Ideographs of Resistance and Identity Construction in the Kenyan Political Autobiography
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Date
2018-01
Authors
Mutie, Stephen
Goro-Kamau, Nicholas
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Coretrain Journal of Languages, Humanities, Social Sciences and Education
Abstract
The avalanche of autobiographies that are produced in postcolonial Kenya calls for
sustained interrogation and analysis of the narratives created to elucidate those murky
aspects of the colonial past and post-colonial present which may resolve the conundrum of
failed independence. As the past studies on autobiography have shown, the autobiographical
genre, and especially the political strand, has become a strong statement for resistance
against hegemonic discourses that continue to inform national discourses in Kenya. This
paper interrogates the Kenyan postcolonial leadership and the ways in which it is dramatized
in the Kenyan political autobiography. Specifically, the paper interrogates Jaramogi Oginga
Odinga’s Not Yet Uhuru, Raila Odinga’s The Flame of Freedom and Bildad Kaggia’s
Roots of Freedom to show that there is a discursive shift in the Kenyan political
autobiography; a concerted effort to move away from themes of failed independence to
constructing ideographs of resistance within the frameworks of class suicide espoused by
Antonio Gramsci. The paper argues that Jaramogi, Kaggia and Raila use these ideographs of
resistance to construct their senses of selves as Moses (Jaramogi), Joshua (Raila) while
Kaggia sees himself as the black Messiah. The paper rides on textual analysis to contend that
the authors of these texts negotiate and challenge terrains of history, ideology and class to
present their authors as unparalleled nationalists. Leaning on a critical look at the
production of such narratives, which are largely based on personal participation and
observation, this paper interrogates and preserves authoritative data of the Kenyan past and
present which is more vivid and accurate, than the annals, chronicles and other forms of
modern historiography. Historians from earliest times have recognized that the closer such
records were to the phenomena described in both time and place, the more their potential
value as reliable sources for information.
Description
A Research Article in Coretrain Journal of Languages, Humanities, Social Sciences and Education
Keywords
Class suicide, Ideographs, Joshua, Messiah, Moses
Citation
Mutie, S. & Goro-Kamau, N. (2018). Ideographs of Resistance and Identity Construction in the Kenyan Political Autobiography. Coretrain Journal of Languages, Humanities, Social Sciences and Education. Vol.1.2018, pp. 23-33.