Heroism and Critical Consciousness in African Literature

Heroism and Critical Consciousness in African Literature which
was originally published in 1994 as Ideological Sanction and Social
Action in African Literature is a stimulating discourse on the
subjectivisation of the heroic type in African literature as a product
of historical and social forces and processes and the location of
aesthetic consciousness that is undergirded by textual production and
critical positioning. Rich in intertextual analysis and sequences of
meta-commentary the book is both an excavation of the dialectical
relationship between the ‘materiality’ of heroism across wide geographic
sites and historical periods and its aesthetic re-functioning in
African textual productions as well as the problematisation of the place
of ‘critical’ consciousness in African dystopian texts.

The
author’s extensive revisions in preparation of this new edition and the
incorporation of a new part which was written between 2014 and 2015
updates this contribution to African literary and cultural scholarship
their future directions.