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SUMMARY:"The Formation of African Intellectuals" - Professor Simon Gikandi
 \, Princeton University
DTSTART:20120309T170000Z
DTEND:20120309T180000Z
UID:TALK36430@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Judith Weik
DESCRIPTION:The basic premise of this lecture is that what has come to be 
 known as the crisis of postcolonial society in Africa is not simply about 
 the collapse of the infrastructure of modernity\, nor the extroverted natu
 re of African knowledge\, but the historical process by which intellectual
 s were formed on the continent. I will argue that the most influential int
 ellectual class in Africa was produced on the margins of the colonial syst
 em of power\, and that their most important mode of expression was “crea
 tive writing.” I will focus on how the written narrative became the mode
  through which modern African identities could be imagined\, African life 
 ordered\, and a new social order narrated both within and outside colonial
 ism. My lecture will focus on a group of “organic” intellectuals\, new
 ly literature conscripts to modernity\, whose work was crucial in establis
 hing African histories and identities. \n\nSimon Gikandi is Robert Schirme
 r Professor of English at Princeton University and editor of the PMLA\, th
 e official journal of the Modern Languages Association of America. He is t
 he author of many books and articles including Writing in Limbo: Modernism
  and Caribbean Literature\,  Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the
  Culture of Colonialism\, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o\, which was a Choice Out
 standing Academic Publication for 2004. He is the co-editor of The Cambrid
 ge History of African and Caribbean Literature and the editor of the Routl
 edge Encyclopedia of African Literature. His new book\, Slavery and the Cu
 lture of Taste was published by Princeton University Press in 2011. \n\n
LOCATION:The Keynes Lecture Theatre\, King’s College\, Cambridge
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