Ambiguities of the oral song narrative in Charles Samupindi's novel, Pawns (1992)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to explore the role of the song narrative within the intertext of the novel Pawns by Charles Samupindi. Pawns uses the oral song narrative to affirm as legitimate the second Zimbabwe liberation struggle that took place between 1970 and 1979. The song genre is also used in the novel to question the history of the liberation struggle which is the novel's main focus. This is done to promote a sense of critical doubt about the authority attributed to narrativity in classical realism that the novel employs in its structure. The song genre enables readers to realize the possibilities that a novel can imaginatively authorize its own meanings whose values and content are never allowed to settle as social absolutes. Oral song and classical realism in the novel constitute the ambiguities of the identities of Zimbabwean people. In short, this article will show that the novelty of Pawns is its embedded formal ‘contamination’ – a technique that confers to the novel a unique, liminal and carnival spirit, as well as enchanting semantic instability regarding the ideologies of the Zimbabwe war narratives.