Postcolonial Artists and Global Aesthetics [Paperback]

What happens when social and political processes such as globalization shape cultural production? Drawing on a range of writers and filmmakers from Africa and elsewhere, Akin Adesokan explores the forces at work in the production and circulation of culture in a globalized world. He tackles problems such as artistic representation in the era of decolonization, the uneven development of aesthetics across the world, and the impact of location and commodity culture on genres, with a distinctive approach that exposes the global processes transforming cultural forms.

Globalization's literary and artistic effects

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Generic Transformations at the Crossroads of Capital
1. C. L. R. James Sees the World Steadily
2. Fitful Decolonization: Xala and the Poetics of Double Fetishism
3. Tunde Kelani's Nollywood: Aesthetics of Exhortation
4. Jean-Pierre Bekolo and the Challenges of Aesthetic Populism
5. Imaginary Citizenship: Caryl Phillips's Atlantic World
6. Spirits of Bandung: A Sarcastic Subject Writes to Empire
Conclusion: Being African in the World

Notes
List of References
Filmography
Index

Akin Adesokan is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University Bloomington and author of the novelRoots in the Sky. His writings have appeared inScreen, Textual Practice, Chimurenga, andResearch in African Literatures.

In this provocative book, Adesokan (comparative literature, Indiana Univ., Bloomington) argues that genre is shaped by context. For mid-20th-century Africa and much of the world, that context was decolonization, and by the beginning of the 21st century, globalization. The author reveals how the negative aspects of colonialism helped form complex identity issues and the aesthetic restrictions imposed by globalization. He discusses the inherent tensions between decolonization and globalization, using the works of six l“I