Space and ‘African’ Women Writers

Abstract

Delineating Spatial BoundariesThis chapter is concerned with dialectics of space and its relation to transgression of boundaries of gender, identity, culture, and ?Other' as it relates to both subjects of this book and their texts. The hybridized European/African experience of Huxley, Kimenye, Macgoye, and Ogot prompts examination of conditions conducive to engendering of their personal hybridization as well as its manifestation in their fictions.Living in-between cultures and negotiating ?African' identities in their cross-cultural narratives situates Huxley, Kimenye, Macgoye, and Ogot in ?contact zone' and defines them as occupying space.1 To fully comprehend relevance of notion of hybridization in relation to these ?African' women writers and relate it to space they occupy and their subsequent transgression of boundaries in construction of identity, it is useful to note tiie subtle differences in meaning signified by terms contact zone, ?inbetween spaces', and ?Third Space'.2 As Mary Louise Pratt states,contact is an attempt to invoke spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historic disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect.3Similarly, Gloria Anzaldua defines ?borderlands' as physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, referring to it as a mestiza consciousness.4 Further, what Bhabha refers to as an in-between or Third Space, Anzaldua names los intersticios, identifying it as space emerges upon one's occupation of different worlds.5 The ?borderland' invokes notion of frontier, which for Pratt is associated with contact zone where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other,6 as depicted in Huxley's Red Strangers, which focuses on four generations of Gikuyu family and spans years from pre-colonialism to late 1930s. The ?red strangers' of title are first European settlers in Gikuyu area and so called because of effect of sun upon their skin. Huxley's text illustrates comprehensively far-reaching effects of coming-together of these separate cultures in contact zone. Her representation of arrival of tiie first Europeans, their subsequent occupation of indigenous land, and their attempts to impose British justice highlight ensuing conflicts while drawing attention to budding new mestiza consciousness beginning to emerge in some of characters.Bhabha uses terms ?in-between spaces' and ?Third Space' interchangeably to refer to space emerges when person occupies two worlds or cultures. Appropriating Mikhail M. Bakhtin's theorizing of hybridization in language, Bhabha develops it in relation to postcolonial identity and cultural difference,7 proposing that, from that position of liminality8 where cultures come together, Third Space is generated in the emergence of interstices - overlap and displacement of domains of difference.9 Karanja in Red Strangers (1939) exemplifies this merging of difference. The firstborn son of Matu and Wanja, he embodies notion of occupation of Third Space, since aspects of traditional Gikuyu and European culture fuse to shape his identity. Karanja identifies with his inherited culture, yet, as he is also exposed to European influences, area he occupies is Third Space where two cultures commingle. This commingling is illustrated by traditional circumcision ceremony undergone by Karanja:When day came Karanja was best-dressed candidate of all. He had collected, at various times, much finery for occasion, but of different kind from which his father had used. He wore bright-striped European jersey, and two stiff white collars in place of Colobus skins round his wrists. His legs were swathed with rattles made of small cans filled with stones. …