Writing through the Visual and Virtual

Inscribing Language, Literature, and Culture in Francophone Africa and the Caribbean

Contributions by Bertrade Ngo-Ngijol Banoum, Gabrielle Civil, Barbara Cooper, Bojana Coulibaly, Rokhaya Fall Diawara, Khady Diène, Oumar Diogoye Diouf, Nathan H. Dize, Gladys M. Francis, Maha Gad El Hak, Boureima Alpha Gado, Amanda Gilvin, Donna Gustafson, Fakhri Haghani, Phuong Hoang, Julie Huntington, Laurence Jay-Rayon, Abdoulaye Elimane Kane, Jean Hérald Legagneur, Anne Rehill, Anne Patricia Rice, Edwige Sylvestre-Ceide, Becky Schulthies, Jean-Baptiste Sourou, Meghan Tinsley Edited by Renée Larrier, Ousseina Alidou

Not available to order

Publication date:

12 November 2015

Length of book:

528 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Writing Through the Visual and Virtual: Inscribing Language, Literature, and Culture in Francophone Africa and the Caribbean interrogates conventional notions of writing. The contributors—whose disciplines include anthropology, art history, education, film, history, linguistics, literature, performance studies, philosophy, sociology, translation, and visual arts—examine the complex interplay between language/literature/arts and the visual and virtual domains of expressive culture. The twenty-five essays explore various patterns of writing practices arising from contemporary and historical forces that have impacted the literatures and cultures of Benin, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, Morocco, Niger, Reunion Island, and Senegal. Special attention is paid to how scripts, though appearing to be merely decorative in function, are often used by artists and performers in the production of material and non-material culture to tell “stories” of great significance, co-mingling words and images in a way that leads to a creative synthesis that links the local and the global, the “classical” and the “popular” in new ways

Introduction: Traditions of Literacy by Renée Larrier and Ousseina D. Alidou

Pagnes in Cameroon; Bertrade Ngo-Ngijol Banoum and Anne Patricia Rice
Téra-tera: Textiles, Transportation, and Nationalism in Niger’s First Republic; Amanda Gilvin
Chapter 4: Research on Droughts and Famines in the Sahel: the Contribution of Oral Literature; Boureima Alpha Gado
Chapter 6: Alhaji Roaming the City: Gender, HIV-AIDS and the Performing Arts; Ousseina D. Alidou
Chapter 8: Angles of Representation: Photography and the Vision of al Misriyya [the Egyptian] in Women’s Press of the Early Twentieth Century; Fakhri Haghani
Chapter 10: There's More Than One Way to Make a Ceebu-Jën: Narrating West African Recipes in Texts; Julie Huntington
Chapter 12: Ritual Celebrations: Context of the Development of New African Hybrid Cultures; Jean-Baptiste Sourou

Learning and Teaching Material for Early Childhood Cultures: from Africa to a Global Context; Rokhaya Fall Diawara
Chapter 16: The Polyphonous Classroom: Discourse on Language-in-Education on Reunion Island; Meghan Tinsley

or the Meeting of Colonial Heritage and Ancestral Traditions in Haitian Naive Art; Jean Hérald Legagneur
Tourist Art: A Tracery of the Visual/Virtual;Gabrielle Civil. Images by Vladimir Cybil Charlier
Chapter 21: West African Culture in Animation: the Example of “Kirikou”; Maha Gad El Hak
Amour, colère et folie, Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle, Rosario Ferré’s “La Bella Durmiente,” and Nelly Rosario’s El canto del agua; Phuong Hoang
La Mulâtresse During the Two World Wars: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Suzanne Lacascade’s Claire-Solange, âme-africaine and Mayotte Capécia’s Je suis Martiniquaise; Nathan H. Dize
Chapter 25: The Politics of Writing As a Space to Shape Identity(ies); Khady Diène