HYBRID IDENTITY IN NIYI OSUNDARE'S VILLAGE VOICES AND SONGS OF THE MARKETPLACE

Abstract

Ethnic and social differences have continued to manifest in postcolonial African countries often leading to great animosity and bloody clashes. This paper has used Homi K. Bhabha's ideologies of difference and hybridity to study selected poems from Niyi Osundare's Village Voices and Songs of the Marketplace. Such a study is important in order to bring to light the underlying political, ethnic, cultural, religious and social differences reflected in contemporary Nigerian literature and the effects of colonialism on individual private and public experiences. Theresearchers have applied deconstruction of discourse to the selected poems in order to cancel the binary opposition created by the apparent reflection of difference and to bring out the liminal situations that lead to what Homi Bhabha has called hybrid identity. The analysis of selected poems has shown that postcolonial Nigeria is suspended in a liminal space where traditional differences have been dissolved giving way to unrecognizable characters whose actions and inactions have helped to create a third class of hybrid characters.