Cultural identity loss in Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s “Wedding at the Cross”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5433/1678-2054.2017v33p6Keywords:
Cultural identity, Identity crisis, Wariuki/Livingstone JrAbstract
Relying mainly on theories of identity developed by Hall and published in The questions of cultural identity (2006), and others, such as Eurídice Figueiredo (1998) and Bill Ashcroft (2001), in the given article we analyzed some aspects of the loss of cultural identity in the African postcolonial literature written in English. The corpus is the short-story “Wedding at the Cross” from the collection Secret lives and other stories, originally published in 1975 by Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o. The focus of the analysis is, specifically, the main character, Wariuki/Livingstone Jr., and how his fragmented identity reflects the hierarchical nature of the colonization process to which his people was submitted. Through the analysis of the narrative it may be shown how, based on the five overthrows discussed by Hall, the given character reveals to be a subject whose identity crisis seems to have been raised due to the binary system in which he was socially educated.References
ASHCROFT, Bill. et al. (org.). Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. London: Routledge, 2007.
FIGUEIREDO, Eurídice. Construção de Identidades Pós-Coloniais na Literatura Antilhana. Niterói: Eduff, 1998.
FIGUEIREDO, Eurídice e NORONHA, Jovita M.G. Identidade Nacional e Identidade Cultural. In FIGUEIREDO, Eurídice. (Org.). Conceitos de Literatura e Cultura. Niterói: EDUFF, 2010.
HOUAISS, Antônio. Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2004.
SOUZA, Lynn Mario Trindade Menezes de. O fragmento quântico: identidade e alteridade no sujeito pós-colonial. In Letras: Alteridade e heterogeneidade. Santa Maria: UFSM. Jan/Jun, 1997, p. 65-81.
THIONG’O, Ngugi. wa. Decolonizing the mind: the politics of language in African literature. London: Currey, 1986.
THIONG’O, Ngugi. wa. Wedding at the cross. In Secret lives and other stories. London: Heinemann Educational, 1975.
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