Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Africa and orality
- 2 The folktale and its extensions
- 3 Festivals, ritual, and drama in Africa
- 4 Arab and Berber oral traditions in North Africa
- 5 Heroic and praise poetry in South Africa
- 6 African oral epics
- 7 The oral tradition in the African diaspora
- 8 Carnival and the folk origins of West Indian drama
- 9 Africa and writing
- 10 Ethiopian literature
- 11 African literature in Arabic
- 12 The Swahili literary tradition: an intercultural heritage
- 13 Africa and the European Renaissance
- 14 The literature of slavery and abolition
- 15 Discourses of empire
- 16 African-language literatures of southern Africa
- 17 Gikuyu literature: development from early Christian writings to Ngũgĩ’s later novels
- 18 The emergence of written Hausa literature
- 19 Literature in Yorùbá: poetry and prose; traveling theater and modern drama
- 20 African literature and the colonial factor
- 21 The formative journals and institutions
- 22 Literature in Afrikaans
- References
3 - Festivals, ritual, and drama in Africa
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- 1 Africa and orality
- 2 The folktale and its extensions
- 3 Festivals, ritual, and drama in Africa
- 4 Arab and Berber oral traditions in North Africa
- 5 Heroic and praise poetry in South Africa
- 6 African oral epics
- 7 The oral tradition in the African diaspora
- 8 Carnival and the folk origins of West Indian drama
- 9 Africa and writing
- 10 Ethiopian literature
- 11 African literature in Arabic
- 12 The Swahili literary tradition: an intercultural heritage
- 13 Africa and the European Renaissance
- 14 The literature of slavery and abolition
- 15 Discourses of empire
- 16 African-language literatures of southern Africa
- 17 Gikuyu literature: development from early Christian writings to Ngũgĩ’s later novels
- 18 The emergence of written Hausa literature
- 19 Literature in Yorùbá: poetry and prose; traveling theater and modern drama
- 20 African literature and the colonial factor
- 21 The formative journals and institutions
- 22 Literature in Afrikaans
- References
Summary
African performance traditions entered the orbit of European discourse – which, by virtue of language, supplies the operative terms “festival,” “ritual,” and “drama” – primarily as negative examples. As a result, the origins of that entrance were marked in the main by condemnation, inferiorization, and general disregard. It was asserted or implied that blacks either had no traditions of drama indigenous to them, or had traditions that, in comparison with Europe and Asia, were merely “proto-dramatic” or “quasi-dramatic,” cretinous forms in a state of developmental arrest in terms of style, esthetic canons, formalization of technique, and mode of historical transmission. Wherever “properly dramatic” traditions were found, they were marked off as but products of the African encounter with Europe – a way of claiming that the “properly dramatic” traditions are nothing less than derivatives of western forms and traditions (Jeyifo 1990: 242–43). There is a larger context, of course, to these deeply ethnocentric claims. They were part and parcel of the implacable inferiorization of African corporeality and cultural forms that matured in Europe in the eighteenth century and remains a major constituent of Eurocentrism. In the operations of the discourse, the inferiorization of a cultural practice becomes a shorthand to the inferiorization of the bearers of that culture and practice.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000