Managed risk and the lure of transparency in Anglophone African detective noir

Abstract

This essay considers ways in which late twentieth- and early twenty-first century Anglophone African popular literature is conditioned by and problematizes neoliberal governing rationalities. My primary focus is on the detective novel, which emerged as a popular form across the continent in tandem with the implementation of market-oriented forms of governance and the broader cultural shift to free-market capitalism. Detective mysteries and thrillers, I contend, generate fictive truths to mediate the chasm between popular and official narratives of collective justice in moments of acute transformation in the relationship between the individual and the state such as we see in this moment. As a case study, the essay compares Rosina Umelo's Finger of Suspicion (1985, Nigeria) and Angela Makholwa's Red Ink (2007, South Africa) for their adaptation of noir thematics and detective mystery narrative codes of disclosure to critique the neoliberal fetish of transparency and the modes of individuated risk management and economic self-governance attendant on it.