Childhood in contemporary nigerian fiction
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| zeitgeist, 7 but are also offering alternative perspectives of identity, through their experiences as literary and literal children of the postcolony”. Mediated by their imagination of childhood, these writers confront their condition of diaspora, the challenges of a multicultural and transcultural childhood experience, and how it related to what they found as prescribed modes of behaviour and thinking. Childhood, as it is portrayed in their works, presents a discursive field of memories, times, places, spaces, heritages, legacies, traditions and genealogies that are motifs of evolving contemporary experiences and constructions of identities. Thus, these elements form the core set of ideas in the discourse of the represented childhoods) used in this study. In her short fiction like You in America My mother the Crazy African and The Grief of Strangers Adichie for instance creates characters of Nigerian descent in America who are grappling with problems of cultural adaptation in romantic relationships. 7 Zeitgeist, a word whose etymology is German in origin means, spirit of the times”. 7 While the concept of childhood is not new in African literature, it has evolved through time, becoming an instructive thematic concern that generates newer ways of examining the changing forms of identity and ways of identification. In examining why the narrative of childhood appeals to these writers, we can hypothetically say that firstly, the time of childhood is endowed with the potential to experiment with a constantly shifting and fluid sense of identity. Secondly, childhood, a terrain of open consciousness but which has in fact been the burden of cultural transition, is now a significant marker of the consciousness of postcoloniality and postmodernity in the wake of diasporic contexts. 8 Thirdly, childhood is a terrain of contemporary identity formation which complicates other normative categories of the analysis of identity like gender, race and class among others. In light of these hypothetical ideational strands, the study aims to explore a range of things. Firstly, it seeks to examine childhood as an alternative experience of time through its memory and therefore the source of an alternative history and archive. More specifically, childhood will be seen as presenting alternative perspectives from the memory of everyday living that are equally complex and significant in influencing and problematising normative frameworks of collective identities (ethnic, nation and nation- states for instance. These memories are also an untapped archive from which is found untold stories, nostalgia and trauma that help in understanding forms of diasporic identities and the anxieties of their constant mutation. Secondly, this study seeks to look at childhood as a site for dialogue. The diasporic and mobile world of the child makes it traverse different spaces and places, hence encountering multiple cultural worlds which it constantly negotiates within the process of growth. This constant process of negotiation is a form of dialogue with already created regimes of authority and of life by the adult world. Growth is therefore a process interaction with multiple worlds, cultures and epistemes for the child to grow into, while affecting the construction of its own world. Moreover, the idea of dialogue is central to childhood because the articulation of identity is found in the process of dialogue. 9 Spaces, I engage with definitions of these terms in the section Theorising Childhood.” 9 Charles Taylor‟s (1992:25-74) seminal essay The Politics of recognition deals with the idea of dialogue as central to formation of identities. It is picked up by Appiah (1992: 149-164; 2005: 1-36) and also by Watson (2000) as influencing the study of identity and multiculturalism. 8 places and times that influence the narrative of childhood, will be seen as chronotopes of meaning in the immanent dialogic structure of the novel. The notion of dialogue, which essentially signals to negotiation and conversation in the process of identity formation, is also contextualised in Bakhtin‟s (1981) ideas about the dialogic structure of the novel. Thirdly, this study sets out to examine the micro-relationships which define the world of childhood as overdetermined by the discourse of the father, 10 in relation to sons and daughters. This discourse (of the father, which would seem synonymous to history and genealogy is reexamined through the dyadic and micro-relationships of fathers and daughters and fathers and sons. The problematisation of this paternal framework of genealogy is found in how sons and daughters seek agency, in their differently gendered roles and expectations in an arborescent familial lineage. The dialectic nature of these dyadic relationships allows for the foregrounding of the process of dialogue, growth, negotiation and of understanding for the child. It is through these works that the process of constructing orthodox understandings of genealogies based on gender will be explored. Moreover, while the notion of genealogy is used in this study as grounds in which to engage in the formation of childhood identity – in reference to family histories and lineages, it also signals to these writers awareness of influence from forefathers and foremothers in the familial genealogy of African literature. Fourthly, in light of an alternative history provided by the world of childhood, this study aims to look at childhood as a transcultural theme embodied the idea of diasporic identities. The study realises that the world of the child interacts and is woven together by multiple worlds, heritages and legacies. Through the contexts of trans/multiculturality and the idea of childhood as a process, the notion of postmodern identities is highlighted, especially in the context of diasporic experience, which as differentiated from the first three aims mentioned is complicated by being more than just a consciousness. Discourse of the father refers to the image of the father in literary representation and the debates that have arisen, including that of patriarchy. 9 Childhood in these works seems to create portraits of a zeitgeist, which the next section seeks to map out in relation to the selected works for this study. Download 1.93 Mb. Share with your friends:
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