Melancholia Africana
The Indispensable Overcoming of the Black Condition
Nathalie Etoke author Bill Hamlett translator
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:20th Jun '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Melancholia Africana argues that in the African and Afro-diasporic context, melancholy is rooted in collective experiences such as slavery, colonization, and the post-colony. From these experiences a theme of loss resonates—loss of land, of freedom, of language, of culture, of self, and of ideals born from independence. Nathalie Etoke demonstrates that, beyond territorial expropriation and the pain inflicted upon the body and the soul, the violence that seals the encounter with the ‘other’ annihilates an age-old cycle of life. In the wake of this annihilation, continental and diasporic Africans strive to reconcile that which has been destroyed with what has been newly introduced. Their survival depends on their capacity to negotiate the inherent tension of their historical becoming. The book develops a transdisciplinary method encompassing historicism, critical theory, Africana existential thought, and poetics.
Melancholia Africana is a journey inward and outward, between memory and forgetting, facing the psychic horrors to the Africana soul by the chaos of globalization by default. Nathalie Etoke dialectically connects Goree Island and Chicago, Elmina and Birmingham, Duala and Fort-de-France. Diasporic solidarity requires creativity for/giving and re-membering. Etoke invokes a diverse chorus including Fanon, Du Bois, Nina Simone and John Coltrane. -- Sam O. Imbo, Professor of Philosophy, Hamline University
Existential Francophone theorist Nathalie Etoke introduces us, through a fine approach not only to her history, but also to the story of an “Us.” Through her wounds/words, Etoke destabilizes the limits that have been imposed on that “Us.” How to overcome that initial catastrophe for which African descendants still pay? How to understand and take responsibility of the irreparable in order to create another world, another humanity? ... This book is solidly written, and it can be used for research that ranges from Africana existential thought and critical theory to literary theory. The book achieves, in short, one of the main goals of the series editors—Jane A. Gordon and Neil Roberts—to which this book belongs, Creolizing the Canon, namely, to blur and also transcend the borders of the seemingly impossible. * Black Issues in Philosophy, Blog of the APA *
ISBN: 9781786613028
Dimensions: 229mm x 161mm x 14mm
Weight: 349g
112 pages