Event date:

WA Distinguished Professors’ Lecture: Translects and Postcolonial Identity: Transgender Narratives in South African and Nigerian Autofictions

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Time: 3 June 2024 @ 9.45–11.00
Venue: Aula Collegium Heliodori
Speaker: Prof. Chantal Zabus (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord), Faculty Advisory Board (FAB) Member

Abstract

“Translects” (Zabus & Das, 2020) are transnational, transgender-inflected terms rooted in ancestral contexts. Hinging on ‘transing’ and ‘translating’, I examine the use of translects in ‘autofictions’ — South African Zandile Ngozi Nkabinde’s Black Bull, Ancestors and Me (2008), contrasted with South African Anastacia Thomson’s Always Anastacia (2015); Nigerian-born, US-based, Igbo-Tamil writer, Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater (2018); and Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir (2021) — to reflect on a ‘post-queer’ and post-secular turn in approaching transgender identities and personhoods, which translate into various shades of postcolonial naming practices in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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About the lecture series

WA Distinguished Professors’ Lectures Series features internationally renowned scholars visiting the Faculty of English to share their research and professional expertise with the faculty and students.