Abstract:
Globalisation constitutes a time-space transformation of human societies. This
phenomenon, which affects cultural formations, has been depicted in African literature,
and especially the novel. Existing studies on globalisation in African literature have
focused on nostalgia, displacement, migration and disillusionment, with minimal attention
to changes in cultural orientations occasioned by global flows and processes. This study
was, therefore, designed to examine the representation of globalisation and its cultural
forms in selected African novels in order to establish how various elements that enhance
global interconnectedness contribute to a changing cultural perspective in Africa.
Homi Bhabha’s Postcolonial Theory and Arjun Appadurai’s concept of globalisation
served as framework. Interpretive design was used. Eight novels, two each from West
Africa (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go
(Ghana)), East Africa (Mukoma wa Ngugi’s Nairobi Heat (Nairobi) and Nuruddin Farah’s
Crossbones), Southern Africa (J.M. Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus (Childhood) and
NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names (New Names)), and North Africa (Assia
Djebar’s A Sister to Scheherazade (Scheherazade) and Jamal Mahjoub’s Travelling with
Djinns (Djinns)) were purposively selected based on their thematic concerns with cultural
subjectivity in global world and gender considerations. The texts were subjected to literary
analysis.
In the novels, characters’ inability to integrate into the centre or the periphery portrays the
irony inherent in the Otherness that subsists, even with the increasing interconnectedness
of people and places. The characters are suspended within a cultural limbo, thereby
creating a third space with several sociocultural interstices. The tension generated by the
clash between adherents of indigenous culture and the characters within liminal zones
sparks off the major conflicts that sustain the greater part of the plots of the novels.
Appadurai’s five major dimensions of cultural disjuncture in an increasingly globalised
world are variedly depicted in these novels. Various behavioural dispositions of Ifemelu,
Obinze and Olu in Americanah, Yasin and Leo in Djinns and Kweku Sai and his family in
Ghana reveals that the ‘mediascape’ (global media images) and ‘ethnoscape’ (cross border movement of people) stimulate in the characters a psychogenic affiliation with the
West. Afro-pessimistic imprints in Crossbones, New Names and Nairobi explore
‘technoscapes’ (global movement of technology), ‘finanscapes’ (cross-border movement
of capital) and ‘ideoscapes’ (global flow of ideologies) that inscribe Africa as a helpless
recipient in the global cultural flux. While Childhood uses a lost child, David, to allegorise
the liminal identity in a globalised world, Scheherazade projects feminist consciousness in
a patriarchal African society. While Americanah depicts cultural dislodgement in many
Nigerian families, Djinns concentrates on a single family lineage of Yasin. Also, Djinns
projects women as ambassadors of the indigenous culture, whereas Scheherazade
construes globalisation as an emancipatory phenomenon capable of reconstructing female
subjectivity.
Globalisation leverages inter-cultural flux to erode indigenous cultural values in Africa.
This impact, as inscribed in the selected novels, causes family disintegration, a rootless
sense of self, and new cultural orientations.