Postcolonial Themes and Identity Construction in Contemporary African Novels

Abstract

Through the prism of identity construction and postcolonial theme negotiation, this work explores how African novels in the modern age are used to navigate these subjectivities, in the context of broader frameworks in postcolonial scholarship.  By relying upon seminal texts by Fanon, Bhabha, Hall, and Mbembe as well as Mbembe and Ngk ngui wa ThiongO, and the works of fiction by Adichie, Gurnah, Bulawayo, and Dangarembga amongst others, the paper explores how language and memory mediate migration and gender in the creation of subjectivities within African fiction.  The findings suggest that in these texts one cannot talk about identity as the stable essence but rather as the relational, controversied and performative construction.  Novels employ narrative hybridity, multilingual and speculative devices to counteract colonial heritages and create new belonging.  The discussion brings up the way African authors find a means of relating to a global audience without being perceived in an exotic manner. They achieve this by adopting resistant poetics and complex narrative structures that indicate how complex postcolonial life is.  The study affirms that contemporary African novels also act as a storage place of memory and sites of cultural experimentation where identity production is seen as a domain of conflict, as well as one of possibilities.  The study demonstrates that African literature continues to play a significant role in the twenty-first century in terms of the hybridity, diaspora, and decolonization discussions with the help of its connection to the literary aesthetics and postcolonial theory.