Child and youth protagonists in Habila's Measuring Time and Dangor's Bitter Fruit (original) (raw)
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Motherlands, mothers and nationalist sons
Stories of women, 2017
Woman is an infinite, untrodden territory of desire which at every stage of historical deterritorialisation, men in search of material for utopias have inundated with their desires. (Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies) 1 Among postcolonial and feminist critics it is now widely accepted that the nationalist ideologies which informed, in particular, the first wave of independence movements and of postcolonial literatures from 1947, are cast in a gendered mould. Nationalism, which has been so fundamental to the decolonisation process around the world, bears a clear mark for gender, and this gender marking, rather than being referred to a monolithic or transhistorical concept of patriarchy, can be explained as a specific historical development of power defined by sexual difference. To put it more plainly, this book submits that, without this marking for gender, it is well-nigh impossible to conceive of the modern nation. Whether we look at its iconography, its administrative structures or its policies, the new postcolonial nation is historically a maleconstructed space, narrated into modern self-consciousness by male leaders, activists and writers, in which women are more often than not cast as symbols or totems, as the bearers of tradition. Stories of women explores the intricate, often paradigmatic negotiations between gender, sexuality and the post-independence nation which have marked postcolonial narratives, including novels by women, from the independence period up to the present day. The central concept informing the book, therefore, which this chapter will theorise, and the following chapters will further exemplify and expand, is that gender forms the formative dimension for the construction of nationhood, if in relation to varying contextual determinants across different regions and countries. This is a point which, with remarkable unanimity, leading male theorists of the nation such as Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, and Anthony Smith have either ignored or failed to address, often choosing even so to define the nation,
|| Through the analysis of Pepetela's Mayombe, Ngugi's Petals of Blood, Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah and A Man of the People, this article interrogates concepts of nationhood and nation in postcolonial Africa within the framework of the postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory defies grand narratives such as the nation and nationhood, hence deconstructs such narratives as they are problematic. This study shows problems associated with definitions of a nation in which some members are sidelined. Also explored is the idea of nationalism and its importance in forming the nation. It is revealed that nationhood is problematic in post independent Africa even though nationalism served a critical role during decolonisation because variations are noted as differences in gender and ethnicity disturb nation building. Globalisation is also threatening, challenging and undermining the existence of nations.
452ºF: revista de teoría de la literatura y literatura …, 2010
|| Through the analysis of Pepetela's Mayombe, Ngugi's Petals of Blood, Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah and A Man of the People, this article interrogates concepts of nationhood and nation in postcolonial Africa within the framework of the postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory defies grand narratives such as the nation and nationhood, hence deconstructs such narratives as they are problematic. This study shows problems associated with definitions of a nation in which some members are sidelined. Also explored is the idea of nationalism and its importance in forming the nation. It is revealed that nationhood is problematic in post independent Africa even though nationalism served a critical role during decolonisation because variations are noted as differences in gender and ethnicity disturb nation building. Globalisation is also threatening, challenging and undermining the existence of nations.
Advanced Journal of Social Science, 2017
National discourse is any conversation that permeates the generality of a nation. Being the most basic unit of a nation, the centrality of the family to the continuous existence of a nation cannot be overemphasised. This centrality is reflected in how the national discourse of a nation descends to the family, and how events in the family can trigger a national discourse. Predicated on the discourse theory, and using the discourse analysis method to examine purposively selected cases that underpinned national discourses in Nigeria and the United States, the paper examined the symbiotic relationship between national discourse and the family being the smallest unit of a nation. It was discovered that the relationship between national discourse and the family is dialectical, which calls for consciousness on the part of every individual in the family, the media and the nation at large, especially in how national discourses are triggered.
Whose Mother (land)?: Visualising and Theorising National Identity
This paper makes two related arguments. The first of these is that by and large, narrations of the nation have a melodramatic structure. The second is that, the iconic and mythogenic figuring of the nation as Mother India/Bharat Mata, contrary to enduring assumptions about it, is, strictly speaking, not a ‘national’ one at all. To do the above, the paper will critically review the relations between a) melodrama, gender, the organisation of sexuality, the family and the nation; b) The principle of maternality, the maternal body and nation. c) It will examine the ways in which central symbols of the national iconography of Mother India/ Bharat Mata have been deployed and reviewed
Children's Literature in Education Vol 44, Number 1, 2013
""This article demonstrates, through Michael Gascoigne’s Tunzi the Faithful Shadow (1988), that literature for children is sometimes employed by the government into the service of propagating dominant state ideologies in Zimbabwean schools. Such texts disseminate issues of inclusion and exclusion that characterise all nation building projects. I argue, through a reading of Tunzi the Faithful Shadow, that texts for children studied in Zimbabwean schools have been shaped by a distinctly Zimbabwean socio-historical context which includes, but is not limited to, the formation of a new national sensibility after the liberation war and the political unrest in the emerging nation.""
2021
Child and youth migration has not only been marginalized within scholarship on literary engagements with global migratory processes, but has also, for the most part, been studied in the narrow context of movements from the Global South to the Global North. This essay examines the complex dynamics of child and youth migration manifest in narratives of migration to South Africa from elsewhere on the African continent. Focusing on the coming- of-age of young migrants and refugees in Meg Vandermerwe’s novel Zebra Crossing (2013) and Aher Arop Bol’s refugee memoir The Lost Boy (2009), I argue that the texts critique common readings of African childhoods as either utopian or dystopian and move beyond dichotomous framings of young migrants through the lens of victimhood or criminality. The texts highlight young migrants’ precarious experiences relating to intersecting hierarchies of race, gender, ability and immigration status, while at the same time foregrounding their situated, relational agency that is often negotiated through appeals to shared Africanness. Drawing on scholarship on the postcolonial Bildungsroman, I suggest that both texts deploy the form to reclaim access to – and subject to criticism – the current human rights order. By focusing on intra-African migration, this essay extends literary migration scholarship to address how the selected texts exact new vocabularies and alternative imaginaries for the study of contemporary migration narratives.