Overview

Elizabeth Isichei explores the Atlantic slave trade, as reflected in the poetics of rumour and the poetics of memory - an approach different from the quantitative and demographic studies which have transformed the subject over the past twenty years. To this and to her study of popular consciousness in the colony and postcolony, she brings together a wide range of disciplines - ethnography, art and art history, and contemporary literary theory among them - to look at the intellectual history of Africa, from African rather than European premisses. The result is a history of popular consciousness which shows the experiences of ordinary people, often in protest to an ongoing experience of exploitation. Elizabeth Isichei is Professor of Religious Studies, Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand and author of over a dozen books on African history and religion. She holds an Oxford doctorate, and a D.Litt from the University of Canterbury, and is a fellow of the Royal Society (N.Z.).

Full Product Details

9781580461795

Table of Contents

Reviews

The book is an important contribution to our understanding of Africa. It may become one of those must read books for all Africanists. --H-AFRICA Elizabeth Isichei's Voices of the Poor is an eloquent and ambitious effort to reconstruct the popular consciousness of ordinary Africans through the myths, rumors, and memories that circulate in African societies. Voices of the Poor is ambitious in its aims and sweeping in its scope. It is eloquently written and copiously documented...Isichei's fine book points the way to further integration between anthopology and history, providing a rich example of the means by which scholars can investigate popular consciousness by taking seriously the world of symbolic meaning. --INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES, Volume 36 Number 2 (2003)

The book is an important contribution to our understanding of Africa. It may become one of those -must read- books for all Africanists. H-AFRICA Elizabeth Isichei's Voices of the Poor/I> is an eloquent and ambitious effort to reconstruct the popular consciousness of ordinary Africans through the myths, rumors, and memories that circulate in African societies. Voices of the Poor/ is ambitious in its aims and sweeping in its scope. It is eloquently written and copiously documented...Isichei's fine book points the way to further integration between anthopology and history, providing a rich example of the means by which scholars can investigate popular consciousness by taking seriously the world of symbolic meaning. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES, Volume 36 Number 2 (2003)

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Countries Available