Wa Thiongo Research Articles

Clash of Cultures and Resistance in Selected African Plays

Protest African drama that appeared in Kenya and other African countries was due to the bad conditions that Africans lived during the period of colonization. This paper uses the post-colonial theory to explore how resistance in all of its armed and unarmed forms succeeded in awakening the African continent after long years of marginalization. It also tackles the clash of cultures which represents another kind of resistance, dealing with clash of cultures between the European and the African. Moreover, it will focus on the colonial discourse the colonizer relied on to assert the inability of Africans to express themselves without this discourse which the Europeans (colonial powers) invented and deliberately used to establish and deepen their domination over the black continent even after their departure.
 
 For this purpose, the researcher will analyze two different plays written by the Kenyan playwright Ngugi Wa Thiongo, The Black Hermit and The Trial of Dedan Kimathi. The clash of two cultures will be studied in The Black Hermit, while resistance and armed resistance will be examined in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi.

THE RELATION BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND COLONIALISM IN NGUGI WA THIONG’O’S THE RIVER BETWEEN

This article is aimed at describing how the relation between Christianity and colonialism is constructed in The River Between (1965), a novel by Ngugi wa Thiongo. Using postcolonial approach focusing on the analysis of the characters and conflicts, this study reveals the mutual relation between Christianity and colonialism. Christianity becomes the ideological apparatus to build a colonial myth, doctrine, or perspective, while Christian missionaries gain the colonizers support from the colonial administrators. Their antagonistic relation can be explored through the natives re-reading of the Bible to review the colonialism and get rid of the colonial bondage. As postcolonial literature, The River Between offers counter-discourse against colonialism. However, some parts of the text are still slipped in the colonial hegemony.Keywords: Christianity, colonialism, postcolonialism, ideological apparatus, counter-discourse

The Pitfalls of National Consciousness as Depicted in Matigari by Ngugi wa Thiong�o

The paper provides insights into how national consciousness is eroded in post-colonial Africa with reference to Matigari by Ngugi wa Thiongo and the impact of this erosion on the marginalized, largely impoverished masses, who continue to live on the periphery of society. The African elite (bourgeoisie), who are the new rulers after colonialism, become so obsessed with their own material enrichment and their new found power, that the imagined state, for which so many had fought and sacrificed their lives, becomes a mere pipe dream. It is with this background in mind that the paper intends to examine how the pitfalls of national consciousness highlighted by Fanon in his text The Wretched of the Earth find resonance in Ngugis non-fiction work Matigari and the crucial issues that the text raises in terms of how the new rulers abuse their power and the mechanisms that they implement to entrench their authority. Through Ngugis use of the fictional protagonist Matigari, we are taken on a journey that unearths the rampant corruption and brute force of the regime as they strive to annihilate any opposition that dare question their abuse of power.Keywords: Post-colonialism, National consciousness, Othering, Oppressive regime

Postcolonial Ecocriticism and the African Response to Human Experience and the Environment

Postcolonial ecocriticism is a theory that looks at both the environment and people, how both are interconnected, reflect and define each other. Writers symbolically use wholesome social environment to indicate spiritual and moral vivacity of a society while unhealthy environment shows exploitation, extreme materialism, moral decadence, and spiritual ineptitude of a society. This paper looks at Postcolonial ecocriticism as a local response to global environmental issues, and also explores the colonial impact and legacy on human and nonhumans in Africa. The paper is reliant on Postcolonial ecocriticism and uses Frantz Fanon’s thoughts in Wretched of the Earth as the theory that guides the analysis of Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s I will Marry When I Want and Athol Fugard’s Sorrows and Rejoicing. The plays serve as the primary texts of this research paper. Thus, this paper will look at the interconnectedness of humans and nonhumans in the two select plays. The paper specifically sees Postcolonial ecocriticism as Africa’s local response to the global environmental writings that have occluded the issue of colonialism and displacement. The paper also establishes a connection between the anthropos and nonhuman elements in African drama.

Literary cum Philoso-Religious Periscope on the Nature of Man

The self-evident truth that man is a mystery to himself generates justifiable intellectual curiosity. Giving expression to such curiosity would help to further unravel the mysterious nature of man by means of philoso-religious investigations into the personality of some purposively selected major characters in the literary works of prominent African and non-African writers. Consequently, this study undertakes to investigate some creative works of world-acclaimed fame. Purposively selected for the study in this regard include Profs. Chinua Achebe and Isidore Okpewho’s fictions, Prof. Ola Rotimi’s The gods Are not to Blame, George Orwell’s narratives, Ngugi Wa Thiongo and Micere Githae Mugo’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, Marie Correli’s The Sorrows of Satan and Cheik Hamidou Kane’s The Ambiguous Adventure. These classics are selected, because besides being philoso-religiously oriented, their geographical settings cut across the world to validate the findings of the study. The objective of the investigation focused on the selected works is to help man understand himself now more than previously ever, especially in relation to the will of God, his creator. This objective is pursuant to the expectation that achieving it would significantly improve the quality of life on earth, and by extension, man’s eternal destiny. The theoretical premise which drives the investigation of man and his nature in the novels used for the study conceptualises man in relation to ethics and the metaphysical world. It, therefore, provides appreciable insights into man’s identity profile which distinguishes between the created man as an enemy of God and the redeemed man as a friend of God. Relying on some scientific basis, the theoretical framework establishes that God is an undeniable reality, concluding, therefore, that it translates to stark ignorance or gross senselessness not to know Him. The analysis done as part of the study confirms its hypothesis, namely, that literature is a mirror of life which is largely a reflection of the natures of the created man rather than those of the redeemed man. The confirmation of this hypothesis proves that humanity is farther away from God than she is close to Him. In other words, the final destiny of mankind, hereafter, is largely threatened. The pragmatics of this worrisome major finding is that the near-countable redeemed people of God in this generation, especially the clergy, should and must commit themselves to intensified effective creative evangelisation to forestall evil from overtaking the world. Positive response to this clarion call by the redeemed people of God found in all authentic religious sects is imperative, else, evil will eventually overtake the world and provoke God’s devastating wrath on humanity.

An Ecology of World Literature: From Antiquity to the Present Day

An Ecology of World Literature: From Antiquity to the Present Day

Afriphone Literature as a Prototypical form of African Literature: Insights from Prototype Theory

What is the most prototypical form of African literature? Shouldn’t we be using African languages to produce African literary texts, shouldn’t we produce more Afriphone African literature compared to Europhone African literature or Afro-Europhone literature? This issue underlies the reality that the vast majority of African writers presumably think in one language and express themselves (speak, enchant, or write) in another. This problematic, crystalized in major debates between Ngugi wa Thiongo and others, on the one hand, and Chinua Achebe and others, on the other hand, has resulted in great challenges as to how we can define or even conceptualize the discipline of African literature. Is it literature written by Africans in African languages for Africans or is it literature written by anybody including non-Africans in non-African languages? Or is it somewhere in-between these two extremes? The paper discusses several positions on this major question in African literature before advancing a novel proposal based on insights and evidence from proto-type theory within Linguistics and the Cognitive Sciences. This proposal leads to a somewhat provocative conclusion about the gradation of African literatures, where African language literatures or Afrophone literatures, comprise the core, proto-typical category in a 21 st Century African literature constellation, whereas foreign language and diasporic literatures such as Afro-European literatures , Afro-American literatures , and Afro-Chinese literatures are the hybrid and thus more recessive, peripheral types of African literature. Keywords: Afriphone literature, African language literature, African literature, proto-type theory, linguistics, cognitive Science

Two West African Voices in search of Decolonization: Kofi Awoonor and Christopher Okigbo

This study traces the process of decolonization in the poetry of two West African poets; Kofi Awoonor from Ghana and Christopher Okigbo from Nigeria. The chosen poets represent two distinct models toward decolonization. Decolonization is chosen as the topic of this study for its powerful presence in and effect on the literature of West Africa. In the process of decolonization, Awoonor and Okigbo seek to underscore the importance of Africans' returning to their roots as a means of reshaping their identities which the colonizers were determined to obliterate. They undertake, as their responsibility, to resist the literary manifestations of imperialism and direct their peoples towards forming an indigenous cultural identity. They succeed to incorporate the imagery of West African myth and folklore to revive the past and connect it with the present hoping to reconstruct a bright future for their people. Many critics have tackled decolonization in their critical writings; among them were Frantz Fanon, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, Edward Said and Bill Ashcroft. The study makes use of some of these views with special reference to Fanon and Nugugi

Prostitution as Resistance to Human and Societal Brutalities

A reading of modern African novels reveals that some female heroines are presented as prostitutes. Prominent among them are Firdaus in Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero, Mara in Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon, Jagua Nana and Filia in Cyprain Ekensis Jaygua Nana and People of the City respectively, Wanja in Ngugi wa Thiongo’s Petals of Blood to mention but a few. The truth is that some of these heronies take to prostitution as an easy way to escape poverty and life in the rural villages. However, others become prostitutes because they are victims of human and societal brutalities. It is against this backdrop that this paper examines the heroines in Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero and Amma Darkos’ Beyond the Horizon as women in their struggle against human and societal brutalities. These writers in their novels shed some light on the power of women in resistance against oppression at the hands of men and establish that women can resist these brutalities.

From Blueblood to Trueblood: Ngugi wa Thiongo’s and Ralph Ellison’s Rewritings of Conrad’s "Lord Jim"

Postcolonial re-writings of Joseph Conrad’s works rarely make use of Lord Jim, Ngugi wa Thiongo’s A Grain of Wheat being one of the few exceptions. It is also a rare example of a re-writing in which evident intertextual connections ( in this case to Under Western Eyes and Heart of Darkness, as well as The Tempest) conceal other, more deeply embedded ones (Lord Jim). Ngugi’s version of Lord Jim has at its center John Thompson, the British antagonist of all the Gikuyu characters in the novel, and a parodic embodiment of Lord Jim’s dreams of power and glory. The most salient difference between Thompson and Jim lies in the way in which they perceive their own status within the British colonial enterprise. The Oxonian Thompson is fully conscious of the ideological implications of his occupation, while uneducated Jim can barely see the surface of his. Thompson’s state-sanctioned escape from Kenya on the day of its regaining independence, read as a parody of Jim’s escape from the Patna, opens the fi eld for an incisive ideological critique of the colonial contexts of Jim’s tragedy. Ralph Ellison’s rewriting of Lord Jim is limited to the Trueblood episode of Invisible Man and focuses on the main character’s breaking of the incest taboo, which may be compared to Jim’s abandoning ship. Trueblood’s attempt to „move without moving” echoes Jim’s account of his purportedly unconscious jump from the Patna. While Jim, as well as Marlow, present these events and those that occur later, in Patusan, as versions of the Greek tragic paradigm of human transgression and divine retribution, Ellison brings Trueblood’s transgression down to a more quotidian level, substituting a family tragedy in which the gods do not intervene for the pathos with which Conrad endows Jim. Norton in this version of Conrad’s novel serves a similar purpose – he is the parodic, downsized equivalent of Brierly, the captain who commits suicide after realizing that if he had found himself in Jim’s position on the Patna he would have done the same thing. Compared with the reality of a black sharecropper’s life in Alabama, Jim’s obsession with valor and honor, as well as his lust for adventure, are simply infantile, and the imperialist underpinnings of his transgression make it a parody of taboo-breaking. Ellison’s „signifying” on Lord Jim, as far as I know, has not been hitherto noticed by critics.

THE FIGURE OF POSTCOLONIAL WOMEN IN NGUGI WA THIONGO'S PETALS OF BLOOD AND A GRAIN OF WHEAT

The purpose of this study is to examine the figure of postcolonial women in Ngugi Wa Thiongo's Petals of Blood and A grain of Wheat. These novels deal with the condition of Kenya after the colonial period. In this study, the women figures of the novels have been focused on and analyzed in the light of race, class, gender, colonialism, and postcolonial feminism. After a profound reading of the both books, it has been understood that Ngugi portrays various types of women characters in his two books. We see women characters as victims of colonialism and patriarchy, mothers, oppressed figures, and also freedom fighters. Apart from this, A Grain Wheat also includes white women characters and deals with the attitudes of them against black women. That is, this study analyzes various postcolonial women characters from

Literature And Libration in Africa: An Appraisal of Ngugi Wa Thiogo’s A Grain of Wheat

The present study captures the role of the literary artists in the struggle for emancipation of Africa. Brief allusions are made to southern and western African literary works, but East Africa is used as a major microcosm of the representation. Ngugi wa Thiongo’s A Grain of Wheat (1967) is analyzed using the sociological approach to the study of literature with a view to identifying how the author has through the instrumentality of his novel been able to project the realities of blacks emancipation in Kenya. To this end therefore, the historical, economic and social realities of the Kenyan society is analyzed as source materials which Nguigi has used to x-ray his society. The research concludes that, Ngugi has been able to effectively capture the realities of his society through his novel .

The Importance of Oral Tradition in Ngugi WA Thiongo?s Writings: A Critical Analysis of the River between and Petals of Blood

The objective of this study is to examine the stylistic and thematic functions of forms of the oral tradition in Ngugi Wa Thiongo's writings through a critical analysis of The River Between and Petals of Blood. This has become necessary because to some readers and critics, the use of elements of the oral tradition in any literary work by an African writer leads invariably to the achievement of one objective_ giving an African colour or identity to the literary piece. The contribution of forms of the oral tradition such as myths, legends, songs, proverbs and rituals to the themes, philosophies, style and the writer's commitment to a particular cause are often overlooked.

When Orature Becomes Literature: Somali Oral Poetry and Folktales in Somali Novels

The concern of this essay is with the transformations which occur when what is variously termed, “orality”, the “oral tradition”, “oral literature” or “orature” is incorporated into literature in the context of Somali culture. While most sources use these terms interchangeably, Ngugi wa Thiongo, the Kenyan novelist, in a lecture titled “Oral Power and Europhone Glory”, stresses a subtle distinction of meaning between “orature” and “oral literature”. Ngugi notes that: “The term ‘orature’ was coined in the Sixties by Pio Zirimu, the late Ugandan linguist”.1 Ngugi observes that while Zirimu initially used the two terms interchangeably, he later identified “orature” as the more accurate term which indexed orality as a total system of performance linked to a very specific idea of space and time. The term “oral literature”, by contrast, incorporates and subordinates orality to the literary and masks the nature of orality as a complete system of its own. For this reason, “orature” is the preferred term in this essay.

Art and societal dialectics in sub-Saharan Africa: A critique of Wa Thiongo and Osofisan as dramatists

Art, indeed, remains an effective means of representing reality. It has undoubtedly become instrumental in understanding and interpreting aspects of society – its inherent dialectics – its realities. Drama, therefore, as the most social of art forms invariably predisposes the dramatist/artist as invaluable in the solemn task of mirroring these realities. This paper surveys the socio-political developments, nay realities in two Sub-Saharan African societies, to examine the inextricable relationship between art and society as well as underscore the effect of the past on the present, using relevant works of two prominent dramatists from this region, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (Kenya) and Femi Osofisan (Nigeria) as paradigms. Key words: Art, functionality, society, societal dialectics, artist.

Arresting Time, Resisting Arrest: Narrative Time and the African Dictator in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o'sWizard of the Crow

This essay argues that the form of Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo's Wizard of the Crow challenges the Ruler's hegemony. In my analysis, the novel's narrators and Ngũgĩ's inventive use of rumor, prolepsis, and metalepsis work to create pluralistic modes of community that counteract the autocratic, repressive politics of the novel's dictator. This analysis adds a distinctively political dimension to the work of narrative theorists like Gerard Genette, Mark Currie, and Brian Richardson, reading the distinctive feature of multiple narrators or proleptic rumors in the novel as signs of resistance. These formal features of the novel present a discursive challenge to the authority of the Ruler. This discursive challenge to authority is significant because the dictator's power is exercised through the power to speak and shape the world to his own ends. These features of Ngũgĩ's novel mark a development in the transnational genre of the dictator novel. N gũgĩ wa Thiong'o's recent novel, Wizard of the Crow, begins with a rumor. Or, more accurately, with five of the most frequent (theories) on people's lips (3). This inaugural set of rumors conditions the reader to approach the novel in a particular way. This beginning has implications for the novel's form because of the rumors' subject (the Ruler's illness), the mode of narra- tion, and the temporal structure this opening creates. The rumors chronologically belong in the middle of the novel. The five frequent rumors presented at the outset of the novel constitute what Gerard Genette calls repeating prolepses, where the prolepsis double(s), however slightly, a narrative section to come (71). Ngũgĩ uses these repeating prolepses in an unusual way. Genette observes that Repeat- ing prolepses . . . scarcely occur except as brief allusions: they refer in advance

Arresting Time, Resisting Arrest: Narrative Time and the African Dictator in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's <em>Wizard of the Crow</em>

This essay argues that the form of Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo’s Wizard of the Crow challenges the Ruler’s hegemony. In my analysis, the novel’s narrators and Ngũgĩ’s inventive use of rumor, prolepsis, and metalepsis work to create pluralistic modes of community that counteract the autocratic, repressive politics of the novel’s dictator. This analysis adds a distinctively political dimension to the work of narrative theorists like Gérard Genette, Mark Currie, and Brian Richardson, reading the distinctive feature of multiple narrators or proleptic rumors in the novel as signs of resistance. These formal features of the novel present a discursive challenge to the authority of the Ruler. This discursive challenge to authority is significant because the dictator’s power is exercised through the power to speak and shape the world to his own ends. These features of Ngũgĩ’s novel mark a development in the transnational genre of the dictator novel.

Satirical Art in Ngugi Wa Thiongo's Novel Devil on the Cross

On their fight to changing their societies, many African intellectuals have been committed to the denounciation of what they considered to be the major barriers that prevented their societies from moving forward. In fact, many African people believed that chasing the white man from power in the colonies and replace by their own country-fellows on key state's positions would certainly change the socio-economical and political situations of Black folk . Unfortunately, after implementing their strategy, the Africans would simply be disillusioned to notice that the situation got even worse in some countries, as a new ruling class involved in evil practices like snobbery, corruption, megalomania and women's disintegration took control of the destiny of their countries. Thus, based on the framework suggested by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, the Kenyan writer, in his novel Devil on the Cross , I have tried to scrutinize some burning issues which truly help understand the why and the how African new ruling class behaved and still behave foolishly in their daily life when they are given key responsabilities in their countries. These issues are of paramount importance to the development of Africa.

L’Effet roman dans les langues de l’Afrique quelques réflexions comparatistes

In 2006 Xavier Garnier and the present author published a collection of essays derived from a three years long monthly seminar held at the CNRS in Paris on the coming of the novel in the languages of Africa (L’effet roman, Paris 2006). They considered the situation in 27 different languages, analyzing it in details in 20 of them. In the present article the author reflects upon the conclusion and prospects of this comparative enterprise. Quite often the production of fiction is seen as a symbol of cultural achievement in a language: little is known about the texts themselves, their messages, their style. Thomas Mofolo is widely held to be the first novelist writing in an African language, but his first novel, Moeti oa Bochabela, has rarely been read in a political and historical perspective. It is the story of questions posed by the coming of Christianity to Africa and this was a truly revolutionary at that time (1907). While diglossia and bilingualism are the rule in Africa, literatures in African languages are too rarely analyzed along with literature in European languages. The perspectives offered by the political content of the concepts of polyphonia and dialogic consciousness, presented by Bakhtin, acutely aware himself of these dimensions, are not taken with their philological implications in Africa. The novel is a new genre in many European languages, too, and it corresponds with an era of national consciousness. In many African languages careful historical study allows us to reach the same conclusions despite the colonial control, and the recent (second half of the twentieth century) domination of European languages. The paper concludes by a plea for translation, and quotes the recent work of Ngugi wa Thiongo as a new and positive direction for African writers.

Amilcar Cabral and the fortunes of African literature

An able political leader, profound cultural theorist and provocative philosopher of the African struggle for freedom, Amilcar Cabral remains one of the significant African revolutionaries. His theoretical works, particularly National Liberation and Culture, Return to the Source, Identity and Dignity in the Context of the Liberation Struggle and The Weapon of Theory have influenced the direction of creativity in African literature in significant ways. An application of the theoretical insights of this work to African literature helps to understand and critically elaborate the spirit of struggle captured in Africa's diverse arts. This article analyses four creative texts of literature from Africa. These texts are Mission to Kala (1958) by the Cameroon‐born Mongo Beti, Harvest of Thorns (1989) by the Zimbabwe‐born Shimmer Chinodya, Devil on the Cross (1982) by the Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiongo, and Nervous Conditions (1988) by Tsitsi Dangarembga from Zimbabwe. We have deliberately not considered any texts from Lusophone (Portuguese‐speaking) Africa because we believe that the influence of Amilcar Cabral's theoretical writings transcend the literary boundaries carved out as a consequence of the 1884 Berlin conference that partitioned the continent into Anglophone, Lusophone and Francophone Africa.