Critical Arts Call for Papers

Of the early issues dating from 1980 Ntongela Masilela observed that Critical Arts was coterminous with the awakening of the historical consciousness that the practice of cultural studies could facilitate in securing the demise of apartheid. He concluded that “This monumental undertaking is evident on practically every page of Critical Arts”. Seminal authors who lent their intellectual labour to the early Critical Arts Project included JM Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Andre Brink and later Stuart Hall, Tom O'Regan, Ian Ang and Handel Kashope Wright, amongst many others. Masilela continued, “On the eve of the fall of apartheid these and other scholars were engaging “with the intersection of Marxism, race, representation and feminism in an attempt to create new epistemologies” (in Denzin, N. Cultural Studies: A Research Volume, Vol 5, 2000).   Ioan Davies wrote in Border/lines (1985/6), “Critical Arts's nervousness about what stance would be appropriate to coming to terms with culture in Africa seems to be perfectly in tune with anyone's nervousness with coming to terms with Africa”. The early contributions can be accessed via the Michigan State University eJournals project: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/

Critical Arts examined the relationship between texts and contexts, cultural formations and popular forms of expression, mainly in the Third World. After 1994, Critical Arts repositioned itself in the South-North nexus, developing the transdisciplinary epistemologies mentioned by Masilela, but now in conjunction with globally seminal scholars and transnational conceptual trajectories, again with the nervousness identified by Davies.

Critical Arts interprets cultural studies as a form of praxis, of experience, and of strategic intervention. How does one explain the contradictions, the opposing ir/rationalities, the fracturing of logics which so brutally feed political solidarities at any cost? The exigencies of being under fire make it hard to find the discursive space in which participants can catch enough breath to speak the truths of their own participation.   Our journal seeks to profile those approaches to issues that are amenable to a cultural studies-derived intervention, on the basis that `culture' is a marker of deeper continuities than the immediate conflicts under the fire of which so many must somehow live their lives. They must, perhaps, restore the vision of earlier theorists and historians, for whom `culture' was a kind of synthesis arising from the contradictions between human society and the politics of nations. Under the pressures of globalization, this kind of understanding becomes more relevant at every turn.

The journal is rigorously peer reviewed and aims to shape theory on the topics it covers.   Cutting edge theorisation (supported by empirical evidence) rather than the reporting of formulaic case studies are preferred as submissions.   Our editorial board has consisted of African studies scholars (e.g., David Wiley, Maureen Eke), cultural studies luminaries (e.g., Stuart Hall, Larry Grossberg, Daniel Mato, John Hartley), influential media scholars (e.g., Paddy Scannell, Helge Ronning, Hopeton Dunn, Tom O'Regan), anthropologists (Dave Coplan, Lesley Green), and literary scholars (Ken Harrow) amongst many others drawn from African institutions also.   Critical Arts' authors are Africans debating Africa with the rest; and the rest debating Africa and the South and with each other. 

Submissions are sought from both established and new researchers. Recent topics have included political economy of the media, political communication, intellectual property rights visual anthropology, dance and cultural studies in the Middle East.

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