This article examines the role of humour in Wilson Kaigalura’s novel, Mini Devils (2006) primarily because humour and laughter are among the most cherished traits of human being. Yet, what we laugh about, why, and how, are questions of serious concern. Using Susanne Reich and Mark Stein’s (2005) explication of the notion of communities of laughter, this article situates literary humour-laughter relationship within the stimuli-response framework and reads the characters as constituting a community of laughter that functions as an infrastructural site of sociability and socialisation. Drawing upon the theories of power, the article analyses the political and social aspects of humour that come in subtle ways, and yet serve major ways through which to access meanings that reveal, stabilise, or destabilise notions of power in society. This shift, from analysing humour and laughter as aesthetic devices to analysing them as deliberate political acts, can illuminate on our understanding of power dynamics and differentiation in society. The analysis shows that the characters’ performance of humour and its appreciation are goal-oriented and forms of power that are not always monopolised by particularised groups of people but can also be manipulated by all and sundry regardless of their social status in society.
Tanzanian Anglophone fiction is extant and bustling. The invisibility of Tanzanian fiction in English is not due to the country’s inability to produce good- quality Anglophone novels but is related to the challenge in accessing the texts both within and outside Tanzania. Studies about East African fiction tend to ignore the contribution of Tanzanian Anglophone writers in the region. In Tanzania people know more about other canonical African novelists than their very own Anglophone writers. This article explores the emergence and development of Tanzanian Anglophone fiction, paying particular attention to the emergence of Tanzanian Anglophone literary canons and how these canons have inspired and continue to inspire the production of Tanzanian fiction. Starting with the novels produced by the inaugural Tanzanian Anglophone writers in the sixties, and continuing with the most recent works, the paper examines the interface between Swahili and English, translation and self-translation, diasporic writers, universities’ and researchers’ contributions to the definition of the canon and to the visibility of the fiction in general.
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