Preliminary Programme

The quest for identity has been a major preoccupation of Blacks since the advent of slavery. From slavery to the present, blacks have had to deal with conflicting and often culturally constricting constructions of identity. Constructing identity has proven to be perhaps the most divisive and conflicting challenges of the Black American experience, prompting a renowned scholar to describe blacks as a people locked in “a prison house of identity.” The issue has become even more divisive in the post-civil rights context as black respond differently to the realities and changing dynamics of their American experiences. This paper critically examines the many dimensions and manifestations of the identity question and challenges since the civil rights struggles of the 60s. It focuses on the Afrocentric construction of identity and the debates and counter-Afrocentric identitarian ethos it has provoked. (Show less)

Jazz (1992) is Toni Morrison’s six novel in which Morrison “sought to interrogate and revitalize the history of her ethnic groups and show how cultural identity in the present is shaped by the narratives of the past” (Youngs 102) through the use of memory.

Recently, the term, “memory”, especially in ethnic literature has become a significant issue of representation for many writers in American literature because various writers used “memory” as a significant issue to reclaim or retell the American past from distinctly ethnic and racial perspectives. Toni Morrison is one of these writers who have actually used “memory” as a crucial site for dealing with complex negotiations of past and present, personal and communal identity as a significant issue in her novel Jazz. However, essentially what is “Memory?.” Judith Herman describes “Memory” as;

Memory, like belief, like all psychological phenomena, is an action; essentially it is the action of telling a story. . . The teller must not only know how to narrate the event but must also know how to associate the happening with the other events of his life, how to put it in its place in that life-story which each of us is an essential element of personality. A situation has not been satisfactorily liquidated, has not been fully assimilated, until we have achieved, not merely an outward reaction through our movements, but also an inward reaction through the words we address to ourselves, through the organization of the recital in its place as one of the chapters in our personal history and past. (Matus 25)

Thus, it can be said that “memory” is essentially the action of telling a story by knowing how to associate the happening with other events of life and presentation of essential elements of personality or personal history. In fact, Morrison did not only tell a story but represent the historical background of ethnic and racial views, and with the use of memory she tried to combine the past and the present. Therefore, she did not see “memory” only as the action of story telling but as the action of retelling the American past and representing the ethnic identity.

Although Jazz is basically based on a murder plot that occurred in Harlem in 1926, on a larger context it is constructed on migration that began in hope and with the promise of participation in the American dream of freedom and dignity for all citizens, but after a quarter of a century, suffering under segregation and bad living conditions in ghettos urban blacks had mixed feelings as Morrison’s no name narrator in Jazz. Apart from the narrator, every character had a story to narrate. Therefore, the story in Jazz moves back and forth unevenly in time to give the readers the stories of Joe’s and Violet’s childhoods, their meeting in Palestine, Virginia the dead woman Dorcas and so on. That is why, the stories are told in “pieces and fragments of memory”. This telling of stories in fragments shapes the memories and desires of the characters in the present. As the narrative slowly begins to fill in the details the readers go and come between past and present. In fact, Morrison is digging up into individual and collective memories that helped her to see a past that shaped the present of her people through memories. Briefly, in Jazz Morrison with the use of memory, that is shaped by the past, is trying to confront and recover the past, and constitute meaningful cultural and historical facts so that her characters can find release from their repressed memories by narrating memories.

References

Gates, Henry Louise, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, eds. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New
York: Amistad Press, Inc., 1993.

Matus, Jill. Toni Morrison. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988.

Morrison, Toni. Jazz. Great Britain: Vintage,1992.


Wilfred, D.Samuels & Weems Clenora Hudson. Toni Morrison. New York: G.K Hall & Co, 1990.

Youngs, Tim, ed., Writing and Race. London: Longman Limited, 1997. (Show less)

The concept of ‘Volk’ is often viewed as a peculiarly northern European concept, however this concept like many others has been transposed on to African societies as part & parcel of the process of Colonialism. In particular formal schooling has acted as the mouthpiece of ideological, and more markedly in the late nineteenth century theological concepts shifting in and out of vogue in the metrepols of Europe. This paper attempts to explore the concept of ‘volk’ in the context of formal schooling in German East Africa between 1882 and the founding of the first state school, and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. The paper focuses particular attention on the roles of the state and myriad missionary organizations operating schools over the period. The conflicts between state and missions are viewed as predominantly ideological. conflicts altering with change in Europe. The paper concludes with a discussion of the concept of ‘Volk’ in German political thought and the concept was interpreted and policies implemented by both the State and Missionaries. (Show less)

The difference between Western and non-Western forms of feminism is obvious. After the end of colonialism in Africa the goal of modernity was rigorously pursued. However, some of the gains of modernization such as female emancipation or even liberal democracy have continued to elude a lot of societies that are still experiencing the transition from a traditional frame of reference to a modern one. Consequently, these societies are as such encumbered by the partriarchalism stemming from either the pervasive influence of Islam or the phallocentricism of most traditional cultures. The continual tradition/modernity dialectic is one that limits the scope for change and hence favours the traditional over the modern.
This paper examines the conditions of women under a context of Islamisation and also the competing discourses of western-type women's liberation and foregrounds the peculiar configurations that have emerged from them. Such configurations are evident in many West African countries as the paper goes on to demonstrate. (Show less)