Irony, memory and post-colonial disillusionment in alain mabanckou’s broken glass
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Date
2014
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Publisher
Unversity of Dar es Salaam
Abstract
The study examines how irony is deployed to depict the themes of memory and post-colonial disillusionment in post-colonial Africa in Alain Mabanckou’s Broken Glass. Guided by deconstructionist and post-colonial approaches, the study explores how the use of irony as a form of satire makes Broken Glass provide multiple interpretations without losing its primary objective of underscoring the intricacies of disillusionment in post-colonial Africa. The study has three specific objectives. First, to determine the extent to which Broken Glass uses memory ironically to represent Africa’s post-colonial disillusionment. Second, to determine the extent to which the novel deploys irony to implicate the West in Africa’s neo-colonial disillusionment to expose its bigotry. And third, to determine the extent to which the novel employs irony as a form of satire to underscore the intricacies of disillusionment in Africa. The principal conclusion of the study is that the use of irony strengthens the satire in the novel by forcing the reader to go beyond surface meaning to disambiguate the various layers of meaning. The novel shows how Africa’s disillusionment is both caused by the former colonial powers and present-day African leaders and refuses to accept the tendency of the latter to blame the former even for the problems of their own making, hence the use of Credit Gone West in the novel. Finally, the study recommends further exploration of Mabanckou’s use of irony to satirise Africa by studying together all his five Anglophone novels in translation.
Description
Available in print form, East Africana Collection, Dr. Wilbert Chagula Library, Class mark (THS EAF PQ3989.2.M217A44 )
Keywords
Fiction, Congo (Democratic Republic), Mabanckou, Alain, Post-Colonial Africa
Citation
Alinoti, M. (2014) Irony, memory and post-colonial disillusionment in alain mabanckou’s broken glass, Master dissertation, University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam