Staging Nation Statist Self-Identity in Jaramogi Odinga’s Not Yet Uhuru (1967)

Authors

  • George Obara Nyandoro Department of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, Kisii University, Kenya

Keywords:

civic nationalism, staging, nation statist

Abstract

This article argues that an autobiographer, at the time of writing about self, is aware of existing public perception about who s/he is. The construction of self in the autobiography is therefore a form of staging self as an interplay between knowledge of self against nuanced public understanding of the autobiographer and circumstances which produce him. The paper employs Istvan Dobos’s argument on autobiography as a staging of self to analyse how Oginga Odinga constructs self in his Not Yet Uhuru. The paper is also informed by Craig Calhoun’s theory of nationalism particularly his arguments on the construction of civic nationalist identities. The paper relied on close reading of the text to evaluate how the autobiographical self-constructs self-relative to his thematic thrust a well as relative to other characters in the text. However, insights of the context which informed the autobiography were gleaned by extrapolating other secondary texts.

Author Biography

  • George Obara Nyandoro, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, Kisii University, Kenya

    George Obara Nyandoro is the Director of Postgraduate at Kisii University where he also teaches literature in the Department of Languages, Linguistics and Literature. He has previously taught at Kenyatta University. He attained his PhD in Literature from Moi University, having graduated with Bachelors in Education(Arts) and Masters in Literature, respectively, from University of Nairobi. His research interest is in the intersection between life writing genres and the reconstruction of national memories. He has also an interest in general fiction, film and theatre as sites of narrating the nation particularly in the construction of national identities.

References

Calhoun, C. (2007). Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream. London & New York: Routledge.

Dobos, I. (2010). Autobiographical Reading. Spectrum Hungarologicum, Vol 3. Helsinki: Faculty of Humanities, University of Jyvaskyla. Retrieved from https://www.jyu.fi/hungarologia

Lejeune, P. (1982). The Autobiographical Contract, in T, Todorov (ed). French Literary Theory Today. Paris: Cambridge University Press.

Odinga, O. (1967). Not yet Uhuru. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers Ltd.

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Published

2020-05-15

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Staging Nation Statist Self-Identity in Jaramogi Odinga’s Not Yet Uhuru (1967). (2020). Journal of Postcolonial Writing and World Literatures, 1(1), 49-64. https://royalliteglobal.com/world-literatures/article/view/119