An ambitious new approach to African studies, utilizing indigenous
sources to bring back the voices of the native Africans in their own
words rather than that of colonizers and foreigners.
Elizabeth Isichei explores the Atlantic slave trade, as reflected in the
poetics of rumour and the poetics of memory -- an approach different
from the quantitative and demographic studies which have transformed the
subject over the past twenty years. To this and to her study of popular
consciousness in the colony and postcolony, she brings together a wide
range of disciplines -- ethnography, art and art history, and
contemporary literary theory among them -- to look at the intellectual
history of Africa, from African rather than European premises. The
result is a history of popular consciousness which shows the experiences
of ordinary people, often in protest to an ongoing experience of
exploitation.
Elizabeth Isichei is Professor of Religious Studies, Otago University,
Dunedin, New Zealand and author of over a dozen books on African history
and religion. She holds an Oxford doctorate, and aD.Litt from the
University of Canterbury, and is a fellow of the Royal Society [N.Z.]