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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Autobiographical subjects |
| Author: | MacNee, Lisa |
| Year: | 1997 |
| Periodical: | Research in African Literatures |
| Volume: | 28 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 83-101 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Senegal |
| Subjects: | Wolof oral literature autobiography literature |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3820445 |
| Abstract: | The author discusses the theme of the relationship between the individual and the community in African autobiography, a genre which offers the most striking form of discursive articulation of this relationship, because the individual agent presents and actively creates a textual self. The individual autobiographer must draw upon cultural models in order to communicate with his or her audience. The few studies that specifically focus on African biographies often rely on cultural models that oppose Western individualism to African collectivism. In response to this, the present author argues that studies of African autobiography must attempt to discern the specificities of 'self-writing' in Africa. She focuses on a very specific set of autobiographical acts, namely the autobiographical 'taasu', a poetic genre found among the Wolof of Senegal. Performances of 'taasu' contradict the premise that African identities are always and only collective. App., bibliogr., notes. |
