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This edited collection explores how African artists use their art to articulate the need for a return to the traditional African vision of communal solidarity, hospitality, and respect of humanity. The collection highlights the artists’ exposure of the catastrophic effects of the abandonment of African humanism on African culture and life.
List of contents
Introduction: The Crisis of Humanism in Contemporary Africa
Lifongo Vetinde and Jean-Blaise Samou
Part I: Foundational Visions
Chapter One: Humanist Thought in African Oral Literature
Adrien Mbar Pouille
Chapter Two: Ritual and Humanism in Zakes Mda's She Plays with the Darkness
Thomas Spreelin MacDonald
Chapter Three: "Through the Eyes of Dogs": Reflections on Misanthropy and Humanism in a Senegalese Novel
Lifongo Vetinde
Part II: Power, Dystopia, and Postcolonial Violence
Chapter Four: "Remember the Children": Humanism in Contemporary East African Fiction
Marie-Thérèse Toyi
Chapter Five: André Brink and the Politics of Humanism
Hervé Tchumkam
Chapter Six: Of Painting and Politics: Postcolonial Violence and the Rhetoric of Feymania in Cameroon
Jean-Blaise Samou
Part III: History, Trauma and the Pedagogy of Human Rights
Chapter Seven: Ojukwu's War Speeches and the Rhetoric of Humanism
Uchenna David Uwakwe
Chapter Eight: Drawing (on) the Past in Histories of the Present: Dialogues and Drawings of Women's Organized Resistance to Forced Removals in South Africa's Past and Present
Koni Benson
Chapter Nine: Remembering the Past and Building the Future in Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi, the Book of Bones
Mohamed Kamara
Chapter Ten: An Exploration of Human Rights in the Postcolonial Text: "The Conspiracy" by Henri Lopes
Janice Spleth
About the author
Julie Nicholson is professor of practice in the school of education at Mills College.Jean-Blaise Samou is assistant professor of francophone and intercultural studies at Saint Mary’s University.Mohamed Kamara is professor of French and Africana studies and chair of the Romance Languages Department at Washington and Lee University.Jean-Blaise Samou is assistant professor of francophone and intercultural studies at Saint Mary’s University.Julie Nicholson is professor of practice in the school of education at Mills College.
Summary
This edited collection explores how African artists use their art to articulate the need for a return to the traditional African vision of communal solidarity, hospitality, and respect of humanity. The collection highlights the artists’ exposure of the catastrophic effects of the abandonment of African humanism on African culture and life.
