Developmentalism from a Kenyan perspective: Binyavanga Wainaina’s One Day I Will Write About This Place

Beschreibung

This paper deals with the criticism of the development industry in the writing of Binyavanga Wainaina, specifically in his memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place (2011). Following postcolonial theory, the types of gaze, which most powerfully defined and constructed ‘Africa’ for non-African audiences in the 20th century have been the anthropological and the development gaze. Wainaina reflects on these gazes and confronts them. His reflection of humanitarianism and the development industry associates these with intrusion, disappropriation and foreign nuisance. In one scene, for instance, Wainaina recalls the demonstration of a biogas plant by a Danish development organisation in high school, ridiculed by the students. As I will argue, literary writing and literary analysis are means of questioning and disrupting objectifying approaches towards development and social and economic inequality. Wainaina’s texts, as I will show, achieve this not only through the sociological information they provide, but by the very means of literary writing, allowing the reader to witness processes of development through (re)created voices and subjectivities commonly excluded from or objectified in knowledge production on African development. My analysis will also refer to Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits (2008), a collection of essays written by writers, activists and intellectuals mostly from East Africa, edited by the Kenyan journalist and writer Rasna Warah. The contributors to this book, including Wainaina, reconsider the value of ‘development’ and what it means to the people of Africa, thus creating in the words of the editor “a much-needed African perspective on the development industry”.

Zeitraum	26 Okt. 2019
Ereignistitel	African Studies Association of Africa : African and Africana Knowledges: Past Representations, Current Discourses, Future Communities.
Veranstaltungstyp	Konferenz
Ort	Nairobi, KeniaAuf Karte anzeigen
Bekanntheitsgrad	International