Browsing by Author "Settler, Federico"

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    The production of the sacred in postcolonial Africa
    (2006) Settler, Federico; Chidester, David
    This study seeks to discuss the persistence of religion in colonial and postcolonial narratives of confinement and exclusion. I begin by first exploring the history of religion in relation to colonial representations of Africa(ns) as savage and, situating the narratives of confinement and exclusion in the context of South Africa's colonial history, I set out to demonstrate the temporal and spatial expressions of the sacred as it is invoked/ produced by both the colonized and colonizer. I then proceed to explore such contests of power to produce the sacred in Frantz Fanon's On National Culture and the indigenous authorities in post-apartheid South Africa. In doing so, I draw upon the resources of postcolonial theory, subaltern studies and African/Fanon studies to demonstrate how strategies of containment and exclusion have been employed to mediate the persistence of the sacred in colonial, anti-colonial and African nationalist discourses. A further distinguishing feature of this study is that it seeks demonstrate through the metaphor of infection, the persistence of religion regardless of, and in fact activated by, these strategies that seek to domesticate and disinfect the sacred.
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    Religion in the work of Frantz Fanon
    (2009) Settler, Federico; Chidester, David
    This thesis explores Frantz Fanon's engagement with religion, and its impact on his theories of race and racism. As a cultural theorist and political activist with strong Marxian-humanist sympathies, Fanon asserted that, as an irrational force, religion anaesthetised the oppressed and inhibited the recovery of the black self. In this study I draw on critical and analytical work in the fields of religion, African studies, and postcolonial theory to interrogate the significance of the black body in the production of his aesthetic of transformation. To understand Fanon's engagements with religion I examine the social and political contexts of his native Martinique and his adopted Algeria, both countries which are defined by strict social and religious hierarchies. Through this focus on his engagement with Christianity, Islam and indigenous traditions in both Martinique and Algeria I argue that, while Fanon was ambivalent about the usefulness of religion in the anti-colonial struggle and the recovery of the black self, he nonetheless came to recognise the role of religion in producing narratives of the sacred that would cohere and motivate the colonized in their struggle against racist oppression. Finally, I argue that Fanon circumvents his ambivalence towards religion by elevating the significance of the enslaved and colonized body, as a sacred instrument of revolt and recovery. This thesis concludes that it is only through the production of such narratives of the sacred that Fanon is able to expel religion from the recovery of the black self and the inauguration of the new nation, while retaining traces of the sacred in his aesthetic of transformation.