Beginning from an auteur standpoint, this book interrogates extant cinematic re-presentation of African and Nigerian postcolonial realities in Nollywood. It makes a case, using Kunle Afolayan's The Figurine, for a critical space-clearing gesture around the notion of a neo-Nollywood, which transcends the formulaic cinematic re-presentation of African and Nigerian realities to embrace a visionary and philosophic rearticualtion of the role of film-making, and of Nollywood, in the Nigerian imagination. The Idea of neo-Nollywood, and a visionary director, therefore stands at the core of a cinematic production process that challenges, disturbs and stimulates perceptions of current and future African identities

Examines the representations of migration in African literature, film, and other visual media, with an eye to the stylistic features of these works as well as their contributions to debates on migration

Collectively, the essays brought together in this book represent a discursive confluence on Nollywood as a local film culture with a global character, aspiration and reach. The governing concern of the book is that texts, including film texts, are animated by a particular sociology and anthropology which gives them concrete existence and meaning. The book argues that Nollywood, the Nigerian video film text, is deeply rooted in the sub-soil of its social and cultural milieux. Nollywood is therefore, engaged in the relentless negotiation and re-negotiation of the everyday lives of the people against the backdrop of their cultural traditions, social contradictions and the politics of their ethnic/national identity, longing and belonging. The essays weave an intricate and delicate argument about the critical role of Nollywood to the idea of nationhood and the logic of its narration with implications for language, politics and culture in Africa. The book is a valuable addition to the critical discourse on the important place of film and cinema studies in national engineering processes.

This book explores the politics of artistic creativity, examining how black artists in Africa and the diaspora create art as a procedure of self-making. Essays cross continents to uncover the efflorescence of black culture in national and global contexts and in literature, film, performance, music, and visual art. Contributors place the concerns of black artists and their works within national and transnational conversations on anti-black racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, migration, resettlement, resistance, and transnational feminisms. Does art by the subaltern fulfill the liberatory potential that critics have ascribed to it? What other possibilities does political art offer? Together, these essays sort through the aesthetics of daily life to build a thesis that reflects the desire of black artists and cultures to remake themselves and their world.

What does it imply for Nigerian philosophers to conscientiously and engagingly reflect on Nigeria as a place of philosophy and as a dynamic plural context of socioeconomic, political, cultural and ethnic problems? Any answer to this question automatically constitutes the opening salvo to the reflection on the evolution of a Nigerian tradition of philosophy and philosophizing. This book represents such an initial salvo in in its attempt to hammer out the conditions for the possibility of a Nigerian tradition of philosophy by placing that endeavor in between the triadic challenges of the Nigerian political economy, the African philosophical theorizing and the global epistemological hegemony. How do these three dynamics condition the evolution and functional relevance of the philosophical enterprise in Nigeria? How have Nigerian philosophers responded to them? What is Nigerian philosophy? How can there be a "Nigerian" philosophy when there are no Nigerians? This book is also an attempt to contribute to the trajectory of philosophy education in Nigeria within the context of a postcolonial educational system and university dynamics that stultifies the role of the intellectuals in development. From Plato to Wiredu, from Bodunrin to Bourdieu, and from Heidegger and Nietzsche to Fanon, Mignolo and Santos, the book traces a trajectory of dynamics rethinking of existing paradigms and epistemological assumptions that could enable a robust evolution of a Nigerian tradition of philosophy that possesses sufficient clout to confront its historicity and its place in Nigeria’s development impasse.

The English-language branch of the Nigerian film industry, Nollywood, has become the third largest in the world. Nollywood films saturate Nigeria and have spread across the African continent, achieving an astonishing extent and depth of cultural influence. They are the most important modern cultural form to come out of Africa. In this book, Jonathan Haynes aims to map out the cultural terrain of Nollywood films much more comprehensively and ambitiously than has been to date. He in effect establishes a canon for Nollywood films. The book is organized around the historical development of Nollywood film culture, which is explored with close attention to the recent history of Nigeria. Throughout the book, genre (defined with reference to common usage in Nigerian film markets) is the principal framework. Thus after establishing a sense of the material and social circumstances out of which Nollywood was born and exploring a few landmark films, Haynes analyzes the durable set of themes and plot types that dominate the industry and reveal deeply embedded tensions in contemporary Nigerian life. These genres include family films and romances, village films, cultural epics, political films, films made in or about the Nigerian diaspora, and campus films. Haynes concludes by offering some remarks on the future of Nollywood, exploring the buzz around a New Nollywood of films with higher budgets fit for international film festivals and widespread screening in cinemas in Nigeria and abroad."

Gender Terrains in African Cinema reflects on a body of canonical African filmmakers who address a trajectory of pertinent social issues. Dipio analyses gender relations around three categories of female characters – the girl child, the young woman and the elderly woman and their male counterparts. Although gender remains the focal point in this lucid and fascinating text, Dipio engages attention in her discussion of African feminism in relation to Western feminism. With its broad appeal to African humanities, Gender Terrains in African Cinemastands as a unique and radical contribution to the field of (African) film studies, which until now, has suffered from a paucity of scholarship.

Seventeen philosophers, scientists and artists consider questions about the intriguing idea of creativity: Is creativity essentially mysterious? Is creativity essentially inspirational or rationalistic? What role does skill play in creativity? What are the criteria of creativity? Should we assign logical priority to creative persons, creative processes, or creative products? How do forms of creativity relate to different domains of human activity? How does creativity relate to self-transformation? How does our knowledge of the circumstances of creativity effect our appreciation of its products? Can a recipient of a creative work also be a creator of it? Contributors include: Margaret Boden, Larry Briskman, John M. Carvalho, David Davies, Berys Gaut,Rom HarrA(c), Carl R. Hausman, Albert Hofstadter, Arthur Koestler, Michael Krausz, Peter Lamarque, Thomas Leddy, Paisley Livingston, Michael Polany, Dean Keith Simonton, and Francis Sparshott.

This handbook investigates the current state and future possibilities of African Philosophy, as a discipline and as a practice, vis-à-vis the challenge of African development and Africa’s place in a globalized, neoliberal capitalist economy. The volume offers a comprehensive survey of the philosophical enterprise in Africa, especially with reference to current discourses, arguments and new issues—feminism and gender, terrorism and fundamentalism, sexuality, development, identity, pedagogy and multidisciplinarity, etc.—that are significant for understanding how Africa can resume its arrested march towards decolonization and liberation.

Fela Anikulapo Kuti was the Afrobeat music maestro whose life and time provide the lens through which we can outline the postcolonial trajectory of the Nigerian state as well as the dynamics of most other African states. Through the Afrobeat music, Fela did not only challenge consecutive governments in Nigeria, but his rebellious Afrobeat lyrics facilitate a philosophical subtext that enriches the more intellectual Afrocentric discourses. Afrobeat and the philosophy of blackism that Fela enunciated place him right beside Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Garvey, and all the others who champion a black and African mode of being in the world. This book traces the emergence of Fela on the music scene, the cultural and political backgrounds that made Afrobeat possible, and the philosophical elements that not only contributed to the formation of Fela's blackism, but what constitutes Fela's philosophical sensibility too.