Brendon Nicholls
Biographic Data
| ID | 3827693 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brendon Nicholls |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brendon |
| FAMILY NAME | Nicholls |
| SIGNATURE | NICHOLLS B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leeds |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3238-7695 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and the Writing of Political Freedom
We tend in African Studies to think of Ngg wa Thiong'o's emblematic progressive political commitment, not least in his championing of African language literatures and the necessity of polycentric translation.It is less certain that this commitment has a settled status in his fiction, which exhibits aesthetic variations.We reflect upon the early historical realism of Weep Not, Child (1964) and The River Between (1965), the complex interiority of A…
Practical Magic
This article argues for a decolonising, democratic engagement with environmental knowledges formed outside the academy in the Global South. Drawing upon Bruno Latour's claim that our contemporary environmental precarity was first trialled upon colonised peoples, I argue that historically remote – and even conceptually obscure – African popular knowledges should be treated as forms of theory in their own right. Sigmund Freud's teleological account…
A dialectical literary canon
This article proposes a literary canon founded on dialectical principles, using South Africa as our historical example. In order to do so, we first trace the development of dialectical thought, moving from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to Karl Marx to Steve Biko; from Eurocentrism to class consciousness to Black Consciousness. Second, we plot the influence of Hegel and Marx as well as Sartre and Fanon on Biko’s elaboration of dialectics for the B…
Rehabilitating the Reader? A Response to Cajetan Iheka’s Naturalizing Africa
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Roundtable review
An Environmental Unconscious? Nigerian Oil Politics, Autonomous Partial Objects, and Ken Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy
My article starts by disproving the established critical consensus that Ken Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy features a child soldier. Instead, I argue, we see a tactical psychopathy at work, in which the adult soldier's flattened moral choices and fluid political affiliations become expedients to ensure his survival. As a consequence, I argue, the soldier's libidinal attachments become insecure. Correspondingly, objects in the world of Saro-Wiwa's book becom…
Nadine Gordimer's July's People
Nadine Gordimer is one of the most important writers to emerge in the twentieth century. Her anti-Apartheid novel July's People (1981) is a powerful example of resistance writing and continues even now to unsettle easy assumptions about issues of power, race, gender and identity. This guide to Gordimer's compelling novel offers: an accessible introduction to the text and contexts of July's People a critical history, surveying the many interpretat…
The Ethics of Dissident Desire in Southern African Writing; Moving Spirit
Apartheid cinema and indigenous image rights
This article reads Jamie Uys's film, The gods must be crazy, in the context of apartheid ideologies and social inequalities. It argues that the film is complicit with apartheid institutions and that its ethnographic myths of “the Bushman” naturalize Uys's exploitation of his San actors. Additionally, Uys's media hype mystified the social conditions of the San community and the film's popularity institutionalized perceptions that were ultimately d…
The Topography of “Woman” in Ngugi’s Weep Not, Child
Apartheid cinema and indigenous image rights
This article reads Jamie Uys's film, The gods must be crazy, in the context of apartheid ideologies and social inequalities. It argues that the film is complicit with apartheid institutions and that its ethnographic myths of “the Bushman” naturalize Uys's exploitation of his San actors. Additionally, Uys's media hype mystified the social conditions of the San community and the film's popularity institutionalized perceptions that were ultimately d…
A dialectical literary canon
This article proposes a literary canon founded on dialectical principles, using South Africa as our historical example. In order to do so, we first trace the development of dialectical thought, moving from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to Karl Marx to Steve Biko; from Eurocentrism to class consciousness to Black Consciousness. Second, we plot the influence of Hegel and Marx as well as Sartre and Fanon on Biko’s elaboration of dialectics for the B…
An Environmental Unconscious? Nigerian Oil Politics, Autonomous Partial Objects, and Ken Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy
My article starts by disproving the established critical consensus that Ken Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy features a child soldier. Instead, I argue, we see a tactical psychopathy at work, in which the adult soldier's flattened moral choices and fluid political affiliations become expedients to ensure his survival. As a consequence, I argue, the soldier's libidinal attachments become insecure. Correspondingly, objects in the world of Saro-Wiwa's book becom…
The Topography of “Woman” in Ngugi’s Weep Not, Child
The Topography of “Woman” in Ngugi’s Weep Not, Child
Apartheid cinema and indigenous image rights
This article reads Jamie Uys's film, The gods must be crazy, in the context of apartheid ideologies and social inequalities. It argues that the film is complicit with apartheid institutions and that its ethnographic myths of “the Bushman” naturalize Uys's exploitation of his San actors. Additionally, Uys's media hype mystified the social conditions of the San community and the film's popularity institutionalized perceptions that were ultimately d…
Nadine Gordimer's July's People
Nadine Gordimer is one of the most important writers to emerge in the twentieth century. Her anti-Apartheid novel July's People (1981) is a powerful example of resistance writing and continues even now to unsettle easy assumptions about issues of power, race, gender and identity. This guide to Gordimer's compelling novel offers: an accessible introduction to the text and contexts of July's People a critical history, surveying the many interpretat…
The Ethics of Dissident Desire in Southern African Writing; Moving Spirit
Roundtable review
An Environmental Unconscious? Nigerian Oil Politics, Autonomous Partial Objects, and Ken Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy
My article starts by disproving the established critical consensus that Ken Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy features a child soldier. Instead, I argue, we see a tactical psychopathy at work, in which the adult soldier's flattened moral choices and fluid political affiliations become expedients to ensure his survival. As a consequence, I argue, the soldier's libidinal attachments become insecure. Correspondingly, objects in the world of Saro-Wiwa's book becom…
Rehabilitating the Reader? A Response to Cajetan Iheka’s Naturalizing Africa
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
A dialectical literary canon
This article proposes a literary canon founded on dialectical principles, using South Africa as our historical example. In order to do so, we first trace the development of dialectical thought, moving from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to Karl Marx to Steve Biko; from Eurocentrism to class consciousness to Black Consciousness. Second, we plot the influence of Hegel and Marx as well as Sartre and Fanon on Biko’s elaboration of dialectics for the B…
Practical Magic
This article argues for a decolonising, democratic engagement with environmental knowledges formed outside the academy in the Global South. Drawing upon Bruno Latour's claim that our contemporary environmental precarity was first trialled upon colonised peoples, I argue that historically remote – and even conceptually obscure – African popular knowledges should be treated as forms of theory in their own right. Sigmund Freud's teleological account…
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and the Writing of Political Freedom
We tend in African Studies to think of Ngg wa Thiong'o's emblematic progressive political commitment, not least in his championing of African language literatures and the necessity of polycentric translation.It is less certain that this commitment has a settled status in his fiction, which exhibits aesthetic variations.We reflect upon the early historical realism of Weep Not, Child (1964) and The River Between (1965), the complex interiority of A…
History (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Literature (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · African history and culture studies (4 works)