GLOBALISATION AND THE FORMATION OF LIMINAL CHARACTERS IN THE AFRICAN NOVEL

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.