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  • Africa’s Hidden Histories, Everyday Literacy and Making the Self
  • Alain Ricard
Africa’s Hidden Histories, Everyday Literacy and Making the Self Ed. Karin Barber Bloomington, Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2006, 451 p.

Literacy studies have been gaining epistemological relevance in Britain as well as in France, where a new word—littératie [sic!]—has even been invented for them! The study of the emergence of literary practices indeed puts a new emphasis on older themes. Karin Barber talks of "tin trunk texts" in her remarkable introduction that synthesizes the different contributions of what was, at the beginning, a series of seminars funded by the ESRC of the UK. What is "revealed"in the hidden histories of these tin trunk texts is not only a history of personal self-awakening, but also the history of a subtle struggle to undermine cultural domination. This book is an important contribution to the sociology of literature in Africa by its focus on "local practices" and on often hidden epistemological choices.

A sense of anguish penetrates these amateur writers: many of them had little formal education, just enough to write, eventually in English. They were confronted with the "British documentary form of domination" (Barber 6), which could only increase their frustration, since they believed that their mastery of writing should entitle them to better treatment. They were in an interstitial and insecure location (9). Several pieces deal with South Africa, aptly characterized by "missionization to saturation point" as well as by "regimentation and segregation" (14) that intensified the contradiction inherent in the interstitial position. The piece on Louisa Mvembe by Catherine Burns is especially interesting: it narrates the life, struggles, and correspondence of a "Mfengu" woman seeking to be recognized as a native doctor, or rather, as a legitimate herbalist, treating Xhosa as well as Europeans, since she spoke "English and Afrikaans," as she kept mentioning in her letters to the authority. A well-planned strategy: she even used a tiger head as her emblem to capitalize on the world success of the Chinese Tiger Balm (Burns 88)!

Stephanie Newell defines well in the title of her essay one area of concern of these writers: "Entering the territory of the elites [. . .]" (Newell 211–35). She studies newspapers, literary circles, all the necessary background of literature. Graham Furniss shows the persistence of the "literary circle" in Hausa culture (416–34). The sociology of literature presupposed the existence of literary fields, of cultural institutions, and studied cleverly and efficiently their functioning. Bourdieu showed very convincingly the articulation between the narrow and the wide field of literary production. He brought to light the strategic choices actors were making to distinguish themselves, to obtain credit and legitimacy. But what about situations where such institutions are not fully operating, are discriminatory? Where no publishers, no literary milieu exists? The question is of prime relevance for the study of African literatures. Too often, local literatures have been forgotten in favor of productions originating from outside Africa and claiming a monopoly of discourse on the continent. Who are the local producers, often excluded from the "noble"domain of literature? Who are the local writers who did not know how to engage the "Globe"? Was it because their texts were not "well written," not relevant, not identified as literature? To all these questions each author gives a precise and convincing answer. [End Page 238]

Students debate in Fort Hare and write speeches (I. Hofmeyr); schoolgirls write letters about unwanted pregnancies (Lynn Thomas), as in Onitsha; pioneering high society professional women keep secret diaries in the Gold Coast (Audrey Gadzepo)—so do aspiring elites in colonial Ibadan: 72 boxes of notebooks from Chief Akinpelu Obisesan in the University of Ibadan library read by Ruth Thomas! Can we even talk about a literature in such a milieu and moments? This "archive"of letters, even epistolary novels, correspondence, diaries, needs to be "refigured." Such a wealth of literary material, long kept outside the legitimate concerns of the literary study of Africa, is in itself a questioning of the dominant paradigm. We do not need a new word, we just need to focus on the ethnography of literary practices. We cannot avoid the recurring...

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