All over Africa, an explosion in cultural productions of various genres
is in evidence. Whether in relation to music, song and dance, drama,
poetry, film, documentaries, photography, cartoons, fine arts, novels
and short stories, essays, and (auto)biography; the continent is
experiencing a robust outpouring of creative power that is as remarkable
for its originality as its all-round diversity. Beginning from the late
1970s and early 1980s, the African continent has experienced the longest
and deepest economic crises than at any other time since the period
after the Second World War. Interestingly however, while practically
every indicator of economic development was declining in nominal and/ or
real terms for most aspects of the continent, cultural productions were
on the increase. Out of adversity, the creative genius of the African
produced cultural forms that at once spoke to crises and sought to
transcend them. The current climate of cultural pluralism that has been
produced in no small part by globalization has not been accompanied by
an adequate pluralism of ideas on what culture is, and/or should be; nor
informed by an equal claim to the production of the cultural - packaged
or not. Globalization has seen to movement and mixture, contact and
linkage, interaction and exchange where cultural flows of capital,
people, commodities, images and ideologies have meant that the globe has
become a space, with new asymmetries, for an increasing intertwinement
of the lives of people and, consequently, of a greater blurring of
normative definitions as well as a place for re-definition, imagined and
real. As this book - Contemporary African Cultural Productions - has
done, researching into African culture and cultural productions that
derive from it allows us, among other things, to enquire into
definitions, explore historical dimensions, and interrogate the
political dimensions to presentation and representation. The book
therefore offers us an intervention that goes beyond the normative
literary and cultural studies' main foci of race, difference and
identity; notions which, while important in themselves might, without
the necessary historicizing and interrogating, result in a discourse
that rather re-inscribes the very patterns that necessitate writing
against. This book is an invaluable compendium to scholars, researchers,
teachers, students and others who specialize on different aspects of
African culture and cultural productions, as well as cultural centers
and general readers.
