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Author Green-Simms, Lindsey B., 1978- author.

Title Postcolonial automobility : car culture in West Africa / Lindsey B. Green-Simms
Published Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2017

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Introduction: Thinking automobility, feeling automobility -- The hum of progress: motorcars and the modernization of West Africa -- "No danger no delay": Wole Soyinka and the perils of driving -- Moving pictures, mired cars: The automobile in African francophone -- The return of the Mercedes: Upward mobility, the good life, and Nigerian video film -- Women in traffic: towards a feminist automobility -- Conclusion: Global (be)longings
Summary For more than a century cars have symbolized autonomous, unfettered mobility and an increasingly global experience. And yet, they are often used differently outside the centers of global capitalism. This pioneering book considers how, through the lens of the automobile, we can assess the pleasures, dangers, and limits of global modernity in West Africa. Through new and provocative readings of famous plays, novels, and films, as well as recent popular videos, Postcolonial Automobility reveals the surprising ways in which automobility in the region is, at once, an everyday practice, an ethos, a fantasy of autonomy, and an affective activity intimately tied to modern social life. Lindsey B. Green-Simms begins with the history of motorization in West Africa from the colonial era to the decolonizing decades after World War II, and addresses the tragedy of car accidents through a close reading of Wole Soyinka's 1965 postindependence play The Road. Shifting to screen media, she discusses Ousmane Sembene's Xala and Jean-Pierre Bekolo's Quartier Mozart and reviews popular, low-budget Nollywood films. Finally, Green-Simms considers how feminist texts rewrite and work in dialogue with the male-centered films and novels where the car stands in for patriarchal power and capitalist achievement.Providing a unique perspective on technology in Africa--one refusing to be confined to narratives of either underdevelopment or inevitable progress--and covering a broad range of interdisciplinary material, Postcolonial Automobility will appeal not only to scholars and students of African literature and cinema but also to those in postcolonial and globalization studies
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed
Subject Automobiles -- Social aspects -- Africa, West
Automobiles -- Africa, West -- History
Automobiles in literature.
Automobiles in motion pictures.
Automobile driving -- Social aspects -- Africa, West
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Industries -- Transportation.
TRANSPORTATION -- Public Transportation.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
Automobile driving -- Social aspects
Automobiles
Automobiles in literature
Automobiles in motion pictures
Automobiles -- Social aspects
West Africa
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2016044497
ISBN 9781452954714
1452954712
9781452954707
1452954704
9781452957654
1452957657