By Francis B. Nyamnjoh (originally published in Bookmark: News Magazine of the South African Booksellers’ Association, July-September 2006, pp.29-30)
Drawing on his own foray into the world of South African publishing, Dr. Francis Nyamnjoh unpacks some of the challenges facing African literature – on the African continent. He questions the tacit acceptance that there is only limited space available for work written and published by Africans. This article does not seek to provide practical solutions to the economic, distribution and marketing issues but rather focuses on some of the ideological dimensions of publishing Africa.
In a recent paper, I detailed the economics, culture and politics of publishing and reading in Africa. The paper discussed various hierarchies that inform which and how African publications are recognized and represented. In addition, factors such as mediocrity of content, invisibility, remoteness or the poor reputation of publisher, together with poor marketing and distribution conspire to ensure that writers and academics perish even when they have published. If these problems are universal, they are also particularly African, thanks especially to the global popularity of negative representations about the continent, its humanity and creativity. The technical and financial difficulties facing the publishing industry in Africa are well-known. Also common knowledge are the challenges facing African writers of fiction and faction, from novelists to academics through poets, playwrights and journalists. Many African scholars seeking academic fulfilment through publication cannot but perish, and not always because of poor scientific content. In the social sciences, where objectivity is often distorted by obvious or subtle ideology, African scholars face a critical choice between sacrificing relevance for recognition or recognition for relevance. This is because the political economy of the publishing industry prevents them from achieving both of these values at the same time.
Economics Rule
Decisions by publishers are primarily motivated by economic considerations, even if not always by a thirst for profit. Even the most non-commercial, ‘progressive’ or ‘independent’ publishers and university presses hesitate to promote plurality and diversity of content because they run the risk putting themselves out of the business. Reviewers, as arbitrators of taste, standards and knowledge, are readily and uncritically sought after by publishers – regardless of ideological leanings. This implies that publishing is ultimately about policing ideas to ensure that national, regional and global book-markets and book-markers will be dominated by plurality without diversity.
Paymaster or Piper?
In reviewing a manuscript or publication, publishers seek to ensure that established traditions and expectations of palatability are maintained. In a world heavy with economic, cultural and political hierarchies informed, inter alia, by race, place, class, gender and age, this begs a few questions: Whose traditions? Whose palates? Why traditions and palates? Hence the importance of yet other questions: Who has the power to define, enforce and manage these traditions, tastes and standards? How feasible is it to promote literary or cultural traditions and ideals when they are at variance with economic considerations? If he who pays the piper calls the tune, then the cultural capital most likely to inspire investment is that which is familiar to the paymaster’s race, place, class, gender or generation; that into which s/he has been schooled to the point of second nature and which, instinctively, s/he expects every piper worth the name to internalize and reproduce. Yet pipers are just as shaped by their race, place, class, gender and generation as are those who pay them. Inviting them to internalize and reproduce tunes at variance with their own traditions and tastes is to devalue and marginalize their own human experience. Over time, in the interest of convenience and material comfort, many a piper yields to the whims and caprice of the wallet and reproduces the cultural expectations of their paymasters. This makes publishing a very conservative industry where despite rhetoric to the contrary, the emphasis is less on creativity than mimicry, and less on production than reproduction.
Thus socialised into these hierarchies and views frozen since childhood, publishers, editors, peer-reviewers and cultural producers operate in cultural contexts where it is normal to minimise the scientific and creative capabilities of the African mind. Increasingly, for reasons of political correctness, this is true in practice even when it remains un-stated. It is hardly surprising then that African artists, writers and scientists continue to face an uphill task convincing publishers about the maturity and validity of their creative endeavours.
At the Bottom of the Creative Hierarchy
African publishing is dominated by publishers who – for economic, cultural or political reasons – reproduce work informed by a global hierarchy of creativity in which Africans are perceived to be at the very bottom. Most sub-Saharan African publishers north of the Limpopo might have the will to promote alternative pipers and tunes, but they simply do not have the means to do so – or to survive doing so. As for the leading publishers who are mostly South African and white, the tunes they call are preponderantly Western even when the stories and scholarship are geographically located in South Africa. Almost systematically, South African publishers reject pipers and tunes from north of the Limpopo, as the following excerpts from my own personal experiences as a novelist with two South African publishers and their manuscript reviewers demonstrate:
Publisher 1
“This is by far the most accomplished of all this author’s manuscripts that I have had the privilege of reading. Dieudonné has several very interesting strands which come together to form something which is original and entertaining. […] Over the years, …[name withheld] has found that it is very difficult to sell books that do not have a direct relationship to the experiences of the South African book-buying public. While I am sure this will, and is, changing, it should still be taken into account. [...] At present, despite all the excellent writing that I have found in this manuscript, I do not feel it is of a publishable standard. […] As stated above, however, of important concern is that a book, even of this quality, may struggle in a South African market that continues to exhibit little interest in literature from elsewhere in Africa.”
Publisher 2
“Dieudonné is a further, and more fully realised, contribution to Francis Nyamnjoh’s wide-angle critique of Cameroonian society, displaying the same tragicomic impulse seen in The Forgotten, with fewer faults of narration and style. The potential of the MS as a work for publication, however, is greatly limited … given the author’s (lack of) profile. In short, Dieudonné is not a work that will rescue ... Nyamnjoh profitably from anonymity, and I recommend that … [name withheld] decline to publish. […] Apart from the fact that today’s marketplace makes little space for novellas – even less for those originating from north of the Limpopo – the plain fact is that Nyamnjoh’s efforts fall short, in this case, of his ambitious undertaking.”
A Renaissance of Innovation
What is published or not published in South Africa on and from the rest of Africa, plays an important role in perpetuating negative stereotypes between insiders and outsiders, and in undermining the South African contribution to an African renaissance and cultural conviviality. The future of African publishing depends on the extent to which South African publishers reach out to pipers and tunes north of the Limpopo. How effective the manuscript review system remains depends on how receptive to innovative writing and content it is in practice, especially as the merits of reviews cannot be taken for granted. All too often, reviewers use marketability as an excuse to reject what their cultural or ideological palates are uncomfortable with. The inevitable result is that richness and diversity suffer, as the likelihood of cultural imperialism, trivialisation and misrepresentation increases.
Surely, the future of African publishing expects more than Market Forces, as even the Market is known to be amenable to ‘the hidden hand’. Traditions, like works of fiction, are invented and reinvented. Just as reviewers call upon writers to reinvent and resubmit, marginal voices in South Africa and north of the Limpopo are screaming out for their predicament to be captured by pipers in tune with alter-native tunes. It is the place and duty of African publishers to provide for a rainbow continent of multiple identities and cultural conviviality with a unique and powerful voice.
Dr Francis B. Nyamnjoh is Head of Publications with CODESRIA. He has published scholarly articles and books on globalisation, citizenship, media and the politics of belonging. His latest novel A Nose for Money (2006) is published by the East African Educational Publishers in Nairobi, Kenya.
References:
Nyamnjoh, F.B., (2004), “From Publish or Perish to Publish and Perish: What ’Africa’s 100 Best Books’ Tell Us About Publishing Africa”, in: Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol. 39 (5): 331-355.
Nyamnjoh, F.B., (2006), Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa, London: CODESRIA/Zed Books.
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