Reading running

Abstract

How are we to understand the presence of a large and growing archive on ‘postcolonial running’ and the fact that there is so little discussion of sport and imperialism by those of us who work in postcolonial/African literatures? Much of this may be attributed to the disciplinary chasm between literary studies and sport studies. The critical work that emerges from this running archive needs to read the ways in which imperial plunder and philanthropy re-emerge in postcolonial running. This paper initiates a much-needed conversation between African literary studies, cultural studies, and sport studies, and it engages in a ‘reading’ (a key practice in literary studies) of ‘running’ (mostly under the purview of sport studies) in a film, Running the Sahara (2007), and a memoir, Running with the Kenyans (2012). It reads the two cultural documents’ participation in the growth of running tourism in Africa and the corresponding competition between white and black male athletes – tropes that may be traced back to nineteenth-century British imperialism.