Notes
Introduction 1. David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlight- enment (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 47. 2. Scott, Conscripts of Modernity, 70. 3. Scott, Conscripts of Modernity, 70. 4. For a discussion of the relationship between the genre of romance and European nationalism see, for example, Marlon B. Ross, “Romancing the Nation-State: The Poetic of Romantic Nationalism,” Macropoli- tics of Nineteenth-Century Literature, eds Jonathan Arac and Harriet Ritvo (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 56–85. 5. Carol Sicherman, “Revolutionizing the Literature Curriculum at the University of East Africa: Literature and the Soul of the Nation,” Research in African Literatures 29.3 (1998), 125. 6. Biodun Jeyifo, “The Nature of Things: Arrested Decolonization and Critical Theory,” Research in African Literatures 21.1 (1990), 43. 7. The key texts include Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy,ed. Samuel Lipmann (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), and F. R. Leavis, English Literature in Our Time and the University (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969) and The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad (New York: New York University Press, 1963). 8. John Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Canon Formation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 19. 9. James Ngugi, Henry Owuor-Anyumba, and Taban lo Liyong, “On the Abolition of the English Department,” Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics, ed. James Ngugi (London: Heinemann, 1972), 145. 10. Ngugi et al., “On the Abolition,” 145. 11. Quoted in, “On the Abolition,” 145. 12. Ngugi et al., “On the Abolition,” 145. 13. Ngugi et al., “On the Abolition,” 145. 14. Quoted in, “On the Abolition,” 145–46. 15. Leavis, English Literature,3. 16. Leavis, English Literature,8. 17. Ngugi et al., “On the Abolition,” 146. 180 Notes
18. Simon Gikandi, Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 234 (footnote 26). 19. Ngugi et al., “On the Abolition,” 146. 20. Ngugi et al., “On the Abolition,” 146. 21. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London: James Currey, 1986), 89–90. 22. Ngugi et al., “On the Abolition,” 146. 23. Ngugi et al., “On the Abolition,” 146. 24. Ngugi et al., “On the Abolition,” 146. Ngugi’s positions are more complex than this “snapshot” reading suggests. In his later work, he would become sharply critical of the role of the university in the neocolonial exploitation of Kenya. See, for example, my reading of Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross. Also, Ngugi’s Afrocentricism was tempered by his commitment to Marxism. In “The Robber and the Robbed” (Writers in Politics [London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1981], 123–39), to cite one example, Ngugi defines literature in terms not of race but of imperialism. He suggests that literary value be defined in terms of a global struggle against imperialism and capi- talism. According to this argument, there is a fundamental connection between the African proletariat and peasantry and the working people of Asia and Latin America. But see also “Europhonism, Universities and the Magic Fountain: The Future of African Literature and Schol- arship,” Research in African Literature 31.1 (Spring 2000), 1–11. In this essay, Ngugi attempts to define all the disciplines, not just the literature department, of an Afrocentric university. 25. Angus Calder, “Africanisation of the Curriculum,” Internal Memo- rumdum, Department of Literature, University of Nairobi, 6 June 1971. 26. Paulin Hountondji, African Philosophy: Myth and Reality Second Edition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), xii. 27. Hountondji, African Philosophy, 33. 28. Hountondji, African Philosophy, 66. 29. Ngugi et al., “On the Abolition,” 146–47. 30. Simon Gikandi, “African Literature and the Social Science Paradigm,” paper commissioned by the Social Science Research Council, New York, 25. 31. Guillory, Cultural Capital, 38. 32. Guillory, Cultural Capital, 50. 33. Kenneth Kaunda, “Addresses at the Installation” quoted in J. F. Ade Ajayi, Lameck K. H. Goma, and G. Ampah Johnson, The African Experience with Higher Education (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1996), 1. 34. Ajayi et al., The African Experience,1. 35. Ajayi et al., The African Experience,1. Notes 181
36. Ajayi et al., The African Experience,1. 37. For an instructive set of interviews with many of these pioneering writers recalling their heady student days at Ibadan, see Robert Wren, Those Magical Years: The Making of Nigerian Literature at Ibadan 1948–1966 (Washington, D. C.: Three Continents Press, 1991). 38. F. Abiola Irele, The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 173. 39. Irele, The African Imagination, 173. 40. Irele, The African Imagination, 175. 41. Irele, The African Imagination, 175. 42. Irele, The African Imagination, 175–76. 43. Irele, The African Imagination, 181. 44. Irele, The African Imagination, 176. 45. Irele, The African Imagination, 181. 46. Irele, The African Imagination, 181. 47. The phrase “homogenous, empty time,” is taken from Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, a text that I address in greater detail in what follows. 48. Irele, The African Imagination, 177. 49. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 209. 50. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 210. 51. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 209. 52. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 209. 53. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 209. 54. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 223. 55. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 225. 56. Wai Chee Dimock, “Literature for the Planet,” PMLA 116.1 (January 2001), 174. 57. Dimock, “Literature for the Planet,” 174.
Chapter 1 1. Fredric Jameson, “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” Social Text, 69 (Fall 1986), 69. 2. Simon Gikandi, “African Literature and the Social Science Paradigm,” unpublished manuscript, 28. 3. André-Paul Michaud, “Nature as Agency in Ngugi’s The River Between,” Critical Essays on Ngug˜ ˜ı wa Thiong’o, ed. Peter Nazareth (New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000), 49. 4. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The River Between (London: Heinemann, 1965), 1. Subsequent references to this edition will be included parentheti- cally in the body of my text. 5. Michaud, “Nature as Agency,” 49. 182 Notes
6. Ato Sekyi-Otu, “The Refusal of Agency: The Founding Narrative and Waiyaki Tragedy in The River Between,” Research in African Literatures 16.2 (1985), 159. 7. Sekyi-Otu, “Refusal of Agency,” 159–60. 8. Homi K. Bhabha, “Representation and the Colonial Text: A Critical Examination of Some Forms of Mimeticism,” Theory of Reading,ed. Frank Gloversmith (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984), 97. 9. Sekyi-Otu, “Refusal of Agency,” 167. 10. Simon Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 66. 11. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 238. 12. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979), 228. 13. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 61. 14. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 62. 15. Gikandi, “African Literature,” 19. Gikandi suggests that Jomo Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya was the mediating text between Malinowski and Ngugi. 16. Gikandi, “African Literature,” 19. 17. Sekyi-Otu, “Refusal of Agency,” 173. 18. Sekyi-Otu, “Refusal of Agency,” 172. 19. Sekyi-Otu, “Refusal of Agency,” 172. 20. Quoted in Reinhardt Sander and Ian Munro, “Tolstoy in Africa: An Interview with Ngugi wa Thiong’o,” Critical Perspectives on Ngugi wa Thiong’o, ed. G. D. Killam (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1984), 52. 21. Quoted in Sander and Munro, “Tolstoy in Africa,” 52. 22. For a comprehensive historical account of the brutality of British rule during the state of emergency in late colonial Kenya, see Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya (New York: Henry Holt, 2005). 23. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Weep Not, Child (London: Heinemann, 1964), 25–6. Subsequent references to this edition will be included paren- thetically in the body of my text. 24. G. D. Killam, “Weep Not, Child,” Critical Essays on Ngugi wa Thiong’o, ed. Peter Nazareth (New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000), 64–5. 25. Killam, “Weep Not, Child,” 65. 26. John Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 18. 27. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 24. 28. Anderson, Imagined Communities,7. 29. Anderson, Imagined Communities,7. 30. Anderson, Imagined Communities,7. Notes 183
31. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 121–2. 32. Sekyi-Otu, “Refusal of Agency,” 167. 33. James Ogude, Ngugi’s Novels and African History: Narrating the Nation (London: Pluto Press, 1999), 111. 34. Ogude, Ngugi’s Novels, 111. 35. Ogude, Ngugi’s Novels, 111. 36. For a decisive repudiation of the figure of the unimpeachably innocent child, see Lee Edelman, “The Future is Kid Stuff: Queer The- ory, Disidentification, and the Death Drive,” Narrative 6.1(January 1998), 18–30. Edelman writes: Historically constructed [ ...] to serve as the figural repository for sentimentalized cultural identifications, the child has come to embody for us the telos of the social order and been enshrined as the figure for whom that order must be held in perpetual trust. The image itself, however, in its coercive universalization, works to discipline political discourse by consigning it always to accede in advance to the reality of a collective futurity whose fig- urative status we are never permitted to acknowledge or address. (20–1) Drawing on Edelman’s arguments, I suggest that the image of Mwihaki and Njoroge (and indeed that of Njoroge and Stephen) as the innocent embodiments of the ideal postcolonial social order must be contested for its coercive universalizing of a denuded social order.
Chapter 2 1. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Petals of Blood, First American Edition (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 344. Subsequent references to this text will be included parenthetically in the body of my book. 2. Fredric Jameson, “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” Social Text 69 (Fall 1986), 81. 3. James Ogude, Ngugi’s Novels and African History: Narrating the Nation (London: Pluto Press, 1999), 142. 4. Paulo Friere, Cultural Action for Freedom (New York: Penguin, 1972), 9. See also Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed,New revised 20th-Anniversary ed., trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 1993). 5. Peter Nazareth, “The Second Homecoming: Multiple Ngugis in Petals of Blood,” Marxism and African Literature, ed. Georg M. Gugelberger (London: James Currey, 1985), 122. 6. Nazareth, “Second Homecoming,” 122. 7. Simon Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 135. 184 Notes
8. Nazareth, “Second Homecoming,” 122. 9. Nazareth, “Second Homecoming,” 122. 10. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 148. 11. For an example of the lack of correspondence, in this realist text, between the characters’ life circumstances and their discursive register, Nazareth points to a passage in which Karega, a high school expellee, articulates a critique of the Kenyan postcolony in a Marxist vocabulary that is lifted virtually word for word from Ngugi’s Homecoming.See Nazareth, “Second Homecoming,” 122–3. 12. The texts in question include Godfrey Muriuki, A History of the Kikuyu,1500–1900 (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1974), Bethuel A. Ogot, History of the Southern Luo (Nairobi: East African Pub- lishing House, 1967), Gideon S. Were, History of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya c1500–1930 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967), and William Ochieng’, A Pre-colonial History of the Gusii of Western Kenya c. A.D. 1500–1914 (Kampala: East African Publish- ing House, 1974). Alarmingly, many of the literary critics, such as Patrick Williams and Alamin Mazrui, who take at face value Ngugi’s characterization of these texts as “neocolonial” do not engage with the much-maligned texts, much less consider the context in which they were produced. In defense of the much-maligned historians, suffice it to say that, contemporaneous with the famed revolution in the literature department at the University of Nairobi in the late 1960s and early 1970s, radical changes were taking place in the history department both in terms of subject matter and methodol- ogy. Largely as a result of the efforts of the four historians Ngugi names, precolonial African history was institutionalized as a field of study. Not only that, oral sources came to be institutionalized as legitimate bodies of historical evidence. Even a cursory glance at these founding texts of African historiography would demonstrate that they reject rather than accept colonial assumptions about precolonial Africa. 13. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: Towards a Critical Theory of the Arts and the State in Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 4. 14. Ngugi, Penpoints,4. 15. Ngugi, Penpoints,4. 16. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Ori- gin and Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edition (New York: Verso, 1991), xiv. 17. Anderson, Imagined Communities, xiv. 18. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 193. 19. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 193. 20. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 194. 21. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 194. 22. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 195. Notes 185
23. See also J. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Politi- cal Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975). 24. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 15. 25. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 15. 26. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 15. 27. Jameson, “Third-World Literature,” 80. 28. William Ochieng’, “Undercivilization in Black Africa,” The First Word: Essays on Kenya History (Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1975), 18. 29. Ochieng’, “Undercivilization,” 18–19. 30. Ochieng’, “Undercivilization,” 6. 31. Florence Stratton, Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender (New York: Routledge, 1994), 48. 32. Ogude, Ngugi’s Novels, 118. 33. Ogude, Ngugi’s Novels, 119. 34. Stratton, Contemporary African Literature,7. 35. David Cook and Michael Okenimkpe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o: An Explo- ration of His Writings (London: Heinemann, 1983), 113. 36. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 210. 37. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Devil on the Cross, trans. Ngugi wa Thiong’o (London: Heinemann, 1982), 203–04. Subsequent references to this text will be made parenthetically in the body of my book. 38. Patrick Williams, Ngugi wa Thiong’o (New York: Manchester Univer- sity Press, 1999), 109. 39. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 219. 40. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 220. 41. Elleke Boehmer, “The Master’s Dance to the Master’s Voice: Revolu- tionary Nationalism and the Representation of Women in the Writing of Ngugi wa Thiong’o,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 26.1 (1991), 195. 42. For an exploration of the significance of these choices, see Gitahi Gititi, “Recuperating a ‘Disappearing’ Art Form: Resonances of ‘Gicaandi’ in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross,” The World of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, ed. Charles Cantalupo (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1995), 109–28. 43. Ngugi, Decolonising the Mind, 86. 44. Ngugi, Decolonising the Mind, 83. 45. Ngugi, Decolonising the Mind, 83. 46. John Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), ix. 47. Ogude, Ngugi’s Novels, 165–6, footnote 4. 48. Henry Chakava, “Publishing Ngugi: The Challenge, the Risk, and the Reward,” Ngugi wa Thiong’o, ed. Charles Cantalupo (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press), 15. 49. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 209. 186 Notes
50. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 208. 51. Arguably, the relative marginalization of Swahili literature continues. I am grateful to Professor Mohammed Abdulaziz of the Department of Kiswahili at the University of Nairobi for drawing my attention to the problem of the continued marginalization of Swahili and other indige- nous languages in the academic discipline of literature in English in Kenya. 52. Michel Foucault, “Questions of Method,” The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, eds Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 76. 53. F. Odun Balogun, Ngugi and the African Postcolonial Narrative: The Novel as Oral Narrative in Multigenre Performance (St. Hyacinth, Quebec: World Heritage Press, 1997), 59. 54. Eileen Julien, African Novels and the Question of Orality (Blooming- ton: Indiana University Press, 1992), 142. 55. Gikandi argues that the opening of the narrative in the formulaic manner of Gikuyu folktales is particularly pronounced in an over- ture included in the Gikuyu original but omitted from the English translation. For a discussion of this overture and its relationship to the narrative convention of traditional Gikuyu folktales, see Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 211. 56. Julien, African Novels, 143–4. 57. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 212. 58. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 213–14. 59. Julien, African Novels, 143. 60. Julien, African Novels, 144. 61. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 273.
Chapter 3 1. See Seth Adagala, “The Long Hard Battle to Stage Kimathi Play,” Daily Nation 10 Oct. 1976: 15. 2. Gichingiri Ndigirigi, “Kenyan Theatre After Kamiriithu,” TDR (Drama Review) 43.2 (Summer 1999), 72. 3. Simon Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 264. 4. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 264. 5. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 163. 6. Andrew Apter, “The Pan-African Nation: Oil Money and the Specta- cle of Culture in Nigeria,” Public Culture 8.3 (Spring 1996), 441. 7. Apter, “The Pan-African Nation,” 445. 8. Apter, “The Pan-African Nation,” 445. 9. Quoted in Apter, “The Pan-African Nation”, 445–6. 10. Apter, “The Pan-African Nation,” 447. 11. Apter, “The Pan-African Nation,” 447. Notes 187
12. Josphat Gichingiri Ndigirigi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and the Kamiri- ithu Popular Theater Experiment (Ph.D. dissertation: University of California, Los Angeles, 1998), 40. 13. Nicholas Brown, “Revolution and Recidivism: The Problem of Kenyan History in the Plays of Ngugi wa Thiong’o,” Research in African Literatures 30.4 (Winter 1999), 56. 14. David William Cohen, The Combing of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 60. 15. Cohen, The Combing of History, 60. 16. Cohen, The Combing of History, 60. 17. See, for example, Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya (New York: Henry Holt, 2005); David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005). See also Pas- cal James Imperato, “Differing Perspectives on Mau Mau”, African Studies Review 48.3 (2005), 147–54. 18. Cohen, The Combing of History, 61. 19. Cohen, The Combing of History, 61. 20. Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Githae Mugo, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (London: Heineman, 1976), preface. 21. Ngugi and Mguo, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, preface. 22. E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, “Rebutting ‘Theory’ with Correct Theory: A Comment on The Trial of Dedan Kimathi,” Kenya Historical Review 5.2 (1977), 386. Considering the conservative reputation that Kenyan historians seem to have acquired (at least in certain circles of the literary academy), it bears emphasizing that Odhiambo offers a rad- ical Marxist critique of Ngugi’s and Mugo’s questionable Mau Mau historiography. 23. Odhiambo, “Rebutting ‘Theory,’ ” 386. 24. Odhiambo, “Rebutting ‘Theory,’ ” 386. 25. Odhiambo, “Rebutting ‘Theory,’ ” 386. 26. Quoted in Cohen, The Combing of History, 60. 27. Ngugi and Mugo, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, preface. 28. Quoted in Magaga Alot, “Kenya Prepares for Festac ’77 in Lagos,” Weekly Review, 27 Dec. 1976: 31. 29. For an example of a critic who shares Ngugi’s negative assessment of Watene’s play, one could point to Ndigirigi. He welcomes the fact that Ngugi’s and Mugo’s “positive” portrayal of Dedan Kimathi replaced Watene’s “negative” one as Kenya’s official representative to Festac. For an example of a critic who cites Ngugi’s criticisms of Watene and passes over them in silence, see Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 177. 30. Tellingly, the story of the rape and murder of Dr. Lynd during a Mau Mau raid is expunged from a later edition of A Grain of Wheat published in 1986. By the mid-1980s, it would seem Ngugi had become too embarrassed of his erstwhile ambivalence toward Mau 188 Notes
Mau violence to retain the morally compromised scene. This revision helps underscore the suspicion that Ngugi’s polemical condemnation of Watene’s play represents, in large measure, an unarticulated gesture of belated, if unacknowledged, self-critique. 31. John Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 7. 32. Guillory, Cultural Capital,8. 33. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “Kenyan Culture: The National Struggle for Survival,” Guardian 7 June 1979, reprinted in, Writers in Politics (London: Heinemann, 1981), 42–43. 34. Ngugi, Writers in Politics, 42. 35. Ngugi, Writers in Politics, 43. 36. Ngugi, Writers in Politics, 43. 37. Ngugi, Writers in Politics, 43. 38. Ngugi, Writers in Politics, 43. 39. Ngugi, Writers in Politics, 43. 40. Ngugi, Writers in Politics, 46. 41. Ngugi, Writers in Politics, 46. 42. Kamonye wa Manje, “Dedan Kimathi by Kenneth Watene,” Umma I (1975), 78. 43. wa Manje, “Dedan Kimathi,” 75. 44. wa Manje, “Dedan Kimathi,” 76. 45. Homi K. Bhabha, TheLocationofCulture(New York: Routledge, 1994), 66. 46. Kamau Kiarie, “Literary Works Should Celebrate Our Heroes,” East African Standard. Online edition, 17 Mar. 2002,
59. Henderson, The Hunt for Kimathi, 17. 60. Henderson, The Hunt for Kimathi, 18. 61. Henderson, The Hunt for Kimathi, 24. 62. Henderson, The Hunt for Kimathi, 24. 63. Henderson, The Hunt for Kimathi, 24. 64. Henderson, The Hunt for Kimathi, 32–4. 65. Kenneth Watene, Dedan Kimathi (Nairobi: Transafrica Press, 1974), 63. Subsequent references to this text will be included parenthetically in the body of my text. 66. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 225. 67. Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Githae Mugo, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (London: Heinemann, 1976), 3. Subsequent references will be included parenthetically in the body of my text. 68. Brown, “Revolution and Recidivism,” 59. 69. Brown, “Revolution and Recidivism,” 71. 70. Brian Crow, “Melodrama and the Political Unconscious in Two African Plays,” Ariel 14.3 (July 1983), 25. 71. Crow, “Melodrama,” 15. 72. Crow, “Melodrama,” 15. 73. Crow, “Melodrama,” 15. 74. Crow, “Melodrama,” 25. 75. Crow, “Melodrama,” 25. 76. Crow, “Melodrama,” 25. 77. Crow, “Melodrama,” 25–6. 78. Crow, “Melodrama,” 30. 79. Crow, “Melodrama,” 30. 80. Crow, “Melodrama,” 30–1. 81. Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Ngugi wa Mirii, I Will Marry When I Want (London: Heinemann, 1982), 11. Subsequent references to this text will be included parenthetically in the body of my text. 82. Gikandi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 71. 83. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 223. 84. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 223.
Conclusion 1. Cheikh Hamidou Kane, “The African Writer and His Public,” African Writers on African Writing, ed. G. D. Killam (Evanston, IL: North- western University Press, 1973), 53. 2. Kane, “The African Writer,” 53. 3. Kane, “The African Writer,” 58. 4. Kane, “The African Writer,” 58. 5. Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philoso- phy of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 147. 190 Notes
6. Appiah, In My Father’s House, 148. 7. Appiah, In My Father’s House, 149. 8. Appiah, In My Father’s House, 149. 9. Appiah, In My Father’s House, 149. 10. Appiah, In My Father’s House, 149. 11. Appiah, In My Father’s House, 149. 12. Appiah, In My Father’s House, 149. 13. Cheikh Hamidou Kane quoted in J. P. Little, “Autofiction and Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s L’aventure Ambigue,” Research in African Literatures 31.2 (2000 Summer), 84–5. 14. Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, trans. Katherine Woods (Oxford: Heinemann Educational Books, 1994), 150–1. Sub- sequent references to this edition will be included parenthetically in the body of my text. 15. Kane quoted in Little, “Autofiction,” 75. 16. For an earlier discussion of the place of the beleaguered precolo- nial aristocracy in Ambiguous Adventure, see John Conteh-Morgan, “Beyond Race: Class Conflict and Tragic Vision in an African Novel,” Race and Class 19.2 (1987), 17–23. 17. Samba Gadjigo, “Literature and History: The Case of Cheikh Hami- dou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure,” Research in African Literatures 22.4 (Winter 1991), 30. 18. Gadjigo, “Literature and History,” 36. 19. David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlight- enment (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 47. 20. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 23–7. 21. Gadjigo, “Literature and History,” 36. 22. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. Fritz C. A. Koelln and James P. Pettegrove (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951), 159. 23. For more detailed discussions of the Islamic context of Ambiguous Adventure, see Lemuel A. Johnson, “Crescent and Consciousness: Islamic Orthodoxies and the West African Novel,” 239–61, and Ken- neth W. Harrow, “Camara Laye, Cheikh Hamdiou Kane and Tayib Salib: Three Sufi Authors,” 262–97, both in Faces of Islam in African Literature, ed. Kenneth W. Harrow (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991). Bibliography
Adagala, Seth. “The Long Hard Battle to Stage Kimathi Play.” Daily Nation 10 Oct. 1976: 15. Ajayi, J. F. Ade, Lameck K. H. Goma, and G. Ampah Johnson. The African Experience with Higher Education. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1996. Alot, Magaga. “Kenya Prepares for Festac ’77 in Lagos.” Weekly Review 27 Dec. 1976: 30. Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971. Amuka, Peter. “Taking Theatre to the People.” Sunday Nation 17 Oct. 1976: 15. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed., New York: Verso, 1991. Anderson, David. Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. Angus Calder Papers, National Library of Scotland, Acc. 9851. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Apter, Andrew. “The Pan-African Nation: Oil Money and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria.” Public Culture 8.3 (1996): 441–66. Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. Ed. Samuel Lipmann. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. ——, ed. Nation and Narration. New York: Routledge, 1990. ——. “Representation and the Colonial Text: A Critical Examination of Some Forms of Mimeticism.” Theory of Reading. Ed. Frank Gloversmith. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984. 93–122. Bjorkman, Ingrid. Mother Sing for Me: People’s Theatre in Kenya. New Jersey: Zed Books, 1989. Boehmer, Elleke. “The Master’s Dance to the Master’s Voice: Revolutionary Nationalism and the Representation of Women in the Writing of Ngugi wa Thiong’o.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 26.1 (1995): 188–97. Bourdieu, Pierre. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Trans. Susan Emanuel. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 1996. ——. Homo Academicus. Trans. Peter Collier. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1988. 192 Bibliography
——. “The Market of Symbolic Goods.” Poetics 14 (1985): 13–44. ——. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre: The Development of a Theatre Aesthetic. Trans. and ed. John Willett. London: Methuen, 1964. Brown, Nicholas. “Revolution and Recidivism: The Problem of Kenyan His- tory in the Plays of Ngugi wa Thiong’o.” Research in African Literatures 30.4 (1999): 56–73. Calder, Angus. “Africanizing the Curriculum.” Internal Memo. University of Nairobi, 6 June 1971. Cantalupo, Charles, ed. Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Texts and Contexts. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1995. ——. The World of Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1995. Cassirer, Ernst. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. Trans. Fritz C. A. Koelln and James P. Pettegrove. Boston: Beacon Press, 1962. Chakava, Henry. “Publishing Ngugi: The Challenge, the Risk and the Reward.” Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Charles Cantalupo. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1995. 13–28. Cohen, David W. The Combing of History. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994. Conteh-Morgan, John. “Beyond Race: Class Conflict and Tragic Vision in an African Novel.” Race and Class 19.2 (1987): 17–23. Cook, David and Michael Okenimpke. Ngugi wa Thiong’o: An Exploration of His Writings, London: Heinemann, 1983. Corfield, F. D. The Origins and Growth of Mau Mau: An Historical Sur- vey, Colony and Protectorate of Kenya. Nairobi: Government Printer, 1960. Crow, Brian. “Melodrama and the Political Unconscious in Two African Plays,” Ariel 14.3 (1983): 15–31. Edelman, Lee. “The Future is Kid Stuff: Queer Theory, Disidentification and the Death Drive.” Narrative 6.1 (1998): 18–30. Elkins, Caroline. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. New York: Henry Holt, 2005. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove and Weidenfeld, 1969. ——. Discipline and Punish. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1979. Franco, Jean. Plotting Women: Gender and Representation of Women. London: Verso, 1989. Friere, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New Revised 20th-Anniversary ed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum, 1993. ——. Cultural Action for Freedom. New York: Penguin, 1972. Frost, Robert. Race Against Time: Human Relations and Politics in Kenya Before Independence. London: Rex Collings, 1978. Gadjigo, Samba. “Literature and History: The Case of Cheikh Hami- dou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure.” Research in African Literatures 22.4 (Winter 1991): 29–38. Bibliography 193
——. “African Literature and the Social Science Paradigm.” Paper commis- sioned by the Social Science Research Council. New York, 2000. ——. Ngugi wa Thiong’o. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ——. Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism.New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Gititi, Gitahi. “Recuperating a ‘Disappearing’ Art Form: Resonances of Gicaandi in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross.” The World of Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Ed Charles Cantalupo. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1995. 109–28. Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Canon Formation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Gurr, Andrew and Pio Zirimu, eds. Black Aesthetics: Papers from a Collo- quium Held at the University of Nairobi, June 1971. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1973. —— and Angus Calder. Writers in East Africa. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1974. Harrow, Kenneth W. “Camara Laye, Cheikh Hamdiou Kane and Tayib Salib: Three Sufi Authors.” Faces of Islam in African Literature. Ed. Kenneth W. Harrow. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991. 262–97. Henderson, Ian and Phillip Goodhart, The Hunt for Kimathi. London: H. Hamilton, 1958. Hountondji, Paulin. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. Trans. Henri Evans and Jonathan Ree. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Imbuga, Francis. Betrayal in the City. Nairobi: Heinemann, 1987. ——. “We Must Set up an African Theatre.” Daily Nation 1 Feb. 1977: 15. Irele, F. Abiola. The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Jameson, Fredric. “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.” Social Text 15 (1986): 65–88. Jeyifo, Biodun. “The Nature of Things: Arrested Decolonization and Critical Theory.” Research in African Literature 21 (1990): 33–48. Johnson, Lemuel A. “Crescent and Conciousness: Islamic Orthodoxies and the West African Novel.” Faces of Islam in African Literature. Ed. Kenneth W. Harrow. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991. 239–61. Julien, Eileen. African Novels and the Question of Orality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Kane, Cheikh Hamidou. Ambiguous Adventure. Trans. Katherine Woods. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Books, 1994. ——. “The African Writer and His Public.” African Writers on African Writing. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1971. 53–72. Kamau, Kiarie, “Literary Works Should Celebrate Our Heroes.” East African Standard. Online Edition, 17 Mar. 2002.
Kenyatta, Jomo. Facing Mount Kenya. 1st American Ed. New York: AMS Press, 1978. Killam. G. D. “Weep Not, Child.” Critical Essays on Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Ed. Peter Nazareth. New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000. 64–79. Kipkorir, B. E. “Carey Francis at A. H. S., Kikuyu—1940–62.” Biograph- ical Essays on Imperialism and Collaboration in Colonial Kenya.Ed. B. E. Kipkorir. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1980. 112–59. Leavis, F. R. English Literature in Our Time and the University. London: Chatto & Windus, 1969. ——. The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad.New York: New York University Press, 1963. Lewis, Peter. The National: A Dream Made Concrete. London: Methuen, 1990. Little, J. P. “Autofiction and Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s L’aventure Ambigue.” Research in African Literatures, 31.2 (2000): 71–90. Malinowski, Bronislaw. The Dynamics of Cultural Change in Africa: An Inquiry into Race Relations in Africa. Ed. Phyllis M. Kaberry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945. Maughn-Brown, David. Land,Freedom and Fiction: Ideology and History in Kenya. London: Zed Books, 1985. Mazrui, Alamin and Lupenga Mphende. “Orality and the Literature of Com- bat: Ngugi and the Legacy of Fanon.” The World of Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Ed. Charles Cantalupo. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1995. 159–84. Michaud, André-Paul. “Nature as Agency in Ngugi’s The River Between.” Critical Essays on Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Ed. Peter Nazareth. New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000. 48–63. Mudimbe, V. Y. The Idea of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. ——.“African Literature: Myth or Reality?” African Literature: The Present State/L’état Present. Ed. Stephen Arnold. Washington, D.C.: Three Conti- nents Press, 1985. 7–15. Muriuki, Godfrey. A History of the Kikuyu, 1500–1900. Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1974. Mwagiru, Ciugu. “The Travelling Theatre for the People, by the People.” Umma 3 (1976): 26–9. Nazareth, Peter. Critical Essays on Ngugi wa Thiong’o. New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000. ——. “The Second Homecoming: Multiple Ngugis in Petals of Blood.” Marx- ism and African Literature. Ed. Georg M. Gugelberger. London: James Currey, 1985. 118–29. Ndigirigi, Gichingiri. “Kenyan Theatre After Kamiriithu,” TDR: The Drama Review 43.2 (1999): 72–93. Ngugi, James. Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics. London: Heinemann 1972. ——. The River Between. London: Heinemann, 1965. Rpt. 1990. ——. Weep Not, Child. London: Heinemann, 1964. Bibliography 195
——, Henry Owuor-Anyumba, and Taban lo Liyong, “On the Abolition of the English Department.” Internal Memo, University of Nairobi, 24 Oct. 1968. Rpt. James Ngugi, Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics. London: Heinemann, 1972. 145–50. Ochieng’, William. The First Word: Essays on Kenya History. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1975. ——. A Pre-colonial History of the Gusii of Western Kenya c. A.D. 1500–1914. Kampala: East African Literature Bureau, 1974. Odhiambo, E. S. Atieno. “Rebutting ‘Theory’ with Correct Theory: A Com- ment on The Trial of Dedan Kimathi.” Kenya Historical Review 5.2 (1977): 385–88. ——. “Kenyatta and Mau Mau.” Transition 53 (1991): 147–52. Ogot, Bethuel A. “Introduction.” Kenya Historical Review 5.2 (1977): 169–72. ——. “Politics, Culture and Music in Central Kenya: A Study of Mau Mau Hymns, 1951–1956.” Kenya Historical Review 5.2 (1977): 275–86. ——. “Towards a History of Kenya,” Kenya Historical Review 4.1 (1976): 1–9. ——. History of the Southern Luo. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967. Ogude, James. Ngugi’s Novels and African History: Narrating the Nation. London: Pluto Press, 1999. Ross, Marlon B. “Romancing the Nation-State: The Poetic of Roman- tic Nationalism.” Macropolitics of Nineteenth-Century Literature.Ed. Jonathan Arac and Harriet Ritvo. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 1991. 56–85. Sander, Reinhardt and Ian Munro. “Tolstoy in Africa: An Interview with Ngugi wa Thiong’o.” Ba Shiru 5.1 (1973): 21–30. Rpt. Critical Perspec- tives on Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Ed. G. D. Killam. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1984. 46–57. Scott, David. Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Tendencies. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. Sekyi-Otu, Ato. “The Refusal of Agency: The Founding Narrative and Waiyaki Tragedy in The River Between.” Research in African Literatures 16.2 (1985): 157–77. Sicherman, Carol. “Revolutionizing the Literature Curriculum at the Uni- versity of East Africa: Literature and the Soul of the Nation.” Research in African Literatures 29.3 (1998): 129–40. ——. “Ngugi’s Colonial Education: The Subversion ...of the African Mind.” African Studies Review 38.3 (1995): 11–41. ——. “The Leeds-Makerere Connection and Ngugi’s Intellectual Develop- ment.” Ufahamu 23.1 (1995): 3–20. ——. “Ngugi’s British Education.” Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Charles Cantalupo. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1995. 35–46. 196 Bibliography
——. Ngugi wa Thiong’o: The Making of a Rebel: A Sourcebook in Kenyan Literature and Resistance. New York: Hans Zell Publishers, 1990. Sommer, Doris. Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Soyinka, Wole. Myth, Literature and the African World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Stewart, James E. “On the Place of African Literature in Relation to Other Studies in the Faculty of Arts.” Memo to Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Nov. 1968. Angus Calder Papers, no. 28. ——. “Report Including Some Suggestions for Possible Developments within the Faculty Presented to the Forty-second Meeting of the Arts Faculty Board, 20th September 1968.” Angus Calder Papers, no. 36. Stratton, Florence. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender. London: Routledge, 1994. wa Manje, Kamonye. “Dedan Kimathi by Kenneth Watene.” Umma 1 (1975): 75–8. Watene, Kenneth. Dedan Kimathi. Nairobi: Transafrica Press, 1974. wa Thiong’o, Ngugi. “Europhonism, Universities and the Magic Fountain: The Future of African Literature and Scholarship.” Research in African Literature 31.1 (2000): 1–11. ——. Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: Towards A Critical Theory of the Arts and the State of Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. ——. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey, 1986. ——. Devil on the Cross. Trans. Ngugi wa Thiong’o. London: Heinemann, 1980. ——. Ngugi Detained. Nairobi: Heinemann, 1981. ——. Writers in Politics. Exeter, N.H.: Heinemann, 1981. ——. Petals of Blood. 1st American Ed. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978. —— and Ngugi wa Mirii. I Will Marry When I Want. London: Heinemann, 1982. —— and Micere Githae Mugo. The Trial of Dedan Kimathi. London: Heinemann, 1977. Were, Gideon S. History of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya c. 1500–1930. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967. Williams, Patrick. Ngugi wa Thiong’o. New York: Manchester University Press, 1999. Wren, Robert. Those Magical Years: The Making of Nigerian Literature at Ibadan 1948–1966. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1991. Index
Achebe, C., 5, 16, 17, 81 American aesthetic ideology, 70, 110–111, culture, 8 113, 144, 160 literature, 26 African Anderson, B., 81–3 art, 14 imagined communities, 57, 59–61 drama, 23 Anderson, D., 114 theater, 36, 124–5 Anglocentrism, 4, 17–18 university, 4, 11, 14, 15–17, Anglophone, 25 101, 162 anticolonial nationalism, 13–14, 20, African American, also 22–4, 30, 118, 131 Afro-American, 5, 10, 26 in Ambiguous Adventure, 160, Africanness, 4, 11–12, 20 162–3, 165–7, 177–8 Afrocentrism, 4, 9, 12, 20, antiquity 71–2, 79, 80, 92, 98, 113, Greece, Egypt and Rome, 80–2 159, 161 Appiah, K. A., 3, 106 Afrocentric curriculum, 72, 87–8 neotraditionalism, 161–3 Apter, A., 111–12 Afrocentric pedagogy, 71, 90–2 aristocracy, 25, 32, 34 Afro-citizenship, 12 in Ambiguous Adventure, 163–5, Ajayi, J. F. A., 15, 21 167–70, 174, 176–7 allegory, 29–30, 36, 65, 162 Arnold, M., 5, 9, 17, 111 in Ambiguous Adventure, 165–6, atavistic violence, 115, 119, 169, 174, 177 127, 140 in Devil on the Cross, 93–4, 97, 99 avant-garde, 18, 163 in Petals of Blood, 69, 89–90 Aztec civilization, 20 in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, 145–6, 150 Balogun, F. O., 104–5 Alliance High School, 62, 87 Bhabha, H. K., 34 ambiguity, 22, 25 colonial stereotypes, 126–7 in Ambiguous Adventure, 159–61, biculturalism, 40–2 169, 172, 176 black in Dedan Kimathi, 121, 135 aesthetic, 10, 12, 144 in Petals of Blood, 79, 87 civilization, 112 in The River Between, 30–1, 33–4, culture, 111 36, 43–4 diaspora, 145 in Weep Not, Child, 62–3, 65 history, 70, 73–4, 91, 144 198 Index
Black United Nations, 112 civilizing mission, 33–40, 172–3 Boehmer, E., 100 civil war, see Mau Mau Rebellion Bourdieu, P., 1 Clark-Bekederemo, J. P., 16–19 bourgeois, 60, 68, 72, 93, 101, 103, clitoridectomy 151, 162 in The River Between, 39–42, 45 Brecht, B., 149 Cohen, D. W., 114–15, 117 British colonial colonialism, 6, 30, 48, 54, 83, apologia, 58, 62, 116, 122, 116, 120, 124, 128, 135–6, 126–7, 135 141, 143 conquest, 13, 32, 37–8, 49, 52, literature, 13, 26 55, 116, 163, 167–8, school culture, 72 171–3, 176 university, 162 discourse, 5, 40, 83, 119, Brown, N., 113, 149–51 121, 127 Kenya, 30, 48, 55–7, 60–2, Calder, A., 10 128–9, 142–7, 149, 155 canon, 4–5, 7, 13, 16–18, 22, 26, memoir, see Henderson, I., 70, 88, 92, 106, 125–6, 172 modernity, 48, 74, 172 high canonical, 13, 16–17, 22–4, school, 22, 30, 39, 43, 49, 52–4, 86, 110, 161, 163 58, 63, 66, 70; in Ambiguous capitalism, 29, 68, 70, 73, 76, Adventure, 161, 163–4, 84, 94 167–8, 170–7 anticapitalist, 71, 98, 145 stereotypes, 3, 119, 125–6, Carey, F., 87 130–1, 134, 169; see also Caribbean Bhabha, Homi K., culture, 7–8 Conrad, J., 18 literatures, 7, 10 Cook, D., 92 Carothers, J. C., 127–9 Corfield, F. D., 127–9 Cary, J., 18 cosmopolitanism, 12, 19 Cassirer, E., 172 Crow, B., Chakava, H., 102 melodrama, 150–2 Christianity, 29, 81, 127, 129–30 cult of personality, 139 in Ambiguous Adventure, cultural 172–3, 176 authenticity, 153, 156, 177 in Dedan Kimathi, 120, 136, hybridity, 40–1 138, 141 nationalism, 5, 10, 16, 20, 22, 30, in I Will Marry When I Want, 96, 98 155–6 cultural capital, 10, 101 in Petals of Blood, 72, 90 see also Guillory, J., in The River Between, 30, 33–6, curriculum, 6, 8, 10, 14, 17–18, 72, 39–42, 45–7 84, 87–8, 90–1 in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, 147–8 Daily Nation, 123 in Weep Not, Child, 52, 54, 57–8 Declaration of Independence circumcision, 130 (US), 81 Index 199 decolonization, 13, 20, 69, 160 Kenyan National Secretariat for Department of English, see English, Festac ’77, 118 department fetish, 51, 54–5, 58, 107 Dimock, W. C., 26–7 Foucault, M., disciplinary power, 39 East African Standard, 103, eventualization, 104 123, 125 Franco, J., 36 Eliot, T. S., 18 francophone, 25 English French, 3, 6, 81–2, 122, 163–4, 170 culture, 5, 8–9 colonialism, 3, 25, 167–8, 172 department, 4–13, 17 education, 25, 130, 162, 164, memo “On the Abolition of 175–7 the English Department”, literature, 12 4–6, 8, 10, 70 Revolution, 82 hegemony, 13, 103–4, 107, Friere, P., 71 122–3 literature, 4–27 school, 7–8, 51, 54, 58, 88, 102, Gadjigo, S., 168–70 104, 122–3 gender politics, 46–7, 51, 64, 68, Englishness, 4–5, 9, 13, 17, 51, 54, 90, 99, 107, 139, 175 58, 99, 101–2 see also sexual politics ethnic identities, 11, 60, 79, 83, 111 gerontocracy, 74, 175 ethnocentrism, 9, 12 Gikandi, S., 2–3, 8, 13–14, 23, 30, African, 18 36, 40, 42–3, 48, 72–3, 99, British, 7 100, 103, 106, 110, 156 English, 18 Gikuyu culture, 83 ethnophilosophy, see Hountondji, P., schizophrenic novel, 92–3, 106 Eurocentrism, 8, 17–18 Gikuyu, 22, 30, 32–9, 41–2, 45, European 49–55, 75, 79, 83, 92, 97, culture, 29, 43, 123, 178 102–3, 113, 119–21, 127–9, literature, 9, 12 136, 141, 153 modernity, 39, 172 culture, 29, 36, 38, 41, 48, 83 school, 61 folktales/folklore, 92–4, 101 Europeanness, 12 language, 99, 101–7, 110, 113, 153 Fagunwa, D., 104 nationalism, 30, 51 fallacy, 5, 11 origins, 34 imitative,5 sacral ontology, 36, 38, 42, 74–5 intentional,5 God, 34, 43, 50, 63, 69, 79, 87 Fanon, F., 72, 157 of Africa, 79 crisis of “native intellectual”, 20–2 Christian, 41, 63; see also national culture, 143 Christianity Festac (Second World Black and Goma, L. K. H., 15, 21 African Festival of Arts and Greene, G., 18 Culture), 24, 111–13, 118, 144 Guardian, 122 200 Index
Guillory, J., 1, 5, 14, 23, 55 irony (as literary device), 3, cultural capital, 10, 101–2 23–5, 79, 91, 133–4, 137, imaginary politics, 98, 160–1 121–2, 124 in Devil on the Cross, 92, 96–8 pedagogical imaginary, 8 in The River Between, 29–33, 35–6, 38, 41, 43, 46, 48 in Weep Not, Child, 50, 52–3, Haiti Revolution, 2–3 56–64, 66 Henderson, I., 119–20, 124–7, Islam, 25, 163–5, 168, 172–5, 177 129–31, 133, 140–1, 151 Islamic library, 173 heterosexual, 36, 65, 89, 98 Islamic revolution, 168 high canonical, see canon Koranic school, 163–4, 166–8, high culture, 9, 99, 103, 106, 111, 173–4, 176–7 113, 122, 162 sacral ontology, 167, 177 historiography, 70–1, 78, 80, 84–5, 114, 117 James, C. L. R., 2 homogenous empty time, 19, Jameson, F., 57, 82 national allegories, 29–30, 69, see also Anderson, B., 162, 165, 174 horizontal comradeship, 59–60 Jeyifo, B., 4 The Horn, 19 Johnson, G. A., 15, 21 Hountondji, P., Joyce, J., 18 ethnophilosophy, 11–12 Julien, E., 104–6 hubris, 30, 35, 52, 98, 130 Kamiriithu Popular Theatre Experiment, 24, 92, 110, 113 ideological palingenesis, 168 Kane, C. H., 3, 16 imaginary politics, 98–9, 121–2, 152 Ambiguous Adventure, 24–6, see also Guillory, J., 159–78 imperialism, 3, 80, 82, 84, 88, 99, Kaunda, K., 122–6, 141–5, 148, 150–1, 163 founding president of Zambia, Indian 15–16 in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, Kenya Historical Association, 116 146, 149 Kenya Historical Review, 116 in Weep Not, Child, 49, 56–7, 66 Kenya National Theatre, 24, 109–13, 119, 123, 151 indigenous Kenyatta, J., 53, 117 language, see Gikuyu, language Kiarie, K., 125 schools, 35, 39, 63, 71 Kikuyu, see Gikuyu Indonesian nationalism, 60 Killam, G. D., 53 intellectual culture, 19–23, 76, 93, Kimathi, D., see Mau Mau 159, 163, 166 Rebellion intellectual nativism, 25 interracial encoutners, 50, 61–3 Lawrence, D. H., 18 Irele, F. A., Leavis, F. R., 5, 13, 17–18 postcolonial university, 17–20 Leavisate tradition, 7–9 Index 201
Leeds University, 72 Mitchell, P., 84 Leigh, I., 127 modernity, see colonial Ley, C., 69 modernization, 29, 75–6, 86, literary 92, 111, 128, 165, 172 citizenship, 11 Mudimbe, V. Y., 3 culture, 19–20, 102–4, 162 Mugo, M. G., 24, 110, 115–22, education, 5–7, 9, 16–18, 125, 127, 131, 137, 140, 101 143–4, 148, 150–3 nationalism, 1, 10, 20, 139 Muriuki, G., 78, 80 pedagogy, 7, 18 myth of origins, 30, 32–4, 50, lo Liyong, T., 4–5 79–80, 83, 159 L’Ouverture, T., 2 of global black origins, 70 of white origins, 56 magic, 51, 55, 73, 75, 100, 128 mythos of Romance, 3, 22 magical realism, 73 see also Scott, D., Malinowski, B., 43 Manichean opposition, 40, 42 Nairobi Revolution, 4–5, 9–15, margin, also periphery, 5, 9, 25, 52, 19, 23, 67, 70, 72, 89, 72, 74, 78, 99, 103, 113, 118, 93–4, 103 156, 168, 176–7 Nairobi troika, 4–10 of text, 70–1, 154, 164, 168 see also Ngugi wa Thiong’o; lo Marxism, 14, 54, 71, 74, 98, 116, Liyong, T.; Henry 122, 156 Owuor-Anyumba false consciousness, 155–6 national allegories, see allegory Marxist critique, 72, 152, national cultures, 5, 8–9, 12, 14, 155, 159 16–17, 19–21, 23, 59, 69, 96, masculinity, 47, 52, 90, 99–100, 98, 109, 113, 123, 143, 154, 175 152–3, 163 materialist critique, 14, 16, see also Fanon, F.; Gikuyu, 20, 22 culture Mau Mau Rebellion, 48–50, 65, nationalist romance, see romance 67, 70, 109, 113–22, Nazareth, P., 124–30 three Ngugis theory, 71–3, 75 in Dedan Kimathi, 130–42 Ndigirigi, G., 109–10, 113 in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, Negritude, 111 143–5, 149–50 neocolonialism, 86–8, 93–4, 98–9, Mazrui, A., 80 101, 112, 118, 142–3, 145, messianism, 23, 25, 40, 44, 51–2, 152, 163 58, 63, 66, 143–4 neutralism, 35, 42, 45, 48, 52–3, Michaud, A.-P., 31 55, 62, 64–5, 87 militancy, 49, 54, 68–9, 88, new poetic, 18 93, 124, 143, 145, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 1, 4, 22, 153, 147 162, 180–189 mission school, 39, 47, 53 Nigerian literature in English, missionary, 39–40, 57–8, 63 17–19 202 Index
Nigerian National Theatre, 112 postcolonial revolution, 2–5, 18, Nwapa, F., 16, 17 22–3, 35, 88, 94–5, 141, 143 OAU [Organization of African see also Nairobi Revolution Unity], 112 postcolonial university, 5, 9–23, 68, Obasanjo, G. O., 112 70, 78, 84, 86–7, 98 Ochieng’, William, 78, 80, see also Irele, F. A., 84–5 precolonial tradition, 20–2, 31, Odhiambo, E. S. A., 116–17 35–6, 38, 48, 80, 84, 96, 162, 172–3 Ogot, A., 78, 80 President Moi, 122 Ogude, J., 2, 44, 64–5, 70, 78, primitiveness, 29, 85, 128–30 89–90, 102, 107 prophecy, 71, 79, 105, 130, 134 Okenimkpe, M., 92 prophetic discourse, 37, 40, Oral 50, 52 literature, 10–11, 102–7 in The River Between, 33–4, 37–8, tradition, 11, 79–80, 104–6 42–3 Owuor-Anyumba, H., 4–5, 12 in Weep Not, Child, 50–2, 54, 58, 63 palimpsest, 74, 172 parody (as literary device), 64 quest, romantic, 3, 30, 35, 40, 65, patriarchal, 36, 40–1, 46, 50, 88, 98, 120, 169–71, 177 74, 90, 100, 154–6, 175–6 racial identities, 11, 22, 69, 71, peasant culture, 70–1, 76 82–5, 150–82 pedagogical imaginary, 8 racially segregation, 57–62, 144 see also Guillory, J., realist novel, 73, 78, 101, 105 philosophical discourse Renaissance literature, 17, 26 in Ambiguouos Adventure, 165–8, Renison, Sir P., 128 171, 177 Richards, I. A., 18 popular culture, 23, 106, 110, Rodney, W., 85 162–3 romance, 2–4, 7, 22, 121 Portuguese, 12, 116 in Ambiguous Adventure, 159–61, postcolonial intellectual, 2, 8, 163, 165–71 18, 20–5, 114, 119, in Dedan Kimathi, 131–2, 134, 131, 157 137, 141 in Ambiguous Adventure, 159–63, in Devil on the Cross, 92–3, 165–7, 178 95–101 in Devil on the Cross, 93, 95, in Petals of Blood, 70, 74, 77–9, 106–7 87–91 native intellectual, 20–1, 107, in The River Between, 29–33, 143, 157; see also Fanon, F., 35–6, 40, 42, 44, 46–7 in Petals of Blood, 67, 69, 79, 86 roman à clef, 166 in The River Between, 30–1, 35 in Weep Not, Child, 48–50, 59, postcolonial modernity, 14, 16, 74 62, 64–6 Index 203 satire (as literary device), 44, 50, state of emergency, 48–9, 52–3, 62, 58, 169 64, 135, 145, 155 savior, 25, 79, 163 Stewart, J., 6–9 in The River Between, 33, 35, Stratton, F., 89–90 38–9, 42–7 Sufism, 173 in Weep Not, Child, 49, 51, 58, Swahili language and literature, 6, 64, 66 103, 121 school culture, 1, 5, 11–12, 16, 22–5, 30, 47, 54, 67, 69–72, terrorism, 49, 53 78, 86, 90, 92–3, 95, 98–9, Mau Mau, 127, 129–30, 102–4, 110, 119–20, 122, 154, 133, 149 159, 161–3, 166 white, 59, 64 Scott, D., Third World, 29–30, 162 drama of ‘diremption’, 169 tragedy (as literary device), 3, 23–4, 29, 86, 119, 120–1 romance, 2–3, 22, 160, 169 aesthetic of, 40, 119–21, 131 Second World War, 54, 57 in Ambiguous Adventure, 160, secularism, 38, 72, 74 163, 165, 170 in Ambiguous Adventure, 164, in Dedan Kimathi, 131–7, 139, 172–5 141–2 Sedgwick, E. K., 169 in The River Between, 30–1, 33–6, Sekyi-Otu, A., 62 38, 40–2, 44, 46 on The River Between, 30–1, in Weep Not, Child, 48–9, 52, 58, 33–5, 43–5, 47 63–6 Senegalese literature, 25–6 tragic hero, 23–4, 63, 98 sexual politics, 64, 89, 93, 125–6, Kimathi, 120–1, 131–4, 150 139–40 Waiyaki, 30, 35–6, 41, 44 see also gender politics tragic romance, 29–30, 35, 46, 65, Ship of Fools, 93, 106 92, 98 Sicherman, C., 2, 4 tribal, 35–6, 39, 41, 63, 126, Siriana Mission Center 129–30 in Petals of Blood, 67–8, 70–1, origins, 32–4, 50 87–8, 91 in The River Between, 39–40, University College, Ibadan, 16 43–4, 47 University of Nairobi, 4–6, 9, 23, in Weep Not, Child, 49, 57–64, 66 69, 71, 78, 84, 85, 96, 110, 144 see also mission school University of Zambia, 15 social change, 43–4, 84, 91, utopia, 26, 63, 69–70, 83, 87, 150 156, 158 see also Malinowski, B., Victorian literature, 26 social justice, 67, 114, 117 Sommer, D., 36 wa Manje, K., 124–5, 134 Songhai civilization, 21 wa Mirii, N., 110 sovereignty, 26, 173–4 Watene, K., 118–21, 125–7, 131–2, Soyinka, W., 3, 16–17 134–8 204 Index
Were, S. G., 78, 80 white settlers, 120, 136, 138 West, 6–8, 12, 19, 27, 37, 82, 104, in The River Between, 30, 45 123–4, 162–5, 177 in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, Western civilization, 6–8, 128 145, 148, 151 Western culture, 12, 21, 157 in Weep Not, Child, 49–51, 53–5, Western education, 38–9, 44, 61–2 53–4, 161, 166, 176 Williams, P., 2, 98 Western tradition, 8, 11, 82 Woolf, V., 18