Colonialism as postcolonial discourse: re-reading Ngugi’wa Thiong’o’s early novels
Keywords:
Colonialism, Postcolonialism, Ngugi, Early Novels, DiscourseAbstract
As an historical, economical, as well as political discourse that has acutely and epistemologically engaged the attention of the political scientists, historians and the economists for ages, colonialism has been the postcolonial discourse that has profoundly attracted the literary critics over the years. This paper explores this political discourse in Ngugi’s early novels namely; Weep Not Child, The River Between and A Grain of Wheat. It argues that albeit numerous literary writers have portrayed myriad of faces of colonialism in their masterpieces, it demonstrates that colonialism only wears a postcolonial mask, when viewed through the theoretical “viewfinders” of Aime Ceasire, Franz Fanon, Albert Memi, Edward Said, Kwame Nkrumah, VI Lenin, Arif Derilic, Robert Young, exempli gratia.
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