State and Culture in Postcolonial Africa: Enchantings (African Expressive Cultures) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253029988 ISBN 13: 9780253029980

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2017

Synopsis

How has the state impacted culture and cultural production in Africa? How has culture challenged and transformed the state and our understandings of its nature, functions, and legitimacy? Compelled by complex realities on the ground as well as interdisciplinary scholarly debates on the state-culture dynamic, senior scholars and emerging voices examine the intersections of the state, culture, and politics in postcolonial Africa in this lively and wide-ranging volume. The coverage here is continental and topics include literature, politics, philosophy, music, religion, theatre, film, television, sports, child trafficking, journalism, city planning, and architecture. Together, the essays provide an energetic and nuanced portrait of the cultural forms of politics and the political forms of culture in contemporary Africa.

About this title

About the Author:

Tejumola Olaniyan is Louise Durham Mead Professor of African Cultural Studies and English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of Arrest the Music! Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics and African Diaspora and the Disciplines.

Review:

"An intellectual invitation to take seriously the various ways in which the postcolonial state in Africa and the realm of cultural production interact... the individual contributions are joyously anarchic."

(Ebenezer Obadare, author of Humor, Silence, and Civil Society in Nigeria)

"From garrison architecture to unruly pedestrians and taxi drivers performing the improvisational choreography of chaotic urban traffic, from Nollywood to philosophical musings on the unfulfilled promises of modernity, from soccer to revolutionary theatre, this volume makes a compelling case for the relevance of cultural studies in the understanding of the postcolonial African state."

(Cilas Kemedjio, author of The Humanitarian Misunderstanding: Remembering Globalization)

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0253029988
• ISBN 13: 9780253029980
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 334
• Editor: Olaniyan Tejumola