The power to name : a history of anonymity in colonial West Africa

Resource Information

The work The power to name : a history of anonymity in colonial West Africa represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in European University Institute. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The power to name : a history of anonymity in colonial West Africa

Title remainder

a history of anonymity in colonial West Africa

Statement of responsibility

Stephanie Newell

Creator

• Newell, Stephanie, 1968-

Subject

• Africa, West -- Intellectual life -- 20th century
• African newspapers -- Africa, West -- History -- 19th century
• African newspapers -- Africa, West -- History -- 20th century
• Anonymous writings -- History -- 19th century
• Anonymous writings -- History -- 20th century
• Books and reading -- Africa, West -- History -- 19th century
• Books and reading -- Africa, West -- History -- 20th century
• Africa, West -- Intellectual life -- 19th century

Language

eng

Summary

Between the 1880s and the 1940s, the region known as British West Africa became a dynamic zone of literary creativity and textual experimentation. African-owned newspapers offered local writers numerous opportunities to contribute material for publication, and editors repeatedly defined the press as a vehicle to host public debates rather than simply as an organ to disseminate news or editorial ideology. Literate locals responded with great zeal, and in increasing numbers as the twentieth century progressed, they sent in letters, articles, fiction, and poetry for publication in English- and African-language newspapers. The Power to Name offers a rich cultural history of this phenomenon, examining the wide array of anonymous and pseudonymous writing practices to be found in African-owned newspapers between the 1880s and the 1940s, and the rise of celebrity journalism in the period of anticolonial nationalism. Stephanie Newell has produced an account of colonial West Africa that skillfully shows the ways in which colonized subjects used pseudonyms and anonymity to alter and play with colonial power and constructions of African identity --

Member of

• New African histories series

Assigning source

Provided by Publisher

Cataloging source

IEN/DLC

Dewey number

079.6609

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction

Series statement

New African histories