East African Literature and the Politics of Global Reading

“Now let me share this with you”: Exploring Poetry as a Method for Postcolonial Geography Research

“…Such paradoxes of artistic creation are at the heart of this paper. As Kalliney (2008:16) tellingly notes: “The terms of this paradox, in which the politically marginal becomes part of a cultural dominant (or more precisely, a site of symbolic prestige), point to the difficulties of interpreting the political function of works of art in a postcolonial age.” There is thus a need to move beyond simplistic calls for inclusion to reflect the mirror back to decipher how intellectual communities and institutions are implicated in upholding and perpetuating iniquitous systems of global power and how these might be challenged to create more equitable and just research relations.…”

“…So we would simultaneously want to make a claim that poetry might be useful for many other researchers in many other geographical contexts too, being used as a means to create a range of provincial cosmopolitan geographical knowledges (Morin and Rothenberg 2011). Rural Ghana (in all its heterogeneity) happens to be one of those places because of its preponderance of oral culture but poetry could be used as an empowering research tool elsewhere because it is inclusive of non‐textual cultures and it therefore may be a means to account for “complex affiliations which stretch well beyond national boundaries” (Kalliney 2008:13). Moreover, we are not arguing exclusively for only poetry as an artistic form (for many of the points we make above may be equally applicable to literature, or dance, for example); rather we are simply suggesting that poetry is but one tool in the postcolonial geographer's handbag which might brim with all manner of other artistic creations.…”

“…We cannot assume, for example, that using poetry inevitably creates space for “alternative voices” in the research process: to suggest that poetry is necessarily more plural than prose is to play down the possibility that researchers can create biased poetic interpretations that reflect their own agendas, theoretical and institutional locations, and geopolitical positionalities. Below we briefly consider these issues, for as Kalliney (2008) cautions, postcolonial theorists need a greater awareness of how we ourselves produce and circulate knowledge in a global academic context. We believe this is conterminous with Noxolo's (2009:56) compelling call for “responsible academic writing”, which is neither easy nor straightforward.…”