Abstract
Though ‘identity’ has been extensively discussed in many circles of scholarship, the current winds of migration and association by identity makes a further inroad into the need for more research into identity construction even more imperative. Anti-Semitism, racism, ethnic segregation, religious fanatism and gender discrimination are all tenets of the quest for and the guarding of identity. African literary texts, as fictional replication of life, therefore become ideal avenues for the examination of identity formation processes and characteristics amongst Africans. The array of factors that militate against the being a woman in terms of gender and sexuality and how women navigate the roadblocks are amply depicted in African literary works. This paper, therefore, seeks to bring issues of identity construction into a sharper focus in relation to African women in Pede Hollist’s fictional societies. It also adds to the concretization and clarification of issues relating to subjective, ethnic identity formation and symbolic identity construction as part of the identity negotiation and renegotiation narrative. It purposes to do this by examining Pede Hollist’s So The Path Does Not Die through the lens of Ting-Toomey’s identity negotiation theory, and the subjective, ethnic and symbolic identity construction frameworks as articulated by Helena Grice (1998). It concludes that the principal African women in the novel assert their symbolic ethnic identities by negotiating and re-negotiating various other identities. Eventually, as part of the process of gaining a composite subjective identity, they re-negotiate away from the NEW WAYS identity back to the OLD WAYS identity where they experience harmony and happiness as the outcome. Keywords: Identity Negotiation, African Literature, Feminism, Gender, Migration DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/68-05 Publication date: May 31 st 2020
Highlights
The question of who we are, where we are from or in some cases what we often gain relevance when we want to lay claim or deny some origin that relates to us in some way
The current popularity of genealogy and family history point to this need, as does the marketing of family names, crests and the like. It is manifest in the popularity of tourism concerned with roots and heritage. (p.85) Pede Hollist in the novel, So The Path Does Not Die, attempts to depict the complexities involved in identity construction and the very essence of being at home and not merely being home in the African milieu
Anti-Semitism, racism, ethnic segregation, religious fanatism and gender discrimination are all tenets of the quest for and the guarding of identity
Summary
The question of who we are, where we are from or in some cases what we often gain relevance when we want to lay claim or deny some origin that relates to us in some way. Francoise Lionett (1995), as a case in point, avers that ‘fictional works make concretely visible the networks of influence and the question of identity that are central to the debates over authenticity and postcolonial culture” The www.iiste.org array of factors that militate against the being of women on the continent and how these women navigate roadblocks are amply depicted in African literary works. This depiction underscores the argument by Mercer (2001) that identity “only becomes an issue when it is in crises, when something assumed to be fixed, coherent and stable is placed beside the experience of doubt and uncertainty” (503). In this paper the crises of the self against the society in the quest for identity by the female characters in Pede Hollist’s novel, So The Path Does Not Die, is examined
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