03964nam a22005655i 4500 978-3-031-50955-1 DE-He213 20251030112247.0 cr nn 008mamaa 240601s2024 sz | s |||| 0|eng d 9783031509551 978-3-031-50955-1 10.1007/978-3-031-50955-1 doi PN843-849 DS bicssc LIT000000 bisacsh DS thema Rushton, Amy. author. (orcid)0000-0001-8326-9395 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8326-9395 aut http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut 77991 Re-Reading Tragic Africa [electronic resource] : Development, Neoliberalism and Contemporary Fiction / by Amy Rushton. 1st ed. 2024. Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. XI, 195 p. online resource. text txt rdacontent computer c rdamedia online resource cr rdacarrier text file PDF rda New Comparisons in World Literature, 2634-6109 1. Introduction: The Danger of the Single Reading -- 2. Reading Africa in the Neoliberal World-System -- 3. The Longer Walk to Freedom: South African Prophecy and Neoliberal Intervention upon ‘Tragic Africa’ -- 4. ‘Africa awaits its creators’: Subverting Development Narratives -- 5. Back to Utopia: Retrieving the Past to Reclaim the Future -- 6. Conclusion: Towards a Kind of Paradise. Grounded in world-systemic analysis, this book revisits the literary and social implications of ‘tragedy’ in relation to global narratives about Africa and within fiction by writers from the continent. It argues that working through the full complexity of ‘tragedy’ helps to identify and challenge plots that depict Africa as reaching a tragic impasse. Instead, reconsidering tragedy allows for further, related interventions including the implications of narratives of development, the argument for formally engaging with literary texts that present challenging material, reformulations of African political and cultural agency, and the possibilities to be found in utopian thinking. It claims that contemporary fiction helps to scrutinise the familiar big picture of Africa and create space for discussions about wider political and historical commonalities between the continent and the rest of the world. As such, the novels discussed in this study are not simply ‘about’ Africa: these fictional narratives position Africa as a central actor within the global history of late capitalism. Amy Rushton is Senior Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University, UK. They have over a decade of teaching experience and have published numerous articles on African literature, neoliberalism, and contemporary cultural representations of mental distress. Amy is currently Chair of the Board for the National Survivor User Network (NSUN). Literature. 65108 African literature. Comparative literature. Prose literature. 68654 World Literature. 66655 African Literature. Comparative Literature. Narrative Text and Prose. 68655 SpringerLink (Online service) Springer Nature eBook Printed edition: 9783031509544 Printed edition: 9783031509568 Printed edition: 9783031509575 New Comparisons in World Literature, 2634-6109 75986 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50955-1 ZDB-2-LCM ZDB-2-SXL 60367 60367