African War Machines
This map features in the new Chronic, an edition in which we ask: what if maps were made by Africans for their own use, to understand and make visible their own realities or imaginaries? How does it shift the perception we have of ourselves and how we make life on this continent? To view […]
Yambo Ouloguem: Postcolonial Writer, Anti-Wahhabist Militant
Christopher Wise recalls conversations and texts of the Malian author, whose deep Sahelian articulations of Islam have earned him the ire of Wahhabi Muslims and the respect of many who reject the Western imperialist militarisation and reactionary Arabist tendencies that ignore pre-Islamic Africa’s history. Nearly two decades have passed since I interviewed Yambo Ouologuem at […]
How to write about Africa
by Boniface Mongo-Mboussa Serpent à Plumes’ republication of Yambo Ouologuem’s Le Devoir de violence has given this novel a new lease of life. Christopher Wise’s preface insists on the novel’s place in the history of African literature, highlighting the author’s biographical details and situating the book in the historical context of pre-colonial Mali. It also confronts the first publisher’s (Editions du Seuil) […]
In Suburbia
Suburban South Africa is glowing. The sun is up, the trees are in bloom, the lawns are magnificent, and if you ask nicely, you might even get a windowless room. Tanya Pamplone writes about the blessed and the damned, a home she likes and would also like to leave, and painfully assesses the situation of […]
Preliminary Notes for a Mediterranean Manifesto
Connecting ancience and modern roots/routes Rasheed Araeen redraws the boundaries and limits of identity. Mediterranean Manifesto: The Future of Civilisation The Mediterranean as a great means of communication, Interaction and exchange of ideas between three continents [Asia, Africa and Europe]. Once the Mediterranean becomes a great centre of communication, of exchange of ideas, between the West and the East, between the North […]