Small magazines in Africa: ecologies and genealogies

Abstract

This special issue introduction maps the trajectories, histories, ecologies and genealogies of small magazine production and circulation in Africa, within the broader contexts of print cultural histories that frame intellectual, political and cultural communities in Africa and its diasporas in the long twentieth century. It argues for the ways in which the small magazine not only creates alternative audiences and publics, but frames the ecologies of literary and cultural production in the continent in relation to its diasporas. In this way, the introduction brings to sharper focus the ways in which small magazines have been part of a network, an “assemblage” at the intersection of the projects of decolonisation and anti-apartheid activism in relation to a broader project of Pan-Africanism that span the continent and its diasporas.