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This article explores feminist politics in Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and the ways in which it interlinks with forms of care. I tease out the author’s engagement with intersectional feminism as well as her blind spots. I situate Adiche’s work within the context of postcolonial, popular and decolonial feminism, unpacking the significance of hair and the more general question of agency. I then move to show that the poetics of care developed in the novel ultimately falls short of embracing a decolonial feminist stance due to the relative invisibility of the neo-colonial structures at work in contemporary Nigeria., Cet article explore la politique féministe telle qu’elle est représentée dans le roman Americanah de Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ainsi que la manière dont ce féminisme s’entremêle avec des formes de care. Je cerne les contours de l’engagement affiché de l’autrice pour le féminisme intersectionnel, tout en pointant quelques angles morts. Après avoir situé l’oeuvre d’Adichie dans le contexte des féminismes postcolonial, populaire et décolonial, j’étudie l’importance des cheveux et la question plus générale de l’agentivité. Dans la dernière partie, je démontre que la poétique du care développée dans le roman n’adhère pas totalement au féminisme décolonial en raison de l’invisibilité relative des structures néo-coloniales à l’oeuvre au Nigeria pendant la période contemporaine.

It is July 2021 and as we write this introduction, parts of Northern Europe have just experienced catastrophic flooding while Western parts of North America are facing yet another formidable and life-threatening heatwave. Earlier this year, southern parts of the USA experienced a polar vortex which translated into record-breaking low temperatures in Texas, Mozambique was devastated by the third cyclone to hit coasts there since 2019, flash floods occurred in Indonesia, displacing thousands, a...

The universities of the future will do one thing we do not do today. They will teach the art of self-discovery. There is nothing more fundamental in education.We turn out students from our universities who know how to give answers, but not how to ask the essential questions.Ben Okri, “Plato’s Dream,”A Time for New Dreams, 27 Yesterday’s road has ledTo yesterday’s destination.Today is a new chaos.A new journey. A new city.Needing new paths. And new standards.Ben Okri, “The Ruin and the Forest,...

This paper will investigate the means by which these authors probe, notably through generic instability, the construction, internalisation and rejection of the nation (both that from which they have fled and that in which they seek solace) and its accompanying ideologies, along with the politics of truth-telling, on a personal and a public level. Relying on Jacques Ranciere’s work on dissensus, I would like to show how both McLiam Wilson and Chikwava expose the interaction of politics, economics and otherness at both the centre of the Commonwealth (London) and its margins (Belfast and Harare).

In a reflection about her own positionality, seen against the provisional and uncertain background of the “breaches and interstices that the ravelling-out of apartheid colonialism produced” (Writing 128), Nadine Gordimer recounts how her artistic calling preceded her political activism. In this essay, entitled “That Other World that Was the World,” she explains that before she committed herself to the anti-apartheid struggle per se, she had mingled with black writers, painters, and actors, an...

Without overplaying the convergences in the discriminatory and oppressive practices carried out during the twentieth century by the states of South Africa (1948–1994) and Northern Ireland (1921–199...

In 2018, the theme for the annual conference of the SAES (Societe des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Superieur), held at Nanterre University, itself a site of student revolution in the past, was “Revolution(s),” a notion which has particular resonance for the New Literatures panel which provided the genesis of many of the articles included in this issue. Previously colonised countries, as diverse and geographically disparate as India, South Africa, Nigeria, Canada, and Australia (to name but t...

From the colonial through to the postcolonial and contemporary eras, a whole network of incarceration developed on the island of Ireland, as was the case in many European countries. This network, however, involved prisons, specific schools, institutions designed to contain certain women and their children, indeed to make money from them, and, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, asylum seekers. The widespread and varied practices of detention or imprisonment of various parts of the Irish population were highly political, and part of a colonial matrix of power which began in colonial times and extended well into the postcolonial era, straddling the border which separated the Free State and then the Republic of Ireland from the complex colonial statelet of Northern Ireland. Adopting a decolonial approach to analyzing carceral apparatus in Ireland is a way of overcoming the seeming difficulty in examining the architecture and protests in the prisons in the North (under British rule) alongside industrial schools, prisons, and Direct Provision in the South, an independent republic. This book, through the resolutely interdisciplinary approach adopted in its constituent chapters, hopes to change the terms of the conversation about how the carceral apparatus has worked and proliferated in Ireland, in an attempt to analyze, contextualize, and explain its widespread nature.

This article focuses on the politics and aesthetics of borders and barriers in Nadine Gordimer’s Jump and Other Stories and suggests that their sheer prevalence in this collection should be read not only as a just depiction of a highly segregated and discriminatory South Africa, albeit poised on the verge of a transition to democracy, but also as a reflection on the very specific ways in which these borders regulate social movement. Three stories are singled out for this analysis: “The Ultimate Safari,” which is concerned with the international border between Mozambique and South Africa, “Keeping Fit,” which lays emphasis on the fences and barriers which divide white suburbs from sprawling townships, and “Once Upon a Time,” which exposes the increasing tendency among affluent whites to barricade themselves into their homes. In all three cases, Gordimer deftly interweaves extreme violence and the quotidian, varying her narratological approach in order to provide different viewpoints, and attempting to expand her own literary boundaries.

This article builds on existing criticism of the interaction of militant republicanism and feminism during the Troubles by focusing in particular on the prisoners' own writing, analyzing the ways in which they choose to self-represent, but also the ways in which they are represented. The discussion is supported both by recent criticism by Sara Ahmed on the designation of who or what is willful, and how that willfulness is restrained, managed, and presented by various power groups, and by the theoretical writing of Jacques Rancière. The co-dependency of politics and aesthetics in these texts is explored, with a view to showing how they present a radical re-articulation of feminism in the carceral context.

Columbus from his afterdeck watched heights he hoped for,rocks he dreamed. rise solid from my simple water.Parrots screamed. Soon he would touchour land. his charted mind’s desireThe blue sky blessed the morning with its fire.Kamau Brathwaite, “Colombe”I am the tall kingdom over your shoulderThat you would neither cajole nor ignore.Conquest is a lie. I grow olderConceding your half-independant shoreWithin whose borders now my legacyCulminates inexorably.And I am still imperiallyMale, leaving ...

This collection brings together intimate reflections and academic articles on a lesser-known and, the contributors argue, to date underrated South African academic, playwright, fiction writer, and poet, Don Maclennan (1929-2009). Born in England, Maclennan moved to South Africa when he was still a boy, and although he subsequently studied for a short while at Edinburgh University, and lived and taught for a couple of years in the United States, his home became South Africa. He held temporary ...

The front cover of this collection of articles, poems, and personal and collective experiences which deal with both the theory and praxis of decolonizing sexualities features a reproduction of a work of art discussed in one of the chapters by the artist-practitioner in question, Raju Rage. The collage portrait image foregrounds an ambiguously gendered body and the threat of racist violence, and undercuts the amalgamation of monstrosity, terrorism, and non-heteronormative sexuality that has su...

Introduction: Current guidelines require a chest x-ray 1 hour post transcutaneous imaging-guided lung biopsy, in order to rule-out pneumothorax. This delays patient discharge, leads to longer waiting times and more radiation. Thoracic ultrasound (TUSS) is proven to be a safe and fast tool that has very high specificity in ruling-out pneumothorax, when performed by trained chest physicians. Objective: To assess the efficacy and safety of a TUSS-only protocol to rule-out post biopsy pneumothorax. Methods: 48 patients had US-guided biopsy (USGB) for peripheral lung/mediastinal lesions. Mean age 66.8 (SD± 12.0), mean FEV1 (Lts) was 1.61 (SD± 0.55), mean tumour size was 38.3mm (SD± 27.0) and mean distance from skin was 14.2mm (SD± 9.0). Tumours were located in lower lobes in 45.8% and in upper lobes in 54.2%. A bilateral 6-point TUSS (2D and M-mode) was performed before the biopsy as a baseline. Another 6-point TUSS was performed 10 minutes and 30 minutes post USGB, establishing presence of “sliding” and “seashore” signs. All patients were discharged home 30 minutes post biopsy and followed up with a phonecall later the same day. Results: Both “sliding” and “seashore” signs were present post USGB in 46/48 patients (95.8%). In 2 patients there was no clear “sliding” but there was “seashore” sign post biopsy. None of the patients reported shortness of breath or haemoptysis. One patient reported new pleuritic pain, had a repeat TUSS and chest x-ray and confirmed to have a small subcutaneous haematoma. Conclusions: TUSS performed by trained chest physicians can safely rule-out pneumothorax post USGB.

Introduction: Transthoracic ultrasound is an important tool in assessing pleural effusions and placement of chest drains. It also demonstrates pleural-based masses and lung tumours abutting the pleura, lesions usually suitable for US-guided biopsy (USGB). This procedure is not being widely performed by chest physicians. Objective: To assess safety and efficacy of USGB performed by chest physicians in outpatient setting. Methods: The procedures were carried out in outpatient setting between August 2015-January 2016. Apart from informed written consent, checking clotting and omitting antiplatelet/anticoagulants, no special preparations were undertaken. Under real-time US, lesions involving/abutting the pleura which were >15mm were sampled 1-3 times with a full-core biopsy needle (Biopince® 18G). Repeat US was done 10 minutes and 30 minutes post-biopsy, ruling-out pneumothorax. Patients were discharged home 30 minutes post-biopsy. Results: 48 patients had USGB for lung/mediastinal tumours. Biopsies were histologically deemed adequate in 97.9%, with overall yield 97.9% and yield for malignancy 91.6% (44/48), all in accordance with The Royal College of Radiologists. In 1 patient with a negative biopsy, malignancy was diagnosed at surgery. Complications were minimal with one case of minor haemoptysis (2%) and one case of small subcutaneous hematoma (2%). We had no pneumothoraces and no deaths (0%). After the introduction of the service the waiting list for tissue diagnosis has disappeared. Conclusion: USGB can be performed by trained chest physicians with excellent yield and very low complication rate in outpatients. When used appropriately, it reduces the waiting list for tissue diagnosis.

This article explores Edna O'Brien's more recent fiction and demonstrates how Ireland's most prolific writer continues to systematically expose the ways in which oppression and repression operate in contemporary Ireland. Using Sara Ahmed's work on “willful subjects”, I aim to show how O’Brien enshrines willfulness within the very aesthetics of her texts and, in so doing, offers a counter-narrative of the Republic.

This article focuses on prose and poetry produced by Irish republican women prisoners either during their time in prison or after their release, and aims to investigate the ways in which they, on the one hand, represent acts of gendered violence and torture at the hands of prison guards and, on the other, interrogate their solidarity as a group of women. It will be suggested, through close analysis of the tropes deployed, that their commitment, as it is expressed in this writing, moves beyond militant republicanism to embrace a feminist dimension.

A singular voice in the Irish literary landscape of the early twenty-first century, Sean O’Reilly, the author of several works of fiction, proffers a somewhat disconcerting vision of the possibility of escaping the past in a post-conflict Ireland. The cities of Derry and Dublin feature prominently in his works of fiction, three of which are dominated by a male protagonist searching for some form of release from a past which threatens to engulf him, and one of which charts the gradual usurpation of the city of Dublin by the erotic dreamscapes of the main female character.

International audience

International audience