Praise Poetry: Decolonizing the Genres of Reason

This talk investigates theories of ecological relationality and authorship embedded in Shona praise poetry. As a widely-recited genre in Zimbabwe, detembo dzemadzinza engages a broad community in the work of literary curation. As such, it constitutes a social literary praxis grounded in mutual recognition, found-text composition, and accountability through metaphor. Jaji proposes a decolonial method that recognizes the intellectual labor of totem praises by integrating the local customs of U.S. lit crit discourse with readings from her current poetry project, Totemics, a contemporary extension of this oral genre.