The Politics of African Literature: Production, Publishing, and Reception

Abstract

African literature is political and politicized as it contests political issues and proffers political visions. In this chapter, effort will be made to interrogate the politics in the production, publishing, and reception of contemporary African literature. This chapter is meant to complement the second chapter, “Contemporary Africa and the Politics in Literature.” As emphasized in the second chapter, almost every human experience in Africa has become political or connected to politics in one way or another. Similarly, there are political issues involved in the production, publishing, and reception of literature written in Africa. Also, as in the second chapter, here politics intersects with the culture, society, economy, zeitgeist, and other aspects of contemporary African reality. Politics in literature, as used in this chapter, has to do with a conscious or unconscious effort, choice, strategy, or the lack of any determination to do something with particular results anticipated. Politics involves ideology, ideas, and notions of the African reality that writers, publishers, and readers have to deal with in relation to contemporary African literature.