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Palgrave Macmillan

Re-Reading Tragic Africa

Development, Neoliberalism and Contemporary Fiction

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  • © 2024

Overview

Authors:
  1. Amy Rushton

    1. School of Arts & Humanities, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

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  • Marks a substantial advance in understanding tragedy and development in African fiction
  • Explores how world-systemic analysis speaks to literary approaches that prioritise historical and cultural specificity
  • Offers close readings of three widely discussed novels across postcolonial studies and African literary scholarship

Part of the book series: New Comparisons in World Literature (NCWL)

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About this book

Grounded in world-systemic analysis, this book revisits the literary and social implications of ‘tragedy’ in relation to global narratives about Africa and within fiction by writers from the continent. It argues that working through the full complexity of ‘tragedy’ helps to identify and challenge plots that depict Africa as reaching a tragic impasse. Instead, reconsidering tragedy allows for further, related interventions including the implications of narratives of development, the argument for formally engaging with literary texts that present challenging material, reformulations of African political and cultural agency, and the possibilities to be found in utopian thinking. It claims that contemporary fiction helps to scrutinise the familiar big picture of Africa and create space for discussions about wider political and historical commonalities between the continent and the rest of the world. As such, the novels discussed in this study are not simply ‘about’ Africa: these fictionalnarratives position Africa as a central actor within the global history of late capitalism. 

Keywords

Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: The Danger of the Single Reading

    • Amy Rushton
    Pages 1-32

  3. Reading Africa in the Neoliberal World-System

    • Amy Rushton
    Pages 33-73

  4. The Longer Walk to Freedom: South African Prophecy and Neoliberal Intervention upon ‘Tragic Africa’

    • Amy Rushton
    Pages 75-107

  5. ‘Africa awaits its creators’: Subverting Development Narratives

    • Amy Rushton
    Pages 109-145

  6. Back to Utopia: Retrieving the Past to Reclaim the Future

    • Amy Rushton
    Pages 147-181

  7. Conclusion: Towards a Kind of Paradise

    • Amy Rushton
    Pages 183-188

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 189-195
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Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Arts & Humanities, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

    Amy Rushton

About the author

Amy Rushton is Senior Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University, UK. They have over a decade of teaching experience and have published numerous articles on African literature, neoliberalism, and contemporary cultural representations of mental distress. Amy is currently Chair of the Board for the National Survivor User Network (NSUN).



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