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The heart of the city: postcolonial subjectivities in contemporary zambian women's writing

The heart of the city: postcolonial subjectivities in contemporary zambian women's writing
The heart of the city: postcolonial subjectivities in contemporary zambian women's writing
In international debates about post-colonial writing, Zambian literature is largely invisible - overshadowed (as Zambia is in several other regards) by the powerful regional pull of neighbouring South Africa. Moreover, those critics who have written about Zambian texts from the national and regional perspective have tended to represent them as all-too-often aesthetically wanting (i.e. subordinated to journalistic discourses) and almost entirely consumed by the debate about the relative merits of 'modernity' versus 'tradition', usually imagined as the cultural contrast between the city and the country. This article seeks to bypass those trends. Its focus is a recent collection of short fictions edited by Zambian women, which takes both the complexity and the urban inflections of contemporary Zambian identities for granted. The stories' combination of elements of women's romance narrative with the concept of African urban crisis produces the notion of a certain kind of slipperiness as a key component of both Zambian city life and the emergent national imaginary.
women, cities, urban, culture, zambia, gender, subjectivity
1812-5441
20-31
Primorac, Ranka
8e175d18-8ea8-4228-8637-671427202b10
Primorac, Ranka
8e175d18-8ea8-4228-8637-671427202b10

Primorac, Ranka (2007) The heart of the city: postcolonial subjectivities in contemporary zambian women's writing. Scrutiny2, 12 (2), 20-31. (doi:10.1080/18125440701751935).

Record type: Article

Abstract

In international debates about post-colonial writing, Zambian literature is largely invisible - overshadowed (as Zambia is in several other regards) by the powerful regional pull of neighbouring South Africa. Moreover, those critics who have written about Zambian texts from the national and regional perspective have tended to represent them as all-too-often aesthetically wanting (i.e. subordinated to journalistic discourses) and almost entirely consumed by the debate about the relative merits of 'modernity' versus 'tradition', usually imagined as the cultural contrast between the city and the country. This article seeks to bypass those trends. Its focus is a recent collection of short fictions edited by Zambian women, which takes both the complexity and the urban inflections of contemporary Zambian identities for granted. The stories' combination of elements of women's romance narrative with the concept of African urban crisis produces the notion of a certain kind of slipperiness as a key component of both Zambian city life and the emergent national imaginary.

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More information

Published date: September 2007
Keywords: women, cities, urban, culture, zambia, gender, subjectivity

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 79521
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/79521
ISSN: 1812-5441
PURE UUID: b5ea7a3a-cc37-49d4-bdb7-2e935d976604
ORCID for Ranka Primorac: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-1127-1175

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 16 Mar 2010
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 02:54

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