Imaginary Spaces of Power in Sub-Saharan Literatures and Films (Hardback) | Released: 01 Jul 2012

This collection of essays is unlike others in the field of African studies, for it is based on three very precisely delineated focal points: a particular geographical region, the sub-Sahara; specific modes of cultural production, literature and cinema; and a focus on works of French expression. This three-fold approach to exploring the relationships between power and culture in a non-Western environment greatly contributes to making this book unique from a variety of perspectives: African, Francophone and postcolonial studies, as well as cross-disciplinary, cultural, transnational and diasporic studies. Moreover, the book offers deft and innovative analyses that move beyond the rhetoric of crises on the African continent we so very often hear of, so as to present a critical reflection on the subject at hand that is specific to the sub-Sahara and at the same time intimately linked to global culture, economy and politics. The authors' three-fold approach also presupposes that disciplinary compartmentalization increases power conflicts in academia. If only in part, compartmentalization is the result of antagonistic and competitive relations between specialization and multidisciplinary education. This book is thus a modest attempt at presenting an alternative to excessively fixed and homogeneous academic frontiers while considering that disciplinary expertise remains a must. Keeping in mind that an increasing number of scholars in Anglophone Postcolonial studies and Francophone African studies have been attempting for quite some time now to open interstices and build crossroads that can better connect them to each other, keeping in mind that these scholars work at revealing mechanisms by which any antagonistic discourses can mix, influence, act upon or react to one another, this book seeks to take a constructive step in establishing enduring grounds for multidisciplinary, cross-disciplinary and transnational academic research and collaboration.
About the Author: Alix Mazuet is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma. She regularly presents her work, organizes discussion series, and chairs panels on postcolonial theory, African studies and French cultural history. Mazuet has published articles and reviews in academic journals on the transformational process of the space of knowledge in France, from the 1789 Revolution period to the early-19th century. She is currently finishing her book, The Murmur of Books and the Writing of Sounds: Aurality and Sonorous Palimpsest in Nineteenth-Century French Literature.