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Copyright by Meredith Armstrong Coffey 2016 The Dissertation Committee for Meredith Armstrong Coffey Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Narrow Nationalisms and Third Generation Nigerian Fiction Committee: Barbara Harlow, Co-Supervisor Neville Hoad, Co-Supervisor Aaron Bady Toyin Falola Snehal Shingavi Narrow Nationalisms and Third Generation Nigerian Fiction by Meredith Armstrong Coffey, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2016 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I am deeply grateful to my dissertation committee for their many contributions to the dissertation. I am indebted to my co-supervisors Barbara Harlow and Neville Hoad for their guidance, patience, and confidence in my abilities throughout the last six years. I thank Dr. Harlow especially for always pushing me ahead to the next challenge and Dr. Hoad for his relentless optimism. I could not have completed this project without their unwavering support at each stage of the process. Snehal Shingavi joined the committee more recently but has been no less dedicated in offering suggestions and (gently) asking challenging questions in the interest of strengthening my argument. Many thanks go to Aaron Bady and Toyin Falola for their faith in the project’s progress and for their insightful questions at the defense. I suspect that few, if any, dissertation committees are as delighted to work together as the members of mine have been, and for that I am honored. In addition, I am thankful for my colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin and their consistent intellectual and personal support. Allison Haas and Emily Lederman offered constructive yet kind feedback on early dissertation chapter drafts. Providing momentum in the critical last months of writing, Joanna Turner and Laura Knowles Wallace met with me for regular work sessions. I also thank Lauren Grewe, Jenny Howell, Courtney Massie, Robin Riehl, and Laura Thain for their unyielding friendship, advice, and humor. Finally, I am grateful for the support of friends and family from beyond the university. My housemate Kathryn Schroeder’s sympathy and diligent Pennycare permitted me to focus on writing. Many thanks are due to my parents, Kendall Coffey iv and Joni Armstrong Coffey, who have listened carefully, almost always asked the right questions, and provided invaluable moral support. Finally, I am tremendously grateful to David Marcou, who has been the most encouraging friend and partner I could have asked for throughout and beyond my graduate school career. Thank you all. v Narrow Nationalisms and Third Generation Nigerian Fiction Meredith Armstrong Coffey, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Co-Supervisors: Barbara Harlow and Neville Hoad The last decade or so, many literary critics hold, has witnessed a substantial shift in African fiction: nationalist commitments, integral to older African writers’ work, have faded from younger Africans’ literary visions, which often engage wide transnational networks instead. In contrast to this dominant critical narrative, however, the dissertation contends that younger writers have not rejected nationalism, but have revised it in myriad ways to meet contemporary needs. Moreover, I argue not against the existence of a transnational turn, but rather that there is an additional, local dimension, which has received little attention. In the texts I examine, withdrawals into smaller networks function hand in hand with reconfigurations of nationalism, ultimately resulting in what I term “narrow nationalisms.” To make this case, the dissertation focuses on a selection of novels by third generation Nigerian authors—those born after the country’s 1960 independence—about three interrelated areas of crisis: oil conflict in southern Nigeria, the rise of cybercrime, and the so-called “brain drain.” I analyze how narrow nationalisms operate in Kaine Agary’s Yellow-Yellow (2006), Helon Habila’s Oil on Water (2010), Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s I Do Not Come to You by Chance (2009), Sefi Atta’s A Bit of Difference (2012), and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013). Whether they are more about sovereignty, ideology, or belonging, the narrow nationalisms of the primary texts vi all contest longstanding wisdom that nationalism is about imposing ideology from above, especially as characters retreat into smaller communities from which they attempt to catalyze bottom-up, grassroots change. What, then, are the implications of Nigerian fiction’s continued engagement with nationalism for the study of contemporary African literature? Further, in a country that is already fractured in terms of political control and allegiances, and in an era in which the role of the nation-state remains uncertain, what might narrow nationalisms suggest about Nigerian sovereignty? Examining narrow nationalist spaces in third generation Nigerian writing not only complicates literary critical conversations but also reveals new insight into challenges for the present-day Nigerian state—and for Africa and the global south more widely. vii Table of Contents Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 "Keep This Island Free": Niger Delta Women's Resistance in Kaine Agary's Yellow-Yellow and Helon Habila's Oil on Water .............................34 Imperialism and Oil in the Niger Delta.........................................................52 Zilayefa's Struggles as Allegory ...................................................................65 "No One Wanted to Be the Next Ken Saro-Wiwa" ......................................75 Boma Heals on Irikefe ..................................................................................82 Everyday Forms of Women's Resistance ......................................................95 Chapter 2 "Family Always Came First": The Yahooze Generation in Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's I Do Not Come to You by Chance .............................................98 Advance Fee Fraud .....................................................................................111 A Revision of Earlier Nationalist Narratives ..............................................115 Three Nationalisms .....................................................................................120 Kingsley on Religion, Ethnicity, and Family..............................................127 419 in the World .........................................................................................138 Nwaubani's Yahooze Generation ................................................................143 Chapter 3 "Checkin' In": Diasporic Networks and Return Migration in Sefi Atta's A Bit of Difference and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah .............146 African Diaspora and "Brain Drain" Anxieties...........................................160 "Too Huge and Fractured" ..........................................................................165 "The Tarzan Complex" ...............................................................................176 Coming Home .............................................................................................194 Caveats and Consequences .........................................................................204 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................207 Works Cited .........................................................................................................216 viii Introduction This generation incorporated in their literary imaginations disdain for colonialism and distrust of nationalism that had animated earlier generations of writers who bemoaned the cultural agonies of colonialism and the aborted dreams of uhuru. The new generation had decidedly more cosmopolitan visions of the African condition, cultural production, and the subjectivities of gender, class, and sexuality. —Paul Tiyambe Zeleza In 2007, Malawian scholar of history and literature Paul Tiyambe Zeleza became one of the first critics to describe the departure of “third generation” African writers— those “born after 1960”—from some of the thematic concerns of previous generations (“Colonial Fictions” 13). One reading of Zeleza’s analysis suggests that younger writers have traded out their predecessors’ commitment to nationalism in favor of wider “cosmopolitan visions,” a notion that many critics have embraced (13). Third generation Nigerian author Helon Habila, for example, understands Zeleza’s argument in this way: “Taking my cue from Zeleza’s phrase ‘distrust of nationalism,’ I call this generation of writers the ‘post-nationalist’ generation” (“Introduction” viii). Habila thus casts his own generation as writing after the era of nationalism, which implies a significant break from the decidedly nationalist emphasis of previous generations’ writing.1 In addition to the reading that Habila puts forth—and not, I hold, at odds with it— is a second possible interpretation of Zeleza’s analysis, and by extension third generation African writing. Habila calls attention to the phrase “distrust of nationalism,” but 1 Habila notes that his use of “post-nationalist” is “aspirational”—a desirable and reachable goal, if not a precise reflection of current circumstances (“Introduction” viii). 1 Zeleza’s sentence does