The Book in Africa: Critical Debates by Caroline Davis and David Johnson explores the publishing history of manuscripts in Africa.
The following book review was published by Research in African Literatures journal in 2021.
Citation: Paul, Aditi (2021), "The Book in Africa: Critical Debates by Caroline Davis, David Johnson Review by Aditi Paul", Research in African Literatures, 51(4): 251-253.
In
2012 at the Institute of English Studies, London University, “The Book in Africa
Symposium” was held. Some of the presentations made in that symposium coupled
with new case studies from across Africa on the manuscript tradition led to the
publication of The Book in Africa: Critical Debates. In addition, this book
is part of Palgrave Macmillan’s series titled New Directions in Book
History that is exploring, documenting, and reassessing the neglected
global history of print, script, and post-print cultures from antiquity to the twenty-first
century.
The
Book in Africa is an invaluable overview of the
marginalized body of African scholarship that has been a by-product of European
missionaries, colonial administrators, and traders. The book is divided into
three sections and each chapter interconnects sociohistorical circumstances and
literary scholarship: (1) the printing of oral manuscripts in different African
contexts, (2) the relationship between the book and African politics and
economics, and (3) the production, circulation, and reception of literary texts
in Africa.
In the first section, Archie L. Dick examines reading culture
from 1780 to 1840 in the Cape of Good Hope. He notes that the circulation of
copied texts was widespread among the Cape inhabitants. Whether it was
newspapers, religious scriptures, political propaganda leaflets, or
schoolbooks, reading materials before the advent of the printing press were
copied texts and reflected religious, social, class, and language divides. The
author then claims that in the early 19th century, when print capitalism emerged,
the motive for reading and circulating printed text changed to economic gains. Fawzi
Abdulrazak charts the advent of the printing press in Morocco. He analyzes four
phases of the government involvement in publishing: (1) 1865–71, when printing,
finance and marketing, and quality control was under government jurisdiction;
(2) 1871–97, when the government abandoned direct supervision but used printing
for propaganda purposes and private citizens bore the responsibility; (3) 1897–1908,
when publishers sponsored books for both charitable and profitable purposes and
the government assumed the role of censor; and (4) 1908–12, when the government
applied stringent controls over printing and exploited it for political drives.
Likewise, Alessandro Gori, in his chapter, explores different phases in
Ethiopian history that shaped Islamic printing. He argues that due to the
intervention of the Emperor, print culture in Ethiopia had slower progress as
compared with the countries wherein printing under Christian missionaries was
flourishing. Shamil Jeppie captures the oral, written, and print tradition in
Timbuktu. He discusses Ahmad Bul’araf, who turned Timbuktu into a repository of
books through his collection of manuscripts.
In the second section, David Johnson challenges
Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined community and questions the possibility
of print culture contributing to postcolonial South African nation-building. He
argues that despite the reality reflected and realization among citizens, print
literature lacked ideological influence on nation-building and, therefore, had
a negligible impact. Carol Davis traces the history of African print culture of
a British publisher: Longmans. Davis argues that Longmans circulated
linguistic, historical, and anthropological knowledge about Africa through
London-based publications and African education system, while indigenizing staff
and publications and allowing governments, African authors, and educational
institutions to establish alliances with Longmans. But what remains a mystery
is the failure to keep Longmans publishing ventures and profits in Africa on
record. Davis concludes by stating that the fragmentary remnants of Longmans’
commercial business in Africa is unbelievable and could be a conscious veil
over the company’s history with reasons unknown. On the other hand, Giacomo
Macola and Jack Hogan’s chapter discusses Lozi thinkers and how they used books
as tools for propagating Lozi ethnicism. The authors argue that while histories
and ethnographies of Lozi were reflected in vernacular ethnographic works, upon
the advent of electronic material, the trend drifted away from postcolonial
literature. Elizabeth Le Roux explores Witwatersrand University Press (WUP) and
narrates how sociopolitical, economic, and ideational factors exert pressure on
publishing activities of university presses. Le Roux contends that while WUP gained
public trust because of its political mission and anti-apartheid publishing,
the bibliographic analysis reveals that WUP never resisted government
censorship and hence was not a radical, oppositional, and independent press.
In the last section, Ruth Bush and Claire Ducournau
reflect on the role of a literary prize—Grand prix litteraire de
l’Afrique noire—by the Association des ecrivains de langue francaise (ADELF).
The chapter argues that the prize culture by ADELF for African writing in the French
language moved beyond dominant ideas despite adhering to the politics of French
cultural hegemony. Nourdin Bejjit examines the evolution of African literature
and the success of Heinemann Educational Books (HEB). He explores the journey of
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and argues that his shifting political ideas were synchronous
with his relationship with HEB. In the last chapter, Joyce Ashuntantang
discusses Anglophone Cameroonian writers of the 1960s and 1970s and their
struggles with European, African, or Francophone Cameroon publishers. Ashuntantang
argues that disappointed Anglophone Cameroonian writers established their own
publishing houses and met success in publishing high-quality scholarly and
creative writing. However, the advent of the internet encouraged Anglophone
Cameroonian authors to self-publish and digitally promote their writings on
social media sites and blogs. And while the “death of the book” is far away, the
digital revolution did transform publishing and the dissemination of literature
for authors.
The Book in Africa offers
a commendable array of historical research that enables readers to comprehend
the events at a given point in time. The book can be a reference book for those
unfamiliar with the pre- and postcolonial history of publishing houses in
Africa and the conflicting issues with which the writers jostled. Since the book
peeks into the unexplored archives and overlooked studies that are the
evolutionary links in the histography of African book culture, it does play a
role in inciting interest in the lovers of African studies, postcolonial
studies, and the history of print media.
