Papers by Chigbo A R T H U R Anyaduba
University of Toronto Quarterly
The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry
This essay provides a critical review of the field of postcolonial African genocide writing. The ... more This essay provides a critical review of the field of postcolonial African genocide writing. The review makes a case for scholarly recognition of the discourse of African genocide literature. The essay advances some broad claims, among which include the following: that genocidal atrocities in Africa have provoked a body of imaginative literature, which, among other things, has attempted to imagine the conditions giving rise to African genocides, and that this body of literature underlines a confluence of sensibilities shaping atrocity writings and their critical receptions in Africa since the mid-twentieth century. The review provides a critical overview of fictional narratives as well as their scholarly receptions bordering on genocidal atrocities in the Nigerian and Rwandan contexts.
Social Dynamics: Journal of African Studies, 2020
This article examines recent scholarship proposing the use of memory practice to remedy the traum... more This article examines recent scholarship proposing the use of memory practice to remedy the traumatic aftermaths of Nigeria-Biafra War past. The assumption sustained in this scholarship is that through certain cultural memory practices such as truth commissions and commemorative rituals some form of appeasement might be reached regarding the extent of subsistence of that traumatic past. We fault these scholarly claims proposing memory as panacea to mass injustices and tragedies. In addition to the problematic proposals for using memory to remedy past atrocities in Nigeria, we observe that the question of justice is either absent or construed sometimes vaguely as one and the same with memorialisation. Accordingly, this paper further explores the place of justice in (and its implications for) this recent scholarship on Nigeria-Biafra War past. By inserting and centralising questions of justice in the discourse of that war, we seek to rethink the assumptions of memory practice as a rem...
This article examines the patterns of diasporic formations occurring within Africa. This is with ... more This article examines the patterns of diasporic formations occurring within Africa. This is with a view to broadening conceptualisations of the African diaspora in recent criticism of the subject. While noting that recent critical discussions of African diasporas have been significant for their focus on diasporic formations within Africa, this article observes that this scholarship has looked exclusively at diasporas formed through dispersion, especially through the European-occasioned dispersal of peoples. This focus on dispersion-induced diasporisation does not only fail to account for a more general diasporic situation on the African continent, but it also excludes from the diaspora discourse considerations of groups not formed through specific notions of dispersion. Therefore, this study highlights the instance of non-migrant diasporic conditions in Nigeria and by so doing problematises conceptions of African diasporas that insist basically on the conditions of dispersion, migration and vulnerability of populations. I further argue that the imposition of colonial borders and the loss of indigenous sovereignties account for the more pervasive diasporic situation in Africa. Broadening the concept of diaspora to include conditions and populations not generally considered in the discourse offers more nuanced results and helps us to revise the largely ethnic essentialisms on which diasporic formations in Africa have been constructed.
Conference Presentations by Chigbo A R T H U R Anyaduba
The cinema in the post-literate age was declared dead and with it cinephilia (see Sontag). This d... more The cinema in the post-literate age was declared dead and with it cinephilia (see Sontag). This declaration came from the assumption that the image has lost its ennobling powers to animate humans. The genre of film most vilified for its potential to distort rather than animate is the historical trauma film. However, I will examine Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave as a historical trauma film that animates and ennobles repressed traumas of black slavery in America through intricate deployments of filmic strategies. I will base my analysis on Christian Keathley's insight over how cinephilic or epiphanic moments induced by marginal filmic details can ennoble the spectator's metaphysical connection with the image. Like Keathley, I will argue that it is this ability of film to trigger the ineffable that continues to give the historical trauma film relevance in a post-literate, information age.
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Papers by Chigbo A R T H U R Anyaduba
Conference Presentations by Chigbo A R T H U R Anyaduba