Exit of a Hero
Product details
- ISBN 9780472058068
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 05 May 2026
- Publisher: The University of Michigan Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In Exit of a Hero, Okechukwu Nwafor explores the cultural, political, and socioeconomic implications of photography in commemorative practices in southern Nigeria from the nineteenth century to the present. Focusing on obituary and commemorative photographs of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Lagos to contemporary funeral posters, booklets, and social media posts, Nwafor tracks the historical evolution of the iconic and heroic image. He argues that the quest to produce an ideal memorial body is not just a personal aesthetic choice but a deliberate photographic project that resonates with the Igbo aspirations for heroic achievement.
Exit of a Hero asserts that the visual canonization transforms the deceased from a fallible being to an unimpeachable character who transcends underachievement, imperfection, and failed social performance to emerge as a saintly icon of the Igbo public sphere. In seeking an alternative, hyper-visible public self, social media reclaims the lost hero image of the deceased, reconstituting the contested Igbo public space as a lived reality where heroes and icons are actively and eternally commemorated. Nwafor unveils the creative imaginations of colonial subjects and postcolonial citizens as memorialization has become entangled within the intersecting discursive spaces of print culture and the public sphere.
Okechukwu Nwafor is Assistant Professor of Art History at Wesleyan University. He is also the author of Aso Ebi: Dress, Fashion, Visual Culture, and Urban Cosmopolitanism in West Africa (2021).
