Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: Towards a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State in Africa / Edition 1

by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198183907
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/21/1998
Series:	Clarendon Lectures in English , #1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 5.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, an acclaimed novelist, playwright, and critic, is Professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University.

Table of Contents

PrefaceIntroduction1. Art War with the State: Writers and Guardians of a Postcolonial Society2. Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: The Conflict Between the Crafts of Art and the State3. Enacting Power: The Politics of the Performance State4. Voicing Silence: Language, Democracy, and a New World Order5. Renaissance or Orature: Freeing Creativity from the Literary Colonisation of OralityConclusion