“Being Modern”

Abstract

In this chapter, the author revisits the discourse of modernity and modernism at Makerere's art school during the early postcolonial years. The author takes a critical look at a series of texts – essays, interviews, letters, speeches, and memoirs – to interpret the art school's attempt to forge an institutional identity for itself, in light of the larger debates over education and identity that defined the culture of Makerere campus in the 1960s. The earlier colonial discourse served as the foundation for the complex debates over the education system and cultural identity in anglophone Africa during the early phase of self-rule in the 1960s. In the 1960s, there was urgency among some writers to define the parameters of a literature that would stand apart as an African enterprise in its language, form, and content, in its sincere portrayal of a contemporary African reality.

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