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.