scholarly journals NATIONALISM, SUBVERSIVE HISTORY AND CITIZENSHIP: THE QUEST FOR IDENTITY IN THE POSTCOLONIAL NATION IN M.G. VASSANJI’S THE IN-BETWEEN WORLD OF VIKRAM LALL

AFEL ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
James Orao
Keyword(s):  
African History ◽  
Nationalist Movements ◽  
Defining Moments

One must write for one’s age, so says Sartre, arguing that the writer needs to go beyond a passive reflection of his/her age to want to maintain it or change it (1988: 243). But there is no such thing as a passive reflection where history is concerned and the need for constant questioning of held or handed down beliefs, as propagated by the postmodern approaches, re-situates the writer and his/her audience into newer and more dynamic definitions of and reflections on that age. This paper, by looking at M. G. Vassanji’s kaleidoscopic constellation of characters, an other way to look at Kenya’s history around those defining moments of the struggle for independence and thereafter in his novel The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2005), seeks to discuss the notions of identity and especially how it is informed by nationalist movements. Vassanji, in all his books, has consistently attempted to situate the often-ignored Afro-Asian within the often ethnocentric African history. In this text, this attempt is placed within the backdrop of several histories and as such it reflects, not passively, but actively and questioningly and at certain points even subversively on what it means to be Kenyan.

A (Personal) French View of the Referendum Debate

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Dixon
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Nationalist Movements ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Gradual Shift

Historically, there has been a lack of a clear French vision of the multinational nature of the United Kingdom. A gradual shift towards a clearer understanding has been demonstrated by a well-informed and even-handed presentation of the referendum debate in the French media. This article examines the presentation of that debate, as well as Scotland's increasing familiarity in France's cultural imagination. In politics there has been neither much enthusiasm nor overt hostility to the referendum, although a lingering suspicion of nationalist movements, wherever they might be, means that many French are surprised to discover the broadly social-democratic, pro-European and ‘civic’ nature of Scotland's nationalism.

Learning Zulu

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
South African ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
African History ◽  
African Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Correct Form ◽  
Linguistic Purism

When this book's author began studying Zulu, he was often questioned why he was learning it. This book places the author's endeavors within a wider context to uncover how, in the past 150 years of South African history, Zulu became a battleground for issues of property, possession, and deprivation. The book combines elements of analysis and memoir to explore a complex cultural history. Perceiving that colonial learners of Zulu saw themselves as repairing harm done to Africans by Europeans, the book reveals deeper motives at work in the development of Zulu-language learning—from the emergence of the pidgin Fanagalo among missionaries and traders in the nineteenth century to widespread efforts, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, to teach a correct form of Zulu. The book looks at the white appropriation of Zulu language, music, and dance in South African culture, and at the association of Zulu with a martial masculinity. In exploring how Zulu has come to represent what is most properly and powerfully African, the book examines differences in English- and Zulu-language press coverage of an important trial, as well as the role of linguistic purism in xenophobic violence in South Africa. Through one person's efforts to learn the Zulu language, the book explores how a language's history and politics influence all individuals in a multilingual society.

Khawuleza—An Instantiation of the Black Archive

Imbizo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Siseko H. Kumalo
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
African History ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Philosophical Consideration ◽  
Theory Generation ◽  
Artistic Works

South African history is such that Blackness/Indigeneity were excluded from institutions of knowledge production. Contemporarily, the traditional University is defined as an institution predicated on the abjection of Blackness. This reality neither predetermined the positions and responses, nor presupposed complete/successful erasure of Blackness/Indigeneity owing to exclusion. I contend and detail how theorising, thinking about and through the Fact of Blackness, continue(d)—using the artistic works of Mhlongo, Makeba, Mbulu, and contemporarily, Leomile as examples. Analysing the music of the abovementioned artists, a move rooted in intersectional feminist approaches, will reveal modes of theorising that characterised the artistic expressions that define(d) the country. Theory generation, so construed, necessitates a judicious philosophical consideration if we are to resurrect the Black Archive. I conclude with an introspective question aimed at inspiring similar projects in other traditions that constitute the Black Archive, i.e. African languages and literature, theatre, art practice and theory.

Genes, Tribes, and African History

2000 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 357
Author(s):  
MacEachern
Keyword(s):  
African History

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanie du Toit
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The State ◽  
African History ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Social Goods ◽  
Forward Looking

Reading South African history through the lens of interdependence helps explain the disappointment that many South Africans feel in relation to reconciliation. While they are justified in feeling let down, owing to rising inequality and social exclusion, it is wrong to blame Mandela’s strategy of just interdependence because it was abandoned too early. In seeking to overcome oppression, reconciliation is forward-looking and predicated on rebuilding relationships in divided societies. Dealing with a violent past is valuable when striving for a more just future. Reconciliation fosters just, inclusive, and fair societies and is locally owned and driven. A progressive approach to reconciliation is also needed. Reconciliation recognizes the inherent interdependence between citizens themselves, and between citizens and the state. These relationships are progressively re-established in more just ways. In so doing, it helps to create conditions in which social goods such as forgiveness, the rule of law, or democracy become possible.

The Politics of Chiefs and Commoners before the 1830s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raevin Jimenez
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
State Level ◽  
Temporal Context ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
African History ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Level Analysis

The field of pre-1830 South African history has been subject to periodic interrogations into conventional narratives, sources, and methods. The so-called mfecane debates of the 1980s and 1990s marked a radical departure from characterizations of warfare in the interior, generally regarded in earlier decades as stemming solely or mostly from the Zulu king Shaka. Efforts to reframe violence led to more thorough considerations of political elites and statecraft from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century but also contributed to new approaches to ethnicity, dependency, and to some extent gender. A new wave of historiographical critique in the 2010s shows the work of revision to be ongoing. The article considers the debates around the wars of the late precolonial period, including unresolved strands of inquiry, and argues for a move away from state-level analysis toward social histories of women and non-elites. Though it focuses on the 1760s through the 1830s, the article also presents examples highlighting the importance of recovering deeper temporal context for the South African interior.

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