Representations of Child Soldiers in Contemporary African Narratives
Seiten
2024
Lexington Books/Fortress Academic (Verlag)
978-1-6669-5449-4 (ISBN)
Lexington Books/Fortress Academic (Verlag)
978-1-6669-5449-4 (ISBN)
This book analyzes fictional depictions of child soldiering in contemporary African narratives. It engages with varied ideas of childhood and warfare in Africa, challenging Western oversimplification and decontextualization of the realities.
In Representations of Child Soldiers in Contemporary African Narratives, Ademola Adesola examines the dominant factors that writers privilege in their portrayals of child soldiering in sub-Saharan Africa. In his textual-interpretive analyses of selected novels in the African child soldier genre, Adesola contends that critical discussions of African child soldier literature have depended on the interpretive frameworks supplied by Western humanitarian discourses which oversimplify and de-historicize experiences of war in Africa. The author argues that such reductive decontextualization of war realities serve to champion a narrow vision of war in African contexts centered on a moral and humanitarian urge for Western intervention. Regardless of whether the casus belli legitimating those wars are genuine or not, those conflicts (and children’s involvement in them) are understood within the same racist colonial and ethnocentric stereotypes about Africa that have been privileged in Western thought and the Western moral-political imagination for centuries. Thus, in studying African child soldier narratives, this book provides an alternative reading of novels whose settings feature African ethnopolitical conflicts – such as in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo-Brazzaville, Nigeria – notable for their exploitation of children for military ends. The author maintains that these works are significant in the varying ways they reify and challenge the Western ideas of “child” and “childhood,” as well as privilege child soldiers as social actors whose intricate makeups disavow being simply understood as innocent victims or irredeemable perpetrators of atrocities.
In Representations of Child Soldiers in Contemporary African Narratives, Ademola Adesola examines the dominant factors that writers privilege in their portrayals of child soldiering in sub-Saharan Africa. In his textual-interpretive analyses of selected novels in the African child soldier genre, Adesola contends that critical discussions of African child soldier literature have depended on the interpretive frameworks supplied by Western humanitarian discourses which oversimplify and de-historicize experiences of war in Africa. The author argues that such reductive decontextualization of war realities serve to champion a narrow vision of war in African contexts centered on a moral and humanitarian urge for Western intervention. Regardless of whether the casus belli legitimating those wars are genuine or not, those conflicts (and children’s involvement in them) are understood within the same racist colonial and ethnocentric stereotypes about Africa that have been privileged in Western thought and the Western moral-political imagination for centuries. Thus, in studying African child soldier narratives, this book provides an alternative reading of novels whose settings feature African ethnopolitical conflicts – such as in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo-Brazzaville, Nigeria – notable for their exploitation of children for military ends. The author maintains that these works are significant in the varying ways they reify and challenge the Western ideas of “child” and “childhood,” as well as privilege child soldiers as social actors whose intricate makeups disavow being simply understood as innocent victims or irredeemable perpetrators of atrocities.
Ademola Adesola is assistant professor in the Department of English, Languages, and Cultures at Mount Royal University, Canada.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One: Beasts of No Nation as a Narrative of Recovery of Lost Childhood Innocence
Chapter Two: The Portrait of the Child Soldier as a Hybrid Figure in Song for Night
Chapter Three: Prewar Maladies and the Agency of the Child Soldier in Allah Is Not Obliged
Chapter Four: The Child Soldier and the Stereotypical Image of Africa in Johnny Mad Dog
Chapter Five The “Paratextual Condition” of African Child Soldier Narratives
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author
| Erscheinungsdatum | 06.09.2024 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 158 x 239 mm |
| Gewicht | 526 g |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-6669-5449-7 / 1666954497 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-6669-5449-4 / 9781666954494 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
Mehr entdecken
aus dem Bereich
aus dem Bereich
Poetik eines sozialen Urteils
Buch | Hardcover (2023)
De Gruyter (Verlag)
CHF 83,90
Entzauberung und Faszination des Immergleichen in Literatur und Film
Buch | Softcover (2024)
Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH (Verlag)
CHF 118,95
Buch | Softcover (2024)
belleville (Verlag)
CHF 27,95
