Contingent Canons
African Literature and the Politics of Location

Drawing on original archival and field research, this Element offers an original and incisive account of the making of African literature.

Madhu Krishnan (Author)

9781108445375, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 November 2018

75 pages
18 x 12.2 x 0.6 cm, 0.12 kg

'… [Madhu Krishnan] makes a compelling argument for expanding and also questioning the dominant perspective of literary and book studies on canonization and African literature.' Dorit Neumann, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität

This Element explores the mechanisms through which 'African literature', as a market category, has been consecrated within the global literary field. Drawing on archival, textual and field-based research, it proposes that the normative story of African literary writing has functioned to efface a broader material history of African literary production located on and oriented to the continent itself.

Introduction
1. Publishing Africa on a global scale
2. Contemporary canons
3. Alternative landscapes
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Modern & contemporary fiction [post c 1945 FA], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]