scholarly journals Rethinking Development in Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kouamé Sayni

In an intertextual assessment of Jacob’s Ladder (1987) and The Resolutionaries (2013), we are conducting a post-colonial analysis with the aim of showing that the post-colonization systems of sociopolitical and economic organization in African countries has no other objective but spoliation and subjugation of African economies to Western countries. For these two writers, and especially Armah, the international meetings which often gather the great leaders of this world in Africa and elsewhere are only “bloody ritual” meetings organized to make sure that the system of pillage is working perfectly. In this work, our objective is to show how Williams and Armah make use of the power of the imaginary to open the way to development in Africa, specifically by shaping a new African leadership which is ready to challenge the devil plan of Western hegemonic powers with as defiant programs as Fasseke’s nuclear project in Jacob’s Ladder (1987) and Nefert’s plan of unified linguistic construction in The Resolutionaries (2013).

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 28-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Mahmudul Hasan

Said’s critique of Orientalism provokes a comprehensive review by post-colonial theorists of the bulk of western knowledge regarding non-western countries. This Orientalist literature buttresses the colonial notion of a civilizing mission, which is also supported by many western feminists who provide theoretical grounds to such colonialist perceptions. Such post-colonial feminists as Gayatri Spivak, Chandra Mohanty, and Rajeswari Rajan analyze western feminism’s ideological complicity with Orientalist and imperialist ventures.


Author(s):  
Joan Burbick

Joan Burbick reads Jay Harjo from a queering as well as post-colonial perspective, analyzing the way in which normative discourses of social cohesion are questioned and re-formulated from the vantage point of Native American categories such as the berdache. Harjo's vision promotes radical contingency and a seemingly spiritual notion of transference.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Lei Sun ◽  
Xiangyong Kong

With the detection from the post-colonial perspective, there is a certain amount of truth in the statement that Alice Walker’s The Color Purple sometimes reveals Eurocentric ideology, even though she overtly makes efforts for Africa and Africans. The way in which she delineates Nettie’s missionary job in Olinka, confirms habitual Western suspicions about equality between Europe and Africa. With the reexamination of the depiction about the African continent Nettie sketches out, additionally, we might notice Walker’s intention of setting up Africa as a foil to Europe, to some extent, echoes Said’s orientalist discourse.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Ag Efendi Darmanto ◽  
Don Bosco Karnan Ardijanto

Prayer was very important in Jesus’ life and the saints’ lives. Prayer also becomes the important need in the faithfuls’ life. Prayer is a mean to fight againts the devil and the power of sin. Prayer is also an expression of faith in God. It also becomes the way of human being to always remember to God. There are some problems: what is prayer? How do the Catholic teens of St. Hilarius’ Parish, Klepu pray together? What kind of benefits of praying together for the Catholic Teens in St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu? What kind of impedements in praying together that the Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ Parish experience? The aims of this research are: to clarify the definition of prayer, to explain how the Catholic Teens of Hilarius’ parish, Klepu to do their praying together, to explain the benefits of prayer together for the Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu. Finally, to identify various factors that supporting or inhibiting the practice of prayer of the Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu. This research used qualitative research methods. In this study there are 10 respondents consisting of 4 male respondents and 6 female respondents. They are between 13-15 years old. They are members of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu. The conclusions of the research are: 1) The Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu know the understanding of prayer. 2) The Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parihs, Klepu already carry out prayers in certain times either personally or communal prayer in St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu. 3) The Catholic Teens of St. Hilarius’ parish, Klepu understand that the benefits of communal prayer are: creating a partnership or relationship with God and friends, as well as the means to develop their personality.


Author(s):  
Norbert Merkovity

Within the framework of empirical research, the authors sent an email to every member of the Hungarian Parliament. They wanted to know how many representatives would answer their letter within a one-week period. As a next step, they listed the answerers, the composition of parliamentary groups, gender, age, and the way the representatives got into the National Assembly in the election (from single-member districts or from party list). On the basis of this, they outline the profile of the responding representative. The typical answers came from women, who are members of the opposition and who are between the ages of 30–39. The least responses came from the members of the governing coalition. As a final point, the authors conclude in this chapter that Hungarian representatives do not differ significantly from their colleagues in the Western countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-52

In this excerpt from the essay AIDS and Its Metaphors Susan Sontag considers how the AIDS epidemic has affected lifestyles and morality. When epidemics persist for many years, the precautions that had started out as briefly enforced precautions become a part of social morality. Until 1981 the successes of medicine in treating sexually transmitted diseases encouraged emancipation from sexual morals. Sontag uses economic metaphors to designate those decades as a period of sexual spending, speculation and inflation, after which the early stages of a sexual depression set in. AIDS caused fear of sexuality to return. If cancer has taught us to fear environmental pollution, AIDS triggered a fear of pollution through people. The AIDS epidemic led to the disappearance of many secular ideals, which Sontag regards as closely linked to freedom. AIDS provided an incentive for a resurgence of conservatism in many areas. Its effect on the arts in particular was to force a rejection of modernist discoveries and a return to tonality, melody, plot, character, etc. AIDS then becomes a new realism. Sontag also addresses post-colonial issues related to the AIDS epidemic. If AIDS had been a purely African disease, notwithstanding the scale of the epidemic, it would have been considered a “natural” cataclysm similar to famine. But once the epidemic affected the West, it was no longer perceived as a natural disaster. In First World countries, disasters are understood as historical events which bring about important social change, while in Asian and African countries they are viewed as one part of a general cycle of nature and as something closer to natural phenomena. The new disease has changed very little in the operation of that logic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-39
Author(s):  
István M. Fehér

"Hermeneutical Considerations on Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and on the Revisiting of his Path of Thinking II. Starting with preliminary philological-hermeneutical considerations concerning the way Heidegger’s Black Notebooks can and should be dealt with, as well as concerning the question of what tasks may be derived from them for future research, the paper attempts to discuss the Black Notebooks applying a variety of methods and approaches. Themes that are discussed at more or less length include: Time factor and the formulation of our task; explanation and understanding or the way a philosophical path should be approached and dealt with methodically (hermeneutically); the theme related to “Heidegger and anti-Semitism” and the question concerning individuality; prejudices from a hermeneutical perspective and the way to deal with them; relapses and their philosophical explanation; insufficient and exaggerated sensibility; Heidegger and Hegel; equivocality and the dark side of the “formal indication”; Lukács, Scheler and the devil; Heidegger’s great being-historical treatises and their greatness; suggestions for a reconsideration of Heidegger’s way of thinking. – One important hermeneutical claim brought to bear on the various discussions is this: just as it would be inappropriate in our dealing with Heidegger’s texts to disregard Heidegger’s own self-interpretations, it would be no less inappropriate to consider those self-interpretations – which themselves call for interpretation – as telling us the sole and ultimate truth. This second part of the paper dedicates special attention to the question of re-examining Heidegger’s whole philosophical itinerary in the light of the Black Notebooks. Keywords: hermeneutics, being, history, interpretation, individuality "


Author(s):  
Adam Gussow

This chapter explores the way in which the blues lyric tradition uses the devil as a figure for the southern white man and hell as a figure for the miseries of the Jim Crow South. The white slave master and slave patroller show up, in coded form, in the antebellum spirituals; this tradition was reconfigured after Emancipation to reflect the new realities of the sharecropper's and bluesman's world, one presided over by the white bossman, sheriff, and prison farm warden. Bluesmen acted the devil, one might say, in order to evade and supplant the (white) devil and live more freely in the Jim Crow South over which he presided. Big Bill Broonzy, Peetie Wheatstraw, Lightnin' Hopkins, Champion Jack Dupree, and others recorded songs in which they signified on this mean white devil; Wheatstraw and Broonzy imaged themselves as his son-in-law: the black man making love to the white devil's daughter.


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