ATribute to Flora Veit-Wild
Buch, Englisch, 377 Seiten, GB
ISBN: 978-3-9814953-0-0
Verlag: kalliope paperbacks
Bridges connect two entities divided by a gap. Flora Veit-Wild has been a traveler of worlds, in the flesh and in the mind. Her insistence on the emphatic modernity of African literatures have influenced academics and artists from all walks of life, as well as shaping her own research, that includes topics such as surrealism, codeswitching, “new orality”, discourses of body, gender, sexuality, madness and violence, questions of cultural translation and the history of scholarship. This volume compiles a variety of scholarly, literary and artistic contributions from her friends and colleagues in Germany, Zimbabwe and other countries.
Our connections to others are bridges of the metaphorical kind, crossing the chasms of intersubjective differences – Building Bridges can be translated into Shona as kuvaka ukama, literally “building relations”. The various contributions to this volume reflect on how Flora has reached out and formed relations and alliances with a great variety of people. She has strongly influenced many upcoming scholars and has contributed immensely to the development of the studies of African literatures, especially here in Berlin, Germany.
CONTRIBUTORS
Anne Adams, Ulrike Auga, Jane Bryce, Chirikure Chirikure, Lutz Diegner, Sule Egya, Susanne Gehrmann, Liselotte Glage, Ricarda de Haas, Helon Habila, Julius Heinicke, Hilmar Heister, Annekie Joubert, Eileen Julien, Tobias Robert Klein, Maria Kublitz-Kramer, Kahiudi Claver Mabana, Christine Matzke, Chiedza Musengezi, Dirk Naguschewski, Shumirai Nyota, Marion Pape, Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger, Lesego Rampolokeng, Frank Schulze-Engler, Bettina Weiss, Tobias Wendl.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
INTRODUCTION
KUVAKA UKAMA – BUILDING BRIDGES
On May 11th 2012 Flora Veit-Wild, Professor for African Literatures and Cultures at Humboldt University in Berlin will celebrate her 65th birthday.
Throughout her eventful life Flora has impressed and influenced many people with her vitality and personal engagement. She has lived in Zimbabwe and witnessed the development of the nation’s cultural and literary life from a first-hand perspective. Her pioneering work on Dambudzo Marechera and other writers still represents a milestone in the academic exploration of Zimbabwean literature. In 1994 she moved to the African Studies Department at Humboldt University Berlin, which has through her tireless efforts and scholarly diligence since then emerged as a widely recognized site for the study of African literatures and cultures on the European continent.
Zimbabwe is a multifaceted trope in Flora Veit-Wild’s life and a kind of amniotic fluid to her academic work and (many of her) academic children. After having studied and taught German and French philology, she moved with her family to Zimbabwe in 1983, where her “career” in African literature began. She organised the first ever conference on Women and Culture in Zimbabwe and is a founding member of the “Zimbabwean Women Writers”. She was in close contact with African authors, artists and poets; Charles Mungoshi, Yvonne Vera, Doris Lessing, Ama Ata Aidoo and Dambudzo Marechera, to mention only a few. After publishing her PhD-thesis Teachers, Preachers, Non-Believers (1992) she became one of the best known experts on the history of literature in Zimbabwe. African writers and poets, especially Dambudzo Marechera, who’s work is the subject of Flora’s immediately following book Dambudzo Marechera: A Source Book on his Life and Work (1992), shape her life, as she writes in her essay – published in Wasafari (2012) – “Me and Dambudzo”: “He unlocked many doors for me and let me peek into the marvellous world beyond. He gave me intimations of hell but also the strength to resist. He, who said he had never met an ‘African’ but only human beings, made me into an ‘Africanist’. What a prank, Dambudzo.”
At Humboldt University in Berlin Flora arrived in 1994 at the Department for “African Studies”, that saw the inevitable re-shuffle in the course of German re-unification as an opportunity for a scholarly re-orientation: For the very first time “African Literatures and Cultures” were at par with more traditional chairs for History and Linguistics, and colonial remedies such as “Ethnology” banned, if not from the minds then at least from the department’s administrative structures. Flora’s non-dogmatic stance insisting on African literature’s emphatic modernity against all sorts of ethno-romantic desires together with her well-known passion for teaching attracted students from a considerable number of disciplines to her colloquia, lectures and seminars: It is perhaps no mere coincidence that various among the editors of this volume majored in comparative literature, theatre studies or musicology. Her multifarious research interests include, besides a special focus on Southern African literatures, a wide array of topics, such as surrealism, codeswitching, “new orality”, discourses of body, gender, sexuality, madness and violence, questions of cultural translation and the history of scholarship. Flora's efforts to purchase the private estates of distinguished writers, researches and publishers – nowadays integrated in the library inventory of Humboldt University – yielded research projects such as on the work and influence of Janheinz Jahn.
In Berlin she also wrote her impressive array of books and articles such as Writing Madness (2006), but it speaks much of Flora’s widespread abilities and interests that she probably invested as much time into staging African theatre with her students and into organising study trips to Zimbabwe as she did in the meticulous preparation of the 2002 landmark conference “Versions and Subversions in African Literatures” and of the follow-up conference “Conventions and Conversions. Generic Innovations in African Literatures” (2010).
Flora has been a traveler of worlds, in the flesh and in the mind. As professor for African literatures and cultures she never contented herself with the analysis of literature, but has always been eager to support and promote of artists, who were invited to Berlin either to perform their art or share ideas with academic scholars. Floras driving energy is by no means restricted to supporting others in creating works of art, instead her creative impulses have also brought forth a still growing number of neatly crafted puppets (www.floraspuppen.de).
Flora is a passionate gardener and a lioness (“Löwenmutter”), always with an eye on her cubs, which includes not only her two sons Max and Franz, but also her academic and artistic ones. The “Zimbabwe Arts Festival” in June 2011, that linked important portions of the garden of Flora’s life and set another example of how arts and academia can flourish together, could be considered to be another child of hers.
Bridges connect two entities divided by a gap. The general idea behind this volume, edited by a group from the second and third generation of Flora’s students, was to compile a variety of scholarly, literary and artistic contributions from her friends and colleagues in Germany, Zimbabwe and other countries, that adequately reflects her manifold interests in and outside of the academy. Our connections to others are bridges of the metaphorical kind, crossing the chasms of intersubjective differences – Building Bridges can be translated into Shona as kuvaka ukama, literally “building relations”. Flora has proven to be a master builder of these bridges. Wherever she appeared, people were connected, be it women writers in Zimbabwe or doctoral students in Berlin. Various contributions to this volume thus reflect on how Flora has reached out and formed relations and alliances with a great variety of people. She has strongly influenced many young(er) scholars and further has contributed immensely to the development of the studies of African literatures, especially here in Berlin, Germany.
The editors of this volume wish to thank the Institute of African and Asian Studies, Susanne Gehrmann, the DSG (Deutsch-Simbabwische Gesellschaft) and all contributors for their assistance and participation. Special thanks go to our publisher Bettina Weiss, and Charlott Schönwetter and Stefanie Reuter for helping to prepare the manuscript.
Julius Heinicke
Hilmar Heister
Tobias Robert Klein
Viola Prüschenk
April 2012
