Activating Arts to Understand Disability in Africa

While Disability Studies has become more diversified in recent years, contemporary debates still favour the Northern Hemisphere, ignoring the lived experience of disabled people in much of the global South. Few theoretical studies pay sufficient attention to the range of beliefs and attitudes towards disability in specific African contexts, despite the fact that beliefs and explanations for disability permeate daily existence in sub-Saharan African places, and can have real consequences for persons with disabilities, leading to stigmatisation, marginalisation, and even violence. This volume is a timely intervention that seeks to address some of these imbalances and biases. Through frank life writing, evocative poetry, and critical reflections on African arts and literatures, the contributors highlight the urgent need for more culturally informed understandings of disability, as a means by which to challenge existing explanations. They examine the powerful role of different creative forms, tools, and methodologies in enhancing understandings of disability in African contexts. Demonstrating the power of cultural representation in building sensitivity to the range of issues related to disability, this book is of key relevance not just to scholars and students of disability studies, African studies, and sociology, but to all who seek to advocate for social change. The volume is a key outcome of the Disability and Inclusion Africa Network. It is edited by Charlotte Baker (Lancaster University, UK), Elvis Imafidon (SOAS, University of London, UK), Kobus Moolman (University of the Western Cape, South Africa), and Emelda Ngufor Samba (University of Yaoundé 1, Cameroon).

Charlotte Baker Lancaster University, UK Elvis Imafidon School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK Kobus Moolman University of the Western Cape, South Africa Emelda Ngufor Samba University of Yaoundé 1, Cameroon

0.Introduction: The Power of Inclusive Explanations for Disability. 1.Ng'ano cia marimû: Disability, African Literature and Narrative Prosthesis. 2.Five Lives: Alternative explanations for disability in contemporary South Africa. 3.Can We Do Human Together? Exploring Personhood and Disability Through Two African Indigenous Enabling Frameworks. 4.Reframing disability from a Bomvana perspective: Lessons learned from Indigenous peoples of KwaBomvane. 5.Positioning Disability as a Majority Issue in Development: An African Feminist Approach to Statistics and Proverbs. 6.Voices in Hostage. 7.Unearthing Lived Experiences: Integrating disability, arts, and social work in Africa. 8.Participatory theatre and the re-conceptualization of disability in Cameroon: Findings from a Disability and Inclusion theatre workshop. 9.The Fall Artist. 10.Strength, Potential, Expressivity, and Creativity: Music Therapy at a School for Persons with Disabilities in Sudan. 11.Accessible Literature. 12.Plight, perception and social responses to disabled beggars in Aminata Sow Fall's The Beggars' Strike. 13.Intertextuality, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives regarding Albinism in Petina Gappah's The Book of Memory. 14.Surrender into Dance: Three Poems.