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How has the state impacted culture and cultural production in Africa? How has culture challenged and transformed the state and our understandings of its nature, functions, and legitimacy? Compelled by complex realities on the ground as well as interdisciplinary scholarly debates on the state-culture dynamic, senior scholars and emerging voices examine the intersections of the state, culture, and politics in postcolonial Africa in this lively and wide-ranging volume. The coverage here is continental and topics include literature, politics, philosophy, music, religion, theatre, film, television, sports, child trafficking, journalism, city planning, and architecture. Together, the essays provide an energetic and nuanced portrait of the cultural forms of politics and the political forms of culture in contemporary Africa.
List of contents
Introduction
1. Culture and the Study of Politics in Post-Colonial Africa
Patrick Chabal
2. Joined at the Hip: African Literature and Africa's Body-Politic
Niyi Osundare
3. Philosophy and the State in Postcolonial Africa
Olúfémi Táíwò
4. Soccer and the State: The Politics and Morality of Daily Life
Michael G. Schatzberg
5. The Enchanted History of Nigerian State Television
Matthew H. Brown
6. "Performing like there's no tomorrow": Theatre, War and Social Vulnerability in Mozambique
Luís Madureira
7. Fissures of Trespass: Women as Agents of Transgression Amidst National Disenchantment
Névine El Nossery
8. The Sudanese Nation and Its Fragments: Tayeb Salih's Literary Archaeology
Sofia Samatar
9. The African Postcolonial Predicament: A Logic of Revenge, Prison Poetry, and Becoming Human
Ken Walibora Waliaula
10. "Jesus Christ Executive Producer": Pentecostal Parapolitics in Nollywood Films
Akin Adesokan
11. Hi-fi Sociality, Lo-fi Sound: Affect and Precarity in an Independent South African Recording Studio
Louise Meintjes
12. Talibé Trafficking: The Transformation of Koranic Teaching in Senegal
Lark Porter
13. Tradition of Resistance in Nigeria's Print Media: The Example of
TheNEWSKunle Ajibade
14. Improvisational Characteristics of an Urban Fragment: Oxford St., Accra
Ato Quayson
15. Gaining Ground: Squatters and the Right to the City
Anne-Maria Makhulu
16. African Urban Garrison Architecture: Property, Armed Robbery, Para-Capitalism
Tejumola Olaniyan
Index
About the author
Tejumola Olaniyan is Louise Durham Mead Professor of African Cultural Studies and English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of
Arrest the Music! Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics and
African Diaspora and the Disciplines.
Summary
Together, the essays provide an energetic and nuanced portrait of the cultural forms of politics and the political forms of culture in contemporary Africa.
