ENGLISH

Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: Towards a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State in Africa

By Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo

Book information

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Year
1998
ISBN
0198183909, 9780198183907
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
2 MB (2182675 bytes)
Series
Clarendon Lectures in English
Edition
1
Pages
160\113
Time added
2021-11-04 16:28:23
AfricaArtart of the stateDignityfreedompeople powerPolitical Powerpostcolonial statestate of art

Description

Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams explores the relationship between art and political power in society, taking as its starting point the experience of writers in contemporary Africa, where they are often seen as the enemy of the postcolonial state. This study raises the wider issues of the relationship between the state of art and the art of the state, particularly in their struggle for the control of performance space in territorial, temporal, social, and even psychic contexts. Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, calls for the alliance of art and people power, freedom and dignity against the encroachments of modern states. Art, he argues, needs to be active, engaged, insistent on being what it has always been, the embodiment of dreams for a truly human world.

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