The Famished Road after Postmodernism: African Modernism and The Politics of Subalternity

Mark Mathuray

doi:10.1353/cal.2015.0147

The Famished Road after Postmodernism: African Modernism and The Politics of Subalternity

Mark Mathuray

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

If postmodernism has been the dominant critical prism through which The Famished Road has been analysed, how do we approach that text in the wake of the demise of the postmodern moment? In this paper, I will argue that there is much to suggest that The Famished Road’s allegiances, ideological and formal, lie with modernism rather than with postmodernism, which, in part, raises the broader theoretical incompatibility of postmodernism with postcolonialism. Postcolonialism, I will argue, has never been, could never be, postmodernist. It has always been intractably modernist. By paying close attention to aspects of the novel that have often been elided in criticism of the novel: its advocacy of Fanon’s ‘spontaneous’ political resistance, its stylistic hybridity, and its reliance on meta-narratives (i.e. the conjoining of ethics and aesthetics through the Enlightenment categories of Truth, Justice and Beauty), I will explore how we might re-read the novel after postmodernism.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1100-1117
Number of pages	18
Journal	Callaloo
Volume	38
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2015.0147
Publication status	Published - Oct 2015

Keywords

The Famished Road, Ben Okri, modernism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, resistance, African aesthetics, modernity.

Access to Document

10.1353/cal.2015.0147

Accepted ManuscriptAccepted author manuscript, 161 KB

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/613516/pdf

1 Article

Intimacies between men: modernism, African homosexualities and masculinist anxieties in Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters
Mathuray, M., 2014, In: Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 50, 6, p. 635-647 13 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

220 Downloads (Pure)

Cite this

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title = "The Famished Road after Postmodernism: African Modernism and The Politics of Subalternity",

abstract = "If postmodernism has been the dominant critical prism through which The Famished Road has been analysed, how do we approach that text in the wake of the demise of the postmodern moment? In this paper, I will argue that there is much to suggest that The Famished Road{\textquoteright}s allegiances, ideological and formal, lie with modernism rather than with postmodernism, which, in part, raises the broader theoretical incompatibility of postmodernism with postcolonialism. Postcolonialism, I will argue, has never been, could never be, postmodernist. It has always been intractably modernist. By paying close attention to aspects of the novel that have often been elided in criticism of the novel: its advocacy of Fanon{\textquoteright}s {\textquoteleft}spontaneous{\textquoteright} political resistance, its stylistic hybridity, and its reliance on meta-narratives (i.e. the conjoining of ethics and aesthetics through the Enlightenment categories of Truth, Justice and Beauty), I will explore how we might re-read the novel after postmodernism. ",

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note = "Mark Mathuray lectures in English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. He graduated from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar and held a Leverhulme Fellowship at Royal Holloway. He has published various articles on religious discourses and sublime dissonances in African literature and the figuring of homosexuality in African fiction. His monograph, On the Sacred in African Literature: Old Gods and New Worlds was published in 2009. His present research interests include: the exploration of the modernist strategies, both aesthetic and political, of a range of African texts; the connections and disconnections between postcolonialism and queer theory; and the resurgence of modernist ethics and aesthetics in contemporary fiction. ",

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The Famished Road after Postmodernism: African Modernism and The Politics of Subalternity

Abstract

Keywords

Access to Document

Research output

Intimacies between men: modernism, African homosexualities and masculinist anxieties in Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters

Cite this