On the coloniality of “new” mega‐infrastructure projects in east Africa

This article responds to a preference for short‐term history in research on the infrastructure turn by engaging with the longue durée of East Africa’s latest infrastructure scramble. It traces the history of LAPSSET in Kenya and the Central Corridor in Tanzania, revealing the coloniality of new and improved transport infrastructure along both corridors. This exercise demonstrates how the spatial visions and territorial plans of colonial administrators get built in to new infrastructure and materialise in ways that serve the interests of global capital rather than peasant and indigenous peoples being promised more modern, prosperous futures. The article concludes by suggesting that a focus on the longue durée also reveals uneven patterns of mobility and immobility set in motion during the colonial scramble for Africa and reinforced after independence. These “colonial moorings” are significant as they shape political reactions to new mega‐infrastructure projects today and constrain the emancipatory potential of infrastructure‐led development

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Networks, Literary Activism and the Production of World Literature

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the link in this recordThis chapter explores Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s significance in world literature through the frame of publishers’ networks and literary activism, and argues for the ways in which his work has redefined ideas of ‘world literary space’ (Casanova 2004). The chapter opens by reading the networks and structures of value made visible through the Nairobi launch of Petals of Blood ̶ Ngũgĩ’s fourth novel published in Heinemann’s African Writers Series and his last written in English. Leading on from this, it places Ngũgĩ’s critical interventions on world literature in essay collections Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms (1993) and Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing (2014) into dialogue with his own Africa-centred publishing relationships and trajectories. Ultimately, the chapter draws attention to Ngũgĩ’s crucial work ̶ visible through his literary production, critical interventions and publishing decisions ̶ in ‘moving the centre’ of world literature away from the West

Translation(s): Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Presents

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o présents on the topic of translation(s). Translation(s): This panel discusses the impact of translation on the conceptualization and circulation of literatures and oratures in the world, historically and in the present. Questions shaping this discussion include: How are the challenges and benefits of translating literatures of the world into English different from translating Samoan literature into Hawaiian or Arabic into Turkish? How has translation done violence to the people and literatures of colonized nations and how does it contribute to decolonization and cultural revitalization? Should everyday, oral translation practices all over the world impact our understanding of the value of translation as a social and literary process? How can translation practices contribute to resisting a globalizing pedagogy of "world literature"? Moderator: Cristina Bacchilega Panelists: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Yung-Hee Kim, Bryan Kuwada, S. Shanka

Albert Wendt & Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Reading and Conversation--Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Reads from His Literary Work 

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o reads selections from his memoir "Dreams in the Times of War." Albert Wendt and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o read selections from their literary work and engage in a conversation on the overarching themes of the Words in the World symposium

Albert Wendt and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Reading and Conversation--Conversation between Al and Ngũgĩ

Albert Wendt and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o engage in a conversation regarding their literary work and on the overarching themes of the Words in the World symposium