Writing Madness: Borderlines of the Body in African Literature

The regional focus is on writers from Southern Africa: Dambudzo Marechera, Lesego Rampolokeng, Bessie Head and Tsitsi Dangarembga, but also included are writers from francophone and East Africa, Sony Labou Tansi and Rebeka Njau. Introducing the perspective of 'writing madness' into African literature means seeing that literature from a different angle, through the lenses of writers who have ruffled up the surface of realist representation and have explored issues and styles that represent a trespassing of borders, introducing an element of risk and instability. This study follows the transformation from colonial narratives projecting settlers' horror of the 'heart of darkness' onto the African body and mind, to African writers' interaction with these narratives and their own projections of what constitutes madness in a colonial and postcolonial world, and an analysis of how writing by women displays the gendered violence of the process of mental colonisation. FLORA VEIT-WILD is Professor in the African Studies Dept at the Humboldt University, Berlin. North America: Tsehai/African Academic; South Africa: Jacana; Zimbabwe: Weaver Press

Table of Contents:
Introduction - Madness in the Colony: Exclusion & Projection - Black Hamlet: Engaging with the African Healer - Surrealism in Africa? From Rimbaud to Cesaire - Mad Writing, Writing Madness: Dambudzo Marechera - Time's Gone Mad: The Rhyming & Ranting of Lesego Rampolokeng - The Grotesque Body of the Post-Colony: Sony Labou Tansi - Walking Vaginas: Bodily Boundaries in African Oral Culture - Nervous Conditions as Sites of Resistance: Bessie Head, Rebeka Njau & Tsitsi Dangarembga - Tsitsi Dangarembga's Film Kare Kare: The Survival of the Butchered Woman.

About the Author :
Flora Veit-Wild is Emerita Professor of African literatures at Humboldt University, Berlin. She lived in Harare/Zimbabwe from 1983 to 1993 and became known for her work on Zimbabwean literature and as literary executor and biographer of Dambudzo Marechera and a founder member of the Zimbabwe Women Writers. Her numerous publications include studies of body, madness, sexuality and gender in Anglophone and Francophone African writing as well as code-switching and linguistic innovation in Shona literature.

Review :
'Writing Madness offers a valuable introduction to some aspects of the writing north of the Limpopo, sheds light on quirks and follies and the madness of their societies, as portrayed by a divergent group of authors. '...It opens a window on to another world and there are more than enough keys provided to actually also unlock the door and step out of the asylum which is our own private and ostensibly safe space.' - Fannie Oliver in 'The Witness' ----------'There is much of interest in 'Writing Madness' and the central section on the surrealist poets of the grotesque brings voices from Francophone and Southern Africa into fascinating dialogue...' - Jane Plastow in 'LUCAS Bulletin'----------