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Panelist Hetty ter Haar |
Theory on the Move: Anowa and the Politics of Displacement Kristina Mäki, Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London This paper addresses interpretations
of the theme of migration in Ama Ata Aidoo’s play Anowa in an
attempt to illustrate what I have experienced as the often problematic
movement of Western literary theories for application to African texts.
Rooting the discussion in the text enables us to examine how the text
itself is theorising about the themes and issues it raises, thus avoiding
the tendency to begin with the theory and impose this onto the text.
A consideration of the ways the drama deals with the themes of ‘being
on the road’/the journey, Anowa’s abikuness and migratory
nature, and the relationship between Anowa and Kofi Ako will reveal
some of the problems involved in uncritically applying aspects of the
currently in- vogue theories of the Western academy (I refer here mainly
to poststructuralism and its cousin postcolonial theory) to African
writing. It is my understanding that Aidoo’s insistence on confronting
and acknowledging the past before moving into the future holds important
lessons for poststructuralism’s advocation of identity as constructed
and fluid. |