Ngugi's Novels and African History

James Ogude

Description

Ngugi’s entire novelistic output in examined, including his major works, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, Petals of Blood and Matigari. Through a critique of these works, Ngugi’s radical and sometimes ambivalent attitude towards independence (Uhuru) and the manufacturing of nationhood are assessed. Ogude also looks at the wider notion of the distinct boundaries between history and fiction which postcolonial literatures have sought to question.
Introduction



1. Ngugi's concept of history



2. The changing nature of allegory in Ngugi’s novels



3. Character portrayal in Ngugi’s novels



4. The use of popular forms and the search for relevance



5. Allegory, romance and the nation: women as allegorical figures in Ngugi’s novels



6. Ngugi’s portrayal of the community, heroes and the oppressed



Notes



Bibliography



Index

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• África
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 1999
• Nombre de lectures: 4
• EAN13: 9781849645355
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Ngugi’s Novels and African History

Narrating the Nation

James Ogude

P Pluto Press LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA

First published 1999 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 21066–2012, USA

Copyright © James Ogude 1999

The right of James Ogude to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 7453 1436 8 hbk

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ogude, James. Ngugi’s novels and African history: narrating the nation / James Ogude p. cm. ISBN 0–7453–1436–8 hbk 1. Ngügi wa Thiong’o, 1938– —Knowledge—History. 2. Historical fiction, Kenyan (English)—History and criticism. 3. Literature and history—African—History—20th century. 4. Literature and history– –Kenya—History—20th century. 5. Ngügi wa Thiong’o. 1938– –Fictional works. I. Title. PR9381.9.N45Z821999 823—dc21 99–2306 CI

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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Production Services, Chadlington, OX7 3LN Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed in the EC by TJ International, Padstow

5 P

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Writing Back and the Restoration of a Community/Nation 1. Ngugi’s Concept of History 2. The Changing Nature of Allegory in Ngugi’s Novels 3. Character Portrayal in Ngugi’s Novels 4. The Use of Popular Forms and the Search for Relevance 5. Allegory, Romance and the Nation: Women as Allegorical Figures in Ngugi’s Novels 6. Ngugi’s Portrayal of the Community, Heroes and the Oppressed 7. Conclusion

Notes Bibliography Index

vii

1 15 44 68

87

109

126 153

161 169 176

To my brother Aguyo Kogude, who sacrificed for my education and to my mother Helida Akuno Ogude for showing me the value of discipline and hard work.

Acknowledgements

Ngugi’s stature in African literature and his interventions in the debates on Africa’s historiography have been major influences on my academic career. My first encounter with the social relevance of literature was through my contact with Ngugi as a student at Nairobi University and I thank him for the insights without which this book would have been different. Special gratitude goes to my academic mentor, Njabulo Ndebele, and to members of the African Literature Department at the University of the Witwatersrand, especially Phaswane Mpe, Isabel Hofmeyr and Bheki Peterson for their support and encouragement. Mpe in particular helped with the initial proofreading of the manuscript – many thanks. Special thanks to the African literature students, whose stimulating debates in class helped to sharpen some of the ideas expressed in this book. And to my friend, Atieno Odhiambo of Rice University, Texas, for his support and useful sources on the production of Kenyan history. Although this book is based on my PhD thesis written for the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, it has been revised substantially to include the early novels of Ngugi and to provide a more comprehensive historical perspective – thanks to Roger van Zwanenberg of Pluto Press for insisting that I include the early novels of Ngugi. I have also endeavoured to simplify the academic jargon and terminology originally used in the thesis in order to make the book accessible to a wider audience without compromising the academic value the book may have. Some parts of this book have appeared as articles in various journals. Parts of the introduction and Chapter 1 were drawn from ‘Ngugi’s Concept of History’ in theCanadian Journal of African Studies31.1. (1997): 86–112. Parts of Chapter 4 appeared in English inAfrica24.1 (1997): 71–87 vii

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and parts of Chapter 6 were drawn from my article appearing inWasafiri28 (Autumn 1988): 3–9. Where permission has been required for republication, I am grateful to the editors of the journals for that permission. Finally, I would like to thank members of my family who have sustained me with encouragement throughout this project: to my daughter, Didi, my son, Omondi, and to my wife, Nthabiseng, for love and understanding as I kept away from their company while preparing this book.

Introduction

Writing Back and the Restoration of a Community/Nation

Early African narratives have always been seen as writing against colonial discursive practices in an attempt to validate Africa’s historiography denied by colonialism. Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer, called it ‘an act of atonement’ (quoted in Awonoor 1976, p. 251) – the process of returning to self or what Basil Davidson calls the reconstituting of a ‘shattered community, to save or restore the sense and fact of community against all the pressures of the colonial system’ (1978, p. 155).Edward Said calls it restoring ‘the imprisoned community to itself’ (1994, p. 259). In literature, this process of restoration was marked by a strong sense of cultural nationalism. The emergence of cultural nationalism as an engagement with the epistemological practices that came with colonialism was an attempt at the recovery of African gnosis repressed by colonialism. These forms of African writings, rooted in the emergent African nationalism, were engaged in what Gikandi calls ‘the act of willing new realities into being’ and elaborating new knowledges of Africa (1991, p. 2). Signifi- cantly, the knowledges were reconstructed not simply from what colonialism was attempting to repress, but also from the historical conditions colonialism had created. The nationalist thought depended, in part, upon the realities of the colonial powers and the discursive practices that came with it. But the new narrative of ‘nation formation’ constituted a dialogue, not just with the West whose discursive instruments the writers had appropriated to subvert the colonial project, but also a dialogue with other adjacent zones of knowledge such as history, anthropology, political science, religion, etc., within the academy. In other words, the process of social engineering, the process of specifying the 1

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Ngugi’s Novels and African History

ideological lexicon of nation formation, involved the African writer as much as it involved the historian, the political scientist, the anthropologist, the politician and the religious leader. The sites of construction and idioms may have been different, but they certainly interfaced and interlocked in search of an enduring moral centre. Ngugi has been most poignant in his engagement with other disciplines and the discursive practices emanating from the West. Narrative, particularly the novel, has tended to provide Ngugi with the space to imagine Africa’s history which he believes had been repressed by colonialism. Ngugi has insisted, correctly, that his writing is very much part of Kenya’s (and by implication Africa’s) historiography and the theorising of its political economy. Ngugi’s writing is not just laying a claim to the terrain of culture, but also to radically ‘revised visions of the past tending towards a postcolonial future, as urgently reinterpretable and redeployable experiences, in which the formerly silent native speaks and acts on territory reclaimed as part of a general movement of resistance, from the colonist’ (Said 1994, p. 256). Ngugi posits narrative here as an agent of history because it provides the space for challenging our notions of national identities, uses of history, and ways in which they are deployed in power contestation in modern Kenya and Africa in general. And yet, in spite of Ngugi’s interest in the grand project of writing back to colonialist historiography, and in spite of the apparent radical reinterpretations that have been hailed in his novels ranging fromThe River Between(1965) toMatigari (1987), the element of historical invention has not been adequately explored. The element of historical invention could provide a useful point of entry into Ngugi’s concept of history, particularly when one bears in mind Ngugi’s stated commitment to presenting ‘true’ images of Africa’s past as a counter to ‘false’ colonial portrayals of the continent (Ngugi 1972, pp. 39–46). This book seeks to look beyond the current state of criticism which has failed to locate Ngugi’s texts within the contested 1 terrain of Kenya’s historiography. Critics have been content to take their image of Africa from the literature itself and then praise the literature for its ‘truth’ or lack of it without trying

Introduction

3

to understand the nuances underpinning the alternative histories embedded in these texts. If Ngugi sets out to offer an alternative picture – ‘the true image of Africa’ – then we need to enquire into the ‘truth’ of his picture in order to avoid the temptation to erase the problematics and contradictory meanings of his texts. The need to rethink Ngugi’s texts in the light of new experiences and theoretical insights is desirable if we want to enrich the production of knowledges in Africa. The call for rereading Ngugi’s texts does not imply that the ‘first’ readings were entirely useless or even irrelevant. In this book I anticipate the kind of interrogation that would bring to the surface certain things that may have been taken for granted due to a number of factors, for example, the trend closely associated with the ‘new criticism’ which tends to isolate the text from its social and historical setting. A literary text at its best, we are told, should express some timelessness, which could be demonstrated even if one ignores time and specificity. But of particular interest to me is the now well rehashed debate around the literature/history couplet in which literature is seen as the signifier and history the signified. This approach, which privileges history as the source of literature, tends to overemphasise literature’s fictiveness and to delete its historical and political relevance. The fundamentals of this argument are that literature and history belong to different spheres of being in which history is regarded as more basic and ‘“more real” ... than the domain of textual representations’ (Bennet 1990, p. 42). The effect of this dualistic ontology, Tony Bennet writes, ‘is to privilege history as both the literature’s source and its ultimate referent’ (p. 42). In other words, ‘literature always constitutes the phenomenon to be explained just as surely as history provides the means of explanation; no other ordering of their relations is imaginable’ (p. 42). Ultimately, the explanatory power or even the epistemological usefulness of literature depends on how close it approximates the historical truth which is its ultimate referent. Thus ‘the political effects and value of literary texts are assessed on the basis of the position accorded