Proximate Histories : Entangled Temporalities in Contemporary African Fiction

West-Pavlov, Russell

Routledge（2026/05発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 154 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781041287070

Full Description

This book explores how African fiction offers revolutionary models for understanding temporality and reimagining history in our catastrophe-ridden twenty-first century. Examining eight works from diverse African writers - ranging from Achebe's classic Things Fall Apart, via works by Coetzee and Dangarembga, to contemporary novels by Makumbi, Mengiste, Mujila, Owuor and Serpell - the book demonstrates how these authors eschew linear Eurocentric historicism in favour of bold, immediate confrontations with history in the making and its temporal fabric. Drawing from fiction across Africa, the book proposes a composite theory of 'proximate historiographies' encompassing the entangled, plaited, expansive, interpellative, somatic and kinetic temporalities that emerge from these pathbreaking works. Taken together, they reveal Africa as a laboratory of futurity rather than a place outside history. The book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of African literature, postcolonial studies and contemporary fiction. It will also appeal to those working in environmental humanities, decolonial theory and innovative approaches to historiography.

Contents

Acknowledgements vi
Introduction: Proximate times: Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country 1
Part I
History and time 27
1 Laminated histories: Achebe, Things Fall Apart 29
2 Expansive time: Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions 44
Part II
Multiscalar time 57
3 Interpellative time: Mujila, Tram 83 59
4 Oceanic histories: Owuor's The Dragonfly Sea 69
Part III
Proximate histories 81
5 Somatic histories: Makumbi, Kintu 83
6 Plaited histories: Serpell, The Old Drift 98
7 Kinetic history: Mengiste, The Shadow King 110
Coda: Signs of the times 125
Bibliography 133
Index 152