Childhood in contemporary nigerian fiction
The alternative Archive, History and Time in the Narrative of Childhood
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| 2.2 The alternative Archive, History and Time in the Narrative of Childhood In their introduction, Hamilton (et al., 2002) underscore the significance of “(re)figuring” the archive, by examining it as a site of contested knowledges. In theorising the word “refigure,” they advocate, within the South African post-apartheid context, a reconstruction of the content, form and pedagogy that the archive is discoursed. They underscore the different “record-keeping processes of literature, landscape, dance and art as forms that offer archival possibilities capable of releasing different kinds of information about the past (2002:10). In this sense then, they open up this discourse to what they call marginal archives that also constitute everyday activity of identity formation and maintenance by ordinary people (2002:11). This is important in their argument, and in the idea of an alternative archive and processing of history. While this argument is aware of the fact that the marginal or excluded is no less constructed, as is the mainstream, it is instructive in espousing the idea of an alternative, through not only the content and form of the archive, but also the processes of constructing it. Memory is an important part of this process. Memory as used in literature is a process, not only specific to narrative formations, but also as an entry point for narrative formations into the discourse of the archive. 49 Hence memory as it works in literature is specific to the way a discourse about the archive can be engaged. Yet memory within the representation of childhood provides an interesting examination of the idea of an alternative archive. This is because childhood in literature, works through imaginative use of memory, through a process of reconstruction and re- figuring. It works through what Ender calls emotional memory – a process of remembering that involves both voluntary and involuntary attempts at recollection. Ender examines the act of writing as one that reaches into the depths of forgotten memory, what she describes as beyond memory‟s ken (Writing about childhood allows for the birth of memory where long forgotten emotions bring forth new images through writings power to give shape to subliminal images (175). The process of writing about childhood therefore creates avast field of implicit and explicit memory, the Narrative formations is used hereto mean, ways in which constructions are made. For further details, seethe section Remembering the Forgotten The Power of Emotional Memory” 48 former being the unconscious, long forgotten involuntary memory, and the later, conscious and voluntary memory. This continuum, defines the ontology of autobiographical memory. In this sense the representation of memory, in childhood, is the terrain of an autobiographical archive that can reflect quite interestingly on the record- keeping processes of archives, their individual or collective subjectivities and ultimately, their constructed nature. While representing childhood can be seen as a “self-archiving” process, writers can be viewed as constructors of inimitable versions of history. James Ogude‟s (1999) examination of Ngugi‟s Concept of History for instance, argues for the reconstruction of history by Ngugi who brings into it subjects who had been silenced by colonial versions of history. Ania Loomba (2005) also makes this point in her examination of the role of literature in reconstructing history within the resistance tradition of postcolonial literature. Paul Hamilton (2003) also theorises this, in his examination of historicism and the aesthetics of representation. 51 Much earlier, Dominic LaCapra (1985) underscores the generic specificities of the novel as important in the idea of historiography, which is a critical methodology at the intersection of literature and history. Fiction deals with history through its own unique usage of memory. Therefore, fiction that deals with childhood engages with the autobiographical dimension of history. The childhood world, with its figures and images are perceived as micro-worlds in relation to adult regimes of authority that define it. Hence childhood worlds in this sense are marginalised ones, presumably diminutive in their contribution to time and history. Childhood in this study becomes a contested spatio-temporality, from where the process of reminiscence takes on a complex, autobiographical nature. In this way, it questions the chronological narrative of identity as well as the available archives that an adult self, in reminiscing the past, goes back to, to foster an organic sense of identity. Hence these contemporary childhoods have an alternative sense of memory, where childhood takes the centre stage, in consciousness, in chronology or lack of it, as an organising point of view. Childhood becomes therefore not a marginal, miniaturised and diminutive stage For further debate refer to Paul Hamilton‟s (2003) History and Historicism,” pp.6-17. 49 within the normative frameworks of memory and archive, but its own progenitor of time and history. The memory of childhood becomes a process that constructs alternative times) and histories and therefore, making the represented childhood an alternative archive, justifying its own existence and chronotopical logic in its perception of the world. The representation of childhood in contemporary Nigerian fiction is formed through a process of narrative memory, autobiographical experience, an awareness of the macro- history of the Nigerian nation state, as well as the disconcerting presence of a diasporic consciousness on the part of the authors. The result is an interesting idea of time and history, fostered by the protean form of the novel. Moreover, as Tim Woods and Peter Middleton (2000) argue, there is genre specificity to the way space, time, history and memory are dealt within the diverse genres in literature. Woods and Middleton use the term textual memory to make distinctions between the way memory works in the novel, the poem, in performance and in the dramatic text. Woods and Middleton privilege contemporary literature as a site that engages with history through memory. They posit that the advent of postmodernity has challenged the legitimacy of history as the only discipline that studies the past. 52 Middleton and Woods privilege literature as a site for the alternative construction of time and history – literature does not simply supplement the normative documents of history. These ideas become a foundation for Woods (2007) later study on how African pasts are explored in the narratives of memory and trauma in African literature. This study privileges colonialism as a foundation for his idea of the twin matrices of memory and trauma in African literature. Woods also makes a problematic assumption that African literatures are continually preoccupied with exploring modes of representation to work through its different traumatic colonial pasts (2007:1). In this assertion, The say Narrative, memory, performance and the production and circulation of texts are all implicated in the new spacetimes and history, therefore, takes many forms in contemporary literature, some of them far from obvious. We argue that some of the most original investigations of historicity are taking place in literary practices that are especially aware of the changing conditions of life in space and time, and yet do not advertise themselves as historical literatures” (2000:9) 50 memory, for Woods, is determined by the experience generated by the Western project of colonial occupation, making these African literary excursions into history, more or less supplements of the narrative set by the colonial project. In examining contemporary Nigerian literature, this assumption comes under challenge, because memory – in these works representation of childhood – shifts the focus from colonialism and collective subjectivities and identities, to micro-histories and how they ultimately affect our perceptions of collective subjectivities and identities. The discourse of memory in the representation of childhood in contemporary Nigerian fiction is therefore one of the pursuit of the alternative. The notion of the alternative, in contemporary Nigerian fiction is pursued through are- contextualisation of these childhoods. This is done in view of the spatio-temporal axes of the novel, with the author in the present time in diaspora. There is a shifting process that allows us an alternative approach to time and history in the contemporary Nigerian novel. Moreover, it points us to not only reconstructed ways of dealing with contemporary migrant and diasporic identities, but also to a renewed responsibility of the novel as an alternative archival site. The idea of an alternative time and history is explored through the memories of the everyday world of childhood seen as providing an alternative view of a world dominated by an adult framework of experience. In other words, childhood can, as Njabulo Ndebele‟s (1991) seminal essay posits, allow us to rediscover the ordinary through experiences of memory-places, laughter, cooking, eating, washing and the daily occurrences in a regimented and oft-monotonous livelihood. Landscape memory, flowers and the minutiae of home furniture, carry symbolic capital in defining the essence of childhood time and history and also reflecting on material culture in postcolonial migrant writing (Cooper, 2008b). 53 Hence memory-places, in this case houses in specific places as Nsukka in Adichie‟s fiction carry the symbolic importance of not only the place and time of growth, but also as substrates of history in a familial, ethnic and national genealogy. In this sense, The notion of material culture is used hereto refer to Physical manifestations of creative energy as dress, architecture, tools and cuisine (Manning, 2007:21). Cooper examines this notion of culture as part of what defines the postcolonial diasporic fiction of Adichie and her contemporaries. 51 childhood engages with the macro-identities of ethnicities and nations through the representation of memory, figures and images. It is interesting, especially when childhood as presented through Adichie‟s teenage protagonist Ugwu, is a commentary on the trope on the child of war. Moreover it also allows us an alternative experience of reading the war, through Ugwu‟s childhood/domestic worker perspective. Through this trope, we can also explore the idea of trauma and the role of memory and narrative in the process of expiation. The idea of alternative memory and archive is also examined in Chris Abani‟s Download 1.93 Mb. Share with your friends:
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