Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial ReadingThis is the first comprehensive book-length study of gender politics in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's fiction. Brendon Nicholls argues that mechanisms of gender subordination are strategically crucial to Ngugi's ideological project from his first novel to his most recent one. Nicholls describes the historical pressures that lead Ngugi to represent women as he does, and shows that the novels themselves are symptomatic of the cultural conditions that they address. Reading Ngugi's fiction in terms of its Gikuyu allusions and references, a gendered narrative of history emerges that creates transgressive spaces for women. Nicholls bases his discussion on moments during the Mau Mau rebellion when women's contributions to the anticolonial struggle could not be reduced to a patriarchal narrative of Kenyan history, and this interpretive maneuver permits a reading of Ngugi's fiction that accommodates female political and sexual agency. Nicholls contributes to postcolonial theory by proposing a methodology for reading cultural difference. This methodology critiques cultural practices like clitoridectomy in an ethical manner that seeks to avoid both cultural imperialism and cultural relativisim. His strategy of 'performative reading,' that is, making the conditions of one text (such as folklore, history, or translation) active in another (for example, fiction, literary narrative, or nationalism), makes possible an ethical reading of gender and of the conditions of reading in translation. |
Contents
A Topography of Woman | |
Clitoridectomy and Gikuyu Nationalism | |
The Landscape of Insurgency | |
Reading against the Grain of Wheat | |
Other editions - View all
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading Brendon Nicholls Limited preview - 2010 |
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading Dr Brendon Nicholls Limited preview - 2013 |
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading Brendon Nicholls Limited preview - 2016 |
Common terms and phrases
Abdulla African Literature agency argues Barnett and Karari Carol Sicherman child Christian circumcision debate clitoridectomy colonial construction critic critique Cross Crow Dedan Kimathi Devil discourse Donald Barnett Emergency Facing Mount Kenya father female characters female sexuality femininity forest Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak gender Gikonyo Gikuyu language Gikuyu nationalism Grain of Wheat ideological James Ngugi Jomo Kenyatta Kamiti Karari Karari Njama Karega Kenyan Kenyan history Kenyan women Kihika land landscape language literary male masculine Matigari Mau Mau Mau Mau insurgency Mau Mau prostitute Mau’s metaphor mother motherhood Mumbi Munira Mwihaki myth Nairobi narrative nationalist neocolonial Ngotho Ngugi wa Thiong’o Ngugi’s fiction Ngugi’s novel Njamba Nene Njoroge Njoroge’s Nyawira ogre oppression paternity patriarchal Petals of Blood political position postcolonial privileged prostitute reading Rebel relation representations reproductive resistance revolutionary River Secret Lives settler story struggle symbolic translation Trial of Dedan Waiyaki Wangari Wanja Wariinga Waruhiu Itote Weep Wizard