Contemporary African Cultural Productions

Authors

V.Y. Mudimbe (ed)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.57054/codesria.pub.80

Keywords:

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN, Cultural Productions, Nollywood, Nigeria

Synopsis

All over Africa, an explosion in cultural productions of various genres is in evidence. Whether in relation to music, song and dance, drama, poetry, film, documentaries, photography, cartoons, fine arts, novels and short stories, essays, and (auto)biography; the continent is experiencing a robust outpouring of creative power that is as remarkable for its originality as its all-round diversity.

Beginning from the late 1970s and early 1980s, the African continent has experienced the longest and deepest economic crises than at any other time since the period after the Second World War. Interestingly however, while practically every indicator of economic development was declining in nominal and/ or real terms for most aspects of the continent, cultural productions were on the increase. Out of adversity, the creative genius of the African produced cultural forms that at once spoke to crises and sought to transcend them.

The current climate of cultural pluralism that has been produced in no small part by globalization has not been accompanied by an adequate pluralism of ideas on what culture is, and/or should be; nor informed by an equal claim to the production of the cultural – packaged or not. Globalization has seen to movement and mixture, contact and linkage, interaction and exchange where cultural flows of capital, people, commodities, images and ideologies have meant that the globe has become a space, with new asymmetries, for an increasing intertwinement of the lives of people and, consequently, of a greater blurring of normative definitions as well as a place for re-definition, imagined and real.

As this book – Contemporary African Cultural Productions – has done, researching into African culture and cultural productions that derive from it allows us, among other things, to enquire into definitions, explore historical dimensions, and interrogate the political dimensions to presentation and representation. The book therefore offers us an intervention that goes beyond the normative literary and cultural studies’ main foci of race, difference and identity; notions which, while important in themselves might, without the necessary historicizing and interrogating, result in a discourse that rather re-inscribes the very patterns that necessitate writing against.

This book is an invaluable compendium to scholars, researchers, teachers, students and others who specialize on different aspects of African culture and cultural productions, as well as cultural centers and general readers.

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Author Biographies

V.Y. Mudimbe

 is Professor of Literature at Duke University, USA. Among his publications are The Invention of Africa and The Idea of Africa, both published by Indiana University Press.

Saliou Ndour

 holds a doctorate in Sociology and and teaches at the Université
Gaston Berger in Saint Louis, Senegal. A specialist in African, West Indies and
Pacifics cultural networks, and an author of numerous articles on industrial cultures,
he is the editor of L’industrie musicale au Sénégal : essai d’analyse (CODESRIA, 2008).

Nadeige Laure Ngo Nlend

 teaches history at the University of Yaoundé I in
Cameroon. She is the Secretary General of the Cameroonian Centre for
Egyptology, and a member of the Research Group on Egyptology at the
University of Yaoundé I.

Adebayo Olukoshi

 a Professor of International Economic Relations, is currently
Director of the UN African Institute for Economic Development and
Planning (IDEP). From 2001 until 2009, he served as Executive Secretary of the

Oumar Silué N’Tchabétien

 a social scientist with a doctorate from the University of Bouake in Ivory Coast, has been researching the sociological spaces of street cultures of the youth in relation to Ivory Coast politics. His research
includes the diffusion of political ideologies within these spaces.

Victoria Phiri Chitungu

 a specialist in Ethnic studies, is the Curator of
Ethnography and Art at the Livingstone Museum of Zambia. She has done
extensive work on cultures of Zambia, and is the author of “Masks and Dances,
Mwanapwebo and Maliya: A Representation of Woman at the Centre of Social
Change in Zambia”, published in Signs, 2008.

Léon Tsambu

 is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology,
and researcher at Centre d’études politiques (CEP) of the University of Kinshasa.
He is currently working on his doctorate. His interest is in urban culture and
creative economy. He is a member of a number of scholarly societies, and has
published in Afrika Studies and Africa Media Review.

Nhamo Anthony Mhiripiri

 teaches Media Studies at the Midlands State University
in Zimbabwe. His doctorate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal was on
“Contemporary Visual Cultural Productions of the Zulu and Bushmen in South
Africa”. He has published short stories in several anthologies, including Dreams,
Miracles and Jazz (Picador Africa, 2008) and No More Plastic Balls (College Press,
2000). He is the author of academic articles in Emerging Perspectives on Dambudzo
Marechera (Africa World Press, 1999), The Hidden Dimensions of Operation Murambatsvina
(Weaver Press, 2008), Muziki: The Journal of Music Research in Africa, Visual
Anthropology and the Journal of Literary Studies.

Pinkie Mekgwe

 is a specialist in English and African literature, gender politics
and education. With a BA from the University of Botswana, and an MSc and
DPhil (Gender and Literary Studies) from the University of Sussex, Dr. Mekgwe
is a former Programme Officer in the Research Programme of the Council for
the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). She has
served as assistant lecturer at Sussex University’s School of African and Asian
Studies, and as a visiting lecturer at Malmo University in Sweden. A post-doctoral
fellow at the Institute for Economic and Social Research, University of the
Witwatersrand, Dr. Mekgwe contributed to a discourse on “Sexuality and
Masculinity”, and to a book on Sexuality and the Concept of the Nation. She has been
a producer and presenter of “Open Book” (an educational literature radio
programme in Gaborone), and a founding Board Member and first female
chairperson of the Botswana Media Regulatory Body.

Reuben Adejoh

 is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science,
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. He has attended international conferences,
and published a number of articles on strategic studies and political economy.
He is a member of the National Association of Political Science of Nigeria. His
research is in the area of religious fundamentalism and national security in Nigeria.

Muff Andersson

 a Researcher, works in the Office of the Principal, University
of South Africa (Unisa), and is currently writing the multi-volume “A History of
the University of South Africa” which looks at the history of Higher Education
in South Africa. A specialist in African Literature and Popular Culture, her focus
is on youth and violence. She is a scriptwriter and author of several books, the
most recent of which is Intertextuality, Violence and Memory in Yizo Yizo: Youth TV
Drama (Unisa Press, 2010).

Vera Azevedo

 graduated from the School of Theater and Cinema, and the
Instituto Superior das Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE), both in
Lisbon, Portugal. She is presently a Technical Assistant at the Teatro Nacional D.
Maria II in Lisbon, and conducting her doctoral research in the field of
Anthropology and Popular Culture in Mozambique.

Benge Okot

holds a PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand. He is
currently teaching in the Department of Literature at Makerere University, Kampala,
Uganda. He has conducted fieldwork in Sudan and Uganda. With Alex Bangirana,
he co-edited Uganda Poetry – Anthology 2000. He is working on a new book
“Ethnopoetics and Gender Dynamics among the Acoli of Northern Uganda”.

Susan Mbula Kilonzo

is a Professor of Religious Studies. She teaches in the
Department of Religion, Theology and Philosophy at Maseno University, Kenya.
Her main research interests are in Sociology of Religion, African Culture, Gender
and Development. She has published articles in these areas, and a book on Christian
Diversity and Community Development (Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010).

Geneviève Mayamona Zibouidi

a laureate of the 2006 CODESRIA Research
Seminar on the Youth, and the 2007 Durban Campus, holds an MA in International
Economic Relations from Marien Ngoubi University in the Congo. A member
of the Research Centre on Economic and Political Analyses, her field of research
includes cultural structures and politics of pricing food products.

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Published

January 28, 2013

Series

CODESRIA Books
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