Humanitarian Fictions
Africa, Altruism, and the Narrative Imagination
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Humanitarianism has a narrative problem. Far too often, aid to Africa is envisioned through a tale of Western heroes saving African sufferers. While labeling white savior narratives has become a familiar gesture, it doesn’t tell us much about the story as story. Humanitarian Fictions aims to understand the workings of humanitarian literature, as they engage with and critique narratives of Africa.
Overlapping with but distinct from human rights, humanitarianism centers on a relationship of assistance, focusing less on rights than on needs, less on legal frameworks than moral ones, less on the problem than on the nonstate solution. Tracing the white savior narrative back to religious missionaries of the nineteenth century, Humanitarian Fictions reveals the influence of religious thought on seemingly secular institutions and uncovers a spiritual, collectivist streak in the discourse of humanity.
Because the humanitarian model of care transcends the boundaries of the state, and its networks touch much of the globe, Humanitarian Fictions redraws the boundaries of literary classification based on a shared problem space rather than a shared national space. The book maps a transnational vein of Anglophone literature about Africa that features missionaries, humanitarians, and their so-called beneficiaries. Putting humanitarian thought in conversation with postcolonial critique, this book brings together African, British, and U.S. writers typically read within separate traditions. Paustian shows how the novel—with its profound sensitivity to narrative—can enrich the critique of white saviorism while also imagining alternatives that give African agency its due.
Paustian shows how imaginative literature by African writers equips us to move beyond Eurocentric representations of Africa that depend on colonialist and naïve neoliberal ideas. The book sets out engaging readings of African literature, using the notion of ‘humanitarian fictions’ as an analytical category and a political challenge that takes us toward big questions of ethics, history, and ongoing human interactions.---Olakunle George, Brown University
Humanitarian Fictions manages throughout to be critical without being dismissive and constructs a humanitarian vision that is acutely sensitive to its own predicament.---Jeanne-Marie Jackson, Johns Hopkins University
. . . [A]n original essay studying the engagement of both colonial and postcolonial literary texts with humanitarian discourse. Paustian persuasively traces this grand narrative, heavily driven by white missionary saviorism, to the moral outlook to save the less fortunate. The narrative is resilient and adjustable. . . Highly recommended.---Choice Reviews
Years ago, I discovered that novels by African authors could be inspiring sources for researching current and past African affairs. Noticing that Megan Cole Paustian drew on this kind of sources to present her argument about the problems of contemporary humanitarian efforts in Africa, I was immediately enthralled. . . [A] highly recommended reading . . .---Stanisław Grodź, Verbum
Introduction: The White Savior Narrative and the Third Sector Novel | 1
1. The Moral Cause | 33
2. The Emancipated African | 67
3. The Universal Human | 101
4. The Benevolent Gift | 134
5. The Nongovernmental Organization | 169
Epilogue: Rearticulating the Humanitarian Atlantic | 207
Acknowledgments | 215
Notes | 219
Works Cited | 251
Index | 267
