Homecoming, memory, and transnational mobility in recent Kenyan and Nigerian narratives of return

Abstract

This thesis examines the cross-generational effects of colonialism, its derivative, and alternative dominant discourses on African writing and ways of engaging with them from a transnational perspective. It analyses recent narratives of return to Kenya and Nigeria to unpack the entanglements of (inter)relationships evoked by the journey of homecoming in the era of globalization today. Focusing on recent narratives, both fictional and nonfictional, by Noo Saro-Wiwa, Binyavanga Wainaina, Okey Ndibe, and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, this thesis contends that memory as bodily experiences strategically manifests and interrogates forms of dominant discourses entangled with colonialism and their global impact. The memory (re)appearing alongside the evocation of bodily experiences articulates the limiting forces associated with the history of colonialism and, at the same time, transcends them by showing alternative modes of (re)connection.

The first chapter analyses Saro-Wiwa’s Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (2012), to address Saro-Wiwa’s oscillations between “returnee” and “tourist,” her use of transference creating an idealised past and incorporating visions from elsewhere, and the blurring of the distinction between loss and absence. The dramatic effects of trauma reveal the complexity of her diasporic identity and the ambivalence in both her travelling and her writing. The second chapter studies Wainaina’s One Day I Will Write About This Place (2011) by the deployment of the trope of food. This chapter identifies everyday activities and the social cohesion they lead to as pan-Africanism with a small “p,” which is different from but in dialogue with the Pan-Africanism Movement in history. The pan-African unity at the grassroots involves the continental yearnings and aspirations for decolonization and Wainaina’s inner desire as a gay writer in the public space of Africa. The third chapter examines three interweaving topics, time, the body, and memory in Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc. (2014) in a double line of representation: realistic depiction and the animistic logic of the Igbo body-chi epistemology. The return exposes the alienating impact of racism and capitalism rooted in colonialism, and the return also activates the forgotten local culture and tradition. The fourth chapter explores the construction of a cosmopolitan unity in Owuor’s The Dragonfly Sea (2019). The interaction and intra-action between human and non-human agencies are reflected in bodily experiences, which connect the anthropocentric critique of colonialism and the advocation of a postcolonial memory with an awareness of a deeper ecological entanglement.

Memory functions as a counter-historical narrative, interrogating unequal and hierarchical relationships and orderings. The analysis of memory as bodily experiences through the lens of homecoming contributes to an understanding of the postcolonial condition of Nigeria and Kenya and people’s shared precariousness in the globalized world today.