Whose Life Is It, Anyway
Issues of Representation in Life Narrative Texts of African Women
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3206769 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kirk Arden Hoppe (0000-0003-1494-0274, corresponding author), Kirk Hoppe |
| Year | 1993 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 623 |
| Publication date | 1993-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The International Journal of African Historical Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0361-7882 • E-ISSN: 2326-3016 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/220481 |
| OpenAlex | W2263000973 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Life narrative texts are complex multi-dimensional discourses between the African narrator and the oral story, between the Western scholar and the narrator, and between the reader and all voices of the text. There are ideological and methodological problems inherent in writing a life story as told by the other. Whose history is created? This paper will examine a selected body of literature, the life narratives of African women, in light of a body of post-modem theory. This theory addresses who/what is represented by the text, and the meaning of such representations. The processes of creating a life narrative text will be analyzed in four parts: the meeting, the telling, the writing, and the reading. Can life narratives challenge the second epoch of colonization Wole Soyinka refers to above, or do they work to reify established power relations
Art · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2022 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |