Papers by Esther de Bruijn
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International Research in Children's Literature, 2022
This article situates Ghana’s popular market fiction for children in relation to British colonial... more This article situates Ghana’s popular market fiction for children in relation to British colonial and official Ghanaian children’s literature and, following Rancière’s model of the ‘ignorant schoolmaster’, presses for an expectation of intelligence from the rowdy genre, toward ‘radical equality’. Joshua Kojo Sey’s Wonders Shall Never End (c. 2017) serves as a central case of how a text that may seem to lack control over its own abundance of ideas offers up vital imaginary constructs.
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Postcolonial Text, 2015
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Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2019
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Journal of the African Literature Association, 2018
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Journal of African Cultural Studies, 2017
ABSTRACT Ghana’s market fiction of the early 2000s takes up the issue of modern slavery, particul... more ABSTRACT Ghana’s market fiction of the early 2000s takes up the issue of modern slavery, particularly in the form of forced child labour. This paper argues, first of all, that market fiction pits innocent children against negligent parents, to insist that parents shoulder the blame for their children’s descent into slavery. However, the texts frequently directly associate this notion of contemporary culpability with historical complicity in the Atlantic slave trade in a turn that points to the larger systemic inequalities of modernity that encourage parents to ‘sell’ their own children. With reference to Perry Nodelman’s notion of the ‘shadow text’ that accompanies all narrative constructions of childhood, we examine how depictions of innocence in these stories of child capture are informed by adult desires and anxieties. Accordingly, the sensational strategy of eliciting culturally painful – and shameful – memories serves as a typically extreme mechanism for delivering cautionary warnings both to adult and young readers not only about the horrific nature of contemporary slavery but also about excessive investment in the structures and ideologies of global capitalism.
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The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2017
This article argues that the 1980s and nineties popular literary magazineJoy-Rideattracted an exc... more This article argues that the 1980s and nineties popular literary magazineJoy-Rideattracted an exceptionally wide and regular readership by transposing the sensational aesthetics of Ghanaian oral narrative performance into the printed text.Joy-Rideretained its circulation in a period of devastating economic and sociopolitical tumult that resulted from an accumulation of natural disasters combined with the forced austerity measures of J. J. Rawling’s military government. Offering a collage of modern media such as serialized comics and photonovels, the magazine created intertextual associations with popular cultural experiences like Concert Party theatre and Ananse storytelling. Comics scholarship and affect and embodiment studies come together to support my position that the rich integration of text and image inJoy-Rideworked mnemonically to produce a sense of cultural vibrancy in the magazine narratives. This vitalism functioned, I argue, to sustain a feeling of cultural continuity f...
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Research in African Literatures, 2007
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Journal of the African Literature Association, 2018
This article analyzes how, from the late 1990s into the mid-2000s, publishers and distributors of... more This article analyzes how, from the late 1990s into the mid-2000s, publishers and distributors of Ghana's market fiction for children took advantage of and manipulated educational structures in order to produce commercial sensations. The didacticism of the texts, aimed at satisfying educational demands, establish a permissive frame for the unruliness of the fiction, both as an industry and as a literary genre. Market fiction producers and distributors look for gaps in the state provision of education and offer informal fixes to the contradictions at the core of national educational policy—the most pointed being the lack of adequate literature in schools. Drawing on book history methods, the essay shows how, at the industry's apex, its economic motive merged with educational aims to ultimately produce a genre for young readers that was affordable, accessible, and exciting in its novelty and cultural relevance. Three cases of figures in the industry who capitalize on the educational apparatus (two author-publishers and one educator-distributor) demonstrate how a popular literature can skirt institutional rules to the advantage of the industry and readerships alike. They also illustrate how the market fiction industry's commercial dreams are not anathema to literary innovation or even aesthetic brilliance.
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Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2017
This article argues that the 1980s and nineties popular literary magazine Joy-Ride attracted an e... more This article argues that the 1980s and nineties popular literary magazine Joy-Ride attracted an exceptionally wide and regular readership by transposing the sensational aesthetics of Ghanaian oral narrative performance into the printed text. Joy-Ride retained its circulation in a period of devastating economic and socio-political tumult that resulted from an accumulation of natural disasters combined with the forced austerity measures of J. J. Rawling's military government. Offering a collage of modern media such as serialized comics and photonovels, the magazine created intertextual associations with popular cultural experiences like Concert Party theatre and Ananse storytelling. Comics scholarship and affect and embodiment studies come together to support my position that the rich integration of text and image in Joy-Ride worked mnemonically to produce a sense of cultural vibrancy in the magazine narratives. This vitalism functioned, I argue, to sustain a feeling of cultural continuity for the magazine's readership.
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Journal of African Cultural Studies, 2017
Ghana's market fiction of the early 2000s takes up the issue of modern slavery, particularly in t... more Ghana's market fiction of the early 2000s takes up the issue of modern slavery, particularly in the form of forced child labour. This paper argues, first of all, that market fiction pits innocent children against negligent parents, to insist that parents shoulder the blame for their children's descent into slavery. However, the texts frequently directly associate this notion of contemporary culpability with historical complicity in the Atlantic slave trade in a turn that points to the larger systemic inequalities of modernity that encourage parents to 'sell' their own children. With reference to Perry Nodelman's notion of the 'shadow text' that accompanies all narrative constructions of childhood, we examine how depictions of innocence in these stories of child capture are informed by adult desires and anxieties. Accordingly, the sensational strategy of eliciting culturally painful – and shameful – memories serves as a typically extreme mechanism for delivering cautionary warnings both to adult and young readers not only about the horrific nature of contemporary slavery but also about excessive investment in the structures and ideologies of global capitalism.
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Journal of Postcolonial and Commonwealth Studies, Mar 2013
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Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2008
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Research in African Literatures, 2007
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Papers by Esther de Bruijn