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- Convenors:
-
Victoria Osei-Bonsu
(University of Ghana)
Kwame Osei-Poku (University of Ghana)
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- Stream:
- Language and Literature
- Location:
- David Hume, Lecture Theatre A
- Sessions:
- Thursday 13 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
"Border" is defined here loosely as the barrier between two transitional positions. This panel employs this definition to examine the implications of various spatial displacements on identity. Papers will approach this topic by considering identity formations that result from border crossings.
Long Abstract:
"Border" is defined here loosely as the barrier between two transitional positions. This definition is employed to examine the implications of various spatial displacements along cultural, gendered, political, religious, and/or economic lines. While such spatial displacements may occur on different scales within, across or beyond Africa, at each level, they may re-produce open processes of 'becoming' through the construction and negotiation of identities impacted by whatever power relations may be at play. This panel invites papers that will approach this topic by examining, inter alia, the different (asserted, contested, and/or re-shaped) identity formations that result from movement from one undefined or defined territory to the other (conceptually or physically). The panel "Border crossings and Identity" also seeks papers that challenge the strict limitation of ideas and encourages the cross-hatching of diverse disciplinary fields which hinge on the literary culture in interrogating issues of border crossings and identity.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
What does it mean to be / to feel African and European at the same time in cities like Luanda and Maputo? Writers like José Eduardo Agualusa and João Paulo Borges Coelho reflect cultural clashes and controversial identities in their novels.
Paper long abstract:
Some African cities such as Luanda (Angola) and Maputo (Mozambique) have a recent convulsive and controversial history. After the independence of the metropolis, the descendants of Portuguese officials, businessmen or emigrants are driven to an uncertain destiny and feel themselves as sudden foreigners in the country they were born. In Luanda and Maputo, however, a strange coexistence starts between those who have remained, clinging to an identity questioned by the victors of the struggles for independence, and the legitimate residents of the same streets and houses, eager to regain their identity, so often denied by European settlers.
In this paper I analyze the metaphorization of the space that José Eduardo Agualusa and João Paulo Borges Coelho propose in their novels Teoria geral do esquecimento (2012) and Crónica da Rua 513.2 (2006), respectively.
In both Agualusa's Luanda and Borges Coelho's Maputo a process of identification takes place, inevitable and necessary, between the individual and the space that inhabits, which causes cultural clashes amongst (apparently) opposite identities. What does it mean, in these cities, to be European or African?
In a turning point, when the former settlers cross the distance between Europe and Africa in the opposite direction to the usual (from south to north), those who remain in these large, already independent cities are responsible for building a new network of relationships between locals and foreigners and for redefining new identities, way beyond the color of the skin, in order to withstand and face what the future holds.
Paper short abstract:
Migration can lead to composite identities. An interesting case is that of conquest in a territory where language and ethnicity are closely aligned: what happens to the language and the identity of the group whose land has been overrun? We examine two contrasting villages in Northern Ghana.
Paper long abstract:
Spatial displacement usually entails linguistic and cultural contact, from which, composite identities may emerge. Such mobility is never without conflict; and enmity may remain for generations. We look at two villages in the Northern Region of Ghana, where there has been interethnic conflict. Ethnic group and language are closely aligned; we aim to show how earlier conquests have affected this alignment, resulting in ongoing disputes about ownership of territory and mixed identities. Our data is a large-scale language-use questionnaire combined with ethnography, the object of which was to discover language preferences in development communication contexts, either with NGOs or with local residents. Pong-Tamale lies in Dagbon, a former kingdom founded around 1480. In Dagbon, there is no dispute about territory, identity or language. Pong-Tamale contains many migrants from Ghana and surrounding countries; Dagbani is a common lingua franca. However, it faces competition from Hausa, a common lingua franca also used by foreign migrants. Pong-Tamale contrasts with Daboya, a village in the Gonja traditional area. The Gonjas' claim to the land is more recent (17th century), established through conquest. The Gonja language is dominant, but is in competition with others spoken by 'client' tribes in the same villages. Hausa is barely used. In Daboya, there is an uneasy truce between the Gonja and subordinated groups. Unlike in 'plural' Pong-Tamale, identity in Daboya is complex, composite and contextually-contingent - the same individual may claim to be Gonja or (e.g.) Tampulma depending on situation. All this is reflected in language choices.
Paper short abstract:
The paper locates Chikwava and Bulawayo's representations of border crossings in the Zimbabwean crisis as renegade identities as a way to critique the complex narrative of desertion, betrayal and resistances as expressed by the migrating minds and bodies in the two texts.
Paper long abstract:
The Zimbabwean crisis novel has often been a representation of shifting national allegiances which have impacted on personal and national identities. The Zimbabwean crisis literary text, which is associated with the post 2000 land reform heralds personal and national discontent with power as it critiques the Mugabe regime and Zimbabwe's patriotic history. The writers being mostly voluntary exiles themselves represent shifting allegiances and migratory identities in their characters. The characters cross borders in both the physical and psychological senses to produce a whole new complex of subjective border crossings which this study identifies as renegade identities to mark the personal, physical and psychological migration as the characters deal with the changes in the Zimbabwean social, economic and political landscape. The characters' physical 'escape' to the diaspora and the individual transitions they also have to go through in order to adapt to the new environment presents a complex of spatial identities. The paper presents the argumen that the Zimbabwean crisis fashions identities after itself in the two texts. The Zimbabwean who tries to adapt to the changing Zimbabwean milieu and the Zimbabwean who runs away from the country embodies the crisis in search of a new identity for the nation and for himself or herself. The paper will utilise postcolonial theory to critique the identity transitions and complexes that are embedded within the discourse of a Zimbabwe in crisis in Brian Chikwava's Harare North and NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names.
Paper short abstract:
Using Isidore Okpewho's The Last Duty, this paper examines the transgression of deformed bodies into sexually-charged spaces reserved by norm for perfect bodies and how this border crossing (re)defines and (re)constructs identity and personhood.
Paper long abstract:
From the perfect gentleman in oral folktales to Amos Tutuola's "a full-bodied gentleman reduced to head" (in The Palm-Wine Drinkard) to Calixthe Beyala's Lame-Leg (in Your Name Shall Be Tanga), African writers have been obsessed with and have sustained the narrative of the able/perfect body as norm for the sexual. The idea that bodies that are different/deformed could not be sexual has been so dominant in African fiction over time that in the instances where it happens, attention is drawn to it (both within and without the text) as an aberration, a border crossing. Often, in the creation and sustenance of this "aberration", a reductionism occurs in which the deformity of the characters overtakes and drowns out their identity and personhood. This paper reads Isidore Okpewho's The Last Duty against the grid of the established trope of the perfect body in African prose narratives, focusing on the novel's use of sexuality and deformity as inclusive (and not exclusive) identity markers. Okpewho's The Last Duty pays attention to the re-validation of the personhood of the body with deformity in a way that affirms the body's sexuality as well as its ability to give and receive pleasure, thereby challenging and shifting the borders that define who can(not) be sexual. Odibo's sexual experience marks his transition from "deformed" to "re-/fully- formed" and the beginning of his re-integration/inclusion into his society as a person and not a deformed body.
Key words: (dis)ability, deformity, sexuality, able/perfect body, identity, personhood
Paper short abstract:
The forceful capture and transfer of slaves from their homes violates all aspects of human rights. It has affected blacks at both sides of the Atlantic. The disruptions transcend physical boundaries.
Paper long abstract:
The connection between slaves, descendants of slaves and the African continent is one that transcends time and space, and is powerful enough to reach out to future generations to establish a link. Several descendants of slaves, some with no immediate link to Africa, have attested to this powerful connection to their ancestral land. Some have experienced varying degrees of a "pull" that "calls" them to Africa in search of their roots and their identity. Several African and African American literary works have dealt with the subject. Using Isidore Okpewho's Call Me by My Rightful Name, this paper explores the spatial, cultural and generational boundaries (or lack thereof) in the work. The main character, Otis, is a young college student in the 1960s United States. He is forced to confront his ancestry when he suddenly starts to manifest some form of spiritual possession that cannot be explained medically. He is led on a physical, spiritual and ancestral journey to Nigeria where he is confronted with his ancestry and the Nigerian way of life. The paper will examine the powerful links in ancestry that transcend generations, space, culture and time, the belief in reincarnation and the role of memory, as well as the idea that boundaries are a man-made construct that often hinder a richer experience of ancestral presence within the physical world setting.
Keywords: boundary, ancestry, time, generation, space, culture
Paper short abstract:
The process of physically traversing borders influences the way in which the body, as the bearer of identity, is interpreted and enacted - i.e. the way in which identity is performed. What is the link between the psychological understanding and the corporeal somatization of spatial displacement?
Paper long abstract:
The border is not just a geographical entity but any boundary between two distinct positions or conditions. The body, too, is a border for it separates our inner self from "the others"; it is the barrier shielding our ideas, opinions, personalities. It is also bounded by culture, that is, the body is interpreted and manipulated in accordance with the cultural and aesthetical practices of the social group to which it belongs. Thus, in the context of geographical displacement, the body of the traveller faces a twofold crossing of the border. The first is the obvious physical transition from one place to the other. The second (and more epistemological) consists in the re-reading of the body and its possible reinterpretation and rearrangement; this can be due to the change of the traveller's spirit resulting from the exposure to different lifestyles, customs, and aesthetical criteria and practices, as much as from the relation of the migrant with the natives of the host societies'. Through the analysis of two novels that recount the experiences of black female bodies as they move to and fro across borders, Ken Bugul's Riwan ou Le chemin de sable (1999) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah (2013), this paper will explore the ways in which a body can be the physical remainder of someone's provenience, how it is turned into the place where identity is debated and contended, and the multiple possibilities for decoding and recoding it before, during, and after the departure from the homeland and return.
Paper short abstract:
Black women's sexuality has been shaped by various narratives over time and space. Using examples from literature, history, anthropology and popular culture, this paper shows how various factors have mediated the formulation of a black women's sexuality that crosses time and space
Paper long abstract:
Sexuality serves as a key aspect of human identity and has been an area of much interest to many scholars. Attempts have been made to understand and categorize 'black sexuality' largely as 'other' from the Western perspective. Black women's sexuality in particular has been mystified, exoticized , silenced, and exploited. Several factors over time have also governed the sexuality of black women including slavery and colonialism.
This paper interrogates the narratives around black women's sexuality per research done by anthropologists and other scholars to tease out the recurrent themes and areas of diverging opinion. Data sources for this paper included ethnographic works, journal articles, websites and reports on popular culture. The paper highlights key areas that have been of interest to researchers of black women's sexuality and draws out the ways these narratives have shaped the black woman's identity.
Past and contemporary Western and Western-influenced researchers have depicted black sexualities in general and black women's sexualities in particular as primitive and posing a danger to civilized man. Additionally, the sexuality of the African woman is often portrayed as functional, a means to ensuring procreation, a key goal of many African societies. Black women's attempts to attain sexual liberation through creative means such as music is seen to be often met with bewildered criticism and awed fascination. Overall, there is a dearth of research on black female homosexualities and black women's sexual expression for its own sake, not as a societal function. There is therefore potential for further research in these areas.