Nuruddin Farah is widely regarded as one of the most sophisticated voices in contemporary world literature. Michel Foucault is revered as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, ...with his discursive legacy providing inspiration for scholars working in a range of interdisciplinary fields. The Disorder of Things offers a reading of the Somali novelist through the prism of the French philosopher. The book argues that the preoccupations that have remained central throughout Farah’s forty year career, including political autocracy, female infibulation, border conflicts, international aid and development, civil war, transnational migration and the Horn of Africa’s place in a so-called ‘axis of evil’, can be mapped onto some key concerns in Foucault’s writing most notably Foucault’s theoretical turn from ‘disciplinary’ to ‘biopolitical’ power. In both the colonial past and the postcolonial present, Somalia is typically represented as an incubator of disorder: whether in relation to internecine conflict, international terrorism or contemporary piracy. Through his work, both fictional and non-fictional, Farah strives to present alternative stories to an expanding global readership. The Disorder of Things analyses the politics and poetics that underpin this literary project, beginning with Farah’s first fictional cycle, Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship (1979-1983), and ending with his Past Imperfect trilogy (2004-2011). Farah’s writing calls for a more refined, substantial reading of our current geo-political situation. As such, it both warrants and compels the kind of critical engagement foregrounded throughout The Disorder of Things. This book will appeal to students, academics and general readers with an interest in the interdisciplinary study of literature. Its engagement with theorists, drawn from postcolonial, feminist and development studies, set against the backdrop of a host of philosophical and sociological discourses, shows how such intellectual cross-fertilisation can enliven a single-author study.
Though the title of Nuruddin Farah's Links suggests the language of network often invoked in theories of globalization, the 2003 novel instead questions this discourse through its focus on the ...affective responses of characters to a series of dead bodies. The links Farah explores in the novel are the affiliations and lived experiences, often unacknowledged, that stress the limits of an individual, revealing what binds them to groups and shapes how they imagine others. Set in Mogadiscio in the years after the United Nation's failed intervention, Links reflects on the gap between the ideals of a post-Cold War humanitarianism that could transcend differences of race and religion and the reality of the prolonged state of emergency in Somalia. While moral philosophers have stressed the novel's ability to generate humanitarian sentiment, this article argues that Links presents a generative limit to humanitarian reading models. Building on recent theorizations of the global novel's relation to otherness, the article proposes that Links is deeply invested in not only locating the limits of the novel form to convey knowledge and build understanding, but also in presenting the powerful recognition of partial and contingent knowledge, what a character in Links calls "human truths."
Social scientists have associated diverse strands of otherness with madness and other disabling psychological anomalies. A number of studies in African literature have associated mental illness with ...relegation of groups. Emerging conversations and literary writers however argue that otherness causes psychological alienation that facilitates entry into and existence of other selves alongside the primary self. These fragmented characters are not insane, but experience severe psychological disturbances that should not be ignored. This article extends the second argument that diverse strands of otherness result in fragmentation of the self. Using post-colonial and psychological theories, the article provides new evidence from Nuruddin Farah’s Close Sesame (1983) and Maps (1986). The ideas of Bailey (1942), Laing (1960) and Hegel (1967) will form a theoretical basis of interpretation.
Nuruddin chose not to leave the African continent; he chose, for many years, not to renounce his Somali passport courageously facing the never-ending interrogations, risks and humiliations faced by ...his countrymen at every border and transit point. Each narrative voice tells its own story twice, once to an interlocutor from a shared cultural context and once to an interlocutor external to its cultural context. Nuruddin has never ceased to inspire me with his poetic instincts, his empathy and integrity, his deep reflections on the diaspora and the civil war, the central catastrophe of our history which is rarely spoken about among Somalis as though talking about it might bring on a curse. In Links, the author explains the Somali term for civil war in the form of a dialogue between two characters: "In a civil war, death is an intimate," Af-Laawe said.
...World Quarterly vol. 11, no. 3, 1989, pp. 171-87. "USOL 4th Convocation address by world renowned author Prof. Nuruddin Farah." Reading Nuruddin Farah: The Individual, the Novel and the Idea of ...Home. Different Shades of Green: African Literature, Environmental Justice, and Political Ecology, by Byron Caminero-Santangelo.
...almost 15 years later, I try to contextualize the conversation with subsequent developments in Somalia, in general, and, in particular, those aspects which are already covered in the interview. ...Needless to say, with the Somali language too. Because of this our communication in the interview was an experience of dialogue in two languages. The difference between writing and orality is this: in oral culture a person can say something today and deny it tomorrow; with writing this cannot happen. ...writing implies the use of thought with reflection and rationality, with logic and measure. ...I believe that you have succeeded, but are you satisfied with your representation of Somali society or are there still pieces that are not inserted in the depiction, and traits yet to be defined? NF:
Chronology: Nuruddin Farah Moolla, F. Fiona
Tydskrif vir letterkunde,
2020, Letnik:
57, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Warned by brother not to return to Somalia after enraging Barre regime by publishing A Naked Needle-moves to Italy for next three years. 1976-9 Translator and English language teacher in Rome and ...Milan. 1978 A Spread of Butter broadcast by BBC African service. 1979 Novel Sweet and Sour Milk published. First draft of Gifts written there. 1989 Moves to Kampala, Uganda. 1990 First draft of Secrets completed in Berlin; receives German Academic Exchange Service fellowship there. World Literature Today dedicates Autumn issue to Farah and his work. 1999 Moves to Cape Town, South Africa. 2000 Publishes Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora. 2001 Wins the Italian Premio Mondello prize for best foreign author. 2003 Second prize winner of the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. 2004 Publishes Links. 2005 Wins the Italian Premio Napoli award for the Italian translation of Links. 2010 Publishes Knots.
What Farah's characters reveal is the precipitous slope down which, more often than not, communities and nations tend to slide in times of war. ...he has succeeded to give victims of the civil war a ...platform on which their shattered humanity could be reassessed. ...in Mogadishu, when Ebla commits the polyandric act, the wife of her "second" husband (Tiffo) is supported by a female support group who terrorize husbands and their secret lovers. (The theme of creating alternative forms of family reaches a crescendo in the make-up of Kalaman in Secrets, to be discussed later.) This shows how Farah's works share thematic concerns, and how they form a catena, as well as how Farah, through a form of austere vision, resurrects things, characters, and concepts in a multiplicity of ways and for various reasons.
Master trilogist, essayist, and Somalia's most staunch critic, Nuruddin Farah has the honor of having kept Somalia alive in the global imagination. His output of thirteen novels engage various ...dimensions of Somali history and politics. In this interview, Farah is asked about the ideological and personal influence of the Cold War on Somalia. He reveals that the Cold War indeed impacted not only the journeys he embarked on, but that several characters in his novels attempt to resist and cope with the political framework generated by the long arm of the superpowers in Somalia.
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