Dina Ligaga
Biographic Data
| ID | 173813 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dina Ligaga |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dina |
| FAMILY NAME | Ligaga |
| SIGNATURE | LIGAGA D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1264-4298 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 51 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Kenyan Radio, Colonial Modernity, and Postcolonial Subjectivities
This chapter examines postcolonial subjectivities to identify the significance of local voices and cultures in Kenyan radio history. Postcolonial subjectivities disrupt linear narratives emanating from colonial archives on radio that exclude productive discussions about the development of local radio cultures in Kenya. From archival listener responses and engagements with radio to radio drama read both in the context of state radio’s restrictions…
Revision as Reflection
Holding space at the margins
Publishing in Africa has long been debated among academics in the global south who recognise the marginal status of African academics' ideas and knowledge. Many of the solutions proffered in global north academies, such as internationalisation and collaborative research, often fail to address specific issues that continue to mark the unequal status of publications from the continent because of the location of the interventions. More recently, a g…
Rethinking Motherhood through Afrofeminism
In this article, I read Jennifer Makumbi's novel The First Woman (2020), which I argue combines African feminism and indigenous knowledge to generate alternative narratives of motherhood in the absence of the main character's biological mother. I argue that Makumbi rethinks motherhood through an afrofeminist lens to complicate the idea of the ideal mother as self-sacrificing and sacred. In the novel, Makumbi intentionally re-engages the myth of o…
Africa Pulse’
Pondering the Gaps
The burden of being a writer, I have now come to appreciate, is to learn when to let go of a project; and to understand that there may never be resolutions to the tensions emerging from the finishe
Ambiguous agency in the vulnerable trafficked body
The narrativization of the trafficked body in the novels of Abidemi Sanusi and Chika Unigwe allows for a contemplation of Europe in African migrant imaginaries as both promise and failure. Sanusi’s Eyo is a narrative of a ten-year-old girl who is trafficked to the United Kingdom as a human sex slave. The novel draws attention to the tensions that define her being/unbeing in Europe and beyond, even after a brave escape from her traffickers. This p…
Gender and Popular Imaginaries in Africa
Roundtable review
The death of British tourist, Julie Ward, in 1988 in the Kenyan Maasai Mara has been recorded in the form of three non-fiction books, one fictional text, a feature film, numerous media reports and
Thinking around Genre
In this article, I revisit a familiar narrative format of the moral narrative that I argue is used to narrate stories of (especially) women in the public sphere in Kenya. Reading a range of media texts, I trace a pattern of representation that I identify as contained within a recognizable genre of the moral narrative and use this genre to identify a structure of narrative of issues around gender and sexuality in Kenya. The examples are drawn from…
Presence, Agency and Popularity
Representations and self-representations in new digital cultures have complicated readings of gender and sexuality in the media in increasingly interesting ways. This article explores such representations, focusing on two well-known figures in the Kenyan tabloid media, Vera Sidika and Huddah Monroe. These two women are informally referred to as “socialites”, a reference made to their adopted over-the-top lifestyles and choices of self-representat…
Special Issue
Mapping emerging constructions of good time girls in Kenyan popular media
This article explores the figure of the good time girl as generated through discussions of young women's sexualities in popular media platforms in Kenya. The article locates itself within a socio-historical space in which sexuality has always been debated through a dominant moral economy embedded within religious and traditional structures. It seeks to answer questions around how, within such a context, the figure of the good time girl can be und…
Virtual Expressions
There is a growing body of work on popular culture in Africa that has focused on the eclectic production of culture on the continent. However, very little attention has been paid to the rising significance of the Internet as a site of production for these popular cultures. Existing scholarship on Internet usage and production on the continent has tended to focus on issues of lack, whether it is about access, literacy, or usage, which though impor…
Re-imagining and re-writing the legend of Queen Pokou
Enacting the quotidian in Kenyan radio drama
This article identifies radio in Africa as an important social space for interrogating the everyday lives of its listeners. By focusing on a specific Kenyan radio play Not Now, the article explores the thematic concern of forced marriage and its moral implications on listeners. Importantly, Not Now is pointed out as part of a larger programme of radio drama in Kenya, Radio Theatre , which engages with issues of the quotidian. The debate on forced…
Narrativising Development in Radio Drama
By identifying radio as a previously understudied phenomenon, this article points at the various areas of interest in radio studies in Africa. It suggests a new reading of radio for development in Africa where radio drama is packaged for consumption within the ‘real’ everyday world. By utilizing the soap opera and melodramatic forms, development radio dramas shape themselves around the realities facing their listeners. Pointing out that soap oper…
Virtual Expressions
There is a growing body of work on popular culture in Africa that has focused on the eclectic production of culture on the continent. However, very little attention has been paid to the rising significance of the Internet as a site of production for these popular cultures. Existing scholarship on Internet usage and production on the continent has tended to focus on issues of lack, whether it is about access, literacy, or usage, which though impor…
Mapping emerging constructions of good time girls in Kenyan popular media
This article explores the figure of the good time girl as generated through discussions of young women's sexualities in popular media platforms in Kenya. The article locates itself within a socio-historical space in which sexuality has always been debated through a dominant moral economy embedded within religious and traditional structures. It seeks to answer questions around how, within such a context, the figure of the good time girl can be und…
Gender and Popular Imaginaries in Africa
Special Issue
Narrativising Development in Radio Drama
By identifying radio as a previously understudied phenomenon, this article points at the various areas of interest in radio studies in Africa. It suggests a new reading of radio for development in Africa where radio drama is packaged for consumption within the ‘real’ everyday world. By utilizing the soap opera and melodramatic forms, development radio dramas shape themselves around the realities facing their listeners. Pointing out that soap oper…
Revision as Reflection
Holding space at the margins
Publishing in Africa has long been debated among academics in the global south who recognise the marginal status of African academics' ideas and knowledge. Many of the solutions proffered in global north academies, such as internationalisation and collaborative research, often fail to address specific issues that continue to mark the unequal status of publications from the continent because of the location of the interventions. More recently, a g…
Pondering the Gaps
The burden of being a writer, I have now come to appreciate, is to learn when to let go of a project; and to understand that there may never be resolutions to the tensions emerging from the finishe
Ambiguous agency in the vulnerable trafficked body
The narrativization of the trafficked body in the novels of Abidemi Sanusi and Chika Unigwe allows for a contemplation of Europe in African migrant imaginaries as both promise and failure. Sanusi’s Eyo is a narrative of a ten-year-old girl who is trafficked to the United Kingdom as a human sex slave. The novel draws attention to the tensions that define her being/unbeing in Europe and beyond, even after a brave escape from her traffickers. This p…
Thinking around Genre
In this article, I revisit a familiar narrative format of the moral narrative that I argue is used to narrate stories of (especially) women in the public sphere in Kenya. Reading a range of media texts, I trace a pattern of representation that I identify as contained within a recognizable genre of the moral narrative and use this genre to identify a structure of narrative of issues around gender and sexuality in Kenya. The examples are drawn from…
Enacting the quotidian in Kenyan radio drama
This article identifies radio in Africa as an important social space for interrogating the everyday lives of its listeners. By focusing on a specific Kenyan radio play Not Now, the article explores the thematic concern of forced marriage and its moral implications on listeners. Importantly, Not Now is pointed out as part of a larger programme of radio drama in Kenya, Radio Theatre , which engages with issues of the quotidian. The debate on forced…
Narrativising Development in Radio Drama
By identifying radio as a previously understudied phenomenon, this article points at the various areas of interest in radio studies in Africa. It suggests a new reading of radio for development in Africa where radio drama is packaged for consumption within the ‘real’ everyday world. By utilizing the soap opera and melodramatic forms, development radio dramas shape themselves around the realities facing their listeners. Pointing out that soap oper…
Re-imagining and re-writing the legend of Queen Pokou
Virtual Expressions
There is a growing body of work on popular culture in Africa that has focused on the eclectic production of culture on the continent. However, very little attention has been paid to the rising significance of the Internet as a site of production for these popular cultures. Existing scholarship on Internet usage and production on the continent has tended to focus on issues of lack, whether it is about access, literacy, or usage, which though impor…
Mapping emerging constructions of good time girls in Kenyan popular media
This article explores the figure of the good time girl as generated through discussions of young women's sexualities in popular media platforms in Kenya. The article locates itself within a socio-historical space in which sexuality has always been debated through a dominant moral economy embedded within religious and traditional structures. It seeks to answer questions around how, within such a context, the figure of the good time girl can be und…
Presence, Agency and Popularity
Representations and self-representations in new digital cultures have complicated readings of gender and sexuality in the media in increasingly interesting ways. This article explores such representations, focusing on two well-known figures in the Kenyan tabloid media, Vera Sidika and Huddah Monroe. These two women are informally referred to as “socialites”, a reference made to their adopted over-the-top lifestyles and choices of self-representat…
Special Issue
Roundtable review
The death of British tourist, Julie Ward, in 1988 in the Kenyan Maasai Mara has been recorded in the form of three non-fiction books, one fictional text, a feature film, numerous media reports and
Thinking around Genre
In this article, I revisit a familiar narrative format of the moral narrative that I argue is used to narrate stories of (especially) women in the public sphere in Kenya. Reading a range of media texts, I trace a pattern of representation that I identify as contained within a recognizable genre of the moral narrative and use this genre to identify a structure of narrative of issues around gender and sexuality in Kenya. The examples are drawn from…
Gender and Popular Imaginaries in Africa
Ambiguous agency in the vulnerable trafficked body
The narrativization of the trafficked body in the novels of Abidemi Sanusi and Chika Unigwe allows for a contemplation of Europe in African migrant imaginaries as both promise and failure. Sanusi’s Eyo is a narrative of a ten-year-old girl who is trafficked to the United Kingdom as a human sex slave. The novel draws attention to the tensions that define her being/unbeing in Europe and beyond, even after a brave escape from her traffickers. This p…
Africa Pulse’
Pondering the Gaps
The burden of being a writer, I have now come to appreciate, is to learn when to let go of a project; and to understand that there may never be resolutions to the tensions emerging from the finishe
Holding space at the margins
Publishing in Africa has long been debated among academics in the global south who recognise the marginal status of African academics' ideas and knowledge. Many of the solutions proffered in global north academies, such as internationalisation and collaborative research, often fail to address specific issues that continue to mark the unequal status of publications from the continent because of the location of the interventions. More recently, a g…
Rethinking Motherhood through Afrofeminism
In this article, I read Jennifer Makumbi's novel The First Woman (2020), which I argue combines African feminism and indigenous knowledge to generate alternative narratives of motherhood in the absence of the main character's biological mother. I argue that Makumbi rethinks motherhood through an afrofeminist lens to complicate the idea of the ideal mother as self-sacrificing and sacred. In the novel, Makumbi intentionally re-engages the myth of o…
Kenyan Radio, Colonial Modernity, and Postcolonial Subjectivities
This chapter examines postcolonial subjectivities to identify the significance of local voices and cultures in Kenyan radio history. Postcolonial subjectivities disrupt linear narratives emanating from colonial archives on radio that exclude productive discussions about the development of local radio cultures in Kenya. From archival listener responses and engagements with radio to radio drama read both in the context of state radio’s restrictions…
Revision as Reflection
Political science (15 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Art (9 works) · Kenya (9 works) · Literature (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · History (6 works) · Law (6 works)