Colo Colonialism as Postcolonial Discourse

Re-reading Ngugi’wa Thiong’o’s Early Novels

Authors

Keywords:

Colonialism, Postcolonialism, Ngugi, Early Novels, Discourse

Abstract

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.

Dimensions

Aime, Cesaire. Discourse on Colonialism.Modern Reader, 1972.

A.I., Yandaki.The State in Africa: A Critical Study in Historiography and Political Philosphy. Gaskiya Corporations, 2015.

Ania, Loomba. Colonialism/ Postcolonialism.Routledge, 1988.

Ania, Loomba. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. 2nded, Routledge, 2005.

Arif, Dirlik. “Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism”. The JournalCritical Inquiry.nol. 20, no. 2,1994, pp.328-356.

Ato, Quayson. Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice, or Process?Blackwell, 2000.

Bill, Ashcroft, et al. The Postcolonial Reader.Routledge, 1995.

Bill, Ashcroft, et al. The Empire Writes Back:Theory and Practices in Post-Colonial Literatures. Routledge,1989.

Bill, Ashcroft, et al. Key Concepts in Postcolonal Studies.Routledge, 2003. thorny

Bill, Ashcroft, Postcolonial Transformation.Routledge, 2001.

Bhikhu, Parekh. “The West and its Others”.Edward Said and the Gravity of History: Cultural Readings of Imperialism, edited by. Keith Ansell-Pearson, Benita Parry and Judith Squires,St. Martin’s Press, 1997, pp.173-193.

Dan, Clayton.“Empire”.The Dictionary of Human Geography, edited by D. Gregory, R Johnston, G. Pratt, M, Watts, and S, Whatmore, Wiley Blackwell, 2009,pp.189-190.

David, Maughan-Brown. Land, Freedom and Fiction: History and Ideology In Kenya. Zed Books, 1985.

Franz, Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth.Penguin Books, 1963.

Franz, Fanon. A Dying Colonialism. Groove Press, 1959.

Franz, Fanon. Black Skin White Masks. Pluto Press, 2008.

John Morrisey, et al. Key Concepts in Historical Geography.Sage, 2014.

John, Macloed. The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial Studies.Routledge, 2007.

Kwame, Nkrumah. Africa Must Unite. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Inc. Publishers, 1963.

Kwame, Nkrumah. Neocolonialism the Last Stage of Imperialism.Thomas Nelison and Sons, 1965.

Ngugi, wa Thiong’o. Weep Not, Child. Heinemann, 1964.

Ngugi, wa Thiong’o. The River Between.Heinemann, 1965.

Ngugi, wa Thiong’o. A Grain of Wheat.Heinemann, 1967.

Paul, Ahluwalia. Politics and Post-colonial Theory: African Inflections. Routledge, 2001.

Peter, Barry. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.Manchester University Press, 1995.

VI, Lenin. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. International Publishing Company, 1999.

Published

2022-07-26

How to Cite

Abdullahi, N. U. (2022). Colo Colonialism as Postcolonial Discourse: Re-reading Ngugi’wa Thiong’o’s Early Novels. Journal of Postcolonial Writing and World Literatures, 3(1). Retrieved from https://royalliteglobal.com/world-literatures/article/view/747

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2022)

Section

Articles
Copyright & Licensing

Copyright (c) 2022 Nasir Umar Abdullahi

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This open-access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY-NC-SA) license.

You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.

Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. 

Under the following terms: 

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. 

No additional restrictions You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.