'Like wounded birds'?: Ngugi and the Intellectuals

Abstract

For many, Ngugi is perhaps the paradigmatic postcolonial intellectual: politically committed, oppositional, outspoken, activist, exiled. At the same time, though this fact is widely acknowledged, it is, arguably, surprisingly little studied, and the same may be said for his continued engagement with the figure of the intellectual in his fiction and essays. A similar and unexpected gap is observable in the area of postcolonial studies. Although the period of decolonization saw many debates about the nature and function of intellectuals in relation to anti-colonial struggles and newlyindependent states, the current moment of postcolonial theory, in its 'high' or post-structuralist-inflected mode, has produced little in the way of sustained analysis of intellectuals. This is all the more surprising given the numbers of prominent intellectuals in the field, though sceptical observers might perhaps see it as a reluctance to analyse potentially uncomfortable issues of institutional location or ideological affiliation. While it is not part of the aims of the present piece specifically to offer a contribution to the theorizing of postcolonial intellectuals, it is hoped that the attempt to relate Ngugi's representations of the formation, functioning, and failures of intellectuals in his creative work to his discussions of them in his essays, as well as to his instantiation of a particular mode of committed postcolonial intellectual activity in his own life, may nevertheless provide insights into one important history of struggle. One obvious exception to the charge of theoretical neglect of the question of intellectuals would be Edward W. Said, though it is debatable whether he would now want his work to be counted as postcolonial theory, given his increasing unhappiness with theory as he perceives it, as a 'guild designation [. . ] that has produced a jargon I find hopelessly tiresome'. This of course ignores what many more conservative anti-theory figures would see as Said's profound guilt in terms of his responsibility for helping to unleash colonial discourse and postcolonial theory (supposedly riddled with tiresome and obscurantist jargon) on the academic world. It is also far from clear how Said would situate postcolonial theory in relation to a blanket dismissal such as the following: