F0605 War and the End of Empire
a) Historical background to the imperial conflicts of the late 19th century: the Zulu Wars, Cecil Rhodes\' project, and the causes and consequences of the Boer War. Discussion of clips from the film Zulu and the TV series Rhodes
Attitudes and Reactions in Britain and South Africa to the Boer War.
Reading and discussion of a selection of Boer War Poems from Elleke Boehmer (ed), Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Literature 1870-1918, Oxford World Classics, 2001.
b) Introduction to African writing. Colonial discourse and imperial attitudes. Post-colonial theories of resistance and rewriting. The concept of Negritude and the work of Frantz Fanon.
The work of Chinua Achebe. Writing back to the centre and the rewriting of colonial texts. Examples from Things Fall Apart & Joseph Conrad\'s Heart of Darkness. Discussion of clips from the film Mr. Johnson
c) Ngugi wa Thiong\'o and the politics of language in African writing.
Background to Kenya & the Mau Mau conflict.
Reading and discussion of of Ngugi, Weep Not, Child
d) Socio-political background to the Nigerian Civil War 1967-70.
Survey of creative writing written on the conflict. Reading and discussion of a selection of poems by Christopher Okigbo.
Wole Soyinka & the social use of theatre. Reading & discussion of the play Madmen and Specialists
Comparison of male and female narratives of the Civil War. Discussion of two stories from Flora Nwapa\'s collection, Wives at War and Buchi Emecheta\'s novel, Destination Biafra.
Objectives
The reading texts and the audiovisual material will be approached from a post-colonial perspective, enabling the student to come to terms with three of the most bitter conflicts of the twentieth century: the Boer War at the turn of the century, the Mau Mau conflict of the 1950s and the Nigerian Civil War of the 1960s. Special attention will be paid to formal aspects: language, literary discourse and orality, as well as the sociopolitical role of African literature. At the end of the course the student will have become familiarized with the most recent and influential postcolonial theories and the main features of Anglophone Nigerian and Kenyan writing.
At the beginning of each of the four sections into which the course is divided, the instructor will provide an initial introductory session on the historical, sociopolitical and literary background to the conflict under discussion. After this general lecture, teaching will then be based on detailed text analysis and in-depth class discussion. Depending on class size, the group may be divided into smaller units to encourage student participation. Individual students or small groups of two or three students will be expected to lead the discussion on one of the texts and relate their analysis to the theoretical models previously introduced.
Readings