From the 1880s onward English- and African- language newspapers hosted many different types of literary production: they created environments for all kinds of situated literary creations that did not in any linear sense “lead to” postcolonial literary forms. Focusing on English-language newspapers from the 1910s and 1920s, this talk will discuss three challenging writers, all pseudonymous, who share a style of writing that might be dismissed today as turgid, sermonizing, imitative, or simply “unreadable.” What kind of cultural and political encounters were articulated by such authors in writing fiction for the press? Why did they choose English above African literary languages? What kind of archive is constituted by creative writing in colonial West African newspapers?

My research focuses on the public sphere in colonial West Africa and issues of gender, sexuality, and power as articulated through popular print cultures, including newspapers, pamphlets, posters, and magazines. I study how local intellectuals–ranging from school leavers to nationalist leaders–debated moral and political issues through the medium of print. I am especially interested in the cultural histories of printing and reading in Africa, and the spaces for local creativity and subversive resistance in colonial-era newspapers. My recent research project, “The Cultural Politics of Dirt in Africa, 1880-present,” positions these interests in an interdisciplinary and comparative historical perspective, and includes the study of popular discourses about dirt in Nairobi and Lagos in relation to changing ideas about taste and disgust, sexuality, multiculturalism, and urbanization.