The HSRC is pleased to invite you to the launch of African Literature and Intellectual Histories: Reflecting on Ntongela Masilela’s Work. The book is about Professor Ntongela Masilela (1948–2020) who is recognised as one of South Africa’s most eminent scholars. Join us to discuss his highly respected and meticulous contributions to local and global intellectual discourse, most significantly via his historical archive, which offers essential insights into disciplines such as literature, film, arts, and political and intellectual history.
The essays contain his most significant writings, and the book presents Masilela as a widely read and travelled scholar, who scoured the national archive to unpack the most intricate aspects of our history and its interconnectedness with the history of the world. In so doing, Masilela brings to life both prominent and lesser-known African intellectuals by engaging with their archives in a manner that empowers the reader to also appreciate the value of biographical sketches.
His treatment of race, language, culture and indeed literature itself is not just theoretic but verges on the dramatic, and thereby he gives these paths of inquiry both life and contemporaneity. Further, there is an ongoing debate in contemporary Africa about the definition of “what is South African literature,” and “what is national liberation” and that which marks a successful post-colonial state. The book will enrich these debates, which are sometimes stylised and conducted without historical context.
Date: Wednesday, 12 February 2025
Time: 18:00 for 18:30
Venue: Exclusive Books, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town
Register to attend: skhan@hsrc.ac.za
Contact: For more information, please contact Shouneez Khan, skhan@hsrc.ac.za