APPUNTI LEZIONI.

05.03.2015
Transition from the moment of liberation to the moment of independence plot
Use of the language and the code of the colonizer to fight against the colonizer
> the great code
The Bible is quoted explicitly in the novel, the epic tone of the Bible > deliver a
message of freedom from the West. Europe and GB thought that they could use
the Bible to gain the approbation of Africans, but they used it against the
British.
Pp12. explicit inter textual quotation from the Bible (Book of Exodus). Political
narrative for a very long time. The famous motto let my people go also
became a great slogan of African-American slaves. The leaders of Kenyan
movement of independence - as long as you have to gain freedom you follow
your leaders, people united to follow independence aim, but after people exit
Egypt they become internal divided, they build a new idol the great narrative
in independence. INDEPENDENCE is not good as promises. Assure a new world
and a better society, but the reality is far less fulfilling that expectation. Some
people gained a lot from independence, everybody acquired the same rights
CITIZENS but the novel seem to be asking what happened to people who
were in troubles? To British?
Different answers, it depends on the colony.
Kihika (hero) fighter arrested, tortured and killed
Mugo (antihero) someone who was involved directly in the fighting, but who is
not going to celebrate.
GENDER (man vs woman in colonial and post-colonial) most women in
colonial scenery were suborned, they are not only taking a specific active role,
but a symbolic role. The white women are represented under treat, vulnerable
creature that men have to protect from wild instinct of Africans. Need of the
colonizer to present his action as an action of defense. White woman as a
victim, and African woman as a temptress, the woman who might seduce the
white man. African woman with charming sexuality (ecstasy exit from
yourself, savage woman). Constant figure of desire, temptation for white man,
great danger of the black man. The woman is also a fighter.
Wambui woman fighter (ch.3) this woman has aged quickly because of the
harsh conditions of fighting.
Use of a traditional dress to participate actively to anti-colonial fight. Woman
active fighter.
War of liberation is made of action and mythology. Decolonize the mind!
Replace the white mythology with the new mythology Kihika.
Introduce the character with some curiosities, flashback.
Pp14 some tribes become important in independence, other were exploited
by British.
Jealousy Maybe Mugo would like to be a leader.
Guilt.
the thing thats eating you is inside your clothes if you have enemies is

someone whose close to you kikulacho kimo nguoni mwako

Terror of the white man Kihika graphic description of him impaled. Mythical
narrative public narrative of the hero and private view of the hero form the
point of view of a friend. Mugo gives a speech in honor of the fallen martyr.
Accusation of betrayal.
Mugo passive character, constantly paralyzed.
Freedom fighters violent actions against white. Mau mau terrify not just
actively fight the soldiers. They also wanted to create terror in the society of
colonizers. Mau mau fighter were not honored.
Ritual keep people together, kind a new ritual for everybody. National
anthems, flags colonial import.
God in the anthem: which God?
Transition the colony into the nation, the new party is the incarnation of the
movement.
Fig Tree kikuyu symbol. British cut down a lot of sacred trees for plantations of
tea and coffee. The land was cut to made space for tea plantations.
Every character in the book is connected with his memories recollection,
remember, all people are remembering. Memory becomes something to share.
Pestering (something irritating)
National narrative + countless individual narratives.
Ch. 4 white men point of view colonizer. Colonizers are different people with
different roles and personalities.
Knowledge is power know the signs. To build a colony you have to know the
signs. Agriculture officers.

12.03.2015
THE ROLE OF THE COLONIZER
Postcolonial perspective tells us that in the colonial relations we should not only
focus on the victim, colonial context.
We can not crystallize the role of the colonizer and the role of the colonize in
stereotypes. Many positions and mentalities that are shared by members of
white community and the natives of the nation. Paradoxical statement. One is
that the colonial setting is divided by the color of the skin. On the other hand,
there are countless positions.
Local population different privileges by colonial authorities and take
advantages of that.
Karanja native that takes advantages that white people give him.
People doing scientific researches not bad people, but the point is that the
system has created a situation of inequality. Passage to India Foster they
really respect each other but the point is that the system makes it impossible.
Limits. The colonial system is based on inequality.
Science always thought as a neutral ground. Science in the colonial space is

always attached to power, you cant have a black director. The white man has
to remain in charge. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. Politics happens in every situation
where power is given to some people and not to some other. In the colonial
space what is always missing is a relation of equality. A white person can be
friend with a black person, but at the end of the day, there are two separates
worlds.
British are losing their power.
Ngugi he wants to show the emotional life of all the people involved. Psycho
analytical term all people are alienated. Have a Disconnect between the
world where you live and your psychic life. How colonial relations breaks the
economy of the village and create the karanja who works in the house and he
try to get friendly with white.
Pp34.
The African men is always seen as a children. Civilization is white, we are adult
in civilization. Man has to reinforce his masculinity in relationships with women.
Sadistic use of power by white man.
Pp37 - 38.
The representation of the black man. In the western tradition the black man is
never represented like normal, he Is de-sexualized. The new political situation
creates a new psychological way of feeling things.
Uncomfortable situation, he wants to escape. On one hand he feel completely
embarrassed, on the other hand having coffee with the woman makes him feel
better than the others.
In colonial situation race is the first divide.
Black man not happy at all after the change of regime. Karanja has gained
some privileges by the colonial situation and he doesnt want to lose them.
Literature is guilty. White are like adult that stop childrens fights.
Mimic men colonized who adopt the dress, speech and intellectual power of
white people. Elites of colonial societies that live like English. If your skin color
is not the right skin color, you cant be English. Race is what will keep us
forever apart.
Apology for a great democratic nation that goes beyond the state. Transform
the British empire in one nation. Educate everybody (Thompson) moral
rehabilitation.
SPACES
Kenya: world has been changed in ways that are not reversible. European form
exported. Post-colonial is understanding that the world had a profound affect
from colonizers. The 1st intervention is dividing and naming spaces, turning
spaces into places. Linked to economic and public relations.

02.04.2015
Stereotipe History begins with Europe. Division of space, drawing of lines,
destablishing of propriety by white man, take the land, cut trees to make space

for plantations.
Black people try to gain some privilege from white people. Spectrum of
position.
South Kenya, higher territory, less hot, everything were built around there. The
train in the novel is not just a memory, it i salso something else. The character
with the train, he hang out on the plat. The colonial intervention change habits.
Train become the great attraction, place where things happen.
Place to socialize (square, church )
Ngughi showing things as they are, young Kenyan people going to train station.
Iconic work (carpenter).
1. He traditional culture of kikuyu artisans > no alienation
2. Heavy industrialization brought by British.
Ch. 7 flashback time before the emergency proclaimed by British . political
awakening and rising of iconic love and sentimental life.
Pp72: British destroy a way of life.
Pp75:
-thoughts and feelings of a young woman.
Pp101. Gikoyo get arrested. section about detention.

09.04.2015
Pp123
Renaming colonization started with naming, renaming is an act of
decolonization. Renaming can have a powerful liberation effect. Forget the
past, if you forget the past chances are that youre going to repeat the past.
Mugo betray kihika, but the others shut.
Villagers using Christian imaginary exodus to vision their own freedom
parody for enslaved people.
Consciousness of dependency

23.04.2015
THE TRUE STORY-BILLY KAHORA
Portrait of Kenya of the last 20 years. No fictional narrative.
Implied READER protagonist of the story, someone who reads novels.
Book that provides a lot of linguistic challenges, long segments of text in
Kiswahili. Some translations on summary, some left unexplained.
Give a realistic portrait of Kenya.
Reflecting on a destiny of a group of people.
At least major location Maasailand, Holokulto (remote area where Munyakei
goes), Nairobi (center of his professional life), Mombasa (place of his wife).
Life of internal migration, different locations far from each others, totally

different worlds. The book gives the connectedness between different areas but
also the cultural separation, the most extraordinary difference and factor,
ethnic identity seems to play no role at all.
No relation between colonized and colonizer.
Ethnic identity individual who lives both comfortably and uncomfortably with
different identities.
Perform an identity express the identity in different moment.
David Munyakei Masai Kikuyu family (Christian) different selves that coexist
in David Munyakei, different identities that express themselves in different
situations.
Masai habits he doesnt feel complete with his Masai side.
Munyakei doesnt change is honesty, moral gratitude.
At the end of the book we find out that David Munyakei has basically no money.
Disillusionment.
2nd president of Kenya: Daniel Arab Moi
Muai Kibaki (2nd part) 3rd president.
Point of view of 2000, reflecting on the years of Moi.

14.05.2015
Humanitarian Aim
Nairobi is an affluent city. There is a whole community that works for other
nations (like USA).
Pure journalism/essay. The essay begins by giving anecdotes of hurt.
Is the AID INDUSTRY serving other people needs or serving itself?
Does development mean that we are all inspiring to the same standard of life?
Cultural colonialism.
Kenyan people don't want to be represented anymore from Europeans, they
want to represent themselves. So first of all they don't want to be politically
represented by a different country, they don't want to be a colony or a subject
state, they just want to be independent. Secondly they want to find their own
identity, as a nation, they want to speak for themselves.
African people don't want non-African people to tell them what they mean.
They want to be able to tell what they are. Listen directly to voices of Kenyan
journalism, voices of Africans, a culture where there is a lot Africa, when we
hear speaking about Africa by medias, we are not hearing Africa told from
Africans, but a fantasy, it's an Africa that fulfills our needs, an Africa that is
about our own projection of reality.
The author invite us to see Africa critically.
The author is Kenyan, but his background is Indian. Which means that he
belongs to a substantial community from India. This community is very self
containing clothes, speaks English with Indian accent, they have been in Kenya
for over a hundred years, so they are Kenyan. Mosaic of Kenyan society. This

woman speaks about herself.

The development myth another stereotype.

Literature cognitive mapping of the world, direct access to the way people
think and speak
- window/light: if you really want to understand a place, reading a book is more
important than seeing the place, because seeing the place is just to confirm
stereotypes.
Europe knows Africa by descriptions of travelers representation describes the
world.
Africa is divided in European colonies and Africans were not asked. Post colonial
studies is a subject that want to listen to the voices of Africans.
How we write about Africa - Binyawanga Wainaina
Short Essay published in 2005 for Granta. It's a satiric essay who wants to shoe
the main stereotypes about Africa accumulated during years. Africa has a skin,
we all have prejudices, we have some keys to interpret other cultures.
There are some words that characterize Africa:
- ethnic words (exotic: mystery/adventure)
- connection with nature escapism
- rhythm in blood (drums)
- timeless primordial tribes

The True Story of David Munyakei by Billy Kahora.

Arguments over corruption, political dissent and ethnic tensions are all part of
life in contemporary Kenya but this is the strength of the country literature.
Billy Kahora studied Journalism in Rhodes University in South Africa. He
discovered creative non-fiction in his final year and it opened up to him all sorts
of new possibilities. He sent a story to Kwani? In 2003 and the found editor
Binyawanga liked it. Kahora felt that Kenyan language had taken a significant
shift, mass reality seemed to bend English, Swahili and out other African
languages. He argued that different forms of creative non-fiction could serve to
Africans in the formalizing and telling their oral, informal and common stories.
At the time the Munyakei story had just emerged through the Bosire
Commission. A friend of Binyawanga and Kwani? was doing a documentary,
and so he set out to tell his story in print with all the new access to which Judy
was privy.
The book offers two critical points of Kenya's history:
> Goldenberg scandal of 1992
> 2007-08 post-election crisis.
One key role of creative non fiction is to open up key aspects of Kenyan and
regional history in creative and accessible ways for as many people as possible.
Without creative non-fiction these issues remain ephemeral media sound bites
or academic papers, accessible only to educated and professional classes.
David Sedera Munyakei:
a Central Bank of Kenya clerk and eventually Kenya's biggest whistle-blower
that helped to save Kenyan economy from collapse. He found himself in the
center of a web corruption.
Book summary:
PART 1
- David Munyakei in 1994 moves from Nairoby to Mombasa [when David
stepped down from the bus onto the soil of Mombasa, he was making a step of
faith.]
- Mombasa in early 1994 is a great place for a young man to make a start
show what he was made of.
- President Moi and the ruling party Kanu had been re-elected two years before
and there was a renewed sense of confidence in the rampant corruption going
on everywhere in the country.
- backstreet exchange economy
- he got a work and after a month he moved with his new friend. - friendship:
two men forced together in a foreign enviroment.
- Janet: goes to Mombasa to meet him. She stayed to one of her cousins. There
there was a shop owned by Mariam sister. Mariam is 14 and when she become

16 she will be David's wife. He became a Muslim for convenience.

- Bajun population: mixture of Bantu, Somali and Arabs they are a distinct
cultural group. They speak Tikuu. They social structure has been influenced by
Arabs and their activities are connected with the sea.
- he has to go back to the place where he comes from. Part of him realized that
the Masai nation was the only place he could go back to and regroup. He was
lucky that he had a nation to fall back on. Many young man in Kenya's urban
areas did not have a tribal framework to support them after the effects of the
gradual collapse of Moi state.
PART 2
- Late 1998 David arrived with his family in Olokurto
- Like most Kikuyus or people of mixed ethnicity who have lived in Masaailand
and intermarried and acquired some Masai customs, could not escape the
feeling of otherness.
Masai who have left their homelands and gone to the city and received a
formal education integrating them into modern Kenya also shun the old ways.
Masai way of life is very accomodatic of those who take to it without
reservation. The Masai have always had a parallel system of government to the
colonial and post-colonial administrators.
Masai self awareness and sense of belonging to a tangible nation has been
present since the earliest historical accounts of the Masai.
- The 1980-90 saw the growth of tribalism in Kenya. Many Kenyans fell back on
tribal ways to redefine themselves in a Kenya where the nation state had
suffered a tremendous attrition. Once Kenyatta was in power, the lines
between these nations became blurred with that of the emerging state of
Kenya
- David Munyakei is also a Masai: he born in Maasailand and speaks Masai.
- 2002 president Kibaki Munyakei goes back to Nairoby to introduce himself
to Goldenberg Commission.
PART 3
- Flashback in Munyakei's life: he wanted to study and become a pilot, but he
realized that he was lucky to get that job in Central Bank of Kenya. The boy's
dreams had been replaced by the man's need to survive in the real world
- he discovered that something was going wrong in the Department he worked
for, then exposing it and being arrested.
PART 4: TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL, GOLDENBERG COMMISSION AND
HOW CBK AND THE GOVERNMENT VOMITED ON MUNYAKEI'S SHOES.
- David Munyakei's life changed after testifying.
- in January 2004 the government offered David an accounts clerk position at
the Office of the President.
PART 6: LET US NOW PRAISE A HREO, LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT.
- Everyman hero: had lived destitute, friendless, unprotected by the country he
helped save. No hero is mortal until he dies. Munyakei in death had once again
become a human and we wrung our hands because we had done nothing for
him.
- One of last time Kahora met Munyakei, was going with him and Binyawanga
to solve a problem for a newspaper. They met Wambui he and Munyakei were
working together for some weeks.

- Munyakei had never forgotten how to be Kenyan and schizophrenic.

-The Kenyan of 1992 and the Kenyan of 2005 were two different entities:
Munyakei was just hustling, like the rest of society. Maybe a hero wasn't
allowed to hustle. Kenyan preoccupation with getting paid had been rushed
into being by Goldenberg itself. By almost destroying the Kenyan economy,
Goldenberg had ushered in the age of the Kenyan hustle. And just like Kenya,
Munyakei had changed: he had adapted.
When everyone said they were doing their job, all he saw was that they were
getting something and he wasn't. And that started on that day in 1992.
His helpers wanted a hero and he wanted few thousand shillings.
- he finally get employed with the Office of the President. Then he contracted
an infection and he died in 2006.

A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o.

The author.
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the
University of California. He was born in Kenya in 1938 into a large peasant
family. He studied in Makerere University College in Uganda and University of
Leeds in Britain.
The Kenya of his birth and youth was a British settler colony (1895-1963). He
lives through the Mau Mau War of Independence (1952-1962), the central
historical episode in the making of modern Kenya and a major theme in his
early works.
In 1967 Ngugi become lecturer in English Literature at the University of Nairobi
and in this period was also at the center of the politics of English departments
in Africa.
The year 1977 forced dramatic turns in Ngugi's life and career. His first novel

Petals of Blood was published. The novel painted a harsh and unsparing
picture of life in neo-colonial Kenya. Ngugi was imprisoned.
After Amnesty International named him a Prisoner of Conscience, an
international campaign secured his released a year later. However the Moi
Dictatorship barred him from jobs at colleges and universities in the country. He
continued to be a uncomfortable voice for Moi dictatorship.
When he was in Britain, he learned about the Moi regime's plot to eliminate him
on his return and this forced him into exile in Britain and then in US.
In exile, Ngugi worked with the London based Committee for the Release of
Political Prisoners in Kenya (1982-1998) which championed the cause of
democratic and human rights in Kenya.
Paralleling his academic and literary life has been his role in the production of
literature, providing as an editor, a platform for other people's voices.
A Grain Of Wheat
His critical and political writing has focused ever more sharply on issues of
culture and language. A grain of Wheat came at a crucial moment in the
radicalization on Ngugi thinking, most dramatically evident here in the way
writing moves from the single-character focus of the earlier novels to the social
epic mode of later ones.
The present time of the book is the four days leading up to Kenya's
independence from British colonial rule in December 1963, although the
unconfessed events which are the drama of the narrative mostly took place
during the Emergency in the 1950s. The Emergency was declared in 1952 to
suppress the Mau Mau, an armed rebellion against European settlements in the
highlands of Kenya European settlement in the central highlands, later to be
called the White Highlands to describe the racial dimension of settler activity.
In The Grain of Wheat the Emergency has been over for seven years, the
rebellion triumphant despite its military defeat, and independence is just days
away. But for the rural Gikuyu community of Thabai, the time or rejoicing and
optimism is also edged with suppressed anxieties and guilt, the people are
troubled by what it means to be free.
The framing voice is a third person narrator, who at times speaks with a clear
political awareness of the context of Kenya's colonial history, and at other
times slides quietly into the inclusiveness of the oral story-teller speaking to
listeners who are familiar with the main events of the tale.
Yet all the main figures tell their own stories in confessional encounters and
interior monologues, stories which intersects and challenge each other. The
narrative frequently slips in and out present-time and between narrating
voices, creating some instability about what is known and what it means to
know.
Mugo: to Thabai he is a hero, a long suffering victim of colonial violence. He
had been arrested during the Emergency or intervening to stop a policemen
from beating up a woman who had refused him sex. In detention he has been
obsessively tortured and harassed by the District Officer John Thompson. On
his release form detention after Emergency, he had come back, built himself a
hut and farmed the piece of land leased to him. To this community Mugo is a
hermit: a holy, quiet, self-sufficient, moral man.
Political narrative: it is political in its desire to show the development of an
awareness of a history of oppression. When the rebellion comes the individual

dramas become more prominent ad the narrative progress.

Moral narrative: through the guilt they suffer, they arrive at a point of
understanding and self-knowledge , and so in the end the novel offers a
possibility of regeneration.
Plot Overview.
A Grain of wheat takes place in Kenya on the brink of its UHURU in December
1963. Over a period of four days leading up to independence, the people of the
village of Thabai ready themselves for the celebration of freedom. However,
the troubling events of a not-too-distant past continue to affect the book's
characters.
Many of the Kikuyu people were somehow affected by the Mau uprising and as
a response to this uprising, the British government declared a state of
emergency, during which time any of the people in Thabai could be forcibly
detained, imprisoned and tortured ad a suspected conspirators.
The narrations slips into a first person plural we as the of the village is heard
when recalling important events. The novel shifts also from the present-time to
the past and back again, allowing characters to reveal their experiences and
innermost thoughts.
Much of the present-time narrative revolves around various people of Thabai
trying to convince Mugo, a quiet man regarded as a hero for his actions during
the Emergency, to speak at the Uhuru celebration.
While the native Kenyans are preparing for their independence, the British
administrators are preparing to leave Kenya once the government has been
transferred to black power, John Thompson is depressed at the thought of
British abandoning their progress.
CHAPTER 1-3
The present day setting (Kenya on the brink of independence from the British)
and events of the not-too-distant past which weigh heavily on the minds of all
the characters.
Mugo is the central character, reluctant to play any part in the new Kenya and
would clearly prefer to be left alone. He is holding on to a dark secret from his
past.
An explanation of The Movement reveals the struggle of Kenyan people for
their autonomy in the face of colonizing forces.
CHAPTER4-5
These chapters focuses on the consequences of the end of British power for the
colonizers. John Thompson is considering all the progress that has been made
in Kenya under his administration.
These chapters reveals two Kenyas one belonging to Kikuyu people, rich in
tradition and history and misery from their oppression during colonization, and
the other a land of white administrators with their ideas about treating natives,
based on racism.
CHAPTER 6-8
Ironically, Mugo, who desires nothing but to be alone and left to his own
thoughts, has become a sounding board for the problems of his fellow villagers.
Gikonyo reveals his own history. The story of Gikonyo and Mumbi stands in

contrast to the relationship between John and Margery Thompson: when her
lover dies, she feels only regret at having to return to a state of boredom
Moreover John Thompson seems to be unaware of his wife adultery, while
Gikonyo cannot forgive Mumbi's unfaithfulness.
History of Gikonyo experience in detention: he feels that the actions of a
spineless man who was more concerned with a woman's love than with his
duties to his country.
CHAPTER 9-11
Neither Gikonyo nor Mumbi can appreciate hat the other suffered during the
time of Emergency. Mumbi is alarmed to learn that Karanja is the person who
betrayed her brother Kihika. General R believes in Karanja guilt and intends to
have him publicly exposed at the uhuru celebration. Karanja is suspected
because he has dedicated most of the last years working for the white man and
he will lose all status when British leave.
Thompson still remains convinced that the people of Africa need the
europeans.
CHAPTER 12-13
In his conversation with Mumbi, Mugo reveals that he is no hero; any heroic
action on his behalf were done simply as isolated incidents for other human
beings, not for the sake of the Movement. Mugo is also revealed as a lonely
man. His lack of involvement in the Movement can be traced to his lack of roots
and connections within the community.
CHAPTER 14
Kenya gained independence 12/12/1963. The British flag was lowered and the
new flag of Kenya was fliying.
Gikonyo in the final scene seems to be a changed man, willing to accept Mumbi
despite her infidelty.
Once he has put his past aside he can begin looking to the future.
A tree has been planted in the spot where Kihika died, to celebrate his life.
Karanja: he is the only one of his brothers to survive and he dedicates his life
serving the white man. He is in love with Mumbi. At the end he leaves for the
train station, he wanted to kill him self but he finally decide to live.
Mugo: once more, he visits the old woman, who again seems to recognize
him as her son. She approaches him and then she die. The after his confession,
Mugo is lead away into the night.

APPUNTI GENERALI.
Literature cognitive mapping of the world, direct access to the way people
think and speak
window/light: if you really want to understand a place, reading a
book is more
important than seeing the place, because just
seeing the place is a way to confirm
stereotypes.
Europe knows Africa by description of travelers representation describes the
world.
Africa is divided in Europeans colonies and Africans were not asked postcolonialist studies: listen to the voices of Africans.
Writers: Africa is an undeveloped and war country we have to stop trying to
save Africa. The European must be benevolent and help Africans, that are
treated like children. Europe imposes a way of thinking and a certain lifestyle.
How to Write about Africa - Binyawanga Wainaina
Short essay pubblished in 5005 for Granta.
It's a statistic essay who wants to show the main stereotypes about Africa
accumulated during years. Africa has a skin. We all have prejudices, we have
some keys to give interpretation to other cultures.
There are some words that characterize Africa:
- ethnic words: (exotic: mystery, adventure)
- connection with nature escapism
- rhythm in blood (drums)
- timeless primordial tribes (Africa has a history that we ignore, it has been
removed by civilization)
- darkness
- sex
- prominent African personalities (Nelson Mandela)
Most books about Africa are written by non-africans for not-africans exploit
prejudices, interested on a specific part of Africa.
People who write about Africa think to care about Africa because it is a place of
strange and horrible things.
Tabu Subjects:
ordinary domestic scenes the books about Africa tend to eliminate

ordinary life and tend to talk about exotic or terrible things.

Projection: Africa is under the control of a European project
racist fantasy: the feeling you feel is felt by the other: when Italians
started a war to conquer Africa, they had Africans girls, so in white's
collective imaginary black men want to sleep with white women.
Sexual high continent/ African nature is personified by a woman
feeling for Africa: pity, adoration, domination Africa needs Europe be
on the same level to treat another culture as equal.
Africa is a place where you have adventures, where you can face
mortality, diseases and war, but you can come back still alive.
African characters (stock, never change)
Shamani, wise men from noble tribes
naked warriors
corrupt politicians
prostitutes
loyal servants/ African assistant
savage, wild men

Post-colonial studies.
Forces of cultural representation that act in political and social
authority context agreeing with world's modern order.

Post-colonial: academic setting

> colonialism: epochal phenomenon that during two centuries saw the 80% of
the planet under the dominion of strongest European countries civilizing
mission
> post - it doesn't mean that colonialism has been passed, but wants to
underline the world of the new millennium, strongly influenced from political,
social, economical and cultural phenomenons catalyzed from colonialism itself.
> studies (history, literature, philosophy, psychology...)
F. Fanon: colonialism influenced life and the vision of the world of colonizers as
much as the one of colonized.
Exalt anything that is not occidental like antidote to colonialism or like symbolic
reparation for all the pain, or idealize other civilities like more pure and
primitive instead of corrupted occidental modernity.
Caricatures: post-colonial perspective: refuses dogmatic contrasts finding a
more complex interpretation of the world where we live and its recent and
passed history: hybridism.
English language: main way for communication dominant and hegemonic
language, large diffusion that Great Britain gave to it in its colonies.
Globalisation: cultural forms of globalization hardly stay the same during their
transmigration in the planet, being modified basing on local needs.
Autobiographic and analytical deposition of authors for whom colonialism has
been an existential and direct experience.
E. Said: Orientalism.
1. Object of studies: he sees how building and reproducing a standard analysis
of an undistinguished and unable of self-government orient, also people who
gave contribution to make those cultures known in Europe, built an enormous
archive that represented a far away world with the image of desires, anxieties
and expansionist aims of Europe.
2. methodological nature: colonial topic: union of meanings that build an object
that existed even more that the topic itself, but is from it identified and limited.
The author call explicitly in cause his intellectual identity built from his
perspective of studies existential experience from which has born his critical
mediation.
Identity politics represent and tell his own history out of colonizers schemes,
they can decolonize their imaginary: mind decolonization. Literature that born
near the independence contributed to develop issues and topics tied to
colonialism and post-colonialism, almost always in a language more accessible
to the academic one.
1990, C. West affirmation of a new cultural politics of differences, equal and
eclectic.
Globalization: passage from an idea of imperialism (that is the classic one of
colonialism in XIX and XX centuries of states) to the one post-modern marked
by American superpower and from transnational organizations and
multinational corporations.
Crosswalk - the language of post-colonial theory.

Space of meeting, impossibility of clear distinctions. Spaces patterned by

a different perception of existing.
Colonization > decolonization
post-colonial: hall-form of trans-culturation, of cultural translation,
with the aim of disturb cultural couples.
Post-colonial thinking subvert, discuss the thought universality of
occidental thoughts: read in a new perspective.
Spivak The wholly otherness of margins deconstruction: space
where other voices can emerge. Involvement that is also a way of
taking distances.
Post-colonial theory submersion in occidental matters to rewrite
them from a marginal point of view.
Appropriation of metropolitan language: accept:
one more way of colonization
aware choice
Parry: to produce an alternative knowledge made of the listening of
native voice.
Post-colonial theory is made by the relation with the other:
psychoanalysis: Fanon post-colonial difference in the though of
human mind. Different social condition of people who live in their own
country as a foreigner obstacle the good ending of therapies.
Memmi: psychology: the forced oblivion in that historical moment
was ruled by new nations, it wouldn't have lead to the
emancipation from the past.
Bhabba ambivalence of colonial desire: camouflage of colonized
that imitate the colonizer: space in the middle between two
subjects culturally built, they give back to the colonizer the partial
mirrored of his image
new space in the middle, cultural space that creates the
proximity of the other, space where cultural differences get
closed (in between).
Translation: form of linguistic, cultural and geographic transfers.
Cultural translation: concerns all the ones who feel involved in a
meeting with the difference of the other

During the building: nationalism and post-colonial nations.

Belonging to a nation: negotiable and inalienable right

Nationalism always comes before the real nation, it invents the nation
where it doesn't exist yet. Interaction between ideology, culture and
society.
Nationness exported to Europeans borders.
Nationalism was used to claim ways of community life, create political
collective identities, separation from colonial governments, instrument of
opposition against racist topics.
Cultural and political projects (ngritude): tension to unity in the
oppression that goes over national borders. Two decades after World

War Two: bourgeois and nationalists. Socialist inspiration (1965-75)

difficulty: produce shared culture, a collective subject; limits given by
the adoption of European models.
The conquest of a national unity is just the first step. The culture
promoted from liberation movements has to look forward, basing on
the best given from local cultures, but also even from what is meaning
from other cultures. To survive post-colonial nations have to live in
contemporary times and participate to the creation of a new culture,
based on traditions.
National foundation: myth, story, narration. The idea of nation is inspired
by his narration: tale about origins. Ethic-politic engagement of literary
world: create common relationship in the middle of the new national
groups, promoting ways of cohesion and build a sense of belonging.
Get back a damaged identity, denied or deleted from colonization:
from their writings emerges the need of roots, origins, ancestors and
foundation myths.
Geography gives the first answer to auto-identification.
Post-colonial governments tend to keep the national borders patterned by
colonialism, but common people subvert this external imposition with
migrations. The post-colonial identities, that produce and reproduce
themselves with the transformation and the difference, can represent an
alternative to strong and absolute identities supported by various ethic
fundamentalism.

Pearls for the world: origin and evolution of post-colonial diaspora.

Diaspora: migratory transnational flows, dispersion in many regions of the
world of a community forced to leave its native land. Social-political
transnational configuration that involves various and different communities.
Forced, collective dispersion in many directions of an ethnic group.
Nostalgia for the native land left behind the shoulders and the desire of
the coming back. To collective memory is given the responsibility to
preserve the cultural heritage of the origin group. The outliving of
traditions is accompanied from the transformation for hybridization. The
transmission of the cultural heritage guarantees the preservation of the
collective identity also during the diaspora. The diaspora opens the space
of negotiation between cultures, of which makes in discussion the
national homogeneity > resists to assimilation theories.
Osmotic relation
integration and autonomy
discrimination and marginalization
Black Atlantic(Girloy): system of interaction and historical, cultural
and political communication that had its origins on slavery times
dynamic process.
Over the race: race and ethnicity in post-colonial studies.

Thought influenced by stereotypes about human diversity, deeply-rooted

in our imaginary: Eurocentric mentality white man = humanity.
Importance of language in the construction of the racial other. XVI

century: white, political questions.

RACE many concepts that orientate the post-colonial theory are
applicable to the dominion of culture of words that belonged to race topic
cultural linguistic arbitrary category that racism make it seems
natural and fixed. The idea of race insert itself on the roots of
inequality of European traditions, that until the meeting with noneuropean cultures, ideally divides humanity following classical and
biblical models.
Classifications - the race is everything - physical factors/ racial profiling
don't exist biological borders physical features don't coincide with moral
and intellectual features human variety must be analyzed without
political compromising.
Ethnicity proper of a race or a community it seems to be linked to a
condition of minority or otherness in contrast with a majority condition. It
is based on a contrast.

White women listen! Gender line in post-colonial studies.

Feminist occidental critics built the woman of the world like object of its
categories of analysis. The African woman symbol of the historical delay
against the occidental feminine emancipation: global hegemony of occidental
culture.

Black feminists and post-colonial topic of marginality like political

position. Purpose a political interpretation of the identity that refuses any
totalizing temptation.
Borders:
uncomfortable non-belonging to a place
existence of domination lines distinguished basing on sexual, racial,
ethnic relations.
Feminine subjectivity is broken on its roots.
Meeting with the other woman: relation between Europe and the other is
produced in a movement of constant contamination, translation,
incorporation that forestall post-colonial present. Gender and sexuality
are the land where racial borders have been patterned in the colony and
in the metropolis.
color line, strongest race - translation in racial terminology of the
obsession for the other. Eurocentric roots of the meaning of borders given
to feminine internationalism.
as woman I haven't got a nation, as woman my nation is the entire
world
power relationship that marked relationship between occidental
feminist and the one of the other places of the world.
Processes linked to globalization and to post-coloniality draw around
bodies a new battle field where are acting processes of decomposition
and composition of borders. Production movement, of differences in
hierarchical forms that draft around the nexus between gender and
cultural membership new areas of tension and friction.
Exaltation of differences: process of globalization of late modernity the
subaltern woman paradigmatic figure of global condition.

Veil: it had the role to mark racial and sexual borders of process of
inclusion and exclusion in Europe.

Post-colonial architectures: big cities and transnational places.

The empty space has always been the prerequisite for colonization of new
territories, especially in settler colonies. Only in the next phase, in the overseas
lands, like in invaded colonies, populated from a rural mass of pastors and
farmers, to the exploitation of territory has been added also the colonial
meeting with indigenous communities.
English names given from colonizers to countries resend to eurocentric
origins of colonial ideology of conquest. English colonizers tended to
reproduce their native land elsewhere, not just trough place name, but
also exporting English tradition, language and culture.
The colonial enterprise delete the distance between mean (name) and
meaning (place), deleting what existed before and in the middle: the
indigenous. The land appropriation by the white man delete the mythical
and linguistic indigenous past.
Wilderness: intent to domesticate the wild nature privatizing and dividing
spaces.
GRID: geometric order of urbanization. The occupation of the land, the
symbolic buying of lands goes forward with the attribution of an English
name to the place.
The development of north cities is deeply linked with the
underdevelopment of the south of the world. Solidarity unique system
of surviving in the world.
Big post-colonial cities: utopic places for the meeting of cultures.
Informal economy meets the trade of big mall. Cities are places where
people lives in their every-day life. The city, megacity, global,
multicultural or transnational remains the site of dreams, aspirations, but
it is always more mooring of emigrants with their cultural richness and
their economic misery.

Post-colonial actions: dialogue with the canon and the rewriting of

the big classics.
In the development of post-colonial literature, the relationship with the
occidental canon and the one of English literature, plays a very important role.
1. IMITATION 2. DEFINITION OF CULTURES 2. CRITIC ELABORATION
Dialogue post-colonial writer accept the heritage of colonization installing a
stimulating contrast with the classics of English literature.
Transformations of society, marked by multiethnicity and multiculturalism, that
impose a valuation of representation of the canon as a mirror of values of
various communities. Other literature, culture and traditions are going to read
many irregular voices, that from margins want the expression of margins.
Instruction politics in colonies represented a weapon of subjugation of the
other, seen as different, without culture, inferior, and who needs the light of
civilization of colonizers.
Colonialism wants to make the mind of the colonized empty from any content.

The violent imposition of the expressive medium of colonizers brought to a

deep disorientation of the native community.
denounce the condition of alienation determined by a language and a culture
in which people cannot recognize themselves.
The most important area of dominion was the mind universe of the colonized
people, the control, through culture, on how people felt themselves and the
relationship with the world.
aim: get back the interpretation of the past and revenge an identity, claiming
a space where is possible project alternative visions of the world
in the process of writing back the writer can have references with general
topics of classics, and then he can proceed to a reconstruction of them from
the point of view of margins that need to find a way to have a voice.

Translating to the other side: the journey toward post-colonial

literature.
Post-colonial literature in English language. - every texts acquires something on
translation. But there is an alter world in the horizon of English language and
its cultural reality. Translation is a crossroads between cultures.
Big difficulty of eastern literature to correctly understand text coming from
other latitudes without falling in the invisible trap of cultural imperialism and its
universal principles. The interpretative act is founded on the possibility that
horizons of the author and the reader can be overlapping in some points and
produce meanings.
The reading and the translation of the post-colonial text ask a great process of
reflection. The interpretative reading of the text should lead to the elaboration
of a system of choices of translation.
The poetic of an author can lead us to a determinate interpretation of the text.
when a text passes from a historical-cultural context to another, some new
meanings are attributed to it , not expected from the author and nor from the
reader.
From the second half of XX century, authors tried to find again traditions and
identities damaged from colonialism and develop some characteristics to give
some identities to their language.
Many writers decide to write in the European language that arrived in their
country with colonization , that became the official language.
Text coming from post-colonial world are linguistically contaminated. You can
find words that are not translated or rhetorical figures directed to a different
cultural imaginary. Sometimes this happens because in the European language
do not exist the equivalent words.
Are we post-colonial? Latin America between eurocentric paradigms
and colonial experience.
Spanish and Portuguese Latin America has been a space thought from others.
New World Is a cultural place produced by European paradigms and it's like
the image of Occident. The relationship between Spain and Latin American
world it's like the one between a copy and the original.
The collapse of colonial order shows on one hand the Latin American
heterogeneity (imprint left by three centuries of colonization) and on the other

hand reaffirm European features of the conquering cultures.

Building the stage of their own future: post-colonial stories of
Italian migrant voices.
Migrant writings in Italy multicultural reality that can be included in the
canon of contemporary literature. Stories that took place in the age of fascism,
during the period of major expansion of the Empire when Mussolini was the
head of state; and during the last years, in the complicated post-colonial
condition of independent countries.
In Italian colonial adventure we can find similar topics to other colonial
experiences, like the pride of bringing to indigenous to an upgrade of
civilization.
People that from colonies found a way to migrate in Italy with family,
discovering the country studied in school desks, fought the difficulty of finding
themselves in a place located far away from expectations.
Italian voices representing a post-colonial condition, where the topic is the
Italian language and identity, mixing with colonialism and migration aspects
especially women.
Through writing it is possible to verify and to establishing links between
colonial past and contemporary Italian society, seeing stories of meeting,
contamination and identity conflicts.
People who do not come from ex Italian colonies or who do not born from
migrant parents, choose our language like vehicle of write communication,
because it creates the contact with the public they're looking for.
Short Story - My Father's head by Okwiri Oduor.
It capture the conditions and ambiguities inherent in the contemporary Kenyan
world. Simbi, female protagonist attempt to recall her father's head. Themes of
religion, love, memory, death and heritage in Kenya.
Collage of all scenes that Simbi encounters: it is as if she assembles her
father's head.
The author traverses the concept of memory by leading the main character
through fragments of memories inside the memory of her father. Her incapacity
to see her father's head seems to be a metaphor for the incapacity to capture
herself with his death.
- social commentaries on religion, local stories.
The story does not follow a linear sequential order.
effective way the human desires for dignity is presented in the rural
simplicity.
In her mind Simbi can see his face, but his head refuses to appear. Perhaps her
father had a face but not a head at all: people's head is not a thing that one
often saw. Although everyone has a head behind his face, some show theirs
easily: they turn their back on you and their head is all you can see. Her father
was a good man and never show you his head, but his face.

Short Story - On becoming African by Muthoni Garland.

Being with strangers meant that the protagonist was not boxed into an Identity.
His modernity negated his African-ness to other people (stereotypes
ignorance about Africa, also of Afro-Americans).
General ignorance about the world outside, people speaking in a tone that
suggested that Americans were better.
- white Americans were friendly as long as the protagonist didn't try to get
close
- black Americans do not accept him.
Coming from a continent where almost everyone is black, color didn't define
me. And black in America was a complex, nuanced animal that needed
constant feeding. World defined him and his people as Africans he embraced
his African skin: to be an African is a choice always opened to interrogation.

Short Story - All in the Family by Brenda Mukami Kunga

Family life. Relationship between a child and her parents. Her father is a
member of parliament she calls political prostitutes. She doesn't get on well
with her parents. Rich community. She hates her parents friend coming from
dinner (one is a pedophile). Comments on everything that happens that day,
ironic and sarcastic.
Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits by Rasna Warah.
Travel agents have started including slum tours in their itineraries charity
tours
Goodwill missions to slums by celebrities and other tourists are seen by many
as insulting nothing change for people.
Implicit in the world development is the idea that it is a state that can be
achieved through technical interventions that are achievable through more aid.
The amount of aid that goes to Africa is a drop in the ocean compared to what
rich countries have been spending on defense in recent years.
Debt is not a financial problem. It is a political problem. If you canceled al the
debt of the poorest countries tomorrow, the international financial system
won't even notice. Debt is extraordinary useful for the north, it is much better
than colonialism as you don't need ad army etc to keep people in line, and you
don't need the people. But you get advantage because you have continuous
low prices for raw materials.
Without slums many cities in Africa would not function. African cities rely on the
cheap labor provided by slum dweller, to construct buildings, clean streets, and
make economy grow. Slum dweller need the employment generated by cities
to survive.
African countries need to develop institutions and human resources to sustain
economic growth and to improve living standards of the majority. This is not
possible because of the largely corrupt Afican political elite.