DOCSLIB.ORG

——————— Ά Subversion and the Carnivalesque

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
——————— Ά Subversion and the Carnivalesque NICK MDIKA TEMBO ——————— Subversion and the Carnivalesque Images of Resistance in Ngg wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow A BSTRACT The carnivalesque as a guiding concept provides a useful approach to technique and thematic concerns in the African novel, as some contemporary African novelists have integrated elements of resistance to some form of hegemonic dis/order in their novels. What this essay claims is that Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow deploys the carnivalesque as an ideology and weapon of resistance, where the popular voice of the marketplace wo/man is employed to subvert instituted authority. The essay interrogates globalization and Structural Adjustment Programmes, arguing that they are re-invented ideologies of colonization for the twenty-first century. To examine elements of resistance in this novel is thus to examine the ways, both salient and silent, in which the postcolony can combat monstrous postcolonial African régimes and the largely negative impact of globalization on Africa. Introduction I thought they were going to reform society and rule justly, and so I watched their proceedings with deep interest. I found that they made the other regime look like a golden age.1 GŨGĨ WA THIONG’O is one of the most important of Africa’s writers, and certainly the foremost voice of East African literature. N From Weep Not, Child, The River Between, and A Grain of Wheat to Petals of Blood, Devil on the Cross, Matigari, and Wizard of the Crow, he has consistently used the medium of prose fiction and other artistic devices to critique, lampoon, plead, lament, threaten, and paint a picture of the disaster 1 Plato, in Desmond Lee, “Introduction” to Plato, The Republic (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982): 14. © Spheres Public and Private: Western Genres in African Literature, ed. Gordon Collier (Matatu 39; Amsterdam & New York: Editions Rodopi, 2011). 338 NICK MDIKA TEMBO that lies in wait for Africa for being the unquestioning recipient of Western cultural forms and products. In Wizard of the Crow, Ngũgĩ is deeply moved by the culture of fear that has seen many an African country slide back into autocracy marked by col- lapsing public services. Ngũgĩ draws on his own experience of corruption in Kenya (depicted in Petals of Blood, 1977) and of being imprisoned by Daniel Arap Moi’s government (leading to his autobiographical description in De- tained, 1981) to articulate the relationship between the leader(s) and the led and how cheap flattery and blind trust can lead to corrupt leadership and gross violation of human rights. In Wizard of the Crow, Ngũgĩ presents a detailed account of the ‘apemanship’ that informs the Free Republic of Aburĩria, a fictitious totalitarian régime led by a man known only as the Ruler. It is a country ravaged by corruption, stagnating economy, chronic ‘apemanship’, and an array of social problems including “crooked roads, robberies, runaway viruses of death, hospitals without medicine, rampant unemployment without relief, daily insecurity, [and] epidemic alcoholism. [...] Yes, an Aburĩria whose leaders had murdered hope.”2 Ngũgĩ’s disenchantment with the leadership in postcolonial Africa informs his creative life. By the time A Grain of Wheat (1967) was published, for ex- ample, he was already becoming more and more disillusioned with postcolo- nial African leadership in general and the Kenyan authorities in particular.3 His disillusionment gathered momentum later in what Cook and Okenimkpe call the third phase of his philosophy of life, which was “marked by a cor- rosive disillusionment with the character of social forces in independent Afri- ca, particularly Kenya, and a bitter revulsion against the emerging African élite and middle class”4 Because of this, the writer had to shift his emphasis 2 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Wizard of the Crow (London: Harvill Secker, 2006): 586. Further page references are in the main text. 3 This period has gone down in the history of African writing as the decade of dis- enchantment. It is during this period that Africa saw the publication of Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, a “bilious indictment” of the Ghanaian – and, by paradigmatic extension, African – state in which Armah bluntly announces that there are “No Saviours” in post-independent Africa. Instead, we only have “the hungry and the fed. Deceivers all.” See Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968; Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1988): 90. 4 David Cook & Michael Okenimkpe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o: An Exploration of His Writings (1983; London: Heinemann Educational, 2nd ed. 1997): 15. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Imagining Kenya in Ngugi's Fiction
    AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Ram Prasansak for the degree of Master of Arts in English presented on July 29, 2004 Title: Imagining Kenya in Ngugi's Fiction Abstract approved: /-( Laura Rice The relationship between literature and nation-building has been one of the most crucial issues in postcolonial studies. The novel in particular is regarded as a means by which writers forge national consciousness among the colonized during the time of colonization. Many African writers themselves, for example, conceive of their work as an arena of resistance to European colonialism which disfigures the identities of Africans and denies their history. In this study, I investigate how Ngugi wa Thiong'o, the foremost Kenyan writer, attempts to construct what Benedict Anderson calls "imagined communities" in Kenya during the colonial era, decolonization, and the post-independence period as reflected in three of his novels: The River Between (1965), A Grain of Wheat (1967), and Petals of Blood (1977). Far from being an unchanging entity, nationalism is a social construct that is constantly redefined and historically contingent. In The River Between, Ngugi draws upon Gikuyu cultural practices, especially the contested and value-laden rite of female circumcision, as sources of collective identity on which Kenyans might build to construct a nation. As he moves toward A Grain of Wheat, he identifies Kenyan nationhood with the Mau Mau struggle against British rule. In this novel, Ngugi not only contests the British account of the national liberation movement as barbaric, criminal and tribal, but also critiques the government that urges the Kenyan to forget about the Mau Mau because of its violence.
    [Show full text]
  • ABSTRACT DANIEL WRIGHT Ngugi's Nationalist Shift
    ABSTRACT DANIEL WRIGHT Ngugi's Nationalist Shift (Under the Direction of Professor TIMOTHY CLEAVELAND) Critics of Kenya's famous author Ngugi wa Thiong'o have long been fascinated with his adoption of Fanonist Marxism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This shift has typically been described as a radical and abrupt change in Ngugi's epistemological beliefs, resulting in an aesthetic and ideological departure from his three previous novels. This essay attempts to explain this shift by combining biographical information with a close reading of Ngugi's early novels for cultural/nationalist themes. When viewed through a nationalist context, Ngugi's adoption of Marxism represents a discernible and logical evolution in his perception of Kenya's national character. Rather than a break with the past, Ngugi's shift can be best understood as an attempt to solve the troubling problems he observed through his first three novels. While Ngugi certainly jettisoned a great deal of his faith in Western culture and education as vehicles for a modern Kenya, his adoption of Mau Mau as a national symbol reflects not so much a departure with his previous ambivalence towards the movement as an attempt to reposition the nature of Kenyan nationalism away from its traditional ethnic and cultural underpinnings. INDEX WORDS: Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Mau Mau, Kenya, Nationalism, Gikuyu NGUGI'S NATIONALIST SHIFT by DANIEL WRIGHT A Thesis Submitted to the Honors Council of the University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree BACHELOR OF ARTS in HISTORY with HIGH HONORS Athens, Georgia 2010 NGUGI'S NATIONALIST SHIFT by DANIEL WRIGHT Approved: ______________________________ ________________ Professor Timothy Cleaveland Date Faculty Research Mentor Approved: ______________________________ ________________ Njeri Marekia-Cleaveland, J.D.
    [Show full text]
  • Gender and the Erotics of Nationalism in Ngu˜Gı˜ Wa Thiong'o's Drama
    Gender and the Erotics of Nationalism in Ngu˜gı˜ wa Thiong’o’s Drama Evan Maina Mwangi Evan Maina Mwangi is Assistant Professor of English at Northwestern University, where he researches the intersection of nationalism, gender, and sexuality in African literatures and popular culture. He is coauthor (with Simon Gikandi) of The Columbia Guide to East African Literature since 1945 (Columbia University Press, 2007) and the author of Africa Writes Back to Self: Metafiction, Gender, Sexuality (forthcoming, State University of New York Press). His current book project, “(M)Other Tongue Matters: Translation and Gender in Indigenous African Literatures,” focuses on Ngu˜gı˜’s and other writers’ use of sex as a theme and a metaphor in creative works and polemical essays. TDR: The Drama Review 53:2 (T202) Summer 2009. ©2009 90 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.90 by guest on 27 September 2021 Introduction Kenyan author Ngügï wa Thiong’o has been a leading voice in African indigenous-language community theatre for over 30 years. In 1977 his first literary work in Gïküyü, Ngaahika Ndeenda (published in 1980 and translated as I Will Marry When I Want in 1982), coauthored with Ngügï wa Mïriï in collaboration with peasants and workers from their hometown of Limuru, led to his detention without trial by the Kenyan government. This kind of politically engaged performance forms the centerpiece of Ngügï’s artistic production. The influence that
    [Show full text]
  • Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and the Search for a Populist Landscape Aesthetic." Environmental Values 3, No
    The White Horse Press Full citation: Binder, Renee and G.W. Burnett, "Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and the Search for a Populist Landscape Aesthetic." Environmental Values 3, no. 1, (1994): 47-59. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/5506 Rights: All rights reserved. © The White Horse Press 1994. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism or review, no part of this article may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, including photocopying or recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from the publishers. For further information please see http://www.whpress.co.uk. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and the Search for a Populist Landscape Aesthetic RENEE BINDER* AND G.W. BURNETT† *US Forest Service Sumter National Forest Mountain Rest, South Carolina 29664 USA †Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management Clemson University Clemson, South Carolina 29631 USA Direct correspondence to: G. W. Burnett, Room 263 Lehotsky Hall, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29631. ABSTRACT: This essay examines how Ngugi wa Thiong’o, East Africa’s most prominent writer, treats the landscape as a fundamental social phenomenon in two of his most important novels, A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood. Basing his ideas in an ecological theory of landscape aesthetics resembling one recently developed in America, Ngugi understands that ability to control and manipulate a landscape defines a society. Nostalgia for the landscape lost to colonialism and to the corrupting and alienating influences of international capitalism needs to be replaced by its progressive evaluation as it is reshaped by collective action for a new future.
    [Show full text]
  • Character Names and Types in Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross and Wizard of the Crow
    UCLA Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies Title Character Names and Types in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross and Wizard of the Crow Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2qv2b257 Journal Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 38(3) ISSN 0041-5715 Author Ndĩgĩrĩgĩ, Gĩchingiri Publication Date 2015 DOI 10.5070/F7383027729 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Character Names and Types in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross and Wizard of the Crow* Gĩchingiri Ndĩgĩrĩgĩ Character names and character types are recognizable devices that mediate themes in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s fiction. These charac- ter names and character types encapsulate the social reality that the author writes about and comprise a fresh way of understand- ing his novels. From this encapsulation, authorial partisanship and worldview are decipherable. A cursory review of Ngũgĩ’s fiction reveals that these two aspects are sporadically found in his ear- lier fiction—The River Between, Weep Not, Child and A Grain of Wheat—but they become more evident features of Ngũgĩ’s style in Petals of Blood and are used to maximum effect in Devil on the Cross, Matigari, and more recently in Wizard of the Crow. For pur- poses of brevity, however, the discussion in this paper focuses on Devil on the Cross and Wizard of the Crow.1 The section on Devil on the Cross appeared originally in Ufahamu and only minor changes have been made in the analysis of the text in that section.2 The section on Wizard of the Crow is entirely new.
    [Show full text]
  • 20-African-Playwrights.Pdf
    1 Ama Ata Aidoo Professor Ama Ata Aidoo, née Christina Ama Aidoo (born 23 March 1940, Saltpond) is a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright and academic, who is also a former Minister of Education in the Ghana government. Life Born in Saltpond in Ghana's Central Region, she grew up in a Fante royal household, the daughter of Nana Yaw Fama, chief of Abeadzi Kyiakor, and Maame Abasema. Aidoo was sent by her father to Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast from 1961 to 1964. The headmistress of Wesley Girls' bought her her first typewriter. After leaving high school, she enrolled at the University of Ghana in Legon and received her Bachelor of Arts in English as well as writing her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in 1964. The play was published by Longman the following year, making Aidoo the first published African woman dramatist. 2 She worked in the United States of America where she held a fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University. She also served as a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, and as a Lecturer in English at the University of Cape Coast, eventually rising there to the position of Professor. Aside from her literary career, Aidoo was appointed Minister of Education under the Provisional National Defence Council in 1982. She resigned after 18 months. She has also spent a great deal of time teaching and living abroad for months at a time. She has lived in America, Britain, Germany, and Zimbabwe. Aidoo taught various English courses at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY in the early to mid 1990s.
    [Show full text]
  • Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's the River Between and Matigari
    Allegory and the Retrieval of History: Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The River Between and Matigari Eriks Uskalis There is a need for analysis of postcolonial writing which, instead of as- suming dissent as a given, locates its forms and conditions of possibility within contexts that both determine and set limits on its expression. If dissent is defi ned by the effects of the power against which it reacts, it follows that different contexts will call for varied expressions of dissent. In terms of literary production the effects of dissent are often seen as shifts in form and genre. Through acts of dissemination and interpella- tion, the state, as well as the relative hegemonic strength of colonial and postcolonial discourse, have signifi cant ramifi cations on the formation of the context of dissent. I would argue, then, that an analysis of dissent which takes these factors into consideration should “study what was able to emerge within, and against, what seems at fi rst glance to be a domi- nant fi eld of social perception” (Polan qtd. in Lipseitz 31). It should come as no surprise that class plays a major part in the con- ditions out of which literature is produced, but the tenets set out in the above statements work against dismissals of texts which do not express dissent in terms of class. Class formations, in postcolonial times, are often too overdetermined to provide coherent forms of dissent. This can be fl eshed out by a discussion of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s novels The River Between and Matigari.
    [Show full text]
  • Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow and Postcolonial Pedagogy
    Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow and Postcolonial Pedagogy RAPHAEL DALLEO Florida Atlantic University [email protected] ABSTRACT The encyclopedic nature of Ngũgĩ’s Wizard of the Crow makes it an overt summing up of the author’s previous work. At the same time, the novel explicitly positions itself as a break from what came before by rethinking the anticolonial ideologies contained in the earlier work in light of what Wizard of the Crow references as an expanding postcoloniality. This shift can be seen in the philosophy of pedagogy the novel puts forward. Unlike the radical oppositionality of the anticolonial stance, postcolonial pedagogy is depicted as contingent, conflicted, but because of its decentralized, nonhi- erarchical nature potentially better able to redefine the field of possibili- ties than a radicalization of the master’s tools. Wizard of the Crow refuses to retreat from the intellectual’s obligation to oppose and critique global exploitation and inequality, positioning postcolonialism not as an abandon- ment or surmounting of anticolonialism as much as a re-imagining of its goals in changed circumstances. The novel seeks to imagine a decolonizing form of education that can stand against without replicating patriarchy and colonial hierarchy. n his review of Wizard of the Crow, Simon Gikandi notes the way the novel invokes Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s previous work, most obviously by introducing one of the novel’s main characters while she reads Devil on the Cross. This Iintertextual clue leads Gikandi to argue that “Wizard of the Crow is a repetition of Ngũgĩ’s later novels, especially Petals of Blood and [.
    [Show full text]
  • (LALIGENS), Ethiopia Vol. 4 (2), Serial No 10, May, 2015: 31-44 ISSN: 2225-8604(Print) ISSN 2227-5460 (Online) DOI
    LALIGENS, Vol.4 (2), May, 2015 An International Journal of Language, Literature and Gender Studies (LALIGENS), Ethiopia Vol. 4 (2), Serial No 10, May, 2015: 31-44 ISSN: 2225-8604(Print) ISSN 2227-5460 (Online) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/laligens.v4i2.3 The Non-Conformist Intellectual’s Role as a Socio-Political Activist in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow Akani, Julius Nsirim Department of English Studies, University of Port Harcourt Choba, Port Harcourt Tel : +2348038746350 E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Abstract The study of the intellectual character in the African novel can be done in two parts, namely: the conformist intellectual, on one part and the non-conformist intellectual on the other. This paper focuses on the non-conformist intellectual. Generally, the paper is basically an analysis of the non-conformist intellectual’s role as a socio- political activist in Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow. The obvious absence of critical attention on Wizard of the Crow gives this study a special place in Ngugi’s scholarship. Indeed, this paper is pathbreaking and it is meant to open up discussions on Ngugi’s classic of postcolonial African experience, Wizard of the Crow. This is clearly visible in this present researcher’s attempt at paying adequate attention to the intellectual perspective in the novel. The paper gives us an insight into the roles of the non-conformist intellectual in the novel. The role of Kamiti, the non-conformist intellectual in the novel, is appreciated more through a study of his alienation from the socio-political values of the power structure in the novel; and in his desire to play an important part as a leader in the fight for the liberation of the poor masses of Aburiria.
    [Show full text]
  • Leisure Corrupted: an Artist's Portrait of Leisure in a Changing Society
    Leisure corrupted: an artist's portrait of leisure in a changing society By: Sevil Sönmez, Kim Shinev, Leane Marchese, Chris Veldkamp, and G. W. Burnett Sönmez, S., Shinew, K., Marchese, L., Veldkamp, C., and G.W. Burnett (1993). Leisure Corrupted: An Artist's Portrait of Leisure in a Changing Society. Leisure Studies, 12(4):266-276. Made available courtesy of Taylor and Francis: http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/ *** Note: Figures may be missing from this format of the document Abstract: Theoretical arguments that leisure is the basis of any culture are available. Yet, scarcity in the literature of serious consideration of leisure in non-Western societies demonstrates that the topic has been neglected. One possible explanation for the failure to achieve progress in cultural comparisons of leisure is the lack of data. At least three approaches permit this type of comparison. This paper focuses on a literary approach by investigating how East Africa's most prominent creative writer, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, treats leisure in his most important English language novels. This analysis centers on two of his novels, A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood. The two novels are complex, intricate stories drawing heavily on Western philosophy and literature as well as African folklore. Although Ngugi suggests that leisure is the foundation of civilization, the fibre that makes the cloth of society, he portrays leisure distinctively in social terms likely to surprise those familiar with Western traditions of leisure. Article: Introduction Two concepts of leisure now compete in Western societies. One conceives leisure as that which is done after work: a reward for work, a recreation, and a preparation for yet more work.
    [Show full text]
  • As “Secondary Zone Literature” Author: Yanli HE Affiliat
    Title: Rethinking “Minor Literature” and “Small Literature” as “Secondary Zone Literature” Author: Yanli HE① Affiliation: Sichuan University Email: yanlihe scu!edu.cn Abstract: "he aim of this article is to address the limits of the “minor literature” of $illes Deleuze & F)li* Guattari and Pascale Casanova-s “small literature”. mean/hile rethink “minor & small literature” as Michel Ragon-s “secondary zone literature” from three perspectives. Firstly, it will be argued that “minor and small literature” began to lose its theoretical capacity with the advent of globali&ation a#ter the ne/ millennium. which is why scholars like Theo D’haen and David Damrosch tended to move a/ay from the initial ideas of Deleuze. Guattari and Casanova. Secondly, the problems of “minor literature” and “small literature” will be updated. There are three problems with “minor literature”: 1) D & G-s “minor literature”4“litt)rature mineure” is an incorrect translation of Kafka-s work, because 5afka-s original word, “klein”, means “small” in German; 2) The first feature of “minor literature” that “a minority uses a ma9or language in a context outside that language” runs the risk of not only dismissing all literature written by minorities in “minor languages”. but also diminishing the possi1le meanings of the term, “minority”6 and 3) The second and third characteristics of “minor literature”, its “political” and “collective” nature, are unable to explain why only non-European arts, such as African American and Soviet literature, are perceived to be political and collective. In terms of “small literature”. there are t/o problems: a) it fails to explain why countries such as China and India.
    [Show full text]
  • Revolutionary Nationalism and Women's
    BOEHMER Makeup 3/22/05 2:55 PM Page 42 John's G5:Users:john:Public:John's Mac: John's Jobs 2 ‘The master’s dance to the master’s voice’: revolutionary nationalism and women’s representation in Ngugi wa Thiong’o A writer needs people around him. For me, in writing a novel, I love to hear the voices of the people . I need the vibrant voices of beautiful women: their touch, their sighs, their tears, their laughter. (Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Detained)1 With these affirmative words, the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o points to the strong position that women characters have held in his work over the years. It is a position virtually unique in Anglophone African literature. Not only is it the case that the internationally renowned African writers concentrating on themes of national self-assertion have by and large been male, but that in their work the emancipation of women has generally been rated as of secondary importance relative to the liberation of nations or of peoples. For this reason Ngugi’s exertions to include women in his vision of a Kenya liberated from neocolonial domination merit recognition. Yet, at the same time, precisely because of the prominence of his achievement, the enduring masculinist cast of his ideas cannot be ignored. For it is by singling out female voices, by fixing women beneath the evaluative epithets ‘vibrant’ and ‘beautiful’, that Ngugi gives way to that tendency to objectify women which, even in the 1989 Matigari, qualifies his attempt to grant them a leading role in the revolution- ary struggle for Kenyan liberation.2 The ambivalence in Ngugi’s attitude towards women forms a significant, if not metonymic, part of a wider contradiction undercutting his populist nationalist programme for a new Kenya.
    [Show full text]