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Citation

Richards D (2001) Staging the word: the spectacle of the text in African literature. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 3 (3), pp. 405-418. https://doi.org/10.1080/713769067

Abstract
'The spectacle of the text' refers to the presence of writing within African literature. By this, I do not mean specific allusions to other writings or quotations from other sources, nor do I wish to try to trace the networks of influences, borrowings and citations which have contributed to the writings of the three authors I will refer to. My title alludes, not to texts as resources, but, quite simply, to texts as objects: books, papers, documents, scripts. In the (now canonical) writings of Achebe, Soyinka and Ngugi, the reader is offered glimpses of other texts which are not available. These secreted texts, invented by and embedded within other texts, are of crucial significance, not for what they contain as texts, but for what they are, as textual objects. Although these textual objects are themselves withheld from reading, they create the environment around which meanings congregate, and the conditions whereby another kind of reading is possible. I am primarily concerned, therefore, with what the 'surface' presence of textual objects in African writings may signify, and I wish to address how writings are, quite literally, 'seen' in African literature: how a space or 'stage' is created within African writings where textual objects are inspected and what that scrutiny may reveal about the nature of African readership.

Keywords
African Literature; Chinua Achebe; Ngugi Wa Thiong'O; Orality; Painting; Readerships; Textuality; Wole Soyinka

Journal
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies: Volume 3, Issue 3