State Aesthetics: Nollywood, 419, and the Forms of Corruption
Brian Larkin
Associate Professor
Anthropology
Barnard College
Time and Location
12:00pm, 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI
This event is co-sponsored by the Mellon Workshop on New Media and Mass/Popular Culture in the Global South.
Description
In a country such as Nigeria the building of infrastructures, preparation of budgets and other technical and administrative procedures operate as aesthetic as well as political projects. The Nigerian state exists as a system of signs, one whose representational and political logic is fully mirrored in the work of Nigerian film. Tying together the state, 419 criminal networks, religious revitalization, and Nigerian film, I examine the common representational logic that unites these phenomena, undergirds Nollywood film and offers critical insights into the operation of culture and politics in Nigeria.
Bio
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Brian Larkin is the author of Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure and Urban Culture in Nigeria. He has written on issues of information circulation, infrastructures, cinema, piracy, and Islam. He teaches anthropology at Barnard College.