Bibliograph

The power to name, a history of anonymity in colonial West Africa, Stephanie Newell

Type

Label

The power to name, a history of anonymity in colonial West Africa, Stephanie Newell

Language

eng

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

The power to name

Oclc number

822025328

Responsibility statement

Stephanie Newell

Series statement

New African histories

Sub title

a history of anonymity in colonial West Africa

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 --, Provided by Publisher

Classification