Race, resistance and translation: the case of John Buchan’s UPrester John

In postcolonial translation studies, increasing attention is being given to the asymmetrical relationships between dominant and indigenous languages. This paper argues that John Francis Cele’s UPrester John (1958), is not simply a subordinated and obeisant translation of John Buchan’s adventure thriller Prester John (1910), but a more complex form of textuality that is both oppositional and complicit with the workings of apartheid. Although Cele’s translation reproduces Buchan’s story of a daring young Scotsman who single-handedly quells a black nationalist uprising, it also ameliorates the novel’s racist language and assumption. Cele’s translation practice is examined in the context of apartheid publishing and Bantu education.Web of Scienc

Dancing the Pluriverse: Indigenous Performance as Ontological Praxis

This article discusses ways that Indigenous dance is an ontological praxis that is embodied and telluric, meaning “of the earth.” It looks at how dancing bodies perform in relationship to ecosystems and entities within them, producing ontological distinctions and hierarchies that are often imbued with power. This makes dance a site of ontological struggle that potentially challenges the delusional ontological universality undergirding imperialism, genocide, and ecocide. The author explores these theoretical propositions through her participation in Oxlaval Q'anil, an emerging Ixil Maya dance project in Guatemala, and Dancing Earth, an itinerant and inter-tribal U.S.-based company founded by Rulan Tangen eleven years ago

The aesthetics and politics of ‘reading together’ Moroccan novels in Arabic and French

This paper attempts to break down the common practices of reading multilingual Moroccan novels, particularly Moroccan postcolonial novels in Arabic and French. I argue that dominant reading practices are based on binary oppositions marked by a reductionist understanding of language and cultural politics in Morocco. They place the Moroccan novel in Arabic and French in independent traditions with the presupposition that they have no impact on each other, thereby reifying each tradition. They also ignore the similar historical, social and cultural context from which these novels emerge, and tend to reinforce the marginalisation of the Moroccan novel within hegemonic single-language literary systems such as the Francophone or Arabic literary traditions. I advocate ‘reading together’ – or an entangled comparative reading of – postcolonial Moroccan novels in Arabic and French, a reading that privileges the specificity of the literary traditions in Morocco rather than language categorisation, and that considers their mutual historical, cultural, geographical, political, and aesthetic interweaving and implications

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

Decolonising Geographical Knowledges

This piece provides an overview of decolonising approaches for geographers unfamiliar with the field, first by examining some of the ways in which decolonial scholarship seeks to build on – and go beyond - postcolonialism. Developing these points, it turns to discuss what it means to think about decolonising geography at this particular political, institutional and historical conjuncture, examining the urgencies and challenges associated in this moment particularly for British geography. The introductory intervention then moves to examine how the remaining intervention pieces understand and address the theme of decolonial scholarship and geography

Becoming a black researcher: reflections on racialised identity and knowledge production

Critical race theory (CRT) emerged from the U.S. context, and many question the validity of its application to spaces beyond the United States; however, for many black academics in the UK, it has a powerful resonance. Where many in the academy have dismissed the viability of the concept of race in favour of the term ethnicity – or they privilege class – in any discussion of inequalities, CRT recognises the salience of race, centralising it and analysing the ways in which race and racism continue to shape life experiences. CRT has provided an intellectual space for a growing community of academics in England to explore not only our own racial positioning within the academy and wider society but also that of the communities we work with in our research to achieve greater social justice. This paper explores the significance of CRT to the author’s biography and intellectual journey

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

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

Education for a National Culture

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