'This was a Conradian world I was entering': Postcolonial river-journeys beyond the Black Atlantic in Caryl Phillips's work

Reddick, Yvonne orcid iconORCID: 0000-0002-7869-7560 (2016) 'This was a Conradian world I was entering': Postcolonial river-journeys beyond the Black Atlantic in Caryl Phillips's work. Wasafiri, 31 (3). pp. 34-41. ISSN 0269-0055

[thumbnail of Author Accepted Manuscript]
Preview
PDF (Author Accepted Manuscript) - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives.

337kB

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02690055.2016.1181916

Abstract

Caryl Phillips has been accused of replicating the stereotyped view of a timeless, ahistorical Africa that Paul Gilroy puts forward in his paradigm of the Black Atlantic. Yet this article shows that Crossing the River and Phillips’s essays about Africa suggest ways in which Gilroy’s important paradigm of the black Atlantic could be broadened to become more inclusive of writing about Africa. Phillips draws inspiration from writers such as V S Naipaul, Chinua Achebe, and especially Joseph Conrad, to update the literary journey upriver and make it relevant to contemporary West African issues. A complex interplay of racial identities occurs when people from the African diaspora travel to Africa; this is a key preoccupation for Phillips when he rewrites Conrad. During the course of his river-journeys, Phillips meditates upon the complexities of being a black Westerner in Africa, examines the memory of slavery, colonialism and postcolonial unrest, problematises diasporan attempts to ‘return’ to Africa, and recognises the longstanding modernity of African countries.


Repository Staff Only: item control page