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Contemporary Ugandan Speculative Fiction: A Passing Fad or anEmerging Canon?
- Edited by Louisa Uchum Egbunike, Chimalum Nwankwo
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- Book:
- ALT 39
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 07 October 2022
- Print publication:
- 19 November 2021, pp 95-110
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
Helon Habila declares that The Granta Bookof African Short Stories should be canonized ifafter ten years of its publication it still ‘illuminates thepreoccupations and concerns, literary and social, of the times’(10). Although his test of time as a measure of literary meritis vastly shorter than the standard 100 years, I agree thatthematic relevance and stylistic innovativeness are robustgrounds for canonization. Using Habila's yardstick ofcanonization, I strongly recommend for the inclusion of InnocentAcan's ‘The Machodugo’, Lillian Aujo's ‘Where Pumpkin LeavesDwell’, and Dilman Dila's ‘The Last Storyteller’ in the Ugandanliterary canon. My justification for their inclusion is due tohow their respective authors deploy tropes of speculativefiction to showcase Ugandan dystopic social collectives.Furthermore, I argue that the speculative fiction motifs of theselected texts enable their writers to become Wale Adebanwi's‘social thinkers’. Adebanwi argues that writers are ‘not merelyintellectuals whose work mirror or can be used to mirror socialthought, but are social thinkers themselves who engage with thenature of existence and questions of knowledge’ (‘The Writer asSocial Thinker’; 406). The essence of Adebanwi's argument isthat writers do more than faithfully imitate the reality oftheir societies. They use their work to discuss and take a standon pertinent issues affecting society. African writers may nottell readers how to think about important societal issues, buttheir work raises consciousness concerning what issues are worththinking about.
The importance of writers in distilling profound insights aboutsocietal conditions is a point of agreement between Adebanwi andHabila. It is this role of writers that justifies the inclusionof any author's works in the canon of his/her society. Myproposition to include Acan's ‘The Machodugo’, Aujo's ‘WherePumpkin Leaves Dwell’, and Dila's ‘The Last Storyteller’ in theUgandan literary canon recalls Janice Radway's argument that‘works are selected on the basis of aesthetic achievement’(Reading the Romance: 3). Shegoes on to note that canonized texts may not ‘necessarily berepresentative of the large section of the population that hadnever read them’ (3). In these quotations, Radway makes twoimportant comments.
The City as a Metaphor of Safe Queer Experimentation in Monica Arac de Nyeko's ‘Jambula Tree’ & Beatrice Lamwaka's ‘Pillar of Love’
- from ARTICLES
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- By Edgar Nabutanyi, Lecturer in the Department of Literature, Makerere University.
- Ernest N. Emenyonu, John C. Hawley
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- Book:
- ALT 36: Queer Theory in Filmand Fiction
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 March 2020
- Print publication:
- 16 November 2018, pp 82-95
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
In the last 15 years, there has emerged in the Ugandan public sphere what can be called a tradition of queer writing, delineating three trajectories. First, there is a furiously homophobic tabloid press, represented by the Red Pepper tabloid, whose writing about same-sex activity frames this sexuality as an existential threat to the Ugandan society. Second, there is the Ugandan academia, represented by Sylvia Tamale and Stella Nyanzi, who write proffering universalist human rights statutes in support of Ugandans who engage in samesex sexuality. Third, there are fictional writers such as Monica Arac de Nyeko, Beatrice Lamwaka, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and Nakisanze Segawa who use fiction to debate this phenomenon. It is important to note that the thread that links the tabloid press, scholarly research and fictional writing in Ugandan homosexuality writing is the fact that often the Ugandan homosexual is a resident of the city. In fact, it can be argued that since the writers are themselves city residents, it is perhaps inevitable that they should locate their subjects in the metropolis.
If the intersection between Ugandan journalistic, academic and fictional writing lies in the fact that these nodes of knowledge production construct the metropolis as a space for possible performance of queerness, then it is useful to interrogate the forms of knowledge production about queerness that are made possible by an urban setting. This question reminds us of Wale Adebanwi's observation that African writers are social thinkers postulating an insightful overview of the African essence. He argues that African writers are ‘not merely intellectuals whose works mirror or can be used to mirror social thought, but [are] social thinkers themselves who engage with the nature of existence and questions of knowledge’ (‘The Writer as Social Thinker’: 406). Adebanwi's point in the above passage is that African writers use fiction to distil the essence, agency and worldview of African subjects. Given that homosexuality is contemporary Africa's most polarising subject, it is plausible to argue that writers like Makumbi, Arac de Nyeko, Lamwaka and Nakisanze are using fiction to enact platforms and congregate publics to debate this phenomenon.