Elleke Boehmer
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719068782
- eISBN:
- 9781781701898
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719068782.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
In Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (1981), the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o points to the strong position that women characters have held in his work over the years. Beginning with the writing ...
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In Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (1981), the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o points to the strong position that women characters have held in his work over the years. Beginning with the writing of the epic-length Petals of Blood (1977), Ngugi came unequivocally to identify with the plight of the neo-colonially betrayed Kenyan peasantry. His nationalism of the 1960s thus turned increasingly revolutionary and openly Marxist. With respect to his determination in the later novels to develop powerful women characters as counterparts to the strong hero figures he favours, in Ngugi's early work similar tendencies emerge in embryonic form. In particular, as the focus in the early novels is more on the remote past and the pristine origins of Gikuyu people, mother figures signify prominently. As if to make amends, Ngugi, in his more recent work, introduces heroines who have made a decisive break with a former life of mothering and/or whoring in their commitment to a revolutionary cause. To him, other interests give way before the ‘higher social system of democracy and socialism’ in a free Kenya.Less
In Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (1981), the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o points to the strong position that women characters have held in his work over the years. Beginning with the writing of the epic-length Petals of Blood (1977), Ngugi came unequivocally to identify with the plight of the neo-colonially betrayed Kenyan peasantry. His nationalism of the 1960s thus turned increasingly revolutionary and openly Marxist. With respect to his determination in the later novels to develop powerful women characters as counterparts to the strong hero figures he favours, in Ngugi's early work similar tendencies emerge in embryonic form. In particular, as the focus in the early novels is more on the remote past and the pristine origins of Gikuyu people, mother figures signify prominently. As if to make amends, Ngugi, in his more recent work, introduces heroines who have made a decisive break with a former life of mothering and/or whoring in their commitment to a revolutionary cause. To him, other interests give way before the ‘higher social system of democracy and socialism’ in a free Kenya.
Stephen Morton
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846318498
- eISBN:
- 9781781380758
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318498.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Chapter four considers how the state of emergency in Kenya from 1952 to 1959 has been codified in the literary and legal rhetoric of British colonialism, and criticised by postcolonial African ...
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Chapter four considers how the state of emergency in Kenya from 1952 to 1959 has been codified in the literary and legal rhetoric of British colonialism, and criticised by postcolonial African writers and intellectuals as a sign of the inherent violence of European colonial rule. The chapter begins by tracing how the colonial government used the deaths of white settlers and Kenyan Loyalists to justify its recourse to emergency legislation and the detention of an estimated 1.5 million Kikuyu people, who were suspected by the colonial authorities of being involved with the Land and Freedom army, more commonly known as the Mau Mau. After an analysis of the representation of the Land and Freedom army in Robert Ruark’s Something of Value (1955), the chapter proceeds to examine how the colonial state of emergency is framed and contested in the fiction of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.Less
Chapter four considers how the state of emergency in Kenya from 1952 to 1959 has been codified in the literary and legal rhetoric of British colonialism, and criticised by postcolonial African writers and intellectuals as a sign of the inherent violence of European colonial rule. The chapter begins by tracing how the colonial government used the deaths of white settlers and Kenyan Loyalists to justify its recourse to emergency legislation and the detention of an estimated 1.5 million Kikuyu people, who were suspected by the colonial authorities of being involved with the Land and Freedom army, more commonly known as the Mau Mau. After an analysis of the representation of the Land and Freedom army in Robert Ruark’s Something of Value (1955), the chapter proceeds to examine how the colonial state of emergency is framed and contested in the fiction of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
Mark Wollaeger
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199980963
- eISBN:
- 9780190910846
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199980963.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter considers points of intersection between Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Joseph Conrad. By Ngũgĩ’s own account, his rewriting of Conrad’s Under Western Eyes (1911) as A Grain of Wheat (1967) ...
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This chapter considers points of intersection between Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Joseph Conrad. By Ngũgĩ’s own account, his rewriting of Conrad’s Under Western Eyes (1911) as A Grain of Wheat (1967) triggered a crisis of audience that ultimately led him to abandon English for his native Gikuyu. To further complicate the question of influence, Wollaeger also examines the relationship between two works of nonfiction: Conrad’s A Personal Record (1912) and Ngũgĩ’s Decolonizing the Mind (1986). At the heart of Ngũgĩ’s attempt to fashion premodern tribalism into a utopian space are two problems that still animate critical discussion. What is the status of the local and the indigenous? Does attention to influence reinstate a center-periphery model in postcolonial criticism? This chapter shows the extent to which Conrad and Ngũgĩ both anticipate and generate theoretical models later used to articulate modernism and postcolonialism as fields of inquiry.Less
This chapter considers points of intersection between Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Joseph Conrad. By Ngũgĩ’s own account, his rewriting of Conrad’s Under Western Eyes (1911) as A Grain of Wheat (1967) triggered a crisis of audience that ultimately led him to abandon English for his native Gikuyu. To further complicate the question of influence, Wollaeger also examines the relationship between two works of nonfiction: Conrad’s A Personal Record (1912) and Ngũgĩ’s Decolonizing the Mind (1986). At the heart of Ngũgĩ’s attempt to fashion premodern tribalism into a utopian space are two problems that still animate critical discussion. What is the status of the local and the indigenous? Does attention to influence reinstate a center-periphery model in postcolonial criticism? This chapter shows the extent to which Conrad and Ngũgĩ both anticipate and generate theoretical models later used to articulate modernism and postcolonialism as fields of inquiry.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Chapter Three examines the influence of FR Leavis, architect of the Great Tradition, on the thinking of Kamau Brathwaite and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, two of the leading theorists of postcolonial ...
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Chapter Three examines the influence of FR Leavis, architect of the Great Tradition, on the thinking of Kamau Brathwaite and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, two of the leading theorists of postcolonial literature. The chapter argues that Leavis's emphasis on a "living language," as he called it - that is, his belief that a robust spoken dialect is the basis of any great literary tradition - would be rearticulated by Brathwaite and Ngũgĩ in their calls for vernacular literature. The chapter goes on to discuss the close but fractious connections between the English department and postcolonial literature, arguing that Leavis's complex professional relationship with the discipline was one of his major bequests to postcolonial studies.Less
Chapter Three examines the influence of FR Leavis, architect of the Great Tradition, on the thinking of Kamau Brathwaite and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, two of the leading theorists of postcolonial literature. The chapter argues that Leavis's emphasis on a "living language," as he called it - that is, his belief that a robust spoken dialect is the basis of any great literary tradition - would be rearticulated by Brathwaite and Ngũgĩ in their calls for vernacular literature. The chapter goes on to discuss the close but fractious connections between the English department and postcolonial literature, arguing that Leavis's complex professional relationship with the discipline was one of his major bequests to postcolonial studies.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804756877
- eISBN:
- 9780804768375
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804756877.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
Culture is not an inborn destiny but a human artifact that can be reshaped. When culture is threatened to the core by outside forces, a phenomenon called “reactance” may arise. The cult of culture ...
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Culture is not an inborn destiny but a human artifact that can be reshaped. When culture is threatened to the core by outside forces, a phenomenon called “reactance” may arise. The cult of culture and the demarcation of a gender role in the flesh through excision can be interpreted as an African reactance against the forces of colonialism. This explains why the origins of writing on excision can be traced to colonial cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology is the first context in which female autobiography emerged in Kenya. This chapter examines these anthropological preludes to female self-writing by focusing on Jomo Kenyatta's Facing Mount Kenya ([1938] 1961), Ngugi wa Thiong'o's The River Between (1965), and Elspeth Huxley's Red Strangers ([1939] 1999). It also considers the questioning of excision as a rite and a factor of social cohesiveness by analyzing Rebeka Njau's one-act play The Scar (1965), Charity Waciuma's Daughter of Mumbi (1969), Muthoni Likimani's They Shall Be Chastised (1974), and Miriam Were's Your Heart Is My Altar (1980).Less
Culture is not an inborn destiny but a human artifact that can be reshaped. When culture is threatened to the core by outside forces, a phenomenon called “reactance” may arise. The cult of culture and the demarcation of a gender role in the flesh through excision can be interpreted as an African reactance against the forces of colonialism. This explains why the origins of writing on excision can be traced to colonial cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology is the first context in which female autobiography emerged in Kenya. This chapter examines these anthropological preludes to female self-writing by focusing on Jomo Kenyatta's Facing Mount Kenya ([1938] 1961), Ngugi wa Thiong'o's The River Between (1965), and Elspeth Huxley's Red Strangers ([1939] 1999). It also considers the questioning of excision as a rite and a factor of social cohesiveness by analyzing Rebeka Njau's one-act play The Scar (1965), Charity Waciuma's Daughter of Mumbi (1969), Muthoni Likimani's They Shall Be Chastised (1974), and Miriam Were's Your Heart Is My Altar (1980).
Eleni Coundouriotis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823262335
- eISBN:
- 9780823266357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823262335.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter offers a reading of the novels of Mau Mau, focusing extensively on the early fiction of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Godwin Wachira’s seminal Ordeal in the Forest, among others. The novels are ...
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This chapter offers a reading of the novels of Mau Mau, focusing extensively on the early fiction of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Godwin Wachira’s seminal Ordeal in the Forest, among others. The novels are looked at in the context of recent human rights histories of the conflict. Written against the backdrop of Jomo Kenyatta’s appeal to the Kenyan people to forget the painful history of the Mau Mau conflict, the novels take on varied approaches to the project of reconciliation that can be mapped on shifting aesthetic registers of modernist irony, sentimentalism and naturalism. Neil Lazarus’s assertion that the negativity of the naturalist aesthetic is a form of resistance is key to understanding the depiction of torture and detention camps. The idea of political responsibility is theorized through Frantz Fanon’s claim that in anticolonial struggle there are no neutral parties, or bystanders.Less
This chapter offers a reading of the novels of Mau Mau, focusing extensively on the early fiction of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Godwin Wachira’s seminal Ordeal in the Forest, among others. The novels are looked at in the context of recent human rights histories of the conflict. Written against the backdrop of Jomo Kenyatta’s appeal to the Kenyan people to forget the painful history of the Mau Mau conflict, the novels take on varied approaches to the project of reconciliation that can be mapped on shifting aesthetic registers of modernist irony, sentimentalism and naturalism. Neil Lazarus’s assertion that the negativity of the naturalist aesthetic is a form of resistance is key to understanding the depiction of torture and detention camps. The idea of political responsibility is theorized through Frantz Fanon’s claim that in anticolonial struggle there are no neutral parties, or bystanders.
Eleni Coundouriotis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823262335
- eISBN:
- 9780823266357
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823262335.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This study examines the war novel in Africa as a case study of the genre, delineating the genre’s features across literary traditions. By examining the war novel in depth, it also complicates our ...
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This study examines the war novel in Africa as a case study of the genre, delineating the genre’s features across literary traditions. By examining the war novel in depth, it also complicates our understanding of the novel in African literature more specifically, especially since the war novel remains understudied when compared to the more widely read genre of the African Bildungsroman. Looking beyond the cliché depiction of child soldiers, the book argues that war fiction provides an opportunity to address collective rights and tell the history of the dispossessed. The narration of war reveals the convergence of naturalism and humanitarianism, an ethos which takes up the responsibility for the suffering of others. Both these sensibilities are present in culturally hybrid forms in the African war novel, reflecting its syncretism as a narrative practice engaged with the colonial and postcolonial history of the continent. The book argues that the war novel is a form of people’s history that participates in a political struggle for the human rights of the dispossessed and subverts the politics of pity set in motion by the humanitarian discourse of war. Analyses of works by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Nuruddin Farah, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o among others figure prominently as do extended discussions of key conflicts such as the Mau Mau war, the Nigerian Civil War, and Zimbabwe’s wars of liberation. Issues of gender are also foregrounded through the close attention paid to women and war.Less
This study examines the war novel in Africa as a case study of the genre, delineating the genre’s features across literary traditions. By examining the war novel in depth, it also complicates our understanding of the novel in African literature more specifically, especially since the war novel remains understudied when compared to the more widely read genre of the African Bildungsroman. Looking beyond the cliché depiction of child soldiers, the book argues that war fiction provides an opportunity to address collective rights and tell the history of the dispossessed. The narration of war reveals the convergence of naturalism and humanitarianism, an ethos which takes up the responsibility for the suffering of others. Both these sensibilities are present in culturally hybrid forms in the African war novel, reflecting its syncretism as a narrative practice engaged with the colonial and postcolonial history of the continent. The book argues that the war novel is a form of people’s history that participates in a political struggle for the human rights of the dispossessed and subverts the politics of pity set in motion by the humanitarian discourse of war. Analyses of works by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Nuruddin Farah, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o among others figure prominently as do extended discussions of key conflicts such as the Mau Mau war, the Nigerian Civil War, and Zimbabwe’s wars of liberation. Issues of gender are also foregrounded through the close attention paid to women and war.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Chapter Six examines Heinemann Educational Book's African Writers Series, the preeminent literary institution of anglophone Africa. Critics have repeatedly asked whether the series is fundamentally ...
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Chapter Six examines Heinemann Educational Book's African Writers Series, the preeminent literary institution of anglophone Africa. Critics have repeatedly asked whether the series is fundamentally imperialist - because of its links to the metropolitan publishing industry - or anti-imperialist - because it gave voice to so many politically engaged writers. This chapter, by contrast, places the series in the context of global changes in English studies. In the US and in metropolitan Britain, the series seemed to be participating in the fragmentation of the discipline: the breakup of Leavis's Great Tradition and the incorporation of minority writers into the canon. In Africa, however, it is possible to read the series as a part of an expansion and consolidation of English language and literary studies. How the series managed this apparent contradiction is the main topic of the chapter.Less
Chapter Six examines Heinemann Educational Book's African Writers Series, the preeminent literary institution of anglophone Africa. Critics have repeatedly asked whether the series is fundamentally imperialist - because of its links to the metropolitan publishing industry - or anti-imperialist - because it gave voice to so many politically engaged writers. This chapter, by contrast, places the series in the context of global changes in English studies. In the US and in metropolitan Britain, the series seemed to be participating in the fragmentation of the discipline: the breakup of Leavis's Great Tradition and the incorporation of minority writers into the canon. In Africa, however, it is possible to read the series as a part of an expansion and consolidation of English language and literary studies. How the series managed this apparent contradiction is the main topic of the chapter.
Michaela Bronstein
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190655396
- eISBN:
- 9780190655426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190655396.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, World Literature
Why tell a story out of order? Conrad’s narrative experiments are usually read as reflecting a skeptical attitude toward human achievement and knowledge: he tells events out of order, critics ...
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Why tell a story out of order? Conrad’s narrative experiments are usually read as reflecting a skeptical attitude toward human achievement and knowledge: he tells events out of order, critics suggest, in order to question whether any version of events is more valid than any other; experience dissolves into fragmentary chaos. This chapter shows that by upending chronology, Conrad instead provokes the reader to see the connections between different moments, and to become invested in the process of using disparate perspectives as material for the reader’s own single understanding. In Conrad’s chronological and perspectival experiments, Ngũgĩ sees tools for acknowledging the complexity of events—like British actions during the state of emergency in Kenya—while at the same time compelling his readers to take a political and moral stand on them. He uses achronology and multiple voices to demand an international audience’s engagement with the crises and dilemmas of decolonization.Less
Why tell a story out of order? Conrad’s narrative experiments are usually read as reflecting a skeptical attitude toward human achievement and knowledge: he tells events out of order, critics suggest, in order to question whether any version of events is more valid than any other; experience dissolves into fragmentary chaos. This chapter shows that by upending chronology, Conrad instead provokes the reader to see the connections between different moments, and to become invested in the process of using disparate perspectives as material for the reader’s own single understanding. In Conrad’s chronological and perspectival experiments, Ngũgĩ sees tools for acknowledging the complexity of events—like British actions during the state of emergency in Kenya—while at the same time compelling his readers to take a political and moral stand on them. He uses achronology and multiple voices to demand an international audience’s engagement with the crises and dilemmas of decolonization.
