140239 VO Reading Toni Morrison in the context of African Studies (2018W)

Was ist 'Afrika' für Toni Morrison? Was/wer ist Toni Morrison 'für Afrika'?

Die Vorlesung bietet einen Überblick über Toni Morrisons Schaffen (primär Romane und theoretische Analysen, aber auch Interviews, Vorträge, Kinderbücher, Herausgeberinnenschaft, etc.) und nähert sich ihrem Werk (auch) aus einer afrikawissenschaftlichen Perspektive. Wir beschäftigen uns mit historischen, literaturwissenschaftlichen und -theoretischen Kontexten und Konzepten, der Kritik und Rezeption sowie mit zentralen Themen und den im Werk enthaltenen Bezügen zu Afrika als umstrittenem historischem und kulturellem Raum.

Eine grundsätzliche Vertrautheit mit Morrisons Werk ist von Vorteil (aber keine Voraussetzung), eine begleitende Lektüre (zumindest einzelner Werke) ist sehr zu empfehlen!

‘American scholars who champion black American efforts indiscriminately shy away from any research connecting black American art with Africa; linguists busy with black English spend time describing what American blacks say but never why they say it – the relationship of the language blacks brought to this continent with the language they now speak. The tentative ever so romantic threads black Americans try to spin toward Africa are repeatedly cut, and we hear of shattering culture shocks and rejection from Africans. Obviously a strong identification of black people from all over the world with each other (forced, awkward or sentimental as it may be at first) is as frightening a thought to racism as the gathering of the poor of all nations under one compelling idea is to imperialism.’
Toni Morrison (1972): Going Home with Bitterness and Joy: Review of South to a Very Old Place by Albert Murray. In: Denard, Carolyn C. (ed., 2018): Toni Morrison. What Moves at the Margin. Selected Nonfiction. Mississippi: University Press. pp. 115-6.

‘This was the beginning of my ensorcellment by the great texts of the black world. It was in this [my father’s] library that I encountered the names that would plunge me into an intricate web of trajectories and experiences that, years later, Paul Gilroy would famously call the Black Atlantic. [...] What university training added to this foundation was a transcendental, borderless black world that privileged colour, history, and memory above geography and nation. [...] Our professors created a world of ideological intermeshing in which W.E.B Du Bois, Malcolm X, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison were as much ‘our writers’ as were Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, and Ben Okri.’
Pius Adesanmi (2011): You’re Not a Country, Africa. A Personal History of the African Present. Johannesburg: Penguin Books South Africa. p. 64.