The Representation of Social Values and Social Identities in Selected Post-Colonial African Novels
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Date
2019-04
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The dissertation presents representations of social values and social identities in selected postcolonialAfrican novels. The novels are selected depending on criteria set from a wide range ofpost-colonial experiences and have been analyzed in ways central characters of novels aredepicted. In the study, the central characters are focused because they represent the differingsocial values and social identities in the constructed story worlds through actionsanddialogues.The central characters are Wariinga from Devil on the Cross, Dodge from Son of woman, Obufrom The Potter’s Wheel, Dele from The Edifice, and Lucifer from Waiting for the Rain. Thestudy is approached through close reading with a content analysis to obtain textual data. Socialvalues and social identities arecategorized and defined depending on their aspects. Aspects ofsocial values are sense of good human relations, community, hospitality, respect, an extendedfamily system and religion, and aspects of social identities are languages, cultures and historicalevents. In all these aspects as units of analysis, the purpose is to obtain basic guiding principlesand socially shared representations of colonial society in selected post-colonial Africa novels.
The study is to analyze ways of representing oppressive colonial ideologies and ways of resistingand reinforcing them in the novels through those analytical aspects from social values and socialidentities. It is for a better understanding of colonized society in Africa in relation to effects ofcolonial dominations. From the narrative aspects, the central characters are focused to addressthe collective identities and the guiding principles of the continent from novels. As a result ofcolonial domination, sporadically deformed social values and social identities are constructed innovels due to the flawed moral argument of pre-colonialAfrican social values and socialidentities. The sporadic reactions toward pre-colonial social values and social identities are notbased on the awareness of pre-colonial knowledge. Rather, they are signs of residual colonialeffects and colonial domination in colonized discourses. The pre-colonial African social valueshave come to life as primitive, uncivilized and diluted moral qualities, and indirectly consumedmagnify in colonized discourses. The processes of creating personality traits are more of amoral dilemma than self-assertion. They are associated with the concepts of post-colonialismlike ambivalence, mimicry, hybridity, ‘unhomeliness’ and double consciousness and detect waysof colonizing strategies.
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African novels