Cultural Theory and Cultural Dialogue

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African Journal of History and Culture Vol. 2(6), pp. 79-82, November 2010 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/ajhc ISSN 2141-6672 ©2010 Academic Journals Review Cultural theory and cultural dialogue in the 21st century Ameh Dennis Akoh English Unit, Department of Languages and Linguistics, College of Humanities and Culture Osun State University, Ikire Campus, Nigeria. E-mail: amehakoh@yahoo.co.uk, ojodumi39@gmail.com. Tel: +2348035992490, +2348050293410, +2347081485254. Accepted 08 October, 2010 Art is necessarily a cultural system, and culture in its mutation moves in the direction of societal becoming in the same manner as it dictates the direction of artistic creations and recreations. However, as the world, especially Africa, is being dragged along in the imperialist project of globalization, this paper interrogates the fate of cultural theory again, as it especially affects literary criticism of African texts. In the midst of what has been termed ‘nationality’s malady’, some would opt for cultural dialogue rather than effacing non-dominant ‘cultures’. There is therefore a call for an ambitious rethinking of cultural theory in order to make sense out of the grand narratives in which it is presently enmeshed, while it seeks this dialogue. Keywords: Cultural theory, cultural dialogue, literature, Africa. THE REALM OF CULTURE AND LITERATURE This paper has its prodding from the issues raised in Alexel Zverev’s seminar paper “Cultural Dialogue in the 20th Century” published over a decade ago, and it quickly agrees with Zverev that culture has become an enigma, in the same manner that a lethal war has been waged against traditional approaches to literary history and consequently declared effete. This is not surprising with the spate of postmodernist thinking which offers ambivalent answers to the problems that literature and culture had
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