Misrepresentation, Resistance and (Re) Constructing Space in the Plays of Bate Besong and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Micere Gathae Mugo

Abstract

This paper examines resistance to both colonial and neo-colonial oppression, exploitation, dictatorship and marginalisation as an authorial ideology in the plays of Bate Besong, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Micere Gathae Mugo. In an attempt to (re) construct their misrepresented identities and create a conducive environment for the oppressed and marginalised masses, the playwrights create in their plays, characters whose principal objectives are to radically dismantle all forms of socio-cultural, economic and historical inequalities as an attempt to emancipate themselves and the masses from the excesses of colonial and neo-colonial leadership politics. Consequently, resistance is projected in the plays under study as an ancestral imperative, a social expectation and a pressing personal need towards reconstructing space for the postcolonial masses. From a Marxist and Postcolonial theoretical paradigms, this paper sustains the argument that in the plays of Besong, Ngugi and Micere, there is a radical and contestatory content and this is initiated by the kind of nauseating images and stereotypical representations given to the oppressed masses by colonial and neo-colonial leadership. The analysis in this paper reveals that resistance becomes a pivotal alternative and a condition sine qua non for the Anglophone Cameroonian and Kenyan masses to liberate their societies from the bondage imposed by colonialist in partnership with the neo-colonialist. As a result, resistance as an ideology becomes unavoidable towards deconstruction, deligitimacy and reassertion of the historical and cultural identities of the postcolonial people.