Muddy points of entanglements: transglocal fictions in Africa and the diaspora (original) (raw)
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The fictions of Moyez G.Vassanji, Mira Nair and Peter Nazareth represent a crucial commodity. These two writers and one filmmaker’s works are manifestly utilitarian in our attempt as literary scholars and citizens of the world to understand what is meant by the ‘African Diaspora.’ Their narratives interrogate the racialized and divisive accounts of East Africans that consciously and chauvinistically self – define as African or Asian. While all of the texts make clear that there is a certain risk involved in attempting to construct systems of identity formation along syncretic lines, they also make explicit the dangers of the formation and defense of exclusive communities based on skin color. These artists are attempting, and succeeding in exploding the myth of a monolithic racial imperative for African cultural citizenship. This myth of racial uniformity as a prerequisite for African authenticity has been constructed and exploited by members of numerous ethnic communities throughout East Africa at one time or another in order to further their political or economical goals (Gregory: 161).What the artists dealt with in this paper are seeking to do is to counteract such immutable inscriptions of identity and concomitant allegiance and, in their own cases to reinscribe their self – identificatory auras with an identity which can best be described as “Afro-Asian.’ The immediate importance of this endeavor is illustrated by the historical atrocities and terrorism visited upon Afro –Asians by their fellow countrymen. The seemingly unquestioning or ambivalent attitude of the academic community toward these questions represents, albeit through an absence of discursive activity rather than an excess of aggression, a serious impediment to an understanding of the realities of cultural diversity in East African contexts. These Afro-Asian diasporic narratives can illuminate such situations and broaden our understanding of what it means to be ‘African’ in East Africa.
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