokes endless openness on questions of home and identity, it can simultaneously put closure on specific forms of subjectivity. In the process of this contestation, a new synthesis may be emerging that is poised to subject Swahili literature to new kinds of challenges in the politics of identity, compounded by the dynamics and counterdynamics of post-Cold War globalization.
Get the book
Similar books
-
A Comparative Analysis of the South African and German Reception of Nadine Gordimer's, Andre Brink's and J.M. Coetzee's Works
By Eva-Marie HerlitziusWhen one considers this reception pattern , it appears almost ironic how both South African and international journalists have struggled to decipher Coetzee's initials , 527 526 Michael Morris , “ Celebrated author a man of few words .
-
A New History of Spanish Writing, 1939 to the 1990s
By Chris PerriamExtensive treatments of famous names are balanced by discussions of non-canonical and non-literary work. Thematic rather than chronological, the book places its texts in a variety of social, imaginary, and intellectual contexts.
-
James T. Farrell: The Revolutionary Socialist Years
By Alan M. WaldJames T. Farrell: The Revolutionary Socialist Years
-
A Companion to Modern Spanish American Fiction
By Donald Leslie ShawDrawing upon recent research, Shaw traces the pattern from Romanticism to the Boom and beyond and shows how presumptions about narrative and reality have undergone radical alterations.
-
書中的秘境
By 周全, 1955-)), Alberto Manguel書中的秘境
-
書中的祕境
By 周全, Alberto Manguel, 曼古埃爾書中的祕境
-
Nación y literatura: itinerarios de la palabra escrita en la cultura venezolana
By Carlos Pacheco, Luis Barrera Linares, Beatriz González StephanChávez debe morir como un perro , lo merece , con el perdón de esos nobles animales CARLOS ANDRÉS PÉREZ , El Nacional , 25/7/2004 , A / 4 En una entrevista concedida a los periodistas Edgar Alfonzo Sierra y Rubén Wisotzki el 4 de marzo ...
-
阅读日志
By 伟航·宋, 阿尔维托·曼古埃尔阅读日志
-
Bad Books: Rétif de la Bretonne, Sexuality, and Pornography
By Amy S. Wyngaard... 66 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 1 Apter, Emily, 78, 103, 105n7, 105n9, 105n11, 113n84 Aretino, Pietro, 48 Argens, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d', 14, 19, 48, 80 Asse, Eugene, 40n30 AsséZat, Jules, 9n13, 107n17 Assoun, Paul-Laurent, ...
-
Love for Sale: Materialist Readings of the Troubadour Razo Corpus
By William E. BurgwinkleR. Howard Bloch makes the point that this spirit of the canso allies it with newly developing legal mechanisms such as ... Here is the opening to Guilhem IX , the “ Coms de Peiteus's ” vida : “ Lo coms de Peitieus si fo uns dels majors ...