Childhood in contemporary nigerian fiction

122 There are several strands of argument connecting in this chapter the notion of space, place and time (literary chronotope); the idea of a diasporic consciousness on the part of the authors and the strategies of textualising childhood. The strands of argument converge at that set of ideas that constitutes the discourse of childhood. The discourse of childhood is therefore informed not only by the toponyms of actual spaces, places and times, but also a network of textual spaces, places and times found in the idea of intertextuality. In this way, contemporary Nigerian writers would seem to grapple with spaces, places and times of influence that derive from actual familial and literary genealogical heritages. These heritages are explored, as chapter two has done, by a sense of critical memory, which comes out of the dissatisfaction with orthodox colonial/postcolonial history. This dissatisfaction in turn leads to a quest for alternative times and histories, triggered by dislocations, displacements and migrations of authorial selves, which subsequently privilege going back to the formative stage of identity formation – that of childhood. Adult selves are textualised as products of a much richer and complex time of childhood in which myriads of worlds interconnect, taking advantage of the open consciousness of the childhood world. Stylistic strategies chosen to textualise childhood are informed by paratexts and epitexts that (reconstruct these various childhoods.
74
Therefore, the contemporary Nigerian writer, is as Graham Allen (2001:165) says existing as a split subject whose utterances are always double-voiced, their own and yet replete with an otherness which can associate with a socially oriented notion of intertextuality.” Thus, contemporary Nigerian fiction is characterised by an awareness of the tendency of African literature in general and Nigerian literature in particular to be driven by the idea of generations of writing (Adesanmi & Dunton, 2005; 2008; Cooper, b. As a postcolonial subject and migrant writer, the contemporary Nigerian writer is preceded by a literary history that constructs a genealogy of African literature within its I borrow the concepts of Gerard Gennete (b) to refer to elements at the threshold and outside of the text that come from things like interviews, prefaces and text covers. These extra-textual sources provide relational meaning to the text, informing it in a manner that multiplies meanings that might be derived from that given text.

123 repertoire of genres. But as writers of a contemporary time it is difficult to locate themselves within this literary history they have inherited and also grapple with the sociopolitical, economic and cultural fragmentation of their time. What is instructive for them is that they are products of adult regimes of authority, in both familial and literary heritages. Their adult selves are also products of a culturally and geographically mobile world, as migrants. How they approach writing, given the increasing complexity of histories and ideas is crucial in reflecting how they are to be informed by an existing tradition, and also how they seek to problematise it in order to deal with their contemporary context. Yet as writers of a contemporary time, they realise that due to their diasporic status, they have to traverse multiple cultural borders. The process of writing for them is not only double-voiced by virtue of their postcolonial subjecthood, but also because of the inherent need to distinguish their adult from their childhood selves.
75
Childhood is represented as, a potential, in the process of becoming an act of being. In this way, the novel for these writers is a space of stylistic experimentation, and childhood, which is a process of becoming, is connected in the practice of writing. Indeed
Bakhtin‟s notion of the novel as a genre of becoming allows us to see its experimental potential, which the text of childhood relies on. Writing about childhood brings this world into existence and blurs the boundaries between the textual and the actual childhood world. Contemporary Nigerian writers, in bringing the child into textual existence (his/her world, image and memories, find themselves reliving childhood, constructing its processual nature, portraying it as a distinct category, and in conversation with their contemporary adult lifestyles which are also in socio-cultural flux. The crucible, then of childhood is found at the disjuncture and conjuncture of time and space, which as this chapter will explore constructs sites of differentiation between adulthood and childhood. Moreover, the generic importance of the novel is realised in the Coopers (b) examination of metonymy and metaphor as defining the postcolonial migrant writers use of language is important for instance in understanding why the materiality of language, via metonymy, appeals to not only the migrant status of the authorial self but also as away to reach out to the concrete realities that define truths in the perception of childhood.

124 representation of chronotopes that are fragmented, through transcending its generic specificity because of its flexible planes of discourse.
76
A theory of textualising childhood in novelistic discourse entails an attempt at blurring the boundaries between the subject and object of childhood. Moreover, the writing process involves a transcendence of the coupling of object and subject, themes and styles, local and global, as well as between multiple genres. Besides, if seen as the combination of a particular time, place and space, represented childhood is a chronotope. Textualising childhood therefore might mean a reconstruction of childhood personae and roles by the authors. The distance between the adult authorial self and the childhood self being brought into textual existence is blurred, here influenced by contemporary conditions of existence by which adult (read authorial) selves have been transposed across cultural and geographical zones. Ina sense, childhood becomes, in view of a history of migration, its own system of signs It is imperative to give a word of caution here. To say that migrant adult authorial selves represent childhood experiences as only informed by their personal childhood, is not to propose an overriding autobiographical significance of meaning. The idea that authorial distance to the textual world of childhood is blurred goes along way to emphasise, as
Bakhtin (1981) quite elaborately does, that the novel as a genre has in our case transcended analytical, stylistic and thematic exclusivities. It is to emphasise its multi- generic form, for indeed its discourse is dialogically informed by paratexts, epitexts and multiple social speech types. In this way, the child protagonist inhabits a textual world – the novelistic word – that has along history of problematising the orthodox, which in the child protagonists case are the regimes of authority dictated by the adult world. The child protagonist, in whatever state, as a memory or image, then populates the texts that imagine and memorise him or her.
76
Bakhtin‟s (1981:83) literary historiography of the novelistic discourse expresses the point above more clearly by placing the prehistory of Novelistic Discourse as not to be contained within the narrow perimeters of a history confined to mere literary genres Hence Bakhtin begins to posit the idea of the novel as “multi-generic” but also implied in it is the idea of the novel as trans-generic.

125 Hence, childhood as an idea generating a figure, memory or an image of a particular time, place and space populates the text, bringing with it a tension-filled terrain. This terrain of the text or the “storyscape” (Viljoen & Van der Merwe, 2004) is interesting because of how it initiates a dialogic process within the production of meaning embedded in the multicultural worlds of childhood. As writers of a postcolonial time, and as migrant writers, the concepts of space and place present an important site of meaning in the representation of a child figure, image or memories. Real geographical or imaginary places, mental or psychological spaces either experienced in sustained or contingent times are characteristic of the multiple world of childhood. These are houses, homes, compounds, villages, countries and cities. While the textual landscape that defines these spaces and places works through imagination, the minimum unit of the word, which
Bakhtin (1981) and Kristeva (1980) call an “ideologeme,” is foregrounded to inhabit, cohere and dialogue, beyond representing the figurative, image and memorial world of childhood. The textscape of childhood in this sense blurs the theory and practice of representation. This chapter explores the textscape, using Bakhtin‟s idea of the literary chronotope. It examines Nsukka in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‟s Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow
Sun as topography of meaning, where the childhood identities of Kambili and Ugwu are mapped out and seen to intersect with those of the turbulent postcolonial military Nigerian state in Kambili‟s case, and the emergent Igbo and Nigerian nation-state in
Ugwu‟s case. In both cases, Nsukka stands out as a country of the mind (Tindall, 1991) on the part of Adichie, where nostalgia and trauma inform the landscapes with meanings that can be mapped out. The chapter then moves to the cityscape in Abani‟s Graceland, where the time, space and place of the city is presented as a chronotope which is created out of the intersection of dystopian material realities and a utopian cultural landscape of desires.

126

Download 1.93 Mb.

Share with your friends: