Continuous pasts : frictions of memory in postcolonial Africa / Sakiru Adebayo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Adebayo, Sakiru, author.

Contributor:

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Series:

African perspectives (University of Michigan. Press)

African perspectives

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African literature--20th century--History and criticism.

African literature.

African literature--21st century--History and criticism.

Postcolonialism--Africa.

Postcolonialism.

Collective memory--Africa.

Collective memory.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 183 pages).

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2023.

Summary:

In Continuous Pasts, author Sakiru Adebayo claims that the post-conflict fiction of memory in Africa depicts the intricate ways in which the past is etched on bodies and topographies, resonant in silences and memorials, and continuous even in experiences as well as structures of migration. Adebayo argues that the post-conflict fiction of memory in Africa invites critical deliberations on the continuity of the past within the realm of positionality and the domain of subjectivity--that is to say, the past is not merely present; instead, it survives, lives on, and is mediated through the subject positions of victims, perpetrators, as well as secondary and transgenerational witnesses. The book also argues that post-conflict fiction of memory in Africa shows the unfinished business of the past produces fragile regimes of peace and asynchronous temporalities that challenge progressive historicism. It contends that, in most cases in Africa, the post-conflict present is beset with a tight political economy wherein the scramble for survival trumps the ability to imagine a just future among survivors--and that it is precisely this despairing disposition toward the future that the some writers of post-conflict fiction attempt to confront in their works. On the whole, Continuous Pasts shows how post-conflict fictions of memory in Africa recalibrate discourses of futurity, solidarity, responsibility, justice, survival, and reconciliation. It also contends that post-conflict fictions of memory in Africa provide the tools for imagining and theorizing a collective African memory. Each text analyzed in the book provides, in very interesting ways, an imaginative possibility and template for how post-independence African countries can 'remember together' using what the author describes as an African transnational memory framework.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-171) and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472221196

0472221191

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.