Representation, Identity, and Resistance in Two Selected Cameroonian Literary Texts by Victor Epie Ngome and Rosemary E. Ekosso

Abstract

Representation and identity are complex concepts with diverse connotations that involve the binaries ‘the self’’ and ‘the other’. These oppositions could either be referring to an individual, a group, or a particular sex. However, some concepts like Hanna Fenichel Pitkin’s ‘Concept of Representation’, Edward Saïd’s discourse on Orientalism, and Michel Foucault’s Concepts of Power and Resistance present a contradiction in the notion of representation, identity, and resistance. What then is a true representation, a real identity? Is resistance always predetermined or an entity in its own right? This article seeks to examine the relationship in these concepts in two Anglophone Cameroonian literary texts notably, Victor Epie Ngome’s What God Has Put Asunder and Rosemary Ekosso’s House of Falling Women and to assess the validity of the textual representation of a union between two parties and the representation of the African woman in Ngome’s and Ekosso’s texts respectively. The methodology employed is comparative, analytical, and descriptive. The study tentatively concludes that, in as much as paradox abounds in the treatment of representation and true identity, it is observed that the self is in the best position to present itself, that representation, identity, and resistance are intrinsically intertwined, and that Ngome and Ekosso are actively engaged in a textual representation of the grievances of the Minority Anglophones and the unfavourable treatment of the woman in a patriarchal setting respectively. Otherness is found as the root cause of power dynamics.