Childhood in contemporary nigerian fiction
Dialogic Childhoods Chronotopicity in Purple Hibiscus and Half of
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| 3.2 Dialogic Childhoods Chronotopicity in Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun 3.2.1 childhood and the literary chronotope In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. This intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope. 77 The epigraph above explains Bakhtin‟s idea of the chronotope as a formal structure for novelistic discourse on time and space. Referring to it as a formally constitutive category he underscores the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships in literature (1981:84) as informing the concept of the chronotope. The landscape of meaning in the novel is informed by this intersection of axes. The idea of intersection of axes, later reflected in Kristeva‟s (1980) ideas about paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes of the text is important as not only a formal point of entry into the novel but also as informing plot and history. Meaning is therefore constructed at the intersection of the axes of space and time in the novel. Space and time are constituted in the novel by plot, history and actual or imaginary places which become toponyms of meaning for interpretation. In this case the representation of childhood invests in the foregrounding of spaces, places and times of growth, making the discourse of childhood in the novels here a literary chronotope. In fact, childhood has historically been represented as a utopia of time (Heath, in the romantic age, and as a site of cultural retrieval in postcolonial discourse (King, 77 Bakhtin MM (1981) Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel p. 84 127 1980; Abanime, 1998). In this way, it was seen as a distinct authorial presence. Contemporary representations of childhood in this study present it as influencing the process of negotiating adult authorial identities. The time of childhood is portrayed as entwined with space and place. Childhood becomes a palimpsest from which layers of meaning are inscribed and re-inscribed as we will see in this chapter. Childhood is represented by figures occupying spaces and places, memories reflecting times of childhood or images inscribed in specific places or spaces and specific times. Hence, childhood is constructed through a sense of “chronotopicity”. 79 Chronotopicity is not just a formative structure of the novel as a genre, but a technique that blurs authorial distance with the subject matter of childhood. This is because, the diasporic space and consciousness in which contemporary Nigerian works have been crafted, plays an influential role in amplifying chronotopicity as relevant in the production of meaning. Chronotopicity is therefore reified through the notions of cartography and place- attachment in fiction. The represented world of the child, images or memories of it, are therefore mostly constructed around houses, which are divided into kitchens, living rooms, gardens, compounds, all of which carry sensibilities and nostalgia (in the case of memories. But at the same time, navigation around these material spaces is mediated by adult regimes of authority. Hence such spaces also find important meaning through their identification with specific people like mothers, fathers, brothers and extended family members. At the same time there is also the concentric structure of place and spatial cognition that stretches into increasingly public spaces like markets, streets or the University of Nsukka in Adichie‟s works, in which the idea of the self in relation to family and community is constructed. If stretched further, the concentric nature of space, which Achebe observes, in his conversation on identity with Nuruddin Farah (1986), also finds meaning in broad Stephen Heath (2003) Childhood Times pp.16-27. 79 Deriving from the term chronotope, chronotopicity is used hereto signal to the processing of space and time within the landscape of meaning in the novel. 128 cartographical terms that begin to refer to locations as places, moving further away from the cognitive purview of the world of childhood. 80 In examining the idea of place as part of what he calls postcolonial transformation Ashcroft (2001) discusses the tensions that abound in postcolonial experience, in reordering and remapping place, which he examines as the most resistant concept in the process of transformation and decolonisation. He discusses the history of cartography as overdetermined by the Western idea of the ocular and therefore as a perspective that is Eurocentric and therefore problematic if applied in postcolonial imagination and experience. Postcolonial imagination continues to grapple with decolonisation itself from Western concepts of space and time, which Ashcroft says come with a powerful ideological discourse of control. Hence, to textualise childhood within a diasporic space is not only burdened with a problematic historico-ideological sense of place but also with the complexities of a process of self-identification that should transcend specifics of place and space in a manner that portrays the cumulative experiences of migration. Representation of childhood here is therefore a highly charged textual activity that is influenced by the intersections of axes – of chronotopicity, of meanings, of worlds and of cultures, it is dialogic. The discourse of the novel (Bakhtin, 1981) therefore provides a propitious and useful plane of expression, in which childhood can be examined. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‟s texts demonstrate a loyalty to place – in particular, Nsukka. Nsukka features prominently in her two novels. The protagonists in both novels who live in Nsukka are different. But Nsukka transcends the formalistic elements of a chronotope in the narrative. It becomes not just a metaphor but also a metonym, reified to embody childhood figures, images and memories. Nsukka is a toponym that signifies Adichie‟s genealogy, for she actually grew up there, having been brought up by parents working at University of Nigeria Nsukka. Place-attachment in Adichie‟s fiction reflects what Tindall (1991) refers to as countries of the mind which writers occupy. Tindall In this film recording, Chinua Achebe and Nuruddin Farah were speaking at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London, England) 129 explains these countries of the mind as more than just settings. The importance of these places is found in metaphoric forms which are crucial to the production of meaning. As Tindall (1991:9) says I am concerned with literary uses to which places are put, the meanings they are made to bear, the roles they play when they are recreated in fiction, the psychological journeys for Download 1.93 Mb. Share with your friends:
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