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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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African or Hybridan: Irreducible Africanness and Nigerian Music, Drama and Video
| Panel |
88. Cultural construction of the nation: which way Africa?
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| Paper ID | 676 |
| Author(s) |
Oloruntoba-Oju, Taiwo
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | The term ‘African’ (as well as derivatives such as Africanness, Africanity, etc) has been a site of contestation between parameters that insinuate homogeneity but simultaneously admit an enormous amount of heterogeneity (geography, race, colour, culture, history and self-identification); leading to much ambivalence in the characterization of the subject. The African national or personality is no longer a “matter that a passport can decide” as Chinweizu et al (1980) advanced in connection with African literature. Apart from the scourge of indeterminacy associated with hybridity, any distinctiveness associated with an ‘African’ aesthetic matrix is also up against certain universals of culture and aesthetics, among other potential identity landmines. Still, against the insistence of global rhetoric, ‘irreducible Africanness’ continues to be a demand, and parameter for the evaluation, of authenticity in African literature and aesthetics. Just how sustainable today is this term which was first deployed some fourty years ago? This paper re-examines the debate, focusing on the issues of language, universality and other features of the African aesthetic matrix in contemporary African music, drama and video. |
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