Africa's hidden histories, everyday literacy and making the self.(Africa's Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy And Making the Self)(Book review)

ED. KARIN BARBER Bloomington, Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2006, 451 p.

Literacy studies have been gaining epistemological relevance in Britain as well as in France, where a new word-litteratie [sic!]-has even been invented for them! The study of the emergence of literary practices indeed puts a new emphasis on older themes. Karin Barber talks of "tin trunk texts" in her remarkable introduction that synthesizes the different contributions of what was, at the beginning, a series of seminars funded by the ESRC of the UK. What is "revealed" in the hidden histories of these tin trunk texts is not only a history of personal self-awakening, but also the history of a subtle struggle to undermine cultural domination. This book is an …