The algorithmic age of personality : African literature and cancel culture / James Yékú.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Yékú, James, author.

Series:

African humanities and the arts

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African literature--Social aspects.

African literature.

African literature--Appreciation.

Authors, African--Public opinion.

Authors, African.

Literature and society--Africa.

Literature and society.

Cancel culture.

Social media.

social media.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Other Title:

Path to Open

Place of Publication:

East Lansing : Michigan State University Press, 2025.

Summary:

"As the affordances of authorship and reading practices on social media become deeply mediated by algorithmic curation, they encourage closer attention to the author's personality as fundamental to literary production. The Algorithmic Age of Personality: African Literature and Cancel Culture challenges any lingering utopianism in the role of digital media in African cultural productions by exploring how algorithms engender a culture of outrage, conflict, and personality-driven and ego battles that distract from aesthetic and ethical evaluations of literary texts. In Yékú’s careful attention to how contemporary African literary practices are significantly marked by the extractivist and affective logics of social media algorithms, he articulates the current state of debating in the critical universe of African literature and connects this to the phenomenon of “cancel culture.” Rather than a Manichean understanding of cancel culture, Yékú illustrates how the politics of both conservative and liberal polarization shape what can and cannot be said in online commentaries on African literary forms. The outcome is a work that situates postcolonial classics by Chinua Achebe and Joseph Conrad in online debates on cancel culture and decolonization, while responding to social media discussions on Western literary prizes, ethnicity, and sexuality involving writers like Soyinka, Ngũgĩ, Wainaina, and Adichie."-- Provided by publisher.

Notes:

Title from online title page (viewed on May 21, 2025).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781609177836

1609177835

OCLC:

1511133673

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.