140357 KU African Literature and the Anthropology of the Other (2017S)

Course Description:
As a political practice, the literary production and consumption of culture was significant to the history of nationalism and identity formation in Europe, especially in the later part of the 17th and early 18th centuries when nations emerged as discursive categories. Providing the growing readership in Europe with stories of the other, it was not long before the art of voyeurism became a routine part of its mode of articulating cultures of people that were different. By the late 17th century, the print culture had generated the idea of the foreign as a category of literary spectacle, and was later established as a trope. Nowhere was this literary tradition better articulated than in the literary tradition that is now referred to as the African romance novel. As Edward Said once put it, the image of other became consistent with itself in the popular imagination in Europe at the time and remained unchallenged. The construction of racial hierarchy was central to this genre of European literature and colonialism was the off-shot of its practice. As part of the other that became formal colonial subjects in the late 18th century, the Anglophone writer emerged in the earlier part of the 20th century to challenge the assumption of colonial race theory that promoted colonialism. And the primary goal was to point to the inconsistencies of colonial race theory, denouncing colonialism as inhuman, wicked and frightful. The African writer then saw it fit to write-back to African romance texts such as Sanders of the River, Zulu, King Solomon’s Mine, Heart of Darkness and Mister Johnson. This course tracks the intellectual history of anthropological Africa, tracing its construction and validation in the popular imagination which the African romance text generated in Europe in the 18th century. Focusing on Anglophone African literature and using a selected number of the African romance texts as well as the films made out of them, students will be introduced to the complex connection between the rise of British nationalism, race discourse and classism that later defined the colonial project in British West Africa. Special attention will be given to the ways in which abstract categories are deployed in the romance novels to appeal to the British public to support the “civilization” mission of colonialism. Making the point that the modern Anglophone African came out of this history, the course will also study some African canonical texts, critically examining their literary strategies of resistance to race ideas inscribed in the African romance texts.
Course Goals:
This course is designed to fulfil two primary goals: to introduce students to a different way of reading European texts, especially Anglophone European text of the 18 and 19th century, which focus on telling stories about Africa and to interrogate the politics and philosophical disposition that led to the African response to African romance texts. The connections between the two categories of texts are obvious but not the ideological promise that gave birth to them. Students will study a least one example from each category of both literary traditions, focusing on the contexts that produced them and the uses for which they were put at the time they became fashionable texts. Students are also likely to see a number of films based on the literary texts of the African romance novels but the critical focus will be on the literary texts. Theoretically, the course will conflate the ideas of three prominent non-European critics and theorists-Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and Chinua Achebe. Using a small body of classical African texts of the 20th century, students will be directed to read Africa from Africans reading the Africa in African romance texts.
Teaching Methods:
Teaching will be based on formal lectures, guided class discussions based on specific topics, screenings and snap-writing responses.