REPRESENTATION OF THE COLONIZERS IN A GRAIN OF WHEAT BY NGUGI WA THIONGO

Abstract

Representation, in its postcolonial sense, has been the subject of investigation with all its discursive practices and manifestations in the Orient as well as in the Occident. The global South, in particular, has been the focus of the representative discourse conceived, initiated, crafted and executed by the West in order to form the nexus between power and knowledge to carry out, expand and justify the colonial project. The resistance by the colonized was either in the form of armed struggle or through a complete denial; rejecting everything that is Western or belongs to the colonizers. In particular, Ngugi WaThiongo opted for the later and ceased writing in English to express his dismissal against the institution of colonization. The Kenyans, in their holistic ways, represent them on account of their epistemological as well as on ontological grounds thus belittling, maligning, outcasting, othering and subalternizing them and resurface their own cultural, traditional and linguistic subtleties and sensibilities to mark a point of departure from the colonizing forces. The research concludes that representation, in its Saidian sense, was countered by the Africans in their narratives by reciprocity and they reconstructed their discourse to reimaging and repaint the image(s) of the West in their texts.

Keywords: Imperialism, colonialism, representation, culture, resistance.