Postmodern Families in Postcolonial Africa

My dissertation explores the conditions of postcolonial families against the background of postmodernism. It re-examines the modern pretensions of family universalism and values, reconfiguring them into the diverse tapestry of the postmodern framework. This is done in the conviction that postcolonial Africa -- contrary to the wont representation of Africa as continent of obscurities and nocturnal peripheries -- could offer ample evidences to aid investigation and exploration of the theories and praxis of postmodern heterogeneity. Taking into account of the variety of the postcolonial African families in contemporary social organisation, this dissertation was able to reproduce the turn of events with popular literature emerging from the colonial and postcolonial Africa, and re-inscribe them into the major framework of the postmodern discourse. It reveals the intersection of religion and politics in the delineation of postmodern African family. Even though African families prior to the colonial event were lived heterogeneously and diverse, it argues, the "colonial turn" enforced the notion and praxis of family homogeneity. Thus, the uniformity of the colonial events not only blurred the lines -- all of the spatio-temporal dimensions of differences -- between the North and South hemispheres, it nonetheless created a sharp relief of incompatible differences between tradition and modernity in (post)colonial Africa. There is no locus where such differences are re-animated as in the ambit of the family.