From Lagos to London and back again: The road from mimicry to hybridity in the novels of Ben Okri

مرکز و کتابخانه مطالعات اسلامی به زبان های اروپایی

منو

" From Lagos to London and back again: The road from mimicry to hybridity in the novels of Ben Okri "
Maurice O'Connor A. A. Varo

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	53451
Doc. No	:	TL23405
Call number	:	‭3194196‬
Main Entry	:	Maurice O'Connor
Title & Author	:	From Lagos to London and back again: The road from mimicry to hybridity in the novels of Ben Okri\ Maurice O'Connor
College	:	Universidad de Cadiz (Spain)
Date	:	2005
Degree	:	Dr.
student score	:	2005
Page No	:	309
Abstract	:	Locating Ben Okri as a cosmopolitan and migrant writer rather than a Nigerian national writer has been an important consideration in the analysis of his work. He occupies the liminal zone between the borders of nation which produces a distinct subjectivity in comparison to those who remain within the confines of the postcolony. It has been important for us to demonstrate how the narration of nation within his works has also been indicative of the need to imagine a homogeneous homeland from the location of London. Our insistence on the diasporic element of Okri's subjectivity was to show how this contingent moment exercised its influence within his narratives. We argue that Okri's achieving of cultural singularity at a formal level of discourse is a process of transformation similar to Afro-Caribbean, Afro-American, and diasporan African narratives that transform the nature of Europhone languages to express black experience. In our study, we have divided the body of his novels into three broad sections. The first section is comprised of Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981) which represent a narrative of internal dissent constructed through the ambivalent discourse of mimicry. Section two deals with Okri's distancing from the codes of representation of Realism in Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988) where he explores a distinct multi-perspectival narrative. Okri's third phase of writing includes The Famished Road (1991), Songs of Enchantment (1993), and Infinite Riches (1998); novels which indicate a transcultural stage of postcolonial writing. Ben Okri's literary production is paradigmatic of how a postcolonial artist has the power to transform a mimetic writing into a new literary space created through a hybridic consciousness. Principally, we can locate this development at the crossroads where a West African resource-base meets the English book. Okri's work has thus moved towards the performance of diversity where the traces of many distinct ontologies are conceptualised through an Afro-modern writing system. Okri, as a postcolonial writer, bridges the multicultural site of London with Africa and the global and thus performs a transnational movement of culture.
Subject	:	Language, literature and linguistics; Hybridity; Mimicry; Nigeria; Novels; Okri, Ben; Comparative literature; African literature; 0295:Comparative literature; 0316:African literature
Added Entry	:	A. A. Varo
Added Entry	:	Universidad de Cadiz (Spain)