Transnationalism and the agenda of African literature in a digital age

For many new African voices, access to new media technology, with its faster and more advanced means of communication, marks the beginning of a new wave of writing and exchange of ideas. While they are using the traditional media for longer outputs, the web provides the space for more immediate, and often shorter, productions that include poetry and short stories. Writing on the web is often more controversial than in print, perhaps because of the perceived freedom of expression available on the internet against the various forms of censorship that writers encounter with print publishing. Additionally, it is cheaper and faster to publish creative writing on the internet, and this work will potentially reach a wider audience, fuelled by a rapid uptake of internet and mobile phone technology within Africa. Just as the Onitsha pamphleteer manipulated print technology and the racy language of his time and made them his own, capturing the zeitgeist of colonial and postcolonial Africa in the process, so the online African writer uses the technology of his time to reflect the Africa of today. Out of the need to find an alternative to mainstream publishing, a new generation of African writers has found the internet an ideal platform to present their version of self and society. This essay explores questions of how African literature is being shaped by this more global medium where location shifts to cyberspace, and voices are less subject to the ‘gatekeeping’ practices of print publication. I will also consider how the medium itself is shaping new African writing, given the interaction between authors and their readers.

Publication year:2014

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