Myriam J. A. Chancy
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043048
- eISBN:
- 9780252051906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043048.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
The introduction lays out the methodology for the study and explains its key terms. If autochthonomy is the practice of intra-subjective exchanges girded by mobile, local practices, cultural ...
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The introduction lays out the methodology for the study and explains its key terms. If autochthonomy is the practice of intra-subjective exchanges girded by mobile, local practices, cultural expressions or beliefs that form the intra-diasporic bridge between cultures of African descent, then lakou or yard consciousness is the virtual space in which such exchanges take place. This imagined locus is composed of autochthonous beliefs and practices preserved, reformulated, or syncretized over time, which form the basis for communication because of their importance to the identities of those peoples who have continued to practice them, however modified, to subsist and to persist. This space is one in which filiation and affiliation also become redefined cultural features or markers of association.Less
The introduction lays out the methodology for the study and explains its key terms. If autochthonomy is the practice of intra-subjective exchanges girded by mobile, local practices, cultural expressions or beliefs that form the intra-diasporic bridge between cultures of African descent, then lakou or yard consciousness is the virtual space in which such exchanges take place. This imagined locus is composed of autochthonous beliefs and practices preserved, reformulated, or syncretized over time, which form the basis for communication because of their importance to the identities of those peoples who have continued to practice them, however modified, to subsist and to persist. This space is one in which filiation and affiliation also become redefined cultural features or markers of association.
Myriam J. A. Chancy
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043048
- eISBN:
- 9780252051906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043048.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
The conclusion summarizes the study’s main findings and re-centers the argument that narrow limits of interpretation, when it comes to African Diasporic texts, leads to the persistence of hierarchal ...
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The conclusion summarizes the study’s main findings and re-centers the argument that narrow limits of interpretation, when it comes to African Diasporic texts, leads to the persistence of hierarchal models of power relations based on constructions of race, guaranteeing the persistence of racist constructions and consequences upon lived lives. One of the consequences of such misreadings and categorizations also means that the fields of analyses in which these texts circulate replicate interpretive incompetencies. The conclusion summarizes how the study has sought to demonstrate that there are other means of reading African Diasporic texts, such that analyses and critical assessments of such texts are in conversation with and responsive to their interpretive communities.Less
The conclusion summarizes the study’s main findings and re-centers the argument that narrow limits of interpretation, when it comes to African Diasporic texts, leads to the persistence of hierarchal models of power relations based on constructions of race, guaranteeing the persistence of racist constructions and consequences upon lived lives. One of the consequences of such misreadings and categorizations also means that the fields of analyses in which these texts circulate replicate interpretive incompetencies. The conclusion summarizes how the study has sought to demonstrate that there are other means of reading African Diasporic texts, such that analyses and critical assessments of such texts are in conversation with and responsive to their interpretive communities.
Myriam J. A. Chancy
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043048
- eISBN:
- 9780252051906
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043048.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
Autochthonomies is an intellectual project that engages readers in an interpretive journey: it engages and describes a process by which readers of texts created by artists and actors of African ...
More
Autochthonomies is an intellectual project that engages readers in an interpretive journey: it engages and describes a process by which readers of texts created by artists and actors of African descent might engage such texts as legible within the context of African Diasporic historical and cultural discursive practices. It argues that there is a cultural and philosophical gain to understanding these texts not as products of, or responses only to, Western hegemonic dynamics or simply as products of discrete ethnic or national identities. By invoking a transnational African/Diasporic interpretive lens, negotiated through a virtual “lakou” or yard space in which such identities are transfigured, recognized, and exchanged, the study demonstrates how to best examine the salient features of the texts that underscore African/Diasporic sensibilities and renders them legible, thus offering a potential not only for richer readings of African Diasporic texts but also the possibility of rupturing the Manichean binary dynamics through which such texts have commonly been read. This produces an enriching interpretive capacity emphasizing the transnationalism of connections between subjects of African descent as the central pole for undertaking such investigations. Through the use of the neologism, autochthonomy, the study argues further that, despite colonial interruptions, critics of such works should seek to situate them as part of an intricate network of cultural and transnational exchanges.Less
Autochthonomies is an intellectual project that engages readers in an interpretive journey: it engages and describes a process by which readers of texts created by artists and actors of African descent might engage such texts as legible within the context of African Diasporic historical and cultural discursive practices. It argues that there is a cultural and philosophical gain to understanding these texts not as products of, or responses only to, Western hegemonic dynamics or simply as products of discrete ethnic or national identities. By invoking a transnational African/Diasporic interpretive lens, negotiated through a virtual “lakou” or yard space in which such identities are transfigured, recognized, and exchanged, the study demonstrates how to best examine the salient features of the texts that underscore African/Diasporic sensibilities and renders them legible, thus offering a potential not only for richer readings of African Diasporic texts but also the possibility of rupturing the Manichean binary dynamics through which such texts have commonly been read. This produces an enriching interpretive capacity emphasizing the transnationalism of connections between subjects of African descent as the central pole for undertaking such investigations. Through the use of the neologism, autochthonomy, the study argues further that, despite colonial interruptions, critics of such works should seek to situate them as part of an intricate network of cultural and transnational exchanges.
Jeanne Dubino
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474448475
- eISBN:
- 9781474496070
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474448475.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter traces the presence of Woolf in sub-Saharan Africa from 1929 to the present day. The historic trajectory starts with the final decades of the British Empire’s colonial rule in ...
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This chapter traces the presence of Woolf in sub-Saharan Africa from 1929 to the present day. The historic trajectory starts with the final decades of the British Empire’s colonial rule in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on Kenya (1929–59); continues through the half-century of the postcolonial era (1960–2010); and concludes with the age of globalisation (2011–). For the first part, I examine how Woolf, through the narrator in A Room of One’s Own, asserts that (white) Englishwomen do not have the same urge as their white brothers to possess and to convert someone into imperial property. At the time she wrote this claim, there were real-life white European women who were walking by and writing about Black women in Kenya. In the postcolonial era, when the English Departments in anglophone sub-Saharan African countries were influenced by Leavisism, Woolf’s works would not have been taught. I show how colonialism and its institutional legacies, including university curricula, libraries, and publishing, militate against Woolf’s broader appeal to sub-Saharan Africa-based writers. Finally, in the present day, through online references to A Room, one can see how Woolf’s idea of a room is transformed, throughout anglophone Africa, into a virtual writers’ workshop.Less
This chapter traces the presence of Woolf in sub-Saharan Africa from 1929 to the present day. The historic trajectory starts with the final decades of the British Empire’s colonial rule in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on Kenya (1929–59); continues through the half-century of the postcolonial era (1960–2010); and concludes with the age of globalisation (2011–). For the first part, I examine how Woolf, through the narrator in A Room of One’s Own, asserts that (white) Englishwomen do not have the same urge as their white brothers to possess and to convert someone into imperial property. At the time she wrote this claim, there were real-life white European women who were walking by and writing about Black women in Kenya. In the postcolonial era, when the English Departments in anglophone sub-Saharan African countries were influenced by Leavisism, Woolf’s works would not have been taught. I show how colonialism and its institutional legacies, including university curricula, libraries, and publishing, militate against Woolf’s broader appeal to sub-Saharan Africa-based writers. Finally, in the present day, through online references to A Room, one can see how Woolf’s idea of a room is transformed, throughout anglophone Africa, into a virtual writers’ workshop.
