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The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

“What is African Literature?”: Uncovering One Woman’s Answers

By Mackenzie Finley

In 1963, Dennis Duerden of the Transcription Centre in London and Henry Doré of the National Educational Television Centre in New York collaborated with prominent South African writer Lewis Nkosi to develop a television series featuring leading African artists and writers of late-colonial and early-independent Africa. As part of the project, Duerden corresponded with Kenyan writer, Grace Ogot—the only woman writer whose life and work the series intended to explore. The documents exchanged between Duerden and Ogot (currently housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin) offer glimpses into the intent of the television project, the relationship between Anglo-American and African personalities in the early 1960s, and the intellectual lives of Duerden and Ogot during the period of their exchange.

Painting of Grace Ogot, by Joseph Nyagah. Courtesy of the Daily Nation, Kenya.

Painting of Grace Ogot, by Joseph Nyagah. Courtesy of the Daily Nation, Kenya.

On June 22, 1963, Duerden initiated a series of letters with Ogot regarding the proposed television series. Duerden’s first letter was accompanied by a questionnaire, which Ogot was requested to complete. The questionnaire, developed by Nkosi and Duerden, was intended to gather biographical information about the writer before Duerden and his team began production on the film series. Ogot returned the questionnaire with reticent answers.

Lewis Nkosi at the Centre for the Study of Southern African Literature and Languages (CSSALL) at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW), 2001. Via Wikipedia

Lewis Nkosi at the Centre for the Study of Southern African Literature and Languages (CSSALL) at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW), 2001. Via Wikipedia

Consequently, Duerden wrote a follow-up letter to Ogot, requesting that she include greater biographical detail in her answers. In his letter, Duerden endorsed the value of the television project, hoping its worth would inspire Ogot to be more forthcoming. Whether or not Ogot was convinced of the project’s value, she filled out the questionnaire the second time with significantly more revealing information.

In Ogot’s second set of answers, we encounter glimpses of her values, interests, and intellectual life. For example, we learn that her primary literary influences included the short story “How Much Land Does a Man Require” by Leo Tolstoy, The Dark Child by Camara Laye, Mary Slessor of Calabar by William Pringle Livingstone, and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Ogot elaborated on the significance of these works in her life. Tolstoy’s short story, for instance, prompted her to write: “If the whole world read this story, perhaps there would be no war.” Regarding the biography of Mary Slessor by Livingstone, Ogot explained, “If anything at all, this book had a lot to do with the shaping of my life and the choice of my career.” Seeking to emulate the positive impact that Slessor had on African society, Ogot “became a nurse … I regarded this as an expression of that feeling of gratitude in me towards Mary Slessor of Scotland who did so much for my Africa.”

The television project as a whole intended to help a burgeoning African literary scene develop parameters for what might be called “African literature.” To this end, the fifth question on the questionnaire is perhaps the most illuminating. “WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER TO BE SPECIFICALLY AFRICAN INFLUENCES IN YOUR LIFE …?” The question presumes the existence of a tangible “Africanness” which is also reflected in the discourse of late-colonial and early-independent Africa, where African identities and trajectories of peoples, nations, and the continent were all being negotiated. Duerden’s second letter to Ogot unpacks the intention of this question further: “What we want to do is to establish how far the background of your people’s traditions have affected the texture of your life.” The question arises: What does it mean to the author of the questionnaire to be “African” in texture and influence?

Initially, Ogot offered very little in terms of a response to the fifth question. In fact, she chose to write, “NIL.” Yet when Duerden begged for more elaborate answers, Ogot disclosed what she considered to be the “African influences” coloring her life:

“Looking back now, I think that there were some African influences that affected my marriage. An English friend of mine asked me once, “After all these years of Education, you still want to be married according to African customs?” My answer was simple. “There is something terribly African in me that school education has not touched.” The negotiations about my marriage were done according to Luo tradition, and full dowry was paid.”

Ogot went on to summarize her wedding day and highlight some of the specific Luo rituals to which she adhered. Interestingly, Ogot had begun to write that the negotiations regarding her marriage were done according to “African” tradition; however, at “Afri” she stopped and scribbled out the word, replacing it with “Luo”, as quoted above. In the struggle against colonialism, which necessitated a certain unity among African peoples, Ogot’s response displays her active negotiation and mediation of her identity, imagined somewhere in between “Luo” and “African.” Her initial dismissal of the question might also suggest that “Africanness” to her was something embodied rather than something that could be divorced from context, defined, and analyzed. Indeed, in her response, she defines “African influences” as “something terribly African in [her].”

Following her participation in the television series, Ogot went on to publish short stories and novels, including The Promised Land (1966) and a collection of short stories entitled Land Without Thunder (1968). Luo history and tradition saturated her fiction. Yet, Ogot is also remembered for her prominent role in Kenyan national politics. Thus her life’s work reflects the plurality of identities—local, national, and continental—that confronted African literary elite in the wake of African independence. Rather than conclusively answering the question, “What is African Literature?,” the television series on prominent African writers served to expose the tensions underlying such plurality.

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Sources:

Box 17, Folder 21, The Transcription Centre Records, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas, Austin.

“It is a Wide Road that Leads to War”

by Joan Neuberger

On January 1, 1900, an editorial in the New York World  predicted that the twentieth century would “meet and overcome all perils and prove to be the best that this steadily improving planet has ever seen.” The war that broke out just a few years later in 1914 showed that the twentieth century would become something entirely different.

By 1900, most European countries had constitutions, elected representative governments, and limits on monarchical power. Increasing control over nature with industrial machines and modern capitalism offered many Europeans and Americans an unprecedented degree of material comfort and prosperity. With that came a growing sense of their individual achievement, as well as the technology and prosperity to assert their national power in new ways over other people at home and in colonies abroad. But the Europeans’ use of modern power to dominate, educate, classify, and economically exploit others created new conflicts over culture, identity, sovereignty, security, even over different ideas about the basic components of human nature. These conflicts, beginning with colonial liberation struggles and especially the First World War would call into question the very foundations of European power and Europeans’ faith in progress and in the genuine achievements of the entire previous century.

There was considerable enthusiasm for a war in the summer of 1914. Serious disagreements beset every country in Europe: conflicts over political rights, human rights, economic developments, and colonial and other policies. Many people believed that a short war would somehow “wipe the slate clean,” and allow material progress and prosperity to continue. And everywhere people believed that the deep cultural and economic connections among European nations would prevent war from continuing for more than a few months. Nineteenth-century wars in Europe had been of limited scope and duration due to visionary international agreements made in Vienna in 1814-15 after the defeat of Napoleon. Europeans thought they had become too “civilized” to fight a drawn-out, destructive conflict.

The_Outbreak_of_the_First_World_War,_1914_Q81832
Crowds outside Buckingham Palace cheer King George, Queen Mary and the Prince of Wales (who can just be seen on the balcony) following the Declaration of War in August 1914. (Wikimedia Commons)

The declaration of the war brought crowds of people to the streets of every capital city in Europe to celebrate. Friedrich Meinecke, later a major German historian, described the outbreak of the war as “one of the great moments of my life, which suddenly filled my soul with the deepest confidence in our people and the profoundest joy.”  In many countries, even workers, who had been locked in battle with their governments, hastened to join the middle-and upper-classes in the support of the war.

There were, however, other voices. Peasants, who would make up the bulk of the war’s cannon fodder, were indifferent to the political conflicts that divided European nations and resented the draft. And a few prescient diplomats recognized the folly their leaders were embarking upon. Maurice Paléologue, the French ambassador to Russia, wrote in his diary: “So the die is cast…The part played by reason in the government of peoples is so small that it has taken merely a week to let loose universal madness.”

westwardho
“Westward Ho,” a satirical poster by Eric Gill

It would take only a few weeks for the truth of the Russian peasant saying to be apparent to all: “It is a wide road that leads to war and only a narrow path that leads home again.”

uniform

The documents, posters, letters, and photographs currently on display at the Harry Ransom Center illustrate the way ordinary people on the home front and the battlefront experienced the narrowing of that road.

More events, sponsored by the Harry Ransom Center

Please join us for a symposium on World War 1 sponsored by the Institute for Historical Studies at UT Austin:
Remembering World War 1 on its Centennial,” April 16, 2014. 3:30-5:30. GAR 4.100. Free & open to the public.

You may also enjoy:

World War 1: Teaching at the Museum (on propaganda posters)

 

All images courtesy of Harry Ransom Center unless otherwise indicated.

Sources:

W. Bruce Lincoln, Passage Through Armageddon (1986)

Robin Winks and Joan Neuberger, Europe and the Making of Modernity (2005)

World War I: Teaching at the Museum

From the Editor: At universities, not all teaching takes place in the classroom. The University of Texas at Austin has a number of archives, libraries, and museums with public exhibition spaces for teaching students and the general public about topics covered by their collections. This month Not Even Past features a discussion with the curators of The World at War, 1914-1918, the show currently on display at UT’s renowned Harry Ransom Center. Elizabeth Garver and Jean Cannon spent months culling through the HRC’s rich collections of posters, letters, photograph albums and other materials to find just the right balance of objects to convey the experience of the war that was supposed to “end all wars” as it was lived in numerous countries in Europe.

This April we will be rolling out the story of the teaching exhibit differently than in the past. Today we present some of the propaganda materials from the exhibit as well as some that are available through the HRC’s online digital collections. Next week we will post comments from the curators about constructing the exhibit and then we will post a video interview, in which they discuss the selection of materials to teach viewers about World War I as well as some of their favorite, most moving documents.

Propaganda Posters

Propaganda was invented during World War I. Although the declaration of war was greeted enthusiastically all over Europe, support quickly waned. Governments of Britain, France, the US, Germany, Italy and Russia all printed posters to lift morale and encourage support for the war effort. These posters come from the HRC’s digitalized collection (more of the collection can be found here).

Many posters demonized the enemy, often by showing the enemy threatening women and children.

destroy brute

Others simply encouraged men to enlist…

stepintoyrplace

…sometimes recruiting women and children to encourage them.

womenGO

This French poster celebrates the soldiers recruited from their colonies in Africa.

colonial troops

Women, meanwhile, were and taking up active roles, entering the workforce to replace men sent into battle, for example.

women workers

Even in the era of technologically enhanced, mechanized killing machines, horses played a large role in the war effort of all the combatants. And they needed to be supported too.

horse

Dogs too were trained for specific roles. The HRC blog tells us that they could enter No Man’s Land and identify wounded men.

Even.a.dog_.low_.res_

World War I went on much longer than expected and it was expensive. Governments sold bonds to raise money to continue to fight and the circulated posters calling for public financial support.

buybondsww1

Individual groups used posters to raise money for specific support projects like ambulances and other kinds of medical care.

redcrossww1

poetsww1

Food was in short supply everywhere. These French posters encourage people to save bread by eating potatoes and eat fish to save meat.

                                        eat less meatsavebread

Another post on the HRC blog shows the ways Russian posters made food seem unpalatable. This one shows how the Devil gardens–transforming vegetables in German enemies.

the devil's garden

And this one, which represents each of the combatants as food types, makes them all look pretty yucky.

yuckyfood

More on food-related posters here.

The rest of the Harry Ransom Center’s World War 1 poster collection can be found here.

History Made Magic: The Scrapbooks of Harry Houdini Come Alive

By Charley S Binkow

THE NEW ARCHIVE (No.3) Computer and online technologies are enabling historians to do history in a variety of new ways. Archives and libraries all over the world are digitizing their collections, making their documents available to anyone with a computer. Mapping and other kinds of visualization are allowing historians to create new kinds of documents and ask new questions about history. Each week, our Assistant Editors, UT History PhD student, Henry Wiencek and Undergraduate Editorial Intern, Charley Binkow, will introduce our readers to the world’s most interesting new digital documents and projects in THE NEW ARCHIVE.

title_w_border_houdini_magicians_scrapbook_062b_2In a new age of digital powered skepticism, where anything “extraordinary” can be explained within seconds on a smartphone, there isn’t much room for magic.  But the Harry Ransom Center at UT Austin has brought us back to a time when the mystical unknown captured the hearts and minds of people everywhere.  The HRC acquired the scrapbooks of legendary magician Harry Houdini (1891-1926) in 1958 and has recently digitized its collection for the public.  The collection contains ten scrapbooks filled with advertisements, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, reports, how-to articles, and almost everything else regarding magic from roughly the 1830s through the 1920s.  Houdini owned all the books at the time of his death, but he did not compile all of the clippings.  Four books were owned by his contemporaries, including Harry Helms, Herr Jansen, S.S. Baldwin, and Professeur Em. De Verli (sic) and their books have clippings that span Europe and North America throughout the 19th century.  Some scraps detail the “Revival of the Dread Devil-Worship,” while others document articles, such as “Houdini Tells How the Mediums Know So Much.”

4thOne of the best features of the collection, besides its size, is its display.  If you click on “Page Flip View,” the scrapbook will appear on screen and let you flip through the collection, page by page.  You feel as if you’re flipping through the scrapbooks themselves.  My personal favorite piece (located on page 35 of the “Disbound/Divided” scrapbook) is an article from Science and Invention magazine from July 1923.  The article is titled “Magic For Everybody,” and includes such classic tricks as “The Vanishing Handkerchief” and “The Vanishing Horse.” This collection gives us a comprehensive understanding of what these magicians thought valuable; everything they saw as important or nostalgic or innovative they preserved in these books.  We can track their love of magic across a century and see the dynamic ways in which the field changed, in many instances by the collectors themselves. Almost every page of this collection bleeds an infectious love for the world of the supernatural and is well worth exploring.

3rd_picIf you like the Houdini archive, you should also check out the HRC’s other digital collection of “Magic Posters and Playbills,” which contains a visual history of magic spanning from 1750 to 1920.

More finds in THE NEW ARCHIVE: 

Henry Wiencek finds a digital history project that literally maps where and when slavery ended in America. 

And Charley Binknow scrolls through some incredible photographs, letters and government documents from the Easter Rising of 1916. 

 

Photo Credits:

Poster for “Will, The Witch, and the Watch” (Harry Houdini Papers and Magic Collection, Harry Ransom Center)

Magic show advertisement from “Magician’s Scrapbook,” Houdini’s collection of newspaper clippings, playbills, and other assorted material (Harry Houdini Papers and Magic Collection, Harry Ransom Center)

Page from “Magician’s Doings,” a scrapbook created by magician Harry August Jansen then acquired by Houdini. (Harry Houdini Papers and Magic Collection, Harry Ransom Center)

 

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