Swahili Beyond the Boundaries: Literature, Language, and IdentityOhio University Press, 2007 - 206 pages Africa is a marriage of cultures: African and Asian, Islamic and Euro-Christian. Nowhere is this fusion more evident than in the formation of Swahili, Eastern Africa's lingua franca, and its cultures. Swahili Beyond the Boundaries: Literature, Language, and Identity addresses the moving frontiers of Swahili literature under the impetus of new waves of globalization in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These momentous changes have generated much theoretical debate on several literary fronts, as Swahili literature continues to undergo transformation in the mill of human creativity. Swahili literature is a hybrid that is being reconfigured by a conjuncture of global and local forces. As the interweaving of elements of the colonizer and the colonized, this hybrid formation provides a representation of cultural difference that is said to constitute a "third space," blurring existing boundaries and calling into question established identitarian categorizations. This cultural dialectic is clearly evident in the Swahili literary experience as it has evolved in the crucible of the politics of African cultural production. However, Swahili Beyond the Boundaries demonstrates that, from the point of view of Swahili literature, while hybridity evokes endless openness on questions of home and identity, it can simultaneously put closure on specific forms of subjectivity. In the process of this contestation, a new synthesis may be emerging that is poised to subject Swahili literature to new kinds of challenges in the politics of identity, compounded by the dynamics and counterdynamics of post-Cold War globalization. |
Contents
The Intercultural Heritage of Swahili Literature | 15 |
Religion and the Boundaries of Swahili Literature | 83 |
Translation and the ReConfiguration | 123 |
Copyright | |
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Abdalla aesthetic African literature Ahmed Mohamed Ali Mazrui Animal Farm argued Bantu British century Christian classical colonial composed conservationists Daniel Arap Moi Dar es Salaam dialect East African Ebrahim Hussein emergence English erature European example free verse genre German globalization guage Hadithi hili hybridity indigenous influence Islamic katika Kenya Kezilahabi Kiswahili kuwa liberalists linguistic litera Liyongo lugha mashairi Mazrui meter and rhyme missionaries Mombasa Mulokozi Muslim Muyaka Nairobi nationalist Ngugi Njogu novel Nyerere oral original poems poetic poets political postcolonial prose prosodic Publishing House Qur'an regarded religious Salaam schools secular Shakespeare Shariff Sheikh Al-Amin Sheikh Muhammad Kasim short story siku social socialist society Standard Swahili Swahili culture Swahili ethnic Swahili identity Swahili language Swahili literary Swahili literature Swahili poetry Swahili translation Swahili verse Swahili-speaking Tanganyika Tanzania tion tradition translated texts ture ujamaa University Press ushairi Utenzi watu western writing written Zanzibar