Diplomarbeitenbörse

'As the Black African writers have taught us, we must dance our word, for in human speech as in dance, lies an offering; to speak and to write is also to offer oneself to the other; it is to be reborn together'.

This quotation by M. Rombaut locates African literature close to the performing arts. According to his statement African literature seems to transcend the conventional European conception of writing, which is conceiving literature as something planned and permanent. The idea of a literary performance in African writing places the author much closer to the story-teller, who is dependent on his audience and trying to keep in touch with them. By processing their feelings in his performance he gives expression to a common consciousness. In contrast to the Western author who often wants to stand apart from his society, African authors tend to aim their participation in the formation of a shared identity.

This paper tries to find out how authors from the framework of East Africa conceive of cultural identity. Basically, I will proceed in two steps: part A is dedicated to the development of a pattern within which the complex issue of identity can be adequately discussed in an East African context. In Part B I will then apply this discussion scheme to three novels which as I will explain are representative for East African writing, in far as this term is justified.

Part A starts off from some basic observations about identity, on the foundation of which I want to deduce the structure of my analysis. I will argue that identity is based on ones observation of the environment and on the influence of outsiders. All this is to some extent true for two concepts: individual and cultural identity. The latter develops when a group of individuals feels or is ascribed a common bond apt to correspond to several individual self-concepts. These individuals may then share a feeling of home, which can act as a physical but also mental commitment.

Departing form these ideas I will show that four issues might be interesting in dealing with cultural identity, which can be expressed by some central questions:

1.Identity imposed and adopted: In how far can others influence our identity?

2.Identity rediscovered and reinvented:To what extent does our history work on identity?

3.Identity displaced: How does our feeling of physical or mental bond to a physical or mental space I will call home work on identity?

4.Identity integrated: How does a society of several individuals develop an identity?

But why should these issues be relevant for the quest for cultural identity in novels from the context of East Africa? I will confirm the adequacy of the above topics by means of a short survey over the development of the literary tradition in Africa in general and in the course of this show that the development of African literature can be interpreted as a quest for cultural identity which has been marked exactly by the four issues I have chosen.

In the course of colonialism Western patterns of identity have been imposed on the African people and to some extent have been overtaken. After independence the desire to reconstruct and reinvent the African past marked literature and heigthened in the demands of a new nationalism. This soon began to counteract the demands of Négritude, a global black diasporic movement, which asserted the impact of displaced identities on African literature. This demand for the acceptance of diverse identities at present rises the literary and political discussion how these could interact within a common cultural framework.

Although the four issues I want to discuss appear relevant for the development of African literature, when narrowing down my topic in chapter A.3 I have to deal with several restrictions. It is by no means sure that singular texts will focus on the categories I have worked out or even discuss the topic of cultural identity. I will argue that the concentration on novels from an East African context heigthens the probability that the quest for identity is a central theme.

But in selecting this particular area of reserach new difficulties arise. What does the term East Africa mean? I will sidestep this question by limiting my analysis to three texts that can certainly be called East African as first their authors feel a bond to the area and second the texts are set there. These texts are: A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, The Book of Secrets by M.G. Vassanji and Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah. These novels are moreover justified by the wide span of their publication dates (between 1967 and 1994), which might allow me to make out changes in the attitude of authors towards identity from the early years of independence to the present.

In the course of my discussion of the texts, I will show that in Ngugi's novel identity still appears widely defined from the outside and is strongly rooted in the community. Colonialism has had a strong impact on black identity by both the imposition of Western values and the instigation of an oppositional movement which goes in quest of post-colonial values. This quest has to be determined by an active remembrance and confession of the past as a central determinant of identity. The rootedness of identity in a widely objectively reconstructible history implies that our identity is rather marked by our social environment than self-defined. The firm connection of identity to history and environment again implies its allegiance to a particular home and its destruction in alienation from this space. Cultural identities in Ngugi's novel remain closed homogenous entities which in the novel can't be mixed or intertwined.

The later novels deviate from this conservative scheme. Vassanji to some extent accepts the once imposed Western values as cross-cultural influence. He can be optimistic as he trusts in the possibility to actively reinvent and self-define history. Everyone can participate in the renarration and thus co-determine the identity of everyone concerned by this history. Arguing like this the text emphasizes our responsibility in re-narrating history and the necessity to do so. The resulting mulitple representation endows every individual with an intercultural identity: As exiled figures Vassanji's characters have to actively define themselves in between the cultures to find out about their individual and cultural self-concepts. This in-between-ness allows for an intercultural symbiosis and the formation of a multicultural society of exiled figures who by respecting their difference find some common bond.

Gurnah's novel is more pessimistic as to the integration of diverse cultural identities. The text marginalizes and demystifies the European colonizers in the attempt to reinvent history from a local perspective and self-define identity. Deprived of a fixed historical bond the central character, Yusuf, can only find out about his identity as a migrant. Though a home doesn't exist for him he feels the desire for an emotional commitment but has to deny it for the sake of going in quest of himself. The inborn migrancy in which Gurnah places Yusuf has to entail intercultural contact. The novel, on the one hand, denies the possiblity of withdrawing into a fantasy world but on the other hand acknowledges the impossibility of a peaceful interaction between several cultures. Tolerance appears to be the only chance for several cultural identities to coexist.

All in all, from the texts we can make out decisive developments in the notion about cultural identity. While Ngugi in 1967 saw cultural identity as homogenous and rooted in a particular bond to an objective history and society the more recent novels increasingly understand it as a vagrant, heterogenous and self-defined concept as they recognize the subjectivity of history and the fragmentation of social affiliations.