{"product_id":"at-penpoint-9781478008514","title":"At Penpoint","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMonica Popescu traces the development of African literature during the second half of the twentieth century, showing how the United States and the Soviet Union's efforts to further their geopolitical and ideological goals influenced literary practices and knowledge production on the African continent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“African nations regained their independence from Western colonialism against the background of the Cold War. Monica Popescu's book is a comprehensive study of the impact of the war on the culture, literature, and intellectual production of the postcolonial world. It is a great addition to the body of scholarship on African literature and postcolonial studies.” -- Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine\u003cbr\u003e“This ingenious account offers sharp new insight to the history of African Literary Studies and decolonization by framing them in light of the Cold War, not just in terms of subjection by the West, as stressed by postcolonial perspectives, but also by the colonial outreach of the USSR. As Monica Popescu makes stunningly clear, African and Afro-Caribbean writers of the period—Aimé Césaire, Youssef El-Sebai, and Ezekiel Mphahlele—brought to our understanding of twentieth-century imperialism a comprehensiveness unrivaled before or since.” -- Jean Comaroff, Alfred North Whitehead Professor of African and African American studies and of Anthropology, Harvard University\u003cbr\u003e“Popescu’s book is a steadfast engagement with the cultural Cold War’s impact on African literary studies.... \u003ci\u003eAt Penpoint\u003c\/i\u003e...shows how a range of cross-disciplinary and hybrid methodologies are required if we are to build and establish this scholarship.” -- Bhakti Shringarpure * Johannesburg Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eAt Penpoint\u003c\/i\u003e speaks to a variety of disciplines and historiographies. . . . Popescu writes in accessible language that will make graduates and undergrads appreciate and trace the transnational networks involving African writers, diasporic African intellectuals, and various Cold War actors and the impact they had on Africa, especially in the area of African literature.\" -- Emmanuella Amoh * E3W Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003e\". . . \u003ci\u003eAt Penpoint\u003c\/i\u003e is an engrossing and provocative book that illuminates an important archive and challenges humanities scholars of all midcentury regions to reconfigure their fields.\" -- Laura Chrisman * Modern Language Quarterly *\u003cbr\u003e\"Popescu’s biggest contribution here is historiographical: not only does she historicize African literary production during the Cold War, she also reveals the lasting effects of the Cold War on today’s intellectual concepts and commitments. . . . By rehabilitating the idea of the writer as engaged, even committed, \u003ci\u003eAt Penpoint\u003c\/i\u003e reveals a scholar undertaking not only study of the era of decolonization, but also the slow process of decolonizing literary study itself by wresting the Cold War away from the superpowers who waged it.\" -- Emily Hyde * Contemporary Literature *\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eAt Penpoint\u003c\/i\u003e accomplishes what the best scholarship does by illuminating what has been right before our eyes but obscured by our own blinders, ideological or otherwise. Her account resituates Africa at the center of postcolonial studies and reveals the Cold War to be, among other things, a struggle of competing imperialisms.\" -- Cedric Tolliver * The Journal of African History *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003e Introduction. Genres of Cold War Theory: Postcolonial Studies and African Literary Criticism\u003cbr\u003e Part I. African Literary History and the Cold War\u003cbr\u003e 1. Pens and Guns: Literary Autonomy, Artistic Commitment, and Secret Sponsorships\u003cbr\u003e 2. Aesthetic World-Systems: Mythologies of Modernism and Realism\u003cbr\u003e Part II. Reading through a Cold War Lens\u003cbr\u003e 3. Creating Futures, Producing Theory: Strike, Revolution, and the Morning After\u003cbr\u003e 4. The Hot Cold War: Rethinking the Global Conflict through Southern Africa\u003cbr\u003e Conclusion. From Postcolonial to World Literature Studies: The Continued Relevance of the Cold War\u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography\u003cbr\u003e Index","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49408984023383,"sku":"9781478008514","price":98.6,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781478008514.jpg?v=1730504966","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/at-penpoint-9781478008514","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}