Writers and Social Thought in Africa

SPECIAL ISSUE
Writers and Social
Thought in Africa
The novel, like the myth and the parable, gives a view of society from its
contemplation of social life, reflecting it, mirror-like, but also reflecting
upon it, simultaneously – Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Globalectics, p.16.
Social theory in, and social theorizing about, Africa has largely ignored African
literature. Yet, the works of African writers constitute potential sources for the
analysis of social thought and for constructing social theory in the continent.
A few scholars have pointed to the need to engage the works of African writers
in theorizing the social and the political in Africa. For instance, Larry Diamond, in
his important review essay entitled ‘Fiction as Political Thought’ (1989), argues
that the literature of any society tells a lot about the culture, social structure and
politics of the society, while concluding that, fiction in specific contexts, can
reveal more about ‘customs, conflicts, stresses, changes, and transformations
than does all the formal scholarship of historians and social scientists’. For his
part, Ato Quayson (2003), in advocating for calibrations as a method of reading
which makes literature the starting point of approaching the social, argues
correctly that ‘the social’ can be coded as ‘an articulated encapsulation of
transformation, processes, and contradictions analogous to what we find in the
literary domain’.
No doubt, African writers remain some of the continent’s finest social thinkers.
In their fiction, poetry, drama and essays, they have produced and continue
to produce works which constitute an essential fabric of social thought and
social theorizing in and beyond the continent. Indeed, African writers offer the
kinds of abstractions, comparisons, frameworks, and critical reflections on
the African lifeworld – and the place of the African in the global context in the
longue durée – without which it will be impossible to fully account for the nature
of being, existence and reality and the nature and scope of knowledge in the
African context. They also shape or reshape the way in which people think
about ‘social and political order, and the nature, desirability and direction of
change’ (Diamond, 1989: 435). For Diamond, indeed, these constitute the bases
of conceiving the novelist as a political philosopher.
One of Africa’s foremost writers and literary theorists, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, argues
in his recent book, Globaletics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing (2012: 15),
that theorizing about the colonial situation in Africa is based on the foundational
efforts of fiction writers. ‘It was fiction that first gave [Africans] a theory of the
colonial situation’, states Ngugi. Going back to the Greek meaning of theory
(theoria), which means a view and a contemplation, and in raising questions
about the relationship of fiction and theory, Ngugi points us in the direction of
‘fiction as theory’ or ‘fiction…as [a way of] writing theory’. He concludes that
indeed, ‘fiction is the original poor theory’, in that, when human beings were first
confronted with an environment that they could not understand, they ‘invented
stories to explain it’ (Ibid).
VVV

African writers have captured, and continue to capture, important aspects of
the totality of Africans’ experience of the world. This is evident in Achebe’s
Things Fall Apart, a discourse of the clash of ‘culture’ and colonialism, stability
and change, as well as in Camara Laye’s ambivalent reflections on colonialism
in African social history in A Dream of Africa. It is also manifest in Sony Labou
Tansi’s The Anti-People, a harangue against postcolonial governmentality and
disorder, as well as in Dennis Brutus’ Sirens, Knuckes, Boots (1963), a collection
of poems dependent, to use the words of Niklas Luhmann (2001: 16) ‘upon a
reference to a pre-given “beingness”’.
This special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies is
dedicated to examining social thought/social theory in the works of African
writers – in all genres. Questions to be considered by contributors include – but
can also go beyond:
• the relationship between literature and social theorizing in and about
Africa;
• the role of literature in the articulation or illumination of social thought;
• the evolution of social thought in African fiction;
• the subject and context of social thought as reflected in, and reflexive
through, literature;
• the aesthetics of social thought in Africa;
• African writers’ conceptions of, and disputations about, power, authority,
legitimacy, agency, history, gender, sexuality, culture, ontology,
epistemology, modernity, globalization, etc.
We expect contributions which engage with social theory and the social thought
of African writers, as well as those that challenge the assumptions (patriarchal,
racist, ethnic, religious, traditional, modernist, etc.) that undergird the works of
African writers.
Abstracts should be sent to Wale Adebanwi (anadebanwi@ucdavis.edu) by
August 30, 2013. Full papers by those whose abstracts are accepted must be
submitted by December 15, 2013.
References
Diamond, Larry. 1989. ‘Fiction as Political Thought’ (Review Essay). African Affairs, 88,
352: 435-445.
Luhmann, Nilas. 2001. ‘Notes on the Project “Poetry and Social Theory”’, Theory, Culture
and Society, Vol. 18, No. 1: 15-27.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o. 2012. Globaletics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Quayson, Ato. 2003. Calibrations: Reading for the Social. Minneapolis, MN: The University
of Minnesota Press.
www.tandfonline.com/cjca