The Half Lives of African Fictive States

Bibliographic Data

ID9309905
AuthorsNeil Ten Kortenaar (0000-0002-1154-7103, University of Rochester, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume6
Issue2
Pages163-178
Publication date2019-03-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2052-2614 • E-ISSN: 2052-2622
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/pli.2018.51
OpenAlexW2923479172
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited25

On or about February 1966, African literature changed. The coups that overthrew the First Republic in Nigeria, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, and the Kabaka of Buganda divide the history of African literature in two: the period just before and after most of Africa became independent, and the period from 1966 to at least 2006, the year of publication of Ngg's Wizard of the Crow. 1 Literature registered the impact of the coups as a disruption in the setting of the nation-state that novels routinely share with the news and history books. Whereas Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease, published in 1960, the year of Nigerian independence, takes the particular state for granted, after 1966 it became a straightforward matter for African authors to set a novel in a fictive state, a state in every significant way like the author's own but not found on extratextual maps. Novelists could always, it seems, now imagine another African republic called Kangan, Songhai, Katamalanasie, the Ebony Coast, Congheria, Kanem, Aburiria, or not called anything at all

Content (measure theory · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Computer Science · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Mathematics

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