Alexander Fyfe
Biographic Data
| ID | 3613856 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alexander Fyfe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alexander |
| FAMILY NAME | Fyfe |
| SIGNATURE | FYFE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Georgia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8888-4669 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Introduction: Reading African Forms Simultaneously
This introduction to the special issue “African Literatures and the Question of Form” draws on Achille Mbembe’s work, arguing that form should be understood as a process. This, the authors argue, forms the basis of a comparative approach to African cultural and literary forms, centering the process of forming. Avoiding imposing preconceived definitions of form on a particular work, this is a “simultaneous” approach to form, in so far as it eschew…
Video games in selected African novels: Playing intermediality in manifold ways
Beyond the Liberal Subject: Susan N. Kiguli and the Lyric Poem in 1990s Uganda
This essay is concerned with the ways in which lyric poetry, as a certain kind of literary practice, reconfigures and reimagines dominant constructions of the liberal subject. In so doing, it focuses on the work of Susan N. Kiguli, a Ugandan poet whose 1998 collection, The African Saga, was published in the wake of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government’s attempts to improve the position of women in Ugandan society. Although these (neo…
Teaching Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard as Part of a Decolonial Literature Syllabus
This essay argues that The Palm-Wine Drinkard ([1952] 2014), a tale of a quest through the African bush by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, does important decolonial work and is therefore an excellent candidate for inclusion on a literature syllabus that aims to introduce students to decolonial thinking. After introducing Tutuola's work and considering some of the issues at stake for a decolonial pedagogy, it argues that Drinkard provides an act…
Michel K. Zongo, director. Pas d’or pour Kalsaka/No Gold for Kalsaka. 2019. 80 minutes. Mooré and French, with English subtitles. Burkina Faso, Germany. Juno Films. No price reported
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
“Reading and writing… loudly”: Ikhide R. Ikheloa, online criticism, and African literary studies
Recent years have seen an increasing number of non-professional readers contribute to the online conversation about African literary texts. While this is evidence of a healthy democratisation of the field, it also raises questions about the impact that this online criticism has upon the academic field of African literary studies. How exactly are scholars of African literature to engage with this opportunity to open up the field to new voices whil…
Marxism and African literary studies today
This introduction to the special issue, ‘Marxism and African Literatures: New Interventions,’ argues for the continued relevance of Marxist approaches within African literary studies. After a discussion of the place of Marxism in the field today, a brief history of important Marxist interventions is provided, with particular attention paid to works by Omafume F. Onoge, Biodun Jeyifo, George M. Gugelberger, and Chidi Amuta. Against this background…
Tracing the Memory of Africa across the Atlantic Divide
Sylvestre Amoussou, director. L’Orage Africain: Un continent sous influence. 2017. 88 min. French, with English subtitles. Benin, France. Koffi Productions. Vimeo. $5.00
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Introduction: Reflections on Postcolonial Animations of the Material
In this introduction to the special issue, “Animating Theories of the Material: Approaching Animist Being in Postcolonial Literatures,” Rosemary Jolly and Alexander Fyfe consider the recent surge of interest in animisms within postcolonial studies alongside the roughly coeval turn to questions of materiality within the humanities. Introducing the five essays in the issue, they raise questions around the potential limitations of various forms of m…
Wealth in Fiction: Capitalism, Animism, and Ben Okri’s The Famished Road Trilogy
This article proposes the concept of noncapitalist wealth as a line of inquiry into the relations among capitalism, animism, and literary production. I begin by discussing the methodological implications of Harry Garuba’s influential essay on “animist materialism” and suggest that Garuba’s operating theory of capital means that his method ultimately leads to a mode of reading that understands animism as bearing primarily upon representation rathe…
David MacDougall and James Blue, dir. The Faces of Change Collection: The Kenya Series. 1974 (re-mastered 2017). 121 min. Oromo (Boran dialect), with English subtitles, English. United States. Documen…
David MacDougall and James Blue, dir. The Faces of Change Collection: The Kenya Series. 1974 (re-mastered 2017). 121 min. Oromo (Boran dialect), with English subtitles, English. United States. Documentary Educational Resources. $359.95 (price for entire collection for individuals). - Volume 61 Issue 2
The Specificity of the Literary and Its Universalizing Function in Frantz Fanon’s “On National Culture”
This essay considers Frantz Fanon’s chapter “On National Culture” (chapter four of The Wretched of the Earth) in relation to the specificity of literary form and Fanon’s understanding of the universal. Reversing the order in which the essay’s two sections are usually read (and therefore beginning with the second section), the essay traces the evolution of Fanon’s thinking on questions of culture and universalism in relation to the discourse of bl…
The Textual Politics of the Land in the Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa
Taking its prompt from recent studies of Ken Saro-Wiwa's work that can be grouped under the broad heading of "postcolonial ecocriticism," this article addresses the status of the "land" in an expanded archive of the author's works. Reading samples of Saro-Wiwa's lyric poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction, I argue that his writings demonstrate a constant preoccupation with the land as a political, material, and philosophical problem—one in which …
Introduction: Reflections on Postcolonial Animations of the Material
In this introduction to the special issue, “Animating Theories of the Material: Approaching Animist Being in Postcolonial Literatures,” Rosemary Jolly and Alexander Fyfe consider the recent surge of interest in animisms within postcolonial studies alongside the roughly coeval turn to questions of materiality within the humanities. Introducing the five essays in the issue, they raise questions around the potential limitations of various forms of m…
The Textual Politics of the Land in the Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa
Taking its prompt from recent studies of Ken Saro-Wiwa's work that can be grouped under the broad heading of "postcolonial ecocriticism," this article addresses the status of the "land" in an expanded archive of the author's works. Reading samples of Saro-Wiwa's lyric poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction, I argue that his writings demonstrate a constant preoccupation with the land as a political, material, and philosophical problem—one in which …
The Specificity of the Literary and Its Universalizing Function in Frantz Fanon’s “On National Culture”
This essay considers Frantz Fanon’s chapter “On National Culture” (chapter four of The Wretched of the Earth) in relation to the specificity of literary form and Fanon’s understanding of the universal. Reversing the order in which the essay’s two sections are usually read (and therefore beginning with the second section), the essay traces the evolution of Fanon’s thinking on questions of culture and universalism in relation to the discourse of bl…
The Textual Politics of the Land in the Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa
Taking its prompt from recent studies of Ken Saro-Wiwa's work that can be grouped under the broad heading of "postcolonial ecocriticism," this article addresses the status of the "land" in an expanded archive of the author's works. Reading samples of Saro-Wiwa's lyric poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction, I argue that his writings demonstrate a constant preoccupation with the land as a political, material, and philosophical problem—one in which …
Introduction: Reflections on Postcolonial Animations of the Material
In this introduction to the special issue, “Animating Theories of the Material: Approaching Animist Being in Postcolonial Literatures,” Rosemary Jolly and Alexander Fyfe consider the recent surge of interest in animisms within postcolonial studies alongside the roughly coeval turn to questions of materiality within the humanities. Introducing the five essays in the issue, they raise questions around the potential limitations of various forms of m…
Wealth in Fiction: Capitalism, Animism, and Ben Okri’s The Famished Road Trilogy
This article proposes the concept of noncapitalist wealth as a line of inquiry into the relations among capitalism, animism, and literary production. I begin by discussing the methodological implications of Harry Garuba’s influential essay on “animist materialism” and suggest that Garuba’s operating theory of capital means that his method ultimately leads to a mode of reading that understands animism as bearing primarily upon representation rathe…
David MacDougall and James Blue, dir. The Faces of Change Collection: The Kenya Series. 1974 (re-mastered 2017). 121 min. Oromo (Boran dialect), with English subtitles, English. United States. Documen…
David MacDougall and James Blue, dir. The Faces of Change Collection: The Kenya Series. 1974 (re-mastered 2017). 121 min. Oromo (Boran dialect), with English subtitles, English. United States. Documentary Educational Resources. $359.95 (price for entire collection for individuals). - Volume 61 Issue 2
Sylvestre Amoussou, director. L’Orage Africain: Un continent sous influence. 2017. 88 min. French, with English subtitles. Benin, France. Koffi Productions. Vimeo. $5.00
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Marxism and African literary studies today
This introduction to the special issue, ‘Marxism and African Literatures: New Interventions,’ argues for the continued relevance of Marxist approaches within African literary studies. After a discussion of the place of Marxism in the field today, a brief history of important Marxist interventions is provided, with particular attention paid to works by Omafume F. Onoge, Biodun Jeyifo, George M. Gugelberger, and Chidi Amuta. Against this background…
Tracing the Memory of Africa across the Atlantic Divide
“Reading and writing… loudly”: Ikhide R. Ikheloa, online criticism, and African literary studies
Recent years have seen an increasing number of non-professional readers contribute to the online conversation about African literary texts. While this is evidence of a healthy democratisation of the field, it also raises questions about the impact that this online criticism has upon the academic field of African literary studies. How exactly are scholars of African literature to engage with this opportunity to open up the field to new voices whil…
Michel K. Zongo, director. Pas d’or pour Kalsaka/No Gold for Kalsaka. 2019. 80 minutes. Mooré and French, with English subtitles. Burkina Faso, Germany. Juno Films. No price reported
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Teaching Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard as Part of a Decolonial Literature Syllabus
This essay argues that The Palm-Wine Drinkard ([1952] 2014), a tale of a quest through the African bush by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, does important decolonial work and is therefore an excellent candidate for inclusion on a literature syllabus that aims to introduce students to decolonial thinking. After introducing Tutuola's work and considering some of the issues at stake for a decolonial pedagogy, it argues that Drinkard provides an act…
Video games in selected African novels: Playing intermediality in manifold ways
Beyond the Liberal Subject: Susan N. Kiguli and the Lyric Poem in 1990s Uganda
This essay is concerned with the ways in which lyric poetry, as a certain kind of literary practice, reconfigures and reimagines dominant constructions of the liberal subject. In so doing, it focuses on the work of Susan N. Kiguli, a Ugandan poet whose 1998 collection, The African Saga, was published in the wake of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government’s attempts to improve the position of women in Ugandan society. Although these (neo…
Introduction: Reading African Forms Simultaneously
This introduction to the special issue “African Literatures and the Question of Form” draws on Achille Mbembe’s work, arguing that form should be understood as a process. This, the authors argue, forms the basis of a comparative approach to African cultural and literary forms, centering the process of forming. Avoiding imposing preconceived definitions of form on a particular work, this is a “simultaneous” approach to form, in so far as it eschew…
Art (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Literature (5 works)