Rulers agains writers, writers against rules : the failed promise of the public sphere in postcolonial Nigerian fiction

Abstract

Various literary critics have dwelt on the nature, tenets and trends of commitment in Nigerian literature. However, there is paucity of studies on the imaginative narration of the impediments facing the actualization of the public sphere in postcolonial Nigeria. This paper examines the strategies and techniques of representing the failed promise of the public sphere in postcolonial Nigerian fiction, using the examples provided by Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah, Ben Okri’s The Famished Road and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. The methodology involves a close reading of the selected texts, using Jurgen Habermas’ Public Sphere as analytical concept. In the selected novels, Nigeria is depicted as a country where the rulers disallow the existence of the ‘public sphere’, which is supposed to provide a liminal space among the private realms of civil society and the family, as well as the sphere of public authority. This is disclosed in the refusal of the characters, who typify the rulers, to disregard status altogether.