Abstract
Ngugi and Mugo’s co-authored play, <i>The Trial of Dedan Kimathi</i> (1976), encompasses a vast vision of history and memory in the indigenous war of resistance against British colonialism. The play aims at focusing on the Kenyan masses-led struggle before and after constitutional independence. It intends to give ground to an insightful analysis of the politics of naming, misnaming, and renaming which, indeed, has been used as a way of fashioning and refashioning this part of Kenya’s history. To make it through, we will adopt an onomastic approach to further see how the two playwrights engage in (hi)story, historicity and memory (re)construction of the Mau Mau revolution and its leader Dedan Kimathi, and herocism and <i>memoria</i> building, and weave (hi)story and ideology with a view to breaking the psychological and economic bondage of the neo/colonial periods. In so being, it will be possible to point out how the protagonist, Dedan Kimathi, sets at defiance the colonialist’s politics of domination and exploitation in the colonial and post-colonial eras.
Highlights
The colonial history of Kenya can be dated back to the Berlin Conference in 1884-1885 when the European colonial powers decided to partition Africa into territories of influence
Most outrageous and dehumanizing of these were the apartheization system that resulted in differentiation and otherization that allowed settlers a voice in government while the Africans and Asians had no right to political participation
After being subjected to marginalization and silence for many years, Ngugi and Mugo have deliberately decided to end the result of decades of selective memory making as the failure to control history
Summary
The Politics of Naming, Misnaming and Renaming in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976) by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Githae Mugo
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