Representations of Child Soldiers in Contemporary African Narratives
Representations of Child Soldiers in Contemporary African Narratives
Description
In Representations of Child Soldiers in Contemporary African Narratives, Ademola Adesola examines the dominant factors that writers privilege in their portrayals of child soldiering in sub-Saharan Africa. In his textual-interpretive analyses of selected novels in the African child soldier genre, Adesola contends that critical discussions of African child soldier literature have depended on the interpretive frameworks supplied by Western humanitarian discourses which oversimplify and de-historicize experiences of war in Africa. The author argues that such reductive decontextualization of war realities serve to champion a narrow vision of war in African contexts centered on a moral and humanitarian urge for Western intervention. Regardless of whether the casus belli legitimating those wars are genuine or not, those conflicts (and children’s involvement in them) are understood within the same racist colonial and ethnocentric stereotypes about Africa that have been privileged in Western thought and the Western moral-political imagination for centuries. Thus, in studying African child soldier narratives, this book provides an alternative reading of novels whose settings feature African ethnopolitical conflicts – such as in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo-Brazzaville, Nigeria – notable for their exploitation of children for military ends. The author maintains that these works are significant in the varying ways they reify and challenge the Western ideas of “child” and “childhood,” as well as privilege child soldiers as social actors whose intricate makeups disavow being simply understood as innocent victims or irredeemable perpetrators of atrocities.
Accessibility Information
Additional accessibility information
- EPUB 3.0
- Conforms with the requirements of EPUB Accessibility Spec v1.1
- WCAG level AA
- WCAG v2.2 compliant
- accessibility@bloomsbury.com
Hazards
The publication contains no hazards
Support for non-visual reading
- No accessibility features offered by the reading system, device or reading software are disabled or otherwise unusable with the product
- Has alternative text descriptions for images
Visual adjustments
Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified according to the capabilities of the reading system (font family and size, spaces, as well as color of background and text)
Navigation
- Page list to go to pages from the print source version
- Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation
- All or substantially all textual matter is arranged in a single logical reading order
- Content is enhanced with ARIA roles to optimize organization and facilitate navigation
- Purposes of all links are made clear
Rich content
Language tagging provided
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One: Beasts of No Nation as a Narrative of Recovery of Lost Childhood Innocence
Chapter Two: The Portrait of the Child Soldier as a Hybrid Figure in Song for Night
Chapter Three: Prewar Maladies and the Agency of the Child Soldier in Allah Is Not Obliged
Chapter Four: The Child Soldier and the Stereotypical Image of Africa in Johnny Mad Dog
Chapter Five The “Paratextual Condition” of African Child Soldier Narratives
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author
Product details
| Published | 11 Sep 2024 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 236 |
| ISBN | 9781666954500 |
| Imprint | Lexington Books |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
ONLINE RESOURCES
Bloomsbury Collections
This book is available on Bloomsbury Collections where your library has access.
Related Titles
