Title: Forms of resistance against the African postcolony in Brian Chikwava's Harare North
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2015, vol. 41, iss. 1, pp. [157]-173
Extent
[157]-173
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2015-1-10
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/134770
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The article analyzes the novel Harare North by Zimbabwean diasporic writer Brian Chikwava in the context of African writing of post-independence disillusionment and the Cameroonian thinker's Achille Mbembe's analysis of the African postcolony. Mbembe argues that the inhabitants of the postcolony are alienated not only from the state, but also from their own selves, since the post-colony forces them to adapt to permanent change by creating unstable, fragmented identities. Taking its cue from Mbembe, the study explores the forms of political resistance after the break-down of the subject, in whom the identities of victim and oppressor fluidly co-exist. The study concludes by relating Chikwava's representation of the postcolonial subject to Homi Bhabha's unhomeliness.
References
[1] Achebe, Chinua (1977) "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Massachusetts Review 18: 782–794.
[2] Achebe, Chinua (1960) No Longer at Ease. London: Heinemann.
[3] Armah, Ayi Kwei (1968) The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. London: Heinemann.
[4] Armah, Ayi Kwei (1969) "Fanon: The Awakener." Negro Digest 18 (12): 4–9, 29–43.
[5] Bhabha, Homi (1992) "The World and the Home." Social Text No. 31/32: 141–153. | DOI 10.2307/466222
[6] Chikwava, Brian (2009) Harare North. London: Jonathan Cape.
[7] Fanon, Frantz (1965) "Pitfalls of National Consciousness." In: The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. London: MacGibbon and Kee.
[8] Farah, Nuruddin (1983) Close Sesame. London: Allison & Busby.
[9] Ferguson, James (1999) Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[10] Laing, Olivia (2009) "The book will be published in Zimbabwe ... no one will buy it." The Guardian, January 4, 2009. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/04/hotlistbooks-fiction-brian-chikwava [accessed May 1, 2015].
[11] Lazarus, Neil (1990) Resistance in Postcolonial African Fiction. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
[12] Manase, Irikidzayi (2014) "Representations of the Post-2000 Zimbabwean Economic Migrancy in Petina Gappah's An Elegy for Easterly and Brian Chikwava's Harare North." Journal of Black Studies 45(1): 59–76. | DOI 10.1177/0021934713517507
[13] Mbembe, Achille (2001) On the Postcolony. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press.
[14] McCann, Fiona (2014) "Uncommonly Other in Belfast, London and Harare: AlieNation in Robert McLiam Wilson's Ripley Bogle and Brian Chikwava's Harare North." Commonwealth Essays and Studies 37(1): 67–78.
[15] Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988) The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
[16] Ndlovu, Thabisani (2010) "Where Is My Home? Rethinking person, family, ethnicity and home under increased transnational migration by Zimbabweans." African Identities 8(2): 117–130. | DOI 10.1080/14725841003629575
[17] Ngugi, Mukoma (2008). "How Kamau wa Mwangi Escaped into Exile." Wasafiri 54 (Summer): 57–62. | DOI 10.1080/02690050801954443
[18] Ngugi, wa Thiong'o (1967) A Grain of Wheat. London: Heinemann.
[19] Ngugi, wa Thiong'o (1982) Devil on the Cross. London: Heinemann.
[20] Noxolo, Patricia (2014) "Towards an Embodied Securityscape: Brian Chikwava's Harare North and the asylum seeking body as site of articulation." Social & Cultural Geography 15(3): 291–312. | DOI 10.1080/14649365.2014.882397
[21] Ranger, Terence (2005) "Rule by Historiography: the struggle over the past in contemporary Zimbabwe." In: Muponde, Robert and Ranka Primorac (eds.) Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture. Harare: Weaver Press, 217–243.
[22] Soyinka, Wole (1976) Myth, Literature and the African World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[23] Wicomb, Zoë (2015) "Heterotopia and Placelessness in Brian Chikwava's Harare North." In: Palladino, Mariangella and John Miller (eds.) The Globalization of Space: Foucault and Heterotopia. Abdingdon and New York: Routledge, 49–64.
[2] Achebe, Chinua (1960) No Longer at Ease. London: Heinemann.
[3] Armah, Ayi Kwei (1968) The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. London: Heinemann.
[4] Armah, Ayi Kwei (1969) "Fanon: The Awakener." Negro Digest 18 (12): 4–9, 29–43.
[5] Bhabha, Homi (1992) "The World and the Home." Social Text No. 31/32: 141–153. | DOI 10.2307/466222
[6] Chikwava, Brian (2009) Harare North. London: Jonathan Cape.
[7] Fanon, Frantz (1965) "Pitfalls of National Consciousness." In: The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. London: MacGibbon and Kee.
[8] Farah, Nuruddin (1983) Close Sesame. London: Allison & Busby.
[9] Ferguson, James (1999) Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[10] Laing, Olivia (2009) "The book will be published in Zimbabwe ... no one will buy it." The Guardian, January 4, 2009. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/04/hotlistbooks-fiction-brian-chikwava [accessed May 1, 2015].
[11] Lazarus, Neil (1990) Resistance in Postcolonial African Fiction. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
[12] Manase, Irikidzayi (2014) "Representations of the Post-2000 Zimbabwean Economic Migrancy in Petina Gappah's An Elegy for Easterly and Brian Chikwava's Harare North." Journal of Black Studies 45(1): 59–76. | DOI 10.1177/0021934713517507
[13] Mbembe, Achille (2001) On the Postcolony. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press.
[14] McCann, Fiona (2014) "Uncommonly Other in Belfast, London and Harare: AlieNation in Robert McLiam Wilson's Ripley Bogle and Brian Chikwava's Harare North." Commonwealth Essays and Studies 37(1): 67–78.
[15] Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988) The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
[16] Ndlovu, Thabisani (2010) "Where Is My Home? Rethinking person, family, ethnicity and home under increased transnational migration by Zimbabweans." African Identities 8(2): 117–130. | DOI 10.1080/14725841003629575
[17] Ngugi, Mukoma (2008). "How Kamau wa Mwangi Escaped into Exile." Wasafiri 54 (Summer): 57–62. | DOI 10.1080/02690050801954443
[18] Ngugi, wa Thiong'o (1967) A Grain of Wheat. London: Heinemann.
[19] Ngugi, wa Thiong'o (1982) Devil on the Cross. London: Heinemann.
[20] Noxolo, Patricia (2014) "Towards an Embodied Securityscape: Brian Chikwava's Harare North and the asylum seeking body as site of articulation." Social & Cultural Geography 15(3): 291–312. | DOI 10.1080/14649365.2014.882397
[21] Ranger, Terence (2005) "Rule by Historiography: the struggle over the past in contemporary Zimbabwe." In: Muponde, Robert and Ranka Primorac (eds.) Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture. Harare: Weaver Press, 217–243.
[22] Soyinka, Wole (1976) Myth, Literature and the African World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[23] Wicomb, Zoë (2015) "Heterotopia and Placelessness in Brian Chikwava's Harare North." In: Palladino, Mariangella and John Miller (eds.) The Globalization of Space: Foucault and Heterotopia. Abdingdon and New York: Routledge, 49–64.