Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores the power of print and the politics of the book in South Africa from a range of disciplinary perspectives - historical, bibliographic, literary-critical, sociological, and cultural studies. The essays collected here, by leading international scholars, address a range of topics as varied as: the role of print cultures in contests over the nature of the colonial public sphere in the nineteenth century; orthography; iimbongi, orature and the canon; book-collecting and libraries; print and transnationalism; Indian Ocean cosmopolitanisms; books in war; how the fates of South African texts, locally and globally, have been affected by their material instantiations; photocomics and other ephemera; censorship, during and after apartheid; books about art and books as art; local academic publishing; and the challenge of 'book history' for literary and cultural criticism in contemporary South Africa.
Trade ReviewPrint, text and book cultures in South Africa is a field-defining contribution to the country's literary scholarship. Andrew van der Vlies's introductory essay maps the conceptual terrain in a systematic and engaging way, illustrating its relevance to South Africa's literary and cultural history. The essays that follow demonstrate the archival richness and liveliness of the field, while opening doors to future research. Beyond South Africa, the book will be exemplary in showing how book histories develop under postcolonial conditions. - David Attwell, author of J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing (1993) and Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History (2005), and co-editor of The Cambridge History of South African Literature (2012)
Table of ContentsPrint cultures and colonial public spheres; local/global: south african writing and global imaginaries; three ways of looking at coetzee; questions of the archive and the uses of books; orature, image, text; ideological exigencies and the fates of books; new directions.
