Childhood in contemporary nigerian fiction

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2.0 CHAPTER TWO
ALTERNATIVE TIMES) AND HISTORIES.

2.1 Introduction Representation of Childhood as an “architext of memory

Childhood in this study is a discourse, which involves the reconstruction of a time in the past. I use these term discourse in view of Michel Foucault‟s (1972) definition of it as a product of statements and propositions but which affect how the notion of archive is examined
Most significantly, Foucault points out that the notion of discourse in the novel can be examined as propositions of a dispersed authorial self. This act of dispersion occurs in time and space within the plotting of subjectivities in the novel. Taking Foucault‟s ideas in mind,
examining the representation of childhood is therefore through a set of ideas that shifts in time and space. This is because the present self that reconstructs this past is an adult one that seeks to remember a childhood one. In this chapter, childhood is examined in the context of a reconstruction of histories and times related to spatial locations of experience. The discourse of childhood shapes itself through the activity of representation, which constructs images and figures in the novel that are interpreted for the production of meaning. In representing childhood, the notion of memory is critical. In fact, as Evelyn Ender (2005) has argued, representation of memory is the act of constructing an “architext”. This notion of an “architext” refers to writers as masters of mnemonic devices because they give shape to memory and recollection. This chapter uses Enders idea of an architext to foreground memory‟s complex and influential role in the narrative of childhood. In contemporary Nigerian fiction, childhood is represented through child protagonists or figures at a particular time and place, and also through the images of childhood in the memory of adult protagonists. Memory is therefore an important process in construction of the self. Memory reflects on history by bringing it to the present. Memory entails an intentional selection of images from the past, and also a selective reconstruction of those images. Memories are amorphous, and through the works of fiction are given language and narrative shape. Therefore, Nicola King (2000:13-14) argues, memories are

44 interpreted and translated from the form of subliminal images of the past into the present form of the text. Memories therefore acquire an ordered narrative status that is not necessarily bound by chronology – this is how memory relates to representation of the fragmented subjects of contemporary Nigerian fiction. The child figures and images represented in the fiction studied here are informed for instance by traumatic conditions, making the contexts in which they are presented to us as fragmented, creating similar forms of subjective consciousness. This chapter will aim to firstly establish how childhood experiences of time and history are different from those of adulthood, because of how childhood is constructed in the context of the ordinary, the mundane or everyday slices of life. Secondly, the chapter aims to establish what an alternative experience of time and history means in the context of the everydayness of childhood memories. These memories provide childhood with narratives that compete, contest and create composite memories, histories and times. The narratives are defined by the subjective and inimitable personal archives of the authors. Thirdly, the chapter explores how these narrative memories are defined by the nostalgia, trauma and popular experiences in the daily life of childhood. The represented childhood therefore re-contextualises trauma, nostalgia and popular memories within its everyday world. This re-contextualisation seems to be a signal to an alternative archive of experience defined by childhood and is therefore in consonance with the conclusion I make in this chapter that childhood creates the space for an alternative time and history. The chapter therefore sets out to examine these three aims through the texts of
Chimamanda Adichie‟s Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun and Chris Abani‟s

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