Postcolonial Space
African Literary Writing and the Articulations of Worlding
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23424593 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Madhu Krishnan (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 156-171 |
| Publication date | 2025-05-22 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Space and Literary Studies (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/9781009424264.012 |
| OpenAlex | W4410109590 |
| ISBN | 9781009424264 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 12 |
In this chapter, I explore the intersection of spatiality and postcolonial literary writing through a focus on African literatures, broadly speaking, and the practices of worlding therein. Both as a market category and as a subset of what is variously termed ’world literature’ or ’postcolonial literature’, African literary writing offers a rich case study of the ways in which literature functions not merely as a passive repository of space or site of spatial representation, but as a driver of the constitution and performance of space itself. In this manner, the literary functions not as discrete or autonomous but through its entanglements with broader material, social, and ideological circuits. To do so, this chapter begins with an overview of postcolonial spatiality before moving to questions of aesthetics, form, publicness, and circulation to consider the diverse and sometimes divergent ways in which the performance of spatiality in African literary writing operates across uneven and asymmetrically loaded networks of production and distribution. The chapter ultimately argues that differential performances of spatiality in various bodies of African writing demonstrate the ways in which practices of worlding remain mediated by the material, structural, and systemic constitution of literature.
Space (punctuation) · Computer Science · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
| Highly cited | No |
|---|