DOCSLIB.ORG

I ZPH WRITERS SERIES

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
I ZPH WRITERS SERIES ZPH WRITERS SERIES 1Waitinc for the Rain 24 Maru Charles Mungoshi -JBessie Head 2 Coming of the Dry Season 25 The Grass is Singinn Charles Mungoshi Doris Lessing 3 Up in Arms 26 So Long a Letter Chenjerai Hove Manama Ba 4 House of Hunger 27 Unwinding Threads Dambudzo Marechera ed. Charlotte Brunei S Baltlefront Namibia 28 Tsanga Yembeu John ya-Otto Ngugi wa Thiong’o 6 Umzenzi Kakhalelwa 29 On the Road Again Lenah Mazibuko Freedom Nyamubaya 7 Runako Munjodzi 30 I Win Marry When I Want N.M. Mutasa Ngugi wa Thiong’o 8 Bandiet: Seven Years in and Ngugi wa Mini a South African Prison 31 Tenderness of Blood Hugh Lewin Mandia Langa 9 Petals of Blood 32 The Lion and The Jewel Ngugi wa Thiong’o Wole Soyinka 10 No Easy Walk to Freedom 33 A Wife for My Son Nelson Mandela Ail Ghalern 11 Down Second Avenue 34 And Night Fell Ezekiel Mphahlele Molefe Pheto 12 Tell Freedom 35 We killed Mangy-Dog JPeter Abrahams Luis Bernardo Honwana 13 The Trial of Dedan Kimathi Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo 14 Devil on the Cross Ngugi wa Thiong’o I Will Wail by Bertha Msoia and 15 The Non-Believer’s Journey Kulongwa kwaDedan Kimathi by Stanley Nyamfukudza Ngugi \va Thiong’o and Micere 16 Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura? Mugo are also published by ZPH. Charles Mungoshi The River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Things Fall Apart by 17 The Identity Card Chinua Achebe and No Longer at J.M. Adiaffi Ease by Chinua Achebe are 18 Mayombe published by Zimbabwe Pepetela Educational Books and are 19 A Grain of Wheat available through ZPH. Ngugi wa Thiong’o 20 God’s Bits of Wood Sembene Ousmane 21 Shadows on the Horizon Stephen Mpofu 22 Zvairwadza Vasara Gonzo H. Musengc/i 23 A Storm is Brewing Krislina Rungano i ii Decolonising the Mind iii Dedication This book is greatefully dedicated to all those who write in African languages, and to all those who over the years have maintained the dignity of the literature, culture, philosophy, and other treasures carried by African languages. iv Ngugi wa Thiong’o Decolonising the Mind The Politics of Language in African Literature ZIMBABWE PUBLISHING HOUSE v Zimbabwe Publishing House (Pvt.) Ltd. P.O. Box 350 Harare, Zimbabwe Ngugi wa Thiong’o 1981 First published 1987 by ZPH. Reprinted 1994 ISBN 0 949225 38 X All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers. Printed in Zimbabwe at 14 Austin Road, Workington, Harare vi Contents Acknowledgements vi Preface vii A Statement xi Introduction : Towards the Universal Language of Struggle 1 1. The Language of African Literature 4 2. The Language of African Theatre 34 3. The Language of African Fiction 63 4. The Quest for Relevance 87 Index vii Acknowledgements "The Language of African Literature' has a long history. Part of it was originally given as a paper at a conference organised by Trie Writers Association of Kenya in December 1981 on the theme 'Writing for our Children'. A slightly altered version of the original paper was also given at a conference on Language and African Literature at the University of Calabar, Nigeria in 1982. The same version - again slightly altered - was tabled at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair in 1983 and subsequently published in an African Writers Association (AWA) newsletter in the same year. The present is an expanded version and goes very much beyond the scope of the one preceding it. An abridged version of this paper was first read at a university seminar at the Bayreuth University in July 1984. The same, only slightly changed to suit the occasion, was read as the opening speech at the Conference on New Writing from Africa, at the Commonwealth Institute in London in December 1984. The paper, slightly abridged, was first published in New Left Review no. 150 in 1985. "The Language of African Theatre' was also read at the University of Zimbabwe in August 1984 under the auspices of the Literature Department and the Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production. 'The Language of African Fiction' has also been read in Harare, Zimbabwe under the auspices of the Institute of Development Studies in August 1984 and at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, in February 1985. viii Preface I was glad to be asked to give the 1984 Robb lectures in honour of Sir Douglas Robb, former Chancellor of Auckland University and one of New Zealand's most distinguished surgeons. Universities today, particularly in Africa, have become the modern patrons for the artist. Most African-writers are products of universities: indeed a good number of them still combine academic posts and writing. Also, a writer and a surgeon have something in common - a passion for truth. Prescription of the correct cure is dependent on a rigorous analysis of the reality. Writers are surgeons of the heart and souls of a community. And finally the lectures would never have been written, at, least not in the year 1984, without the invitation from Auckland University. I want to thank the Chancellor, Dr Lindo Ferguson, the Vice-Chancellor, Dr Colin Maiden, the Registrar, Mr Warwick Nicholl and their staff for both the invitation and the warm reception. Professor Michael Neil and Mr Sebastion Black were meticulous and helpful in all the arrangements. They, together with Professor Terry Sturm and the staff of the English Department, made me feel at home. Thanks also to Wanjiku Kiarii and Martyn Sanderson for their friendship and constant attention during the visit. and for readily participating in the lectures as actors with only short notice; to Professor Albert Wendt, the Samoan novelist, and his wife Jenny, who laid on a big reception for us at their home at the University of South Pacific, Fiji, and took time to drive us around Suva; to Pat Hohepa who arranged a very, moving Maori welcome; and to all the Maori people inside and outside the University who welcomed us in their houses or places of work. A sante sana! I felt particularly touched by the welcome I received from the Maori people and it will long live in my memory. There is a lot to learn from the culture of Maori people, a culture which has such vitality, strength and beauty: the vitality, strength and beauty of resistance. I was happy therefore that my lectures on The Politics of Language in African ix Literature' coincided with Maori language week. Long live the language and the struggling culture of the Maori people! Apart from the stimulus of the New Zealand invitation, the lectures owed a lot to the time I spent at the Bayreuth University in West Germany as a Guest Professor attached to the Department of English and Comparative Literature from 15 May to 15 July 1984. I want to thank Professor H. Ruppert, co- ordinator of the special research project on identity in Africa, and the German Research Council for the invitation; and Professor Richard Taylor and the entire staff of the English department for their warm reception. I would like to single out Dr Reinhard Sander (who arranged the visit), Dr Rhonda Cobham, Dr Eakhard Breitinger, Dr Jurgen Martini and Margit Wermter, for making their time available and for providing me with a cosy and stimulating intellectual atmosphere for work. To Dr Bachir Diagne from Senegal, with whom I shared the house at St Johannes village, I feel a special indebtedness for all the sessions on mathematical logic, Louis Althusier, Michael Pecheux, Pierre Macherey, Ferdinand de Saussure, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Wolof, African philosophy and much more. He also did translations of some passages from French into English. The fact that these lectures were ready in time for delivery owed a lot to Eva Lanno. Although the first lecture was written and the general framework of the rest worked out in Bayreuth, the actual composition and writing of the other three and the typing of all four was done in New Zealand. Eva typed them, the last two as I was writing them, amidst working out the travel plans and appointments and rushing to the libraries and bookshops for urgently needed references. And finally these lectures would not have been possible without the inspiring patriotic friendship of all my Kenyan compatriots abroad, particularly those in Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Zimbabwe; and to all the friends of Kenyan people's struggles for democratic and human rights. I don't mention their names here for reasons that lie outside this book. But the strength to write the lectures and other books I have written since 1982 under the harsh conditions of my present existence has come from them. Over the years I have come to realise more and more that work, any work, even literary creative work, is not the result of an individual genius but the result of a collective effort. There are so many inputs in the actual formation of an image, an idea, a line of argument and even sometimes the formal arrangement. The very words we use are x a product of a collective history. So, too, is the present work. I owe a lot to the people who have contributed to the great debate on the language of African literature, in particular to the late David Diop of Senegal, and to Obi Wali of Nigeria who made the historic intervention in 1964. There are many others. African linguists for instance have been more progressive in their outlook on the language issue than their counterparts in creative literature.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • WELKOM Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association
    ACLA 2017 ACLA WELKOM Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association ACLA 2017 | Utrecht University TABLE OF CONTENTS Welcome and Acknowledgments ...............................................................................................4 Welcome from Utrecht Mayor’s Office .....................................................................................6 General Information ................................................................................................................... 7 Conference Schedule ................................................................................................................. 14 Biographies of Keynote Speakers ............................................................................................ 18 Film Screening, Video Installation and VR Poetry ............................................................... 19 Pre-Conference Workshops ...................................................................................................... 21 Stream Listings ..........................................................................................................................26 Seminars in Detail (Stream A, B, C, and Split Stream) ........................................................42 Index......................................................................................................................................... 228 CFP ACLA 2018 Announcement ...........................................................................................253 Maps
    [Show full text]
  • Juz021001007.Pdf
    The African e-Journals Project has digitized full text of articles of eleven social science and humanities journals. This item is from the digital archive maintained by Michigan State University Library. Find more at: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/ Available through a partnership with Scroll down to read the article. Zambezia (1994), XXI (i). BOOK REVIEWS Southern Africa After Apartheid: Regional Integration and External Resources Edited by B. Oden. Uppsala, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1993, 271 pp., ISBN 97-7106-332-3, Z$27. This volume consists of a collection of papers presented anonymously in a seminar organized by the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies in May 1992. The contributors are in the main a group of academics and some public officials from the Scandinavian countries and Southern Africa (Botswana and South Africa). The volume is divided into four main areas, viz., theory oriented, issue oriented, organization oriented and external resource oriented perspectives. Many of the chapters summarize existing literature (often without references) rather than contribute new data or new perspectives. Of academic interest are the theory oriented perspectives, the first of which summarizes the available literature on the theories of regional integration, namely the classical approach, the developmental approach and the neo-functional approach. The relevance of these theories to Southern Africa is critically evaluated and this evaluation seems to agree with the available literature concluding that none of the above theories suits the conditions in Southern Africa. The reasons for this conclusion lie in the fact that the circumstances in the sub-region differ within and between countries.
    [Show full text]
  • Vindicating Dambudzo Marechera: Features of Cultic Remembering Anna-Leena TOIVANEN University of Eastern Finland, Finland
    Nordic Journal of African Studies 22(4): 256–273 (2013) Vindicating Dambudzo Marechera: Features of Cultic Remembering Anna-Leena TOIVANEN University of Eastern Finland, Finland ABSTRACT The article approaches the ongoing cultic phenomenon around the Zimbabwean author Dambudzo Marechera from the viewpoint of cultic remembrance. The diverse text corpus concerned with the writer is marked by nuances of regret and loss. These affects reveal a sense of guilt that envelops the author‘s memory, as well as a willingness to compensate the past wrongdoings to which Marechera is seen to become subjected. The sadness around Marechera‘s memory seems to spring from the conception that Marechera was misunderstood during his lifetime. Currently, however, he is seen to have been ahead of his time, a postcolonial writer avant la lettre , and a talent wasted in a hostile environment. What adds to Marechera‘s “tragedy” is that he is interpreted to have predicted the Zimbabwe crisis. Today, Marechera is seen to haunt the world of the living in a ghostly manner, which indicates a melancholic unwillingness to accept the writer‘s loss. Keywords : authorial image, cult, cultural memory, Dambudzo Marechera, Zimbabwe 1. INTRODUCTION Representations of the life story of the Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera (1952–1987) are shaded by sadness. He died at the age of 35, or “in his prime”, as it is frequently expressed in texts dealing with his legacy. The works 1 of the author, repeatedly described as controversial, had a polarized reception: he was both celebrated as an award-winning literary genius and condemned for betraying his people and had one of his novels banned in Zimbabwe.
    [Show full text]
  • The Cat in the House: Marechera Reads Hemingway
    Postcolonial Text, Vol 11, No 2 (2016) The Cat in the House: Marechera Reads Hemingway Alan Ramón Ward University of British Columbia As early critics have noted with some disapproval, Dambudzo Marechera’s style in The House of Hunger seems more informed by the individualistic, self-tortured narratives of modern western writing than an organically African tradition. Anna-Leena Toivanen remarks that “Marechera was accused of being too European” in his aesthetic (“Writer” 184), and that he was “too westernized and individualistic, lacking ‘serious commitment’ to the anti-colonial struggle” (“Receiving” 16). Juliet Okonkwo called him “decadent” (91); Mbulelo Mzamane accused him of cynicism and disillusionment (224); Dan Wylie criticized his focus on an “individual and rampantly esoteric sensibility” (60). Thankfully, the suggestion that Marechera is somehow anti-African has been variously and convincingly discredited (see, for instance, Toivanen, “Writer”; Pattison). Yet it must not be forgotten that Marechera counts European writers among his strongest literary influences. Ernest Hemingway’s name appears explicitly in most of Marechera’s collections. The mention is usually tiny and inconsequential, as in Scrapiron Blues: “Hemingway was a writer who shot himself in the head (dead) with a very big, a very ugly rifle” (244); or characteristically cryptic, as in Black Sunlight: “the big and Hemingway fish that was the mote in his eye” (74). And yet Hemingway’s brief mention in Mindblast, in which Marechera describes himself as following “the myth of the hard-drinking novelist, trying to out-Hemingway Ernest Hemingway in seedy whorehouse bars in Zimbabwe” (123), suggests to me the worthwhile exploration of a notional correspondence that I always felt connected Marechera’s work with Hemingway’s.
    [Show full text]
  • Forms of Hypocrisy in the Writings of Dambudzo Marechera
    FORMS OF HYPOCRISY IN THE WRITINGS OF DAMBUDZO MARECHERA by \ PAULS JONAH ZINAKA Thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of English at the UNIVERSITY OF STELLENBOSCH Co-supervised by Dr A. Gagiano and Dr S. Nuttall December 1999 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Declaration I, the undersigned, hereby declare that the work contained in this thesis is my own original work and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it at any university for a degree. Signature: _.fi2~ __________ Date: _~~!.!.:~'L __ Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Abstract. Perceiving every established notion as inherently entrapping, Dambudzo Marechera rejects and strives to elude all manner of categorisation which tends to submerge one's individuality. His fundamental conviction is that only those whose motive is to exercise power over other human beings insist on fixed notions such a~ nation, race, culture, religion and ideology. This is because such self-seekers realise that hur:nan beings tend to be more susceptible to manipulation if they identify themselves with established categories or discourses. Given the trend in African writing during the anti-colonial period to identify with nationalist discourse, Marechera cuts the figure of a literary funambulist: not only does he refuse to write for a specific nation or race, but he also dismisses fixed notions of nation and race as spurious Machiavellian fabrications aimed at fossilising people's minds for purposes of easier regimentation. Predictably, Marechera invokes the wrath of nationalist critics who see in him a self-deprecating African reactionary or a mere Uncle Tom who affects European avant-gardism.
    [Show full text]
  • Ben Okri, Chenjerai Hove, Dambudzo Marechera
    BOEHMER Makeup 3/22/05 2:55 PM Page 140 John's G5:Users:john:Public:John's Mac: John's Job 8 The nation as metaphor: Ben Okri, Chenjerai Hove, Dambudzo Marechera metaphors are the public history of nations (with apologies to Balzac). (Timothy Brennan, ‘The National Longing for Form’)1 Unreal nation The first, post-1945 phase of anti-colonial nationalism in Africa, as in other colonised regions, was distinguished by literal belief structures: a strong, teleo- logical faith in the actual existence of the nation as ‘people’, and the sense that history essentially unfolded as a process of that nation’s coming-into-being. There was a belief, too, in Africa as in South Asia, as in the Caribbean, that the distinctive forms of modernity, in this case in particular the sovereign state, could be incorporated, indigenised, repatriated.2 These may seem at face value rather obvious statements to make about nationalism, which broadly demands some form of belief in the national entity, and acts of loyalty expressed towards it. Yet the obviousness here is part of the point. In post-independence Africa, as in other former colonies, the nation as a group defined by particular observ- able traits and/or a distinctive, ascertainable history, was for some time believed to have a geopolitical, historical and even spiritual existence. Crucially, it was also seen to provide a means through which identities detached from European stereotypes, and distinctive, local (in this case African) modernities might be generated. However, in the decades since independence, as the coherence of the nation – whether as geophysical space, symbolic leadership or unitary people – has been questioned in various ways, especially perhaps in Africa, national self- awareness in fiction, if not the concept of the nation itself, has undergone sig- nificant shifts and revisions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Family As a Contested Arena: Voices of Discontent in Charles Mungoshi’S Works in Shona and English
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Wits Institutional Repository on DSPACE The Family as a Contested Arena: Voices of Discontent in Charles Mungoshi’s Works in Shona and English Thabisani Ndlovu A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, June 2011 Declaration I declare that this thesis is my own unaided work. It is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been submitted before for any other degree or examination at any other university. ------------------------------ Thabisani Ndlovu -------- DAY OF ------- 2011 i Dedication To my wife Siphathisiwe and our sons, Malcolm and Thando. If there are words to thank you for your love and patience, I haven‟t found them yet. ii Abstract This thesis explores ideologies of intimate attachments and offers an overall critique of the ideology(ies) of family as evinced by Mungoshi‟s ironic treatment of this theme. A close reading of Zimbabwe through the oft-cherished institution of family, an argument is made here, multiplies fields and possibilities of meaning beyond the struggle against colonialism and cultural imperialism. It is suggested that instead of viewing the family as political allegory and unitary, it is profitable to perceive it as consisting of a multiplicity of contesting voices and/or interests. These voices include those of children, women, young adults, lone parents, homosexuals and heterosexual men with thwarted gender identities.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Marechera's House of Hunger'
    International Journal of English and Literature Vol. 2(4), pp. 83-88, May 2011 Available online http://www.academicjournals.org/ijel ISSN 2141-2626 ©2011 Academic Journals Review A psychoanalytic reading of ‘Marechera’s house of hunger’, ‘the black insider’ and ‘mindblast’ Mika Nyoni Curriculum Studies Department, the Great Zimbabwe University, P. O. Box 1235, Masvingo, Zimbabwe. E-mail: [email protected]. Accepted Date 27 January, 2011 This paper analyses three works of art namely ‘House of Hunger’, ‘The Black Insider’ and ‘Mindblast’ by one of Zimbabwe’s most famous, talented and controversial authors, Dambudzo Marechera, using mainly psychoanalytic tools of inquiry. The aforementioned works of fiction have been carefully chosen to sample the writer’s skills and concerns as a poet, playwright and novelist extraordinaire. These works, which were written between 1978 and 1984, give a fair representation of the said author’s vast and varied skills whose works according to one critic ‘read a little like a clever dissertation for a PhD’ (Veit-Wild, 1992: 17) yet he never completed a first degree! Key words: ‘House of Hunger’, ‘The Black Insider’, ‘Mindblast’. INTRODUCTION AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Psychoanalysis ‘reads the past in order to make sense of closely intertwined (Eagleton, 1985). The ‘form’ can be the present. Like a detective story, it starts with effects seen as the physical structure of a work of art, its and traces these effects back to origins’ (Jefferson and anatomy, while the content is its message, substance or Robey (Eds), 1986: 150). Because psychoanalytic ‘chemical content’. In a nutshell, the form is the criticism realizes the importance of the background of the shell/package or conveyor belt of the message.
    [Show full text]
  • I DAMBUDZO MARECHERA
    DAMBUDZO MARECHERA: A PSYCHOBIOGRAPHICAL STUDY Kudakwashe C. Muchena 210106646 Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Magister Artium (Psychology) Faculty of Health Sciences Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University November 2013 Supervisor: Professor Greg Howcroft Co-Supervisor Professor Louise Stroud i PHOTOGRAPH OF DAMBUDZO MARECHERA ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend my most sincere gratitude to the following people for their encouragement and support throughout this process: Firstly, to both my supervisor Prof. Greg Howcroft and my co-supervisor Prof. Louise Stroud for their commitment, patience, guidance, tenacious support and faith in me. To my late mother who was the driving force regarding my studies as far back as I can remember. Although she did not understand what I was doing she still supported me unconditionally. Without her constant encouragement, motivation and strength I would not have made it this far. She has been a source of inspiration throughout my career. To my patient family and friends for their unwavering support. iii DECLARATION I, Kudakwashe C Muchena, hereby declare that the dissertation for Magister Artium (Psychology) is my own work and that it has not previously been submitted for assessment or completion of any postgraduate qualification to another University or for another qualification. Kudakwashe C. Muchena Signature__________________________________ Date______________________________________ iv ABSTRACT Marechera the Zimbabwean writer, poet and novelist emerged in the late 1970s as a new voice in African literature, but his writing career lasted less than a decade. It was his iconoclastic, dense style that expressed the psychological disintegration prevalent in Africa during this period and challenged the central beliefs of both the nationalist and post- independence eras.
    [Show full text]
  • 30-African-Poet.Pdf
    1 Tchicaya U Tam'si Tchicaya U Tam'si (25 August 1931 - 22 April 1988 ) was a Congolese author. His official name is Gérald- Félix Tchicaya; his artist name means "small paper that speaks for a country" in Kikongo. Life Born in Mpili in 1931, U Tam'si spent his childhood in France, where he worked as a journalist until he returned to his homeland in 1960. Back in Congo, he continued to work as a journalist; during this time he maintained contact to the politician Patrice Lumumba. In 1961, he started to work for UNESCO. He died in Bazancourt, near Paris. Since 1989, the Tchicaya U Tam'si-Award is given every two years for African poetry in the small Moroccan city of Asilah. Style 2 U Tam'si's poetry incorporates elements of surrealism; it often has vivid historic images, and comments African life and society, as well as humanity in general. Works Ces fruits si doux de l'arbre a pain 1990 Les Cancrelats 1980 La veste d'intérieur suivi de Notes de veille 1977 À triche-coeur 1960 Feu de brousse 1957 Mauvais Sang1955 3 Kofi Awoonor Kofi Awoonor (13 March 1935 Ŕ 21 September 2013) was a Ghanaian poet and author whose work combined the poetic traditions of his native Ewe people and contemporary and religious symbolism to depict Africa during decolonization. He started writing under the name George Awoonor-Williams. He taught African literature at the University of Ghana. Professor Awoonor was among those who were killed in the September 2013 attack at Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was a participant at the Storymoja Hay Festival Biography Awoonor was born in Ghana when it was still called the Gold Coast.
    [Show full text]
  • Artikelsammlung Al Imfeld
    Artikelsammlung Al Imfeld Inventar erstellt von Nicole Schmid; Christa Baumberger, 2021-06-30 Litar Letzistrasse 23, CH-8006 Zürich Telefon +41 44 291 99 00 [email protected] www.litar.ch Übersicht Autor/Urheber: Al Imfeld Titel: Artikelsammlung Al Imfeld Eckdaten der Dokumente: 1950-2012 Signatur: D-01-01-a bis D-76-h 1 Biographische Angaben Der Schweizer Theologe und Afrikajournalist Al Imfeld (1935-2017) war einer der ersten im deutschen Sprachraum, der sich für die Literaturen aus Afrika einsetzte und persönlichen Kontakt zu vielen Autorinnen und Autoren pflegte. Imfelds erste Station in seinem beruflichen Werdegang war die Missionsgesellschaft Bethlehem in Immensee, wo er zum Priester geweiht wurde. Danach folgten ein Studium der Theologie, ein Doktorat in evangelischer Theologie sowie ein Priesteramt in den USA. In Harlem (New York) lernte er in den 1960er Jahren Martin Luther King Jr. kennen. Aufgrund Imfelds politischen Engagements in der Bürgerrechtsbewegung wurde ihm das Priesteramt entzogen. Imfeld absolvierte während seiner akademischen Laufbahn weitere Studienabschlüsse in Soziologie, Journalismus und Tropenlandwirtschaft. Im Rahmen seiner journalistischen Tätigkeit wurde Imfeld 1966 von der Washington Post während des Vietnamkriegs als Sonderkorrespondent nach Vietnam entsandt. Dort traf und interviewte er Ho Chi Minh. Ende der 1960er Jahre wurde Imfeld dann aber auf Anweisung von der Missionsgesellschaft nach Rhodesien (heutiges Zimbabwe) geschickt, wo er beim Aufbau der Presse mitwirkte. Anschliessend folgten Stationen in diversen Ländern des afrikanischen Kontinents, etwa in Malawi, Tansania und Kenia. Ab den 1970er Jahren engagierte sich Imfeld vor allem als Vermittler afrikanischer Kulturen und Literaturen in der Schweiz und in Deutschland: Er war Gründer vom Informationsdienst Dritte Welt (i3w), Mitherausgeber der Romanreihe Dialog Afrika, Förderer afrikanischer Bücher an der Frankfurter Buchmesse, Mitbegründer der LiteraturNachrichten sowie Redakteur der Zeitschrift Neue Wege.
    [Show full text]
  • X-Rays of Self and Society: Dambudzo Marechera's Avant-Gardism Amd Its Implications for Debates Concerning Zimbabwean Litera
    "X-RAYS" OF SELF AND SOCIETY: DAMBUDZO MARECHERA'S AVANT-GARDISM AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR DEBATES CONCERNING ZIMBABWEAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE BY DREW CAMPBELL SHAW University of Cape Town Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English University of Cape Town 1997 The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town t...{t '601o St\f\w ~1/ JltJC;;Cf 1 DEC 1997 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My deepest gratitude goes to Joan and Syd Shaw, my parents, for their unwavering support throughout this project. I am also indebted to Roshila Nair, Gabeba Baderoon, and Angelo Pick for their expert advice and assistance; and to Pumla Qqola, Maura O'Gara, Colette Guldimann, and other graduate students at UCT, whose support and reassurances have been invaluable. Finally, I am sincerely grateful to my supervisor, Kelwyn Sole, for the thoroughness and professionalism of his advice and feedback. The views expressed in this thesis are my own. ABSTRACT This thesis discusses Dambudzo Marechera's avant-gardism and its significance in the context of Zimbabwean literature and culture. I use the term avant-garde to describe Marechera's defiance of hegemonies, traditions, and prescriptions for writing, as well as his innovations with form and style.
    [Show full text]