Grace A Musila
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 75416 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Grace A Musila |
| PRENOMES | Grace A |
| SOBRENOME | Musila |
| ASSINATURA | MUSILA G A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1572-4477 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 42 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 111 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 40 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2005 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Postcolonial Edifice
For Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the crises of post-independence Africa cannot be understood without an understanding of neo-colonialism as a political dynamic that sabotaged the freedom dreams of Africa and the Global South at large. This chapter reflects on neo-colonialism as a framework for understanding his insights on postcolonial African realities. I locate Ngugi’s views on neo-colonialism within the context of his dynamic intellectual biography, tra…
African Literature in Transition
This book offers a compelling new approach to African literatures as formed by and itself a form of collective memory. It explores the historical spaces and maps that African literature brings to the surface and re-imagines in novel ways. The stories that matter about what happened in the past together constitute a collective memory that African writers and readers draw upon to locate themselves within the world. The book examines the mental maps…
Liberation Struggles
The chapter considers anti-colonial liberation to be a generative archive for African literary imaginaries, by zoning in on literary engagements with anti-colonial liberation struggles across Africa. The chapter suggests that literary texts and liberation struggles co-constitute each other in an ongoing dialogue on the meanings of freedom for post/colonial African societies. Using examples from different genres and regions, this chapter tracks th…
Fugitive Forms
This article examines African artists’ attempts to wrestle the meaning of freedom away from both inherited frameworks of Western formulations of liberty and linear chronoframes of nationalist liberation narratives. It suggests that the African writers, poets, filmmakers, and playwrights examined in this special issue stage artistic experiments with form, to reconfigure the narrative arc of freedom in Africa toward new futurities, despite the seem…
Mpondo refusals
The perimeters of bare rage
The Promise of Belatedness for Africa-Based Scholarship
Narrative, Time, and Disaster
In 2004 I joined a student volunteer group. I was a graduate student in Johannesburg, and our volunteer group taught at an unregistered school in an informal settlement in Eikenhof, south of Johannesburg, once a week. The school had no full-time teachers because it was not recognized by the government. In December we put together food parcels to distribute to people living with HIV in the area. Our visits were difficult. Many of the patients had …
Headnote
Shola Adenekan’s African Literature in the Digital Age: Class and Sexual Politics in New Writing from Nigeria and Kenya is the ninth title in the series African Articulations, published by James Cu
Refusal and the American dream in Dinaw Mengestu’s oeuvre
Across Dinaw Mengestu’s three novels, which can be read as a loosely interconnected trilogy of Ethiopian immigrants’ experiences of the United States, he repeatedly disrupts the conventional frame of the migrant narrative through his protagonists, who refuse to pursue the American dream and the freedoms it proposes. Instead, they choose to adopt a largely indifferent attitude toward the seductions of neoliberal subjectivities and the aspirational…
Of freedom and literature in Africa and the diaspora
This introduction to a special issue on freedom presents a set of original essays that reflect critically on the idea of freedom in relation to specific literary texts from Africa and the African diaspora. Read together, the essays presented in this introduction make up a rich tapestry, offering a set of reflections that map out the complex geo-histories of freedoms in Africa and an array of creative representations of this generative idea across…
Reading relations
Through a self-reflexive mode, this essay explores a set of reading experiences using Italo Calvino’s perspectives on reading classics, and Tony Bennett’s theorisation of reading formations. Calvino prioritises the text as a stable object with inherent capacity to generate different reading experiences, while Bennett insists on the text’s multiplicity. What is clear from both scholars is that reading is a highly contested practice: who reads, wha…
The Legacies of Empire in Nwaubani's I Do Not Come to You by Chance and Mengestu's All Our Names
While the Black Lives Matter movement is widely recognized and supported in Africa, its framing prioritizes experiences of anti-Blackness in the United States and the Black diaspora. This is partly owing to the movement's genesis as a direct response to domestic forms of anti-Blackness, including police brutality, disproportionate Black incarceration, and systemic inequalities, but also because, as Jemima Pierre argues, Africa is often perceived …
Routledge Handbook of African Popular Culture
This handbook brings together an international team of scholars from different disciplines to reflect on African popular cultural imaginaries. These imaginaries – in the sense of cultural productions, contexts, consumers, producers, platforms, and the material, affective and discursive resources they circulate – are influential in shaping African realities. Collectively, the chapters assembled in this handbook index the genres, methods, mediums, …
Imagining Freedom with Keguro Macharia's Frottage
And Wrote My Story Anyway
Tydskrif vir Letterkunde is an online, peer-reviewed, accredited scholarly journal which publishes original, previously unpublished research and overview articles on theoretical, applied or comparative aspects of African literatures and cultural practices
Yearning for rootedness in a femicidal landscape
A lot has changed since I first watched Zulu Love Letter in 2005, and much has remained the same about the traumas of post-1994 South Africa, which preoccupy the film. This piece comments on two is
The Burden of Representation in the Life Stories of Wambui Waiyaki Otieno and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Wambui Waiyaki Otieno are both iconic, yet controversial, women who made important contributions to nationalist and feminist thought in South Africa and Kenya, respectively. Their lives constantly pushed the boundaries of socially sanctioned gendered behavior relating to motherhood, widowhood, and iconicity. In this essay, the author examines the implications of the two women’s responses to their status as mothers an…
The afterlives of slavery and the narrative pressures of black precarity in Dinaw Mengestu's How to Read the Air
This article uses Ethiopian American novelist Dinaw Mengestu's How to Read the Air to map the links between the black diaspora in the United States, which traces its roots back to Atlantic chattel slavery, and the newer black diasporas descended from twentieth-century African migrants in America. It draws on Sylvia Wynter's work on defining statements of the human in European thought; on Saidiya Hartman's concept of the afterlives of slavery and …
Against collaboration - or the native who wanders off
Nothing is quite as futile as trying to occupy or reclaim a negating space. (Keguro Macharia 2016, 186)On 5 January 2019, South African Twitter user Keabetswe, who goes by the Twitter handle @akrea
Gender and Popular Imaginaries in Africa
Ngugi
Margins and their im/possibilities in Eastern African imaginaries
Part-Time Africans, Europolitans and ‘Africa lite’
Afropolitanism seems to be about embracing just enough of Africa to retain a certain flavour that sets one apart from the norm – presumably Euro-American – but not so much as to be too &s;African&s;. Like Coke Lite or a lite beer, Afropolitanism seems to promise Africa lite: Africa sans the &s;unhealthy&s; or &s;intoxicating&s; baggage of Africa. This set of comments is an attempt to think through some aspects of the debate on Afropolitanism. In …
East and Central Africa
Part-Time Africans, Europolitans and ‘Africa lite
I once attended an inaugural lecture at an African University where the colleague introducing the professor emphasized that this professor's work was of such excellence and renown that he could no
Against collaboration - or the native who wanders off
Nothing is quite as futile as trying to occupy or reclaim a negating space. (Keguro Macharia 2016, 186)On 5 January 2019, South African Twitter user Keabetswe, who goes by the Twitter handle @akrea
A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour
Julie Ann Ward was a British tourist and wildlife photographer who went missing in Kenya's Maasai Mara Game Reserve in 1988 and was eventually found to have been murdered. Her death and the protracted search for her killers, still at large, were hotly contested in the media. Many theories emerged as to how and why she died, generating three trials, several 'true crime' books, and much speculation and rumour. At the core of Grace Musila's study ar…
The ‘Redykyulass Generation‘S’ intellectual interventions in Kenyan public life
This article is interested in the intellectual contributions of the youth to Kenyan public life. It focuses on what has been called the ‘Redykyulass Generation’ as a contemporary generation of politically engaged youths who have successfully used various genres of popular cultural productions and media platforms to engage with Kenyan social imaginaries. Using three case studies — the Redykyulass group and the writings of Binyavanga Wainaina and P…
Navigating epistemic disarticulations
This research note reflects on the challenges of conducting research on issues framed by multiple epistemic regimes. Using insights drawn from my work on the 1988 murder of 28-year old British tourist Julie Ann Ward in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya, I discuss the problem of opacities created by a combination of uncritical embrace of received knowledge about Africa/ns and cultural illiteracy in competing knowledge systems around which Afri…
Gender and Popular Imaginaries in Africa
Margins and their im/possibilities in Eastern African imaginaries
Familial cartographies in contemporary East African short stories
Using two East African short stories by Binyavanga Wainiana and Muthoni Garland, this article explores literal, literary and nation-families as recurrent motifs in contemporary East African short stories, which comment on intergenerational relationships and the ensuing patterns of power relations. If, as much scholarship on the post-colonial state opines, the disintegration of the state in Africa ushered in a shift towards family networks, and, b…
Between the Wildebeest, Noble Savages and Moi's Kenya
This paper examines the 1988 murder of British tourist Julie Ward in Kenya's Maasai Mara Game Reserve. It explores the search for Julie Ward's killers and how it is narrated in the three books on the case: John Ward's The Animals Are Innocent: The Search for Julie's Killers (1991), Michael Hiltzik's A Death in Kenya: The Murder of Julie Ward (1991) and Jeremy Gavron's Darkness in Eden: The Murder of Julie Ward (1994). Both the search for Julie Wa…
Remapping urban modernities
This article examines rumour as a type of urban text which interrogates the officially proclaimed rationality of the modern state. Drawing on reported rumours and allegations about the death of British tourist Julie Ward in Kenya in 1988, it reflects on rumour as a medium that contests the legitimacy of hegemonic "truths" produced through modern institutions in Africa. In their critique of the amenability of modern state institutions to manipulat…
The Burden of Representation in the Life Stories of Wambui Waiyaki Otieno and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Wambui Waiyaki Otieno are both iconic, yet controversial, women who made important contributions to nationalist and feminist thought in South Africa and Kenya, respectively. Their lives constantly pushed the boundaries of socially sanctioned gendered behavior relating to motherhood, widowhood, and iconicity. In this essay, the author examines the implications of the two women’s responses to their status as mothers an…
The afterlives of slavery and the narrative pressures of black precarity in Dinaw Mengestu's How to Read the Air
This article uses Ethiopian American novelist Dinaw Mengestu's How to Read the Air to map the links between the black diaspora in the United States, which traces its roots back to Atlantic chattel slavery, and the newer black diasporas descended from twentieth-century African migrants in America. It draws on Sylvia Wynter's work on defining statements of the human in European thought; on Saidiya Hartman's concept of the afterlives of slavery and …
Special Issue
Locations and locutions
Embodying Experience and Agency in Yvonne Vera's Without a Name and Butterfly Burning
This paper reflects on how the corporeality of women's bodies frames their experiences, options, and choices. Through a reading of Yvonne Vera's Without a Name and Butterfly Burning, the paper suggests that Vera explores interactions between discursive practices and the embodied experience of these discourses for women living on the extreme margins of society. This reading suggests that these women's lived experiences as played out by, and on the…
Central and East Africa
The Promise of Belatedness for Africa-Based Scholarship
Ngugi
Age, Power and Sex in Modern Kenya
This article examines two marriages: one between Kenya's 60-year-old Vice-President, Michael Wamalwa Kijana and 34-year-old Yvonne Nambia and the other between 67-year-old Wambui Otieno, an ex-Mau Mau scout, widow, gender activist and outspoken politician, and 25-year-old Peter Mbugua, a stonemason. Wambui's marriage generated a heated debate both in the country and the Kenyan diasporas. An examination of the public debate and responses that atte…
Age, Power and Sex in Modern Kenya
This article examines two marriages: one between Kenya's 60-year-old Vice-President, Michael Wamalwa Kijana and 34-year-old Yvonne Nambia and the other between 67-year-old Wambui Otieno, an ex-Mau Mau scout, widow, gender activist and outspoken politician, and 25-year-old Peter Mbugua, a stonemason. Wambui's marriage generated a heated debate both in the country and the Kenyan diasporas. An examination of the public debate and responses that atte…
Central and East Africa
Between Seventh Street, Goblins and Ordinary People
Embodying Experience and Agency in Yvonne Vera's Without a Name and Butterfly Burning
This paper reflects on how the corporeality of women's bodies frames their experiences, options, and choices. Through a reading of Yvonne Vera's Without a Name and Butterfly Burning, the paper suggests that Vera explores interactions between discursive practices and the embodied experience of these discourses for women living on the extreme margins of society. This reading suggests that these women's lived experiences as played out by, and on the…
Between the Wildebeest, Noble Savages and Moi's Kenya
This paper examines the 1988 murder of British tourist Julie Ward in Kenya's Maasai Mara Game Reserve. It explores the search for Julie Ward's killers and how it is narrated in the three books on the case: John Ward's The Animals Are Innocent: The Search for Julie's Killers (1991), Michael Hiltzik's A Death in Kenya: The Murder of Julie Ward (1991) and Jeremy Gavron's Darkness in Eden: The Murder of Julie Ward (1994). Both the search for Julie Wa…
Inscribing Memories on Dead Bodies
This article examines speculations on the circumstances surrounding the 1988 murder of the 28-year-old British tourist Julie Ward in Kenya, with a particular focus on how circulating discourses in Kenyan and British social imaginaries shaped these speculations. The article suggests that Ward's death took place in a discursive landscape marked by deeply layered and intermeshed contours of British and Kenyan social memories, which have over time cr…
Remapping urban modernities
This article examines rumour as a type of urban text which interrogates the officially proclaimed rationality of the modern state. Drawing on reported rumours and allegations about the death of British tourist Julie Ward in Kenya in 1988, it reflects on rumour as a medium that contests the legitimacy of hegemonic "truths" produced through modern institutions in Africa. In their critique of the amenability of modern state institutions to manipulat…
East and Central Africa
The ‘Redykyulass Generation‘S’ intellectual interventions in Kenyan public life
This article is interested in the intellectual contributions of the youth to Kenyan public life. It focuses on what has been called the ‘Redykyulass Generation’ as a contemporary generation of politically engaged youths who have successfully used various genres of popular cultural productions and media platforms to engage with Kenyan social imaginaries. Using three case studies — the Redykyulass group and the writings of Binyavanga Wainaina and P…
East and Central Africa
Locations and locutions
Familial cartographies in contemporary East African short stories
Using two East African short stories by Binyavanga Wainiana and Muthoni Garland, this article explores literal, literary and nation-families as recurrent motifs in contemporary East African short stories, which comment on intergenerational relationships and the ensuing patterns of power relations. If, as much scholarship on the post-colonial state opines, the disintegration of the state in Africa ushered in a shift towards family networks, and, b…
Civic Agency in Africa
Examines the variety of mostly unorganized and informal ways in which Africans exercise agency and resist state power in the 21st century, through citizen action and popular culture, and how the relationship between ruler and ruled is being reframed. The recent eruption of popular protests across North Africa and the Middle East has reopened academic debate on the meaning and strategies of resistance in the 21st century. This book argues that Wes…
A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour
Julie Ann Ward was a British tourist and wildlife photographer who went missing in Kenya's Maasai Mara Game Reserve in 1988 and was eventually found to have been murdered. Her death and the protracted search for her killers, still at large, were hotly contested in the media. Many theories emerged as to how and why she died, generating three trials, several 'true crime' books, and much speculation and rumour. At the core of Grace Musila's study ar…
Part-Time Africans, Europolitans and ‘Africa lite
I once attended an inaugural lecture at an African University where the colleague introducing the professor emphasized that this professor's work was of such excellence and renown that he could no
Special Issue
Part-Time Africans, Europolitans and ‘Africa lite’
Afropolitanism seems to be about embracing just enough of Africa to retain a certain flavour that sets one apart from the norm – presumably Euro-American – but not so much as to be too &s;African&s;. Like Coke Lite or a lite beer, Afropolitanism seems to promise Africa lite: Africa sans the &s;unhealthy&s; or &s;intoxicating&s; baggage of Africa. This set of comments is an attempt to think through some aspects of the debate on Afropolitanism. In …
East and Central Africa
Navigating epistemic disarticulations
This research note reflects on the challenges of conducting research on issues framed by multiple epistemic regimes. Using insights drawn from my work on the 1988 murder of 28-year old British tourist Julie Ann Ward in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya, I discuss the problem of opacities created by a combination of uncritical embrace of received knowledge about Africa/ns and cultural illiteracy in competing knowledge systems around which Afri…
Gender and Popular Imaginaries in Africa
Ngugi
Margins and their im/possibilities in Eastern African imaginaries
Against collaboration - or the native who wanders off
Nothing is quite as futile as trying to occupy or reclaim a negating space. (Keguro Macharia 2016, 186)On 5 January 2019, South African Twitter user Keabetswe, who goes by the Twitter handle @akrea
Yearning for rootedness in a femicidal landscape
A lot has changed since I first watched Zulu Love Letter in 2005, and much has remained the same about the traumas of post-1994 South Africa, which preoccupy the film. This piece comments on two is
The Burden of Representation in the Life Stories of Wambui Waiyaki Otieno and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Wambui Waiyaki Otieno are both iconic, yet controversial, women who made important contributions to nationalist and feminist thought in South Africa and Kenya, respectively. Their lives constantly pushed the boundaries of socially sanctioned gendered behavior relating to motherhood, widowhood, and iconicity. In this essay, the author examines the implications of the two women’s responses to their status as mothers an…
Sociology (27 obras) · Political science (24 obras) · History (23 obras) · History (21 obras) · African history and culture studies (18 obras) · Law (15 obras) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (15 obras) · Art (14 obras) · Gender Studies (13 obras) · Gender Studies (12 obras)