Panel im Rahmen der VAD-Tagung 2020/21, "Africa Challenges"
7.- bis 11. Juni 2021
Die Tagung fand überwiegend digital statt. Sie sollte ursprünglich vom 22.-25. September 2020 in Frankfurt am Main stattfinden, war wegen Covid19 aber verschoben worden.
Das Thema des Panels knüpfte an das Thema der VAD-Tagung 2020/21 insgesamt an. Die Beiträge beschäftigten sich aus unterschiedlichen Blickwinkeln damit, wie neuere Werke von Schriftsteller*innen aus Afrika der Herausforderung begegnen, Probleme in afrikanischen Gesellschaften zu thematisieren, ohne auf diese Weise "Afrika" zu schreiben bzw. negative, pessimistische und stereotype Afrika-Bilder zu reproduzieren.
Abstract:
In the twentieth century, many (if by no means all) writers from Africa strove to challenge western (mis)representations of the continent in their works. Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart (1958) is one of the most famous examples of this trend. The diverse counterdiscursive strategies employed by African (as well as other postcolonial) writers to oppose and subvert hegemonic stereotypes have been explored as “writing back”. In the twenty-first century, writers from Africa continue to deal with a vast number of old and new topics of both local and global concern in innovative and divergent ways. Those for whom counterdiscursivity remains an issue often point beyond “writing back” in one way or another, questioning or deconstructing customary dichotomies and renegotiating identity in transcultural contexts. Interestingly, a recent debate – especially among the global players of African literature – indicates a renewed interest in the image of the continent in literary works. However, this time, the concern is with what some of these critics read as negative and highly problematic representations of Africa in the work of their own peers. An example of this is Amatoritsero Ede’s (2015) critique of what he calls “self-anthropologizing discourse”, alleging that western-based writers from Africa write about Africa in ways deliberately satisfying the expectations of a western book market by confirming negative preconceptions about Africa. In response to this debate, Taiye Selasi (2015) has cogently clarified that “No one novelist can bear the burden of representing a continent and no one novel should have to”. Yet, the debate highlights a dilemma writers from Africa may experience when addressing experiences of human or political crisis, suffering and injustice in Africa. This panel invites contributions exploring how recent fiction by writers from Africa negotiates, in many different ways, the challenge of addressing problems in African societies without “writing Africa”, thus effectively counteracting the projection of Africa as “Other”.
Vorträge:
Susanne Gehrmann:
Sexist dystopia or genuine deconstruction? The question of ‘poverty porn’ in contemporary Congolese fiction
Ruth S. Wenske:
Between faith and fraud: Christianity as (and beyond) stereotype in contemporary African realism
James Orao:
Beyond the postcolony: post-historical poetics in the contemporary African urban novel
Organisation: Anja Oed