For Friday’s class:
By comparing and contrasting NC and AINO we can open the door to a conversation about the nature of culture, so to speak, not only in a contemporary context of decolonization and postcoloniality but at a more general level. Thinking carefully about these two novels– in particular their “ideological projects” and the methods they use to realize their goals– can give us insight into just how genre, text, and context interrelate. On Friday, we’ll wrap our 3rd Unit by working in groups to come to some preliminary decisions. If both Kourouma and Dangarembga are engaged in a form of social and political criticism via literary fiction, which work is most successful in its efforts? How so? Using fairly basic formal categories– character, plot, diction, setting, etc.– we’ll discuss these matters, if not to arrive at absolute conclusions then at least in order to cobble together a provisional toolkit.
One notion to keep in mind is the way that a given cultural text works to insert its reader/auditor/viewer/etc. into a particular vantage point. Our sympathies and judgements are always elicited– tacitly or expressly– when we “consume” a cultural text. It’s easiest perhaps to see this in the case of film. Remember the clip we screened from Stander? The formal elements of that sequence worked to give the audience a sense of the complexity of this violent confrontation. We were able to individuate the residents of Soweto, which facilitated our identification with them, even as we were brought close to the title character himself, watching his visceral reaction to events (fear, uncertainty, finally a kind of ecstatic violence) before we ourselves are implicated when Andre Stander “breaks the fourth wall” and looks at us directly. Using this kind of critical orientation, our goal is to see how NC and AINO “locate” their readers within (or without) the worlds those novels represent. Ultimately, I think, we’ll have occasion to think about the ethics of representation.