Afrikanische Kriminalliteratur

9. Janheinz Jahn-Symposium, 9. bis 12. Januar 2008:

Beyond 'Murder by Magic': Investigating African Crime Fiction

Aus der Ankündigung:

African crime fiction represents a comparatively new literary genre and an even newer topic in the critical study of African literatures. On the surface, crime fiction is concerned with the detection of crimes (petty as well as large scale), with corruption or political conspiracies. Its capacity for bloodcurdling mystery accounts for part of its popularity. Just as much, however, African crime fiction is concerned with a whole lot of other aspects, such as questions of authority and power within a postcolonial context against potential projections of a (neo-)imperial West; with working up the past of African nations and grappling with order and disorder in postcolonial societies; and with the renegotiation of gender and race relationships. Many authors have thus broadened the theme of investigation to address issues of community, beliefs and identity constructions across geographic and national boundaries. Others have broadened the genre by inventing recognisable sub-categories which relate to the social, political and historical formations of their specific African postcolonies. Dealing with such 'serious' issues in a complex manner has long been regarded as the prerogative of African literary works aimed at elite readerships. Today, however, crime fiction has become one of the most active and ambitious sites of literary investigation. Contemporary African authors deliberately employ the immense popularity of the genre to reach readers from all walks of life. To borrow from an essay on multicultural detective narratives, African crime fiction ingeniously represents "murder with a message" (Adrienne Johnson Gosselin, "Multicultural fiction: murder with a message". Multicultural Detective Fiction: Murder from the 'Other' Side. Ed. Adrienne Johnson Gosselin. New York Garland, 1999, 3-14).

Apart from very sporadic and regionally limited exceptions, African crime fiction has only recently begun to be recognised as a rewarding field of scholarly enquiry. We would like to suggest that African crime fiction represents an especially promising new field in the study of African literatures. For reasons that remain to be examined, popular genres more generally and African crime fiction in particular seem to have an astonishing capacity to absorb and appropriate current thematic concerns more immediately than other genres – and to do so in a highly engaging manner. A comparative investigation of African crime fiction therefore not only helps to identify burning social and political issues but also provides clues as to how they are construed by African writers and intellectuals. Drawing on globally recognised narrative formulae, African authors adapt and, in the process, subvert the various (sub-)genres of crime fiction to engage with and negotiate local concerns central to contemporary life in different social-political, cultural, and historical contexts.

© Anja Oed und Christine Matzke, 2008

Das Symposium wurde von Anja Oed (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) und Christine Matzke (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) organisiert und mit Mitteln der Volkswagen-Stiftung finanziert.

Illustration

Oed, Anja und Christine Matzke (Hg.): Life is a Thriller: Investigating African Crime Fiction. (Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrikaforschung, 30) Köln: Rüdiger Köppe, 2012.

Mit Beiträgen von Matthew J. Christensen, Geoffrey V. Davis, Susanne Gehrmann, James Gibbs, Mikhail D. Gromov, Karola Hoffmann, Said Khamis, Matthias Krings, Manfred Loimeier, Christine Matzke, Katja Meintel, Anja Oed, Ranka Primorac, Uta Reuster-Jahn, Alina Rinkanya und Doris Wieser sowie Interviews mit Angela Makholwa, Meshack Masondo, Deon Meyer und Ben R. Mtobwa.