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Neoliberalism’s Haunted Houses: Symbols of the Apparently Postcolonial and Specters of Revolution in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Matigari
Ist Teil von
Research in African literatures, 2021-06, Vol.52 (2), p.105-118
Ort / Verlag
Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Erscheinungsjahr
2021
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Project MUSE
Beschreibungen/Notizen
This paper probes the symbolic world of Ngug! wa Thiong'o's 1986 novel Matigari, demonstrating that its characters and metaphors expose and critique the enduring violence of neocolonialism in an ostensibly postcolonial period. I explore Ngugi's symbolic representations of European colonialism in the form of his primary antagonists, Settler Williams and John Boy, who embody the persistence of colonial violence beyond the event of political independence. Against these so-called "specters of empire"--in the words of Mark Taylor--I propose that the book's protagonist, Matigari ma Njiruungi, is not only a symbolic nod to the generation of Mau Mau revolutionaries who resisted colonial rule in Kenya, but also a spectral force that assumes the traits of the literary Christ-figure and extends those characteristics to the masses of oppressed workers, students, and peasants rendered invisible by neocolonialism. In Matigari, Ngugi embraces and yet modifies messianic hope, denying the singular incarnation of God in Christ in favor of a decentralized Christology that redistributes the liberatory power of the messiah across the African working classes.