© Columbia University Press
Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing
January, 2012
Cloth, 120 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-15950-0
$22.50
/ £15.50
"Globalectics is a stunning addition to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s creative and theoretical interventions in world culture. Basing his thought as always in personal experience of creating and teaching literature, he makes a powerful plea for understanding the fictive imagination via real, sensuous experience in all its global places. Turning to Hegel to argue that the ‘bondsman’ emerges stronger than the master from that oppressive relationship, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o argues brilliantly that orature, and ‘cyborature,’ are making new transcultural connections across the myriad ‘centers,’ or knots, of the worldwide net of cultures." — Timothy Reiss, author of Against Autonomy: Global Dialectics of Cultural Exchange
"Brilliant essays that demonstrate the transformative power of postcolonial cosmopolitanism. Globalectics as a method of reading rescues world literature from the distortions of its imperial past and transforms it into a mode of sharing, a gift to all of humanity. This is vital pedagogy for a new generation and a beautiful book." — Susan Buck-Morss, Cornell University and the Graduate Center, City University of New York
"Globalectics allows us to read world literature through Ngũgĩ’s sharp and compassionate eyes. Part memoir, part magisterial survey, and entirely engrossing, this book is a capstone to a long and brilliant career." — Christopher L. Miller, Yale University
"A monumental book, reminding us of the internationality of Pan-African postcolonialism and radiating out to a complete rethinking of the stakes of a world literature today. The teaching of the literature of English is spatio-temporally situated with theoretical and practical brilliance. The final discussion of orature has instructed this reader in ways that cannot be contained within a brief comment." — Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Columbia University
"In an ever-shrinking world, this book demonstrated the need to understand the similarities and differences in the stories we tell each other." — Publishers Weekly