Postcolonial criticism and representations of African dictatorship : the aesthetics of tyranny / Cécile Bishop.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bishop, Cécile, author.

Series:

Legenda research monographs in French studies.

Legenda research monographs in French studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dictatorship--Africa.

Dictatorship.

Africa.

Physical Description:

125 p ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

London : Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing, 2014.

Summary:

The figure of the dictator looms large in representations of postcolonial Africa. Since the late 1970s, writers, film-makers and theorists have sought to represent the realities of dictatorship without endorsing the colonialist clichés portraying Africans as incapable of self-government. Against the heavily-politicized responses provoked by this dilemma, Bishop argues for a form of criticism that places the complexity of the reader's or spectator's experiences at the heart of its investigations. Ranging across literature, film and political theory, this study calls for a reengagement with notions - often seen as unwelcome diversions from political questions - such as referentiality, genre and aesthetics. But rather than pit 'political' approaches against formal and aesthetic procedures, the author presents new insights into the interplay of the political and the aesthetic. Research Monographs in French Studies form a separate series within the Legenda programme and are selected and edited by the Society for French Studies. The series seeks to publish the best new work in all areas of the literature, thought, theory, culture, film and language of the French-speaking world. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Two Readings of Henri Lopes's Le Pleurer-rire 19

Part 1 Subversive Ironies and Political Ambivalence 20

Part 2 Postcolonial Literature and the Question of the Author 29

2 'The Truth about Amin' 43

History and Aesthetics in Filmic Portrayals of Idi Amin 43

'Nothing is imposed, nothing is dictated': Barbet Schroeder and the Construction of Objectivity 48

History, Fiction and the Ambiguity of 'Truth' in The, Last King of Scotland 56

'A big fat cannibal in a little bathrobe': Aesthetic Failure in Amin: The Rise and Fall 60

3 Achille Mbenibe and the Disorder of Discourse 79

Postcolonial Power and the 'Aesthetics of Vulgarity' 82

Epistemological Uncertainties: Between the Aesthetic and the Conceptual 85

'Notes provisoires sur la postcolonie' and the Question of Genre 91

Reinterpreting the 'Fetish' 95.

ISBN:

9781909662018

1909662011

OCLC:

884551065

Publisher Number:

99959309227