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GCSC Anniversary Lecture Series: Helen Atawube Yitah: "Now Upon a Time: How African Folktales Speak to the Present and Beyond"

Wann

06.12.2016 von 18:00 bis 20:00 (Europe/Berlin / UTC100)

Wo

Philisophikum I, Alter Steinbacher Weg38, R.001

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+49 641 / 99-30 053

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The GCSC Keynote Lecture Series is open to anyone interested in attending. To provide relevant topics for the diverse set of research interests pursued within the GCSC, the lectures in this series are positioned for an interdisciplinary spectrum of listeners and centred on current concepts, questions and theories within the study of culture. The lectures are oriented according to the research areas of the GCSC and deliver theoretical and methodological impulses.


In this lecture I look at ways in which the content and form of Ghanaian folktales are being subverted to reflect the narrators’ lived realities (or their dreams) and to articulate their ideological perceptions. The revised stories feature (1) open-ended plots that break the presumed “stylistic consistency” of the folktale and (2) characters who inscribe themselves onto a ‘modern’ scene which is a far cry from the fantasy world typically associated with the folktale. I examine how these features challenge long held views in narratology, especially as they pertain to the narrative subject—views which have resulted in a shift in literary studies away from narrative grammar in search of a pragmatics of narrative. Furthermore, given that folktale studies have provided a site for the construction and demonstration of literary and cultural paradigms, my analysis of the Ghanaian folktales will form a basis for exploring the potential of this genre for generating new directions in African studies, particularly with regard to dismantling the foundations of the seemingly intractable colonizing epistemological order that has held sway within the discipline.

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