This book examines tragedy and tragic philosophy from the Greeks through Shakespeare to the present day. It explores key themes in the links between suffering and ethics through postcolonial literature. Ato Quayson reconceives how we think of World literature under the singular and fertile rubric of tragedy. He draws from many key works – Oedipus Rex, Philoctetes, Medea, Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear – to establish the main contours of tragedy. Quayson uses Shakespeare's Othello, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Tayeb Salih, Arundhati Roy, Toni Morrison, Samuel Beckett and J.M. Coetzee to qualify and expand the purview and terms by which Western tragedy has long been understood. Drawing on key texts such as The Poetics and The Nicomachean Ethics, and augmenting them with Frantz Fanon and the Akan concept of musuo (taboo), Quayson formulates a supple, insightful new theory of ethical choice and the impediments against it. This is a major book from a leading critic in literary studies.
Focusing primarily on the work of Samuel Beckett, Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, and J. M. Coetzee, Ato Quayson launches a thoroughly cross-cultural, interdisciplinary study of the representation of physical disability. Quayson suggests that the subliminal unease and moral panic invoked by the disabled is refracted within the structures of literature and literary discourse itself, a crisis he terms "aesthetic nervousness." The disabled reminds the able-bodied that the body is provisional and temporary and that normality is wrapped up in certain social frameworks. Quayson expands his argument by turning to Greek and Yoruba writings, African American and postcolonial literature, depictions of deformed characters in early modern England and the plays of Shakespeare, and children's films, among other texts. He considers how disability affects interpersonal relationships and forces the character and the reader to take an ethical standpoint, much like representations of violence, pain, and the sacred. The disabled are also used to represent social suffering, inadvertently obscuring their true hardships.
In Oxford Street, Accra, Ato Quayson analyzes the dynamics of Ghana's capital city through a focus on Oxford Street, part of Accra's most vibrant and globalized commercial district. He traces the city's evolution from its settlement in the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. He combines his impressions of the sights, sounds, interactions, and distribution of space with broader dynamics, including the histories of colonial and postcolonial town planning and the marks of transnationalism evident in Accra's salsa scene, gym culture, and commercial billboards. Quayson finds that the various planning systems that have shaped the city—and had their stratifying effects intensified by the IMF-mandated structural adjustment programs of the late 1980s—prepared the way for the early-1990s transformation of a largely residential neighborhood into a kinetic shopping district. With an intense commercialism overlying, or coexisting with, stark economic inequalities, Oxford Street is a microcosm of historical and urban processes that have made Accra the variegated and contradictory metropolis that it is today.
. . . a sophisticated and thoughtful study." —Leeds African Studies Bulletin "A very impressive work . . . in the concreteness of its research documentation as well as in its theoretical scope, this study brings a truly innovative dimension to African literary scholarship, and indeed to the whole field of African studies." —Abiola Irele, Ohio State University "The discussion reveals a combination of formidable analytical and critical strength with a refreshingly open-minded and sensible approach to his field." —Karin Barber, University of Birmingham
Even though diasporas have existed since the dawn of documented history, the scholarly field of Diaspora Studies, marked by specific institutions, conferences, journals, and professional scholars, is of more recent vintage. Since the beginning of the 20th century and with varying historiographic emphases the field has been dominated by studies of the "classic" diasporas, namely the Jewish, Greek, Armenian, and African American. Yet over the past twenty or so years the term has been appropriated by newer groups for different forms of diasporic study. Such groups include the Chinese, the South Asian, the Irish, the Italian, the Caribbean, and various others. Different institutional, political, and historical factors pertaining to the consolidation of the position of various immigrant groups in the United States and in Europe have determined these shifting emphases. It is significant to note in this regard the role that donors with particular cultural leanings have had in setting up centers for studies of various diasporas in some of major universities in the US, Europe and elsewhere. The process is still continuing. Following the writings of cultural critics such as Arjun Appadurai, Robin Cohen, Avtar Brah, Stuart Hall, William Safran, James Clifford, Paul Gilroy and others there has also been an internal differentiation within Diaspora Studies between those that align it closely to analyses of migration and its impact on the nation-state and those who take a more culturalist and processual attitude toward describing the phenomenon. What has not yet been done is a careful exploration of the impact of diaspora and diasporization on the literary imagination. In fact, it is striking how much the field has been defined by the disciplines such as Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, and to a certain degree, History. There has not yet been a thorough and critical examination of diasporic literary writing and how this intersects with other kinds of writing in terms of content, genre, and thematic focus. Even though it proved a useful collection for teaching, Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur's 2003 Theorizing Diaspora does not contain a single chapter that attempts to theorize the field from a literary perspective. The proposed book would fill a very important gap in the field not only by providing a critical/theoretical overview of diasporic literary writing but by doing this in a comparative and interdisciplinary way, reading literary texts against visual representations, sociological accounts and historical interventions to generate a fuller and multi-stranded picture.
Fashionable restaurants for public dining in the grand manner were a Victorian innovation, and in London there were few to rival that of Auguste Kettner, formerly chef to Napoleon III, who opened his Soho establishment in 1867. Kettner's quickly became renowned for champagne, gaiety and gastronomic delights, attracting the custom of leading members of society, the stage and the literary world including King Edward VII and Oscar Wilde. In 1877, Kettner was persuaded to share the benefit of his skill and knowledge of cookery, and this delightful book is the result. Witty, worldly and wonderfully wise, it is a culinary A to Z - from absinthe to zest -- that embraces every Victorian speciality you might want to cook, eat or know about, embellished with anecdotes and gossip. There are recipes aplenty, given in the narrative style of the period, but this is much more than a cookbook -- it is an intimate look at late Victorian and Edwardian society life in its privileged heyday.
As with African Literature: An Anthology edited by Olaniyan and Quayson, the concern here is largely with the modern and postcolonial, and in that context, it is the case that African literature has assimilated western criticism and theory - whether Leavisian, New Critical, poststructuralist, feminist, deconstructive, psychoanalytic, post-colonial, postmodern - in forms unique to its own provenance and cultural history. This short book guides the student of modern African writing through this culturally specific terrain. The reputation of African literature in the field of general literary studies is now indisputable. Both Ato Quayson and Tejumola Olaniyan have had wide experience in teaching such courses not just in their own Universities but elsewhere. There are courses in African literature at almost every reputable university in Europe and America. However, despite its popularity, it is still the case that the debates around African literature have not been set up in any coherent fashion, unlike its counterparts in Europe and elsewhere. Almost only texts that have been available so far have been introductions to literary texts. Quayson and Olaniyan want to strike out with a difference. Their book is designed for undergraduates at all levels, as a major survey of and introduction to various kinds of literary theories and how they have been applied in debates in African literary studies. It will be of immediate interest to those in African literature, Postcolonial literature, African-American and Ethnic Studies, as well as to some lesser extent, Anthropology.
To the Japanese, Hideyoshi Toyotomi (1536-1598) is one of Japan's greatest figures, so revered that he was made a Shinto deity after his death. Statesman and solider, he was the architect of the New Japan centuries before it came into existence, and his personal qualities and vision imprinted themselves on the national character. Hideyoshi is both a historical figure and a semi-mythic symbol of the nation, and Dening addresses both aspects of his life in this classic study. Following Hideyoshi from humble beginnings to the heights of political power and ending with the conflict that followed his death and led to the seizing of power by Tokugawa Ieyasu, Dening's account reads almost like one of the monogatari of old, and this is its great strength, for while describing Toyotomi's political achievements in great detail, he is above all able to convey the strength and nature of the inspiration the nation continues to draw from him.
Their essays each explore the transnational connections between Africa and the West, with Gbadamosi focusing on the effects of an African presence in Brixton Market, and Quayson contemplating the state of Nigeria and the contradictions of nationalism. Both authors make free use of the literary imagination to sketch their vision, while anchoring their arguments in historical analysis.
This collection of Mandela's speeches, letter and writing vividly illustrates the magnetic attractions of one of the foremost campaigners for freedom the world has known. This new edition with revised notes and introduction is a valuable historicaldocument and chronicle of the life and thoughts of a man whose name is synonymous with the fight for human rights and self-determination.
. . . a sophisticated and thoughtful study." —Leeds African Studies Bulletin "A very impressive work . . . in the concreteness of its research documentation as well as in its theoretical scope, this study brings a truly innovative dimension to African literary scholarship, and indeed to the whole field of African studies." —Abiola Irele, Ohio State University "The discussion reveals a combination of formidable analytical and critical strength with a refreshingly open-minded and sensible approach to his field." —Karin Barber, University of Birmingham
Focusing primarily on the work of Samuel Beckett, Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, and J. M. Coetzee, Ato Quayson launches a thoroughly cross-cultural, interdisciplinary study of the representation of physical disability. Quayson suggests that the subliminal unease and moral panic invoked by the disabled is refracted within the structures of literature and literary discourse itself, a crisis he terms "aesthetic nervousness." The disabled reminds the able-bodied that the body is provisional and temporary and that normality is wrapped up in certain social frameworks. Quayson expands his argument by turning to Greek and Yoruba writings, African American and postcolonial literature, depictions of deformed characters in early modern England and the plays of Shakespeare, and children's films, among other texts. He considers how disability affects interpersonal relationships and forces the character and the reader to take an ethical standpoint, much like representations of violence, pain, and the sacred. The disabled are also used to represent social suffering, inadvertently obscuring their true hardships.
Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays presents a defense of universalism as the foundation of moral and political arguments and commitments. Consisting of five intertwined essays, the book claims that centering such arguments and commitments on a particular place, in this instance the African world, is entirely compatible with that foundational universalism. Ato Sekyi-Otu thus proposes a less conventional mode of Africacentrism, one that rejects the usual hostility to universalism as an imperialist Eurocentric hoax. Sekyi-Otu argues that universalism is an inescapable presupposition of ethical judgment in general and critique in particular, and that it is especially indispensable for radical criticism of conditions of existence in postcolonial society and for vindicating visions of social regeneration. The constituent chapters of the book are exhibits of that argument and question some fashionable conceptual oppositions and value apartheids. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the fields of social and political philosophy, contemporary political theory, postcolonial studies, African philosophy and social thought.
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