writing laboratories: notes

the writing laboratories focus on literature—its creation and criticism. to achieve this, the laboratories encourage reading as a conscious, creative-critical hermeneutic practice. reading, in this sense, refers to tentative interpretive strategies—like the reading of tarot, of randomly fallen bones and cowries, or tracing constellations—an act of guesswork necessitated by the polysemous text/universe of significations. this preoccupation with reading is grounded in the assumption that writing is not opposed to reading but constituted by it. writers may not be widely read, but they can always (mis)read certain texts through and through.

the writing laboratories adapt all experimental forms of writing workshops to the evolving needs and ambitions of creative practitioners whose primary medium is the text. inclusive of all genres of writing (we do not distinguish between literary and so-called genre texts), the laboratories insist on the creative-critical process of literary production and the active work of reading. as a result, they are organized around two types of reading. the first is the reading of fellow writers’ works at various stages of development. the second is the reading of critical texts that engage with ideas and concerns pertinent to many writers on the continent.

the purpose of this laboratory is to emphasize horizontal, critical discourses among creative practitioners along the western coast of the continent. the current global structures of meaning-making around african texts continue to follow the dominant metropole-colony model, intersecting with the formal and informal spheres of knowledge production. the insistence on horizontality is therefore a direct response to this lopsided cultural dynamic. it is not meant as a replacement, per se, but as an attempt to form creative communities enriched by rigorous and attentive study of one another’s writing and the broader critical discourses surrounding continental african literature.

we acknowledge the mixed linguistic heritage of african writers working in languages acquired from european cultures. however, we emphasize the importance of reading (west) african writers. the (west) african writer demands to be read. we aim to initiate some of the ways this reading can take place—beginning with one another.

while established writers receive new readings that enrich african textual canons (however they may be defined), emerging writers rarely benefit from such generative engagement. the writing laboratories seek to intervene in this state of affairs by activating modes of reading within fellow writers who can offer such generative engagement to one another at the margins of institutional recognition. by the end of each cycle, we hope writers would have had the heartening experience of being critically read and of having read others with equal attentiveness. in this way, a different vein of peer criticism can develop alongside literary expression.