Author: Lily Saint File Type: pdf Under apartheid, black South Africans experienced severe material and social disadvantages occasioned by the governments policies, and they had limited time for entertainment. Still, they closely engaged with an array of textual and visual cultures in ways that shaped their responses to this period of ethical crisis. Marshaling forms of historical evidence that include passbooks, memoirs, American B movies, literary and genre fiction, magazines, and photocomics, Black Cultural Life in South Africa considers the importance of popular genres and audiences in the relationship between ethical consciousness and aesthetic engagement. This study provocatively posits that states of oppression, including colonial and postcolonial rule, can elicit ethical responses to imaginative identification through encounters with popular culture, and it asks whether and how they carry over into ethical action. Its consideration of how globalized popular culture travels not just in material form, but also through the circuits of the imaginary, opens a new window for exploring the ethical and liberatory stakes of popular culture. Each chapter focuses on a separate genre, yet the overall interdisciplinary approach to the study of genre and argument for an expansion of ethical theory that draws on texts beyond the Western canon speak to growing concerns about studying genres and disciplines in isolation. Freed from oversimplified treatments of popular formscommon to cultural studies and ethical theory alikethis book demonstrates that people can do things with mass culture that reinvigorate ethical life. Lily Saints new volume will interest Africanists across the humanities and the social sciences, and scholars of Anglophone literary, globalization, and cultural studies race ethical theories and philosophies film studies book history and material cultures and the burgeoning field of comics and graphic novels. **About the Author Lily Saint is Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University.

Author: Gregory Curtis File Type: epub The Cave Painters is a vivid introduction to the spectacular cave paintings of France and Spainthe individuals who rediscovered them, theories about their origins, their splendor and mystery. Gregory Curtis makes us see the astonishing sophistication and power of the paintings and tells us what is known about their creators, the Cro-Magnon people of some 40,000 years ago. He takes us through various theoriesthat the art was part of fertility or hunting rituals, or used for religious purposes, or was clan mythologyexamining the ways interpretations have changed over time. Rich in detail, personalities, and history, The Cave Painters is above all permeated with awe for those distant humans who developedperhaps for the first timeboth the ability for abstract thought and a profound and beautiful way to express it. From the Trade Paperback edition. **From Publishers Weekly For centuries, people have been going into caves in France and Spain, looking at the 30,000-year-old pictures painted there and asking, What can they be? In this lively survey, Curtis, former Texas Monthly editor, makes it clear that while well never have a definitive answer, the quest will always be fascinating. He begins by laying out who the painters probably were and what their world was like during the waning days of Neanderthals. Then he dives into the caves and the bitter controversies on the art within, from the war of ideas between Marcelo Sautuola and Emile Cartailhac in the late 19th century to Jean Clottess and David Lewis-Williamss current, strongly disputed theory that the paintings are related to shamanic quests. Curtiss own speculation is sometimes more arguable than believable, but usually intriguing. He bolsters a slim number of illustrations with concise descriptions that convey his own delight, befuddlement, frustration and awe. At the cave Les Tres-Freres, he is overwhelmed by the images and by being as close as I would ever bephysically closeto The Truth. For readers who may never visit the caves, Curtiss sensitive narration gives a chance to share that encounter with mystery. 20 b&w illus. and 8-page color insert. (Oct. 13) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.