Abdulrazak Gurnah: Influencing policymakers, cultural providers, curricula, and the reading public worldwide via new imaginings of empire and postcoloniality
Submitting Institution
University of KentUnit of Assessment
English Language and LiteratureSummary Impact Type
SocietalResearch Subject Area(s)
Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies
Summary of the impact
Abdulrazak Gurnah's research, mediated through his novels and short
stories, enriches and reshapes public understandings of empire and its
consequences on an international scale. By challenging previous
assumptions about empire, colonialism, migration, and diaspora, Gurnah's
writing has influenced educators, educational policymakers, broadcasters
and other cultural providers. Since the publication of Paradise
(1994), his creative work has led to a paradigmatic shift in post-empire
geography and history through which Indian Ocean studies and a global
Islamic narrative have become newly visible. Festival organisers, students
at all levels, and the international reading public have had their
horizons expanded by his vision.
Underpinning research
Gurnah has researched and reimagined histories of empire and the colonial
encounter since joining the University of Kent in 1985 (Professor 2004-).
A special issue of English Studies in Africa devoted to Gurnah
(56:1 [May 2013]: 141) shows how his work refuses to deliver the `expected
colonial theme' or `act out the predictable postcolonial "story" of
European colonialism', in Susheila Nasta's words. His politically charged
characters, settings, and histories result in writing with `a staying
power that belies its quietness' (The Nation, 08/09/2005; http://www.thenation.com/article/love-and-betrayal-colonial-africa#ixzz2V9MzY2dV).
One of the prevailing concerns of Gurnah's work is to narrate the complex
trajectory of British imperialism in relation to Asian and African
empires. Paradise (1994) was shortlisted for the Booker,
Whitbread, and Writers' Guild Prizes, awarded the ALOA Prize for the best
Danish translation, and translated into 10 other languages. The novel
refuses the reading of the European imperial narrative of colonialism as a
humane intervention, and also refuses the paradigmatic counter-narrative
of African order disrupted by colonial intervention. Instead it reads the
East African coastal world as interpenetrated by several Indian Ocean
cultures and languages whose mode of existence was division and
negotiation. Here Gurnah uses his own intimate knowledge of this region
and its cultures and languages, which he augmented by fieldwork on the
coast shortly before he began the novel, interviewing people and
travelling to locations that were relevant to the account he proposed to
write. He studied oral accounts of travellers whose testimonies in
Kiswahili offered a ground-level perspective not available to colonial
explorers themselves. He also researched the global narrative of the
Islamic world, which is predominant on the coast, and integrated it into
the novel.[3.1]
By the Sea (2001) was longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted
for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize, and awarded the 2007 Temoin du
Monde Prize in French translation. The novel investigates the condition of
the asylum seeker in modern Britain while exploring the interconnected
cultures of the Indian Ocean littoral, and the kinds of arrangements that
have linked these locations into a world-view. Preparing a 40-minute
programme for BBC Radio 4, `Scenes from Provincial Life, 4' (15/01/1998),
Gurnah researched the experiences of Roma asylum seekers who were then
under relentless media scrutiny. He interviewed asylum seekers in their
government-provided accommodation, spoke to their advisers and
representatives from the Refugee Council, and studied the historical and
cultural context for what seemed a new phenomenon of immigrant experience.
By the Sea combines this research with wide reading in Islamic
inheritance law.[3.2]
Desertion (2005) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers'
Prize. One of the main themes of the novel is the gendered and sexualised
legacy of empire, shown through parallel narratives of colonial past and
postcolonial present, exploring encounters between colonizers and
colonized that refuse stereotypes. Questions of sexual rebellion and
migration are addressed simultaneously with formal issues of narrative
construction. The research for this work involved extensive reading of
post-war migration fiction, as well as colonial and settler writing from
the early years of the 20th century, especially in Kenya where
the novel is set.[3.3]
Gurnah's research into new experiences of migration and diaspora in the
post-9/11 moment is manifest in his most recent novel. The Last Gift
(2011) is grounded in research on migrant dislocations and
multi-generational experiences of displacement and social marginalisation.
The novel draws on specific research concerning 1950s English law
regarding foundlings, adoption and fostering practices. It also employs
research into the revival of interest in Islamic traditions since July
2005, when a group of Muslim young men carried out suicide bombing attacks
in London, creating a sense of generational impasse. Several of the young
men had a secular upbringing, perhaps intended to help them integrate into
British society. They saw this as a deprivation of knowledge and
affiliation they had a right to and which as adults they actively sought.
What their parents had done in the interests of assimilative solicitude
generated an impulse of violent outrage against British actions in the
Muslim world. The Last Gift addresses this generational rift by
exposing the corrosive power of untold stories, including family
secrets.[3.4] Two recent short stories exhibit the fruits of Gurnah's
research by reconfiguring or interrogating received wisdom regarding
geographies of empire. The first story demonstrates how Fra Mauro's Mappa
Mundi (1448-1453), one of the earliest maps to imagine the Indian Ocean as
open waters rather than closed in by a southern land-mass, represents the
Indian Ocean as thoroughly knowable and interlinked, a world
connected.[3.5] The second story investigates the ethics of displaying
colonial specimens in metropolitan museums.[3.6]
References to the research
1. Abdulrazak Gurnah, Paradise (London: Hamish Hamilton,
1994). Pp. 247. ISBN 0-241-00183-8. RAE 2001.
2. Abdulrazak Gurnah, By the Sea (London: Bloomsbury,
2001). Pp. 245. ISBN 0-7475-5280-0. RAE 2008.
3. Abdulrazak Gurnah, Desertion (London: Bloomsbury,
2005). Pp. 262. ISBN 0-7475-7756-0. RAE 2008.
4. Abdulrazak Gurnah, The Last Gift (London: Bloomsbury,
2011). Pp. 279. ISBN 0-7475-9994-4. REF2 output 1.
5. Abdulrazak Gurnah, `Mid-Morning Moon', Wasafiri
66 (Summer 2011): 25-30. ISSN 0269-0055. DOI 10.1080/02690055.2011.557489.
REF2 output 2.
6. Abdulrazak Gurnah, `The Photograph of the Prince', in Road
Stories, ed. Mary Morris and Di Robson (London: Faber and Faber,
2012), 75-90. ISBN 0-9549848-4-7. REF2 output 4.
Details of the impact
Gurnah's research has brought about a reimagining of the British empire
and its subjects through his portrayal of a network of Indian Ocean
cultures that preceded and survived the colonial encounter. His work has
had impact upon cultural providers, upon curricula and the visions of
educators, including those with policymaking capability, and upon reading
publics worldwide.
Collaborating with cultural providers
The reach and significance of Gurnah's research can be seen in
invitations from cultural providers addressing mass audiences to present
his research on the Indian Ocean, Islam, slavery, and migration in the UK
and abroad. For example, Gurnah presented a highly successful programme in
the BBC Radio 4-British Museum series `The History of the World in 100
Objects' (16/12/2009), reported by the Museum's Director Neil MacGregor as
heard `by millions of people both in the UK and around the world'.[5.1]
Gurnah was also invited by Independent columnist and presenter
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to deliver a programme on slavery in Islam in the
series `Heart and Soul' on BBC Radio 4 (17/07/2009) (BBC 4 audiences are
10.8m), and by Joy Keys to appear on internet radio out of Atlanta,
Georgia (06/08/2011). Gurnah's `The Father Instinct', exploring
postcolonial African creativity and fatherhood for BBC Radio 3's `Essay'
programme (27/04/2011) (BBC 3 audiences are 2m), presented by Lou Stein,
was so successful in audience response that it was chosen for Pick of the
Week on Radio 4.[5.2] The success of these programmes led to an invitation
from RichMix, a UK arts and culture outreach organization, for Gurnah to
launch the third issue of `SCARF' magazine, speaking on immigration and
African-ness in the 21st century (22/05/2013) to an audience of
380.[5.3] Concrete international reach is shown by a recent interview in
Nigeria in which Gurnah is described as `Zanzibar's most famous native
son'.[5.3]
Changing educational content and influencing policy-minded educators
internationally
Although Gurnah downplays comparisons with the Nigerian writer Chinua
Achebe [5.3], his novel Paradise has begun to replace Achebe's Things
Fall Apart on postcolonial curricula, such as the Open University's
`Twentieth-Century Literature: Texts and Debates' module [5.4] and
Birmingham's postgraduate module `African Fiction and Its Critics'. That
his work is changing the content of education in postcolonial studies
internationally is evidenced by his novel Paradise being taught in
Paris's Lycée Balzac, English section, as part of their International
Baccalaureate.[5.5] Further international reach is demonstrated by the
teaching of Paradise or Desertion in the USA at Oklahoma,
in San Francisco State's `Contemporary Culture' module (blog http://analepsis.org/2013/03/16/paradise-hum415/),
Northwestern's African Studies program, and Rhodes University's
`Transnational Literature' module. In Africa his novels are taught in the
Congo, Zanzibar, and in South Africa at Cape Town and the University of
Stellenbosch (`The Immigrant Genre' module). Gurnah's educational policy
advice has been solicited by educators and education ministers in
Zanzibar, including at a special conference at the National Library on the
reading and use of literary texts, attended by educational policymakers,
teachers and school children, and then televised in full on Zanzibar's
Star TV (14/04/2011).[5.6]
Because Gurnah has significantly led a paradigmatic shift in
understandings of post-empire geography and history, in which `Indian
Ocean Imaginaries' have been made newly visible, his work serves as the
central reference point in the major German research project, with policy
applications beyond the academy, the Goethe University's `Africa's Asian
Options: Frankfurt Inter- Centre Programme on New African-Asian
Interactions' (AFRASO). The project is intended to set the agenda for `the
reconceptualization of Area Studies in a globalised world' and for `policy
advice with regard to Germany's interactions with Africa.' It has been
specifically funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and
Research (BMBF) because of its public outreach and relevance to policy
design; these are preconditions for all BMBF funding. The project started
in February 2013 with an overall sum of €3.9m. Aimed at analysing
`transnational, transcultural and transregional dynamics' in order to
`provide policy advice with regard to German-African relations in an
increasingly multipolar world', it promises significant post-REF impacts.
Gurnah, who was first invited to read at the Goethe University 15/05/2004,
and gave a keynote and reading 22- 25/02/2011, has been `of prime
importance in the formulation of [the] research programme and continues to
be a major focus of [the project's] ongoing research' because social and
cultural transformations are taken to be central to a full assessment of
these relations. By the Sea, for example, provides an `invaluable
perspective' for `targeting Africa's role in a multipolar world' because
of its `dual focus on African migration to Europe and Arab migration to
Africa' and `"decentred" vision of an Indian Ocean World that has for
centuries produced intricate (and often conflicting) interactions' with
`the legacies of Europe's colonial past'. The `research design of the
AFRASO project' is thus a direct `impact of Prof. Gurnah's fictional and
academic work'.[5.7] Gurnah has changed the content of what is understood,
taught, and used to formulate policy on the part of educators and
policy-minded researchers as well as students.
Enriching the understandings of reading publics worldwide
Gurnah receives many unsolicited testimonials in the blogosphere; for
example, `Melissa' reported on goodreads how her understanding of the
world changed after reading Desertion: the novel `gave me another
view of the world, different from the European one; and it made me rethink
concepts and things that we western people think as common and usual but
may not be usual and common to other cultures'.[5.8] Gurnah's
international reach is also shown by his work appearing in translation in
11 languages, including Turkish and Bahasa-Indonesian, and by frequent
invitations to give readings, lectures, and interviews to widely mixed
audiences at international literary festivals; for example in Paris (Musée
Quai Branly [19/11/2011]),[5.5] Palestine (PalFestival of Literature
[22-29/05/2009]), and the Congo (Etonnants-Voyageurs in Brazzaville, the
Congo Republic [13-17/02/2013]).[5.8] At Brazzaville, Gurnah participated
in what the Independent reported as `high-quality debates that
forged a rare bridge between literary stars of the English-speaking
continent (such as Helon Habila, Andre Brink and Abdulrazak Gurnah) and
their Francophone peers'.[5.8] His global significance is shown by his
being selected to present at one of the world's largest literary
festivals, the Melbourne Writers Festival, Australia (25-29/08/2011),
delivering a 1-hour event `In Conversation' as well as panel discussions
to audiences of 250. At the another of the world's largest, the Brisbane
Writers Festival, Australia (07-11/09/2011), Gurnah was interviewed by
Australian Broadcasting Corporation's `The Book Show' (08/09/2011;
broadcast on 23/09/2011); he presented another 1-hour event, also entitled
`In Conversation', which was filmed by ABC TV [5.8].
The impacts of Gurnah's research are demonstrably international in that
his novels have affected and influenced the views of cultural providers,
educators, festival audiences, and reading publics in the UK and abroad.
His work's significance can be measured by its changing of the
postcolonial curriculum in the UK, USA, Europe, Africa, and beyond.
Gurnah's work has provoked reconsiderations of the legacies of empire, and
informed and enriched people's cultural understanding of difference,
diversity, and Indian Ocean and Muslim imaginaries on a global scale.
Sources to corroborate the impact
-
Corroborating impact through collaboration with cultural providers
(radio and museum): Neil MacGregor, `History of the World in 100
Objects', BBC Radio 4 (16/12/2009). Letter 2/11/2010; website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sqw6k
RSS Source 1.
-
Corroborating impact through collaboration with cultural providers
(radio): `The Father Instinct', `The Essay', BBC Radio 3
(27/04/2011); Pick of the Week on Radio 4. Email from Lou Stein
28/04/2011; http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010gnnq
RSS Source 2. Joy Keys, Atlanta, Georgia (06/08/2011): http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joykeys/2011/08/06/joy-keys-chats-with-author-abdulrazak-gurnah-1
-
Corroborating impact through collaboration with cultural providers
(arts and cultural outreach): RichMix and SCARF Launch
(22/05/2013) website:
http://www.richmix.org.uk/whats-on/event/abdulrazak-gurnah-scarf-launch/;
Sarah Cartledge, `Diasporic Dilemmas: Tanzanian Novelist and Academic
Abdulrazak Gurnah on the Eternal Quest for Home', Fifth Chukker
Magazine (May 2013), http://www.fifthchukker.com/
-
Corroborating impact through educational and curricular change:
Susheila Nasta, `Abdulrazak Gurnah: Paradise', in David Johnson
(ed.), The Popular and the Canonical (Routledge and Open
University, 2005), 294-343 (module textbook). Letter 29/07/2013. RSS
Source 3. Jean-Pierre Orban, Quai Branly, Paris; email 08/11/2011.
RSS Source 4.
-
Corroborating impact through educational and curricular policy
advice: http://www.zanzinews.com/2011/04/mhadhara-wa-profesa-abdulrazak-gurna.html
-
Corroborating impact on programme with policymaking objectives and
capability: Frank Schulze-Engler, Co-Project Leader, AFRASO.
Letter 30/07/2013; website: www.afraso.org
RSS Source 5.
-
Corroborating impact through enriching understanding of reading
publics worldwide: Melissa (19/05/2013): http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77817.Desertion;
press coverage from the Independent on Brazzaville: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/boyd-tonkin-beside-the-congo-too-a-festival-can-flower-but-is-it-just-windowdressing-8505185.html;
information on the event and subsequent publication: http://www.etonnants-voyageurs.com/spip.php?article10693;
Australian Broadcasting Company Radio, `The Book Show' (23/09/2011): http://www.search.abc.net.au/search/search.cgi?form=simple&num_ranks=20&collection=abcall&
query=gurnah