Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading PDF Author: Brendon Nicholls
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317087577
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This is the first comprehensive book-length study of gender politics in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's fiction. Brendon Nicholls argues that mechanisms of gender subordination are strategically crucial to Ngugi's ideological project from his first novel to his most recent one. Nicholls describes the historical pressures that lead Ngugi to represent women as he does, and shows that the novels themselves are symptomatic of the cultural conditions that they address. Reading Ngugi's fiction in terms of its Gikuyu allusions and references, a gendered narrative of history emerges that creates transgressive spaces for women. Nicholls bases his discussion on moments during the Mau Mau rebellion when women's contributions to the anticolonial struggle could not be reduced to a patriarchal narrative of Kenyan history, and this interpretive maneuver permits a reading of Ngugi's fiction that accommodates female political and sexual agency. Nicholls contributes to postcolonial theory by proposing a methodology for reading cultural difference. This methodology critiques cultural practices like clitoridectomy in an ethical manner that seeks to avoid both cultural imperialism and cultural relativisim. His strategy of 'performative reading,' that is, making the conditions of one text (such as folklore, history, or translation) active in another (for example, fiction, literary narrative, or nationalism), makes possible an ethical reading of gender and of the conditions of reading in translation.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading PDF Author: Brendon Nicholls
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317087577
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first comprehensive book-length study of gender politics in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's fiction. Brendon Nicholls argues that mechanisms of gender subordination are strategically crucial to Ngugi's ideological project from his first novel to his most recent one. Nicholls describes the historical pressures that lead Ngugi to represent women as he does, and shows that the novels themselves are symptomatic of the cultural conditions that they address. Reading Ngugi's fiction in terms of its Gikuyu allusions and references, a gendered narrative of history emerges that creates transgressive spaces for women. Nicholls bases his discussion on moments during the Mau Mau rebellion when women's contributions to the anticolonial struggle could not be reduced to a patriarchal narrative of Kenyan history, and this interpretive maneuver permits a reading of Ngugi's fiction that accommodates female political and sexual agency. Nicholls contributes to postcolonial theory by proposing a methodology for reading cultural difference. This methodology critiques cultural practices like clitoridectomy in an ethical manner that seeks to avoid both cultural imperialism and cultural relativisim. His strategy of 'performative reading,' that is, making the conditions of one text (such as folklore, history, or translation) active in another (for example, fiction, literary narrative, or nationalism), makes possible an ethical reading of gender and of the conditions of reading in translation.

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading PDF Author: Brendon Nicholls
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781315598253
Category : Gender identity in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description


Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading PDF Author: Brendon Nicholls
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317087585
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
This is the first comprehensive book-length study of gender politics in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's fiction. Brendon Nicholls argues that mechanisms of gender subordination are strategically crucial to Ngugi's ideological project from his first novel to his most recent one. Nicholls describes the historical pressures that lead Ngugi to represent women as he does, and shows that the novels themselves are symptomatic of the cultural conditions that they address. Reading Ngugi's fiction in terms of its Gikuyu allusions and references, a gendered narrative of history emerges that creates transgressive spaces for women. Nicholls bases his discussion on moments during the Mau Mau rebellion when women's contributions to the anticolonial struggle could not be reduced to a patriarchal narrative of Kenyan history, and this interpretive maneuver permits a reading of Ngugi's fiction that accommodates female political and sexual agency. Nicholls contributes to postcolonial theory by proposing a methodology for reading cultural difference. This methodology critiques cultural practices like clitoridectomy in an ethical manner that seeks to avoid both cultural imperialism and cultural relativisim. His strategy of 'performative reading,' that is, making the conditions of one text (such as folklore, history, or translation) active in another (for example, fiction, literary narrative, or nationalism), makes possible an ethical reading of gender and of the conditions of reading in translation.

Critical Readings of the Works of Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Critical Readings of the Works of Ngugi wa Thiong'o PDF Author: Gambo Sani
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1036400476
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
In this collection of scholarly essays on the works of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, one of the most important postcolonial writers alive, the contributors adopt a range of reading approaches and analytical models like feminism, postcolonialism, historicism, formalism, and psychoanalysis, to excavate new meanings and provide fresh insights into Ngugi’s artistic oeuvre. Through some robust and engaging scholarly discourses, the volume animates the politics, poetics, and artistic vision of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, as well as his commitment to the enterprise of decolonisation. The comprehensiveness of this collection is partly illustrated by the fact that it addresses a range of diverse issues in all of Ngugi’s novels, most of his plays, and some of his scholarly works. To this end, the volume is a valuable addition to the body of literature on Ngugi’s works and an important resource material to students, teachers, and researchers of African literature.

The Postcolonial Animal

The Postcolonial Animal PDF Author: Evan Mwangi
Publisher: African Perspectives
ISBN: 0472054198
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Argues for an innovative and overdue posthuman reading of African postcolonial literature

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o PDF Author: Oliver Lovesey
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 1603291830
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is one of the most important and celebrated authors of postindependence Africa as well as a groundbreaking postcolonial theorist. His work, written first in English, then in Gĩkũyũ, engages with the transformations of his native Kenya after what is often termed the Mau Mau rebellion. It also gives voice to the struggles of all Africans against economic injustice and political oppression. His writing and activism continue despite imprisonment, the threat of assassination, and exile. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," provides resources and background for the teaching of Ngũgĩ's novels, plays, memoirs, and criticism. The essays of part 2, "Approaches," consider the influence of Frantz Fanon, Karl Marx, and Joseph Conrad on Ngũgĩ; the role of women in and influence of feminism on his fiction; his interpretation and political use of African history; his experimentation with orality and allegory in narrative; and the different challenges of teaching Ngũgĩ in classrooms in the United States, Europe, and Africa."

Modernism, Postcolonialism, and Globalism

Modernism, Postcolonialism, and Globalism PDF Author: Richard Begam
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199980969
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Africa -- Asia -- The Caribbean -- Ireland -- Australia/New Zealand -- Canada

Experimental Subjectivities in Global Black Women's Writing

Experimental Subjectivities in Global Black Women's Writing PDF Author: Sheldon George
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350383481
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
In what innovative ways do novels by diasporic Black women writers experiment with the representation of Black subjectivity? This collection explores the inventiveness of contemporary Black women writers – Black British, African, Caribbean, African American – who remake traditional understandings of blackness. As the title word “experimental” signals, these essays foreground the narrative form and stylistic innovations of the black-authored novels they analyze. They also show how these experiments with form mirror the novels' convention-breaking experiments with reimagining Black female subjectivities. While each novel, of course, represents the complexities of diasporic experiences differently, some issues emerge that are broadly shared not just within a regional group, but across geographical borders. One feature of the collection is a comparative look at such linking themes across borders, under the rubrics: a return to precolonial systems of belief, reinventions of mothering, relational subjectivities, memory, history and haunting, and posthumanist revaluations. These themes take different shapes across the multitude of diverse cultures studied in this book. But together they establish a pan-global imaginative practice.

Postcolonial Representation of the African Woman in the Selected Works of Ngugi and Adichie

Postcolonial Representation of the African Woman in the Selected Works of Ngugi and Adichie PDF Author: Eren Bolat
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527581691
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
Until the lives and issues of African women arrived on the agenda of postcolonial writers, African women, who continued their lives under double colonization by patriarchy and dominant powers, did not have much standing in literary works and in the world of literature. Postcolonial African women have often been represented as weak, subaltern, and speechless by western writers, and have even been underrepresented by some postcolonial writers. This book shows how the African woman, who is usually represented in clichéd and stereotyped forms, is depicted a versatile way in Ngugi and Adichie’s novels.

GYNOCENTRIC CONTOURS OF THE MALE IMAGINATION: A STUDY OF THE NOVELS OF CHINUA ACHEBE AND NGŨGĨ WA THIONG’O

GYNOCENTRIC CONTOURS OF THE MALE IMAGINATION: A STUDY OF THE NOVELS OF CHINUA ACHEBE AND NGŨGĨ WA THIONG’O PDF Author: Dr. Amna Shamim
Publisher: Idea Publishing
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
The focus of this book is upon the changing perception of women in African society and their portrayal over different periods in the novels of Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o; the writers who intriguingly wrote on the constant changing role of African women in Igbo and Gikuyu clans. The book dicusses the image of African women entrapped in double jeopardy in both traditional and modern Africa. There has been a remarkable transformation in the representation of women from the early novels to the later novels of both the writers that has been studied in this book from close quarters. The approach and technique of the novelists in projecting their female characters has also been analyzed. The novels of both the writers marked a sea change in the thinking and perception of Westerners with reference to Africa and its people. This work is devoted to the exploration of the image of women in the East and West African societies through the selected novels of Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o.