Christianity And The African Counter Discourse In Achebe And Beti

Christianity and the African Counter-Discourse in Achebe and Beti: Cultures in Dialogue, Contest and Conflict intervenes, in light of African literary products, the history of Christianity in Africa in late 19th and early 20th centuries, goes beyond the existing clichés about the operations of the European Christian missionaries whether Protestant or Catholic in Africa, and opens alternative ways to read the chain of missionary-native African, and missionary-European colonists relationships. Christian missionaries did not come to Africa for: their own interests, the Christianization of Africa, European colonial projects, the interests of Africans, the establishment of European civilization in Africa, but came for all. Once, there was a dialogue between the Christian missionaries and pagan Africans which was in time replaced by contest for superiority, and finally by conflict. Accordingly, the countenance of the continent has changed forever.

This book "intervenes, in light of African literary products, the history of Christianity in Africa in late 19th and early 20th centuries, goes beyond the existing clichâes about the operations of the European Christian missionaries whether Protestant or Catholic in Africa, and opens alternative ways to read the chain of missionary-native African, and missionary-European colonists relationships. Christian missionaries did not come to Africa for their own interests, the Christianization of Africa, European colonial projects, the interests of Africans, the establishment of European civilization in Africa--but came for all. Once, there was a dialogue between the Christian missionaries and pagan Africans which was in time replaced by contest for superiority, and finally by conflict. Accordingly, the countenance of the continent has changed forever"--

This documentary sourcebook presents a selection of articles from indigenous Christian journals from four regions in Asia and Africa around 1900 (India, South Africa, West Africa, and the Philippines). It highlights the voices of local Christian elites and their contributions to the public discourses in different colonial societies on both continents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the same time, it also intends to create an awareness of the various links and transregional (or even transcontinental) networks among indigenous Christian elites that were established through these (and related) journals. Resulting from a larger research project on periodicals and journals of Asian and African Christians around 1900, this sourcebook is the first compilation of such texts in a comparative perspective. The volume is of particular interest to students and scholars in the field of history of Christianity, mission and colonial studies, globalization, cultural, religious and regional studies, and history of the press.

Anchored in postcolonial theory, this book highlights the concept of “postcolonial soliloquies” as an original idea in analyzing West African literature. It uses the political theory of “dialogue” to broaden the reader’s understanding of history, culture, identity and indigenous memories. The book shows how the novels of T. Obinkaram Echewa plunge into the known territory of colonial history with new boundaries.

Abstracts of dissertations available on microfilm or as xerographic reproductions.

Award-winning author Mongo Beti presents The Poor Christ of Bomba, a cutting satirical critique on the role of Catholic missionaries and French colonialism in 1930s Cameroon. A revolutionary novel in its time. In the small village of Bomba, a French missionary priest is instructed to build a parish for its residents. Father Drumont has one important task; to save the village from heresy by preparing its girls for Christian marriage. A servant in Father Drumont's house, a young boy named Denis is reliant on the priest's generosity after the death of his mother. In the eyes of the Catholic church, Denis is the perfect example of the African heathen saved by Christianity – but the reality of what happens behind closed doors in much more sinister. 'One of the foremost African writers of the independence generation.' Guardian

"What is the meaning of Africa and being an African? What is and what is not African philosophy? Is philosophy part of Africanism? These are the kinds of fundamental questions that this book addresses. V. Y. Mudimbe argues that the various discourses themselves establish the worlds of thought in which people conceive their identity. Western anthropology and missionaries have introduced distortions not only for outsiders but also for Africans trying to understand themselves. Mudimbe goes beyond the classic issues of African anthropology or history. He says that the book attempts an archeology of African gnosis as a system of knowledge in which major philosophical questions recently have arisen: first, concerning the form, the content, and the style of Africanizing knowledge; second, concerning the status of traditional systems of thought. He is directly concerned with the processes of transformation of different types of knowledge." -- P. 4 of cover.

This collection of essays from eminent scholar F. Abiola Irele provides a comprehensive formulation of what he calls an "African imagination" manifested in the oral traditions and modern literature of Africa and the Black Diaspora. The African Imagination includes Irele's probing critical readings of the works of Chinua Achebe, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Amadou Hampat'e B^a, and Ahmadou Kourouma, among others, as well as examinations of the growing presence of African writing in the global literary marketplace and the relationship between African intellectuals and the West. Taken as a whole, this volume makes a superb introduction to African literature and to the work of one of its leading interpreters.