Liberating Algerian and african minds and literatures in selected works by Mouloud Feraoun, Ngugi Wa Thiong’O, Frantz Fanon and Kateb Yacine.

Abstract

This thesis discusses the continuous effects of colonization on Algerian and African minds and literatures and the effort to criticize and overcome them in the novels of Mouloud Feraoun and Ngugi Wa Thiong’O as well as in the essays of Frantz Fanon. Although most African countries gained their independence in the early 1960’s, the questions of “coloni(z)ability” and “mind colonization” are still debated in many Algerian and African works of fiction and essays. Indeed, the writers and intellectuals of previously colonized countries of the continent are frequently accused of being unable to free themselves from the biases and prejudices of colonialist discourse and achieve intellectual emancipation and literary independence. Colonial education and cultural imperialism enslaved minds and “hybridized” literature. Worse, even, as a result of their subjugation, many colonized individuals and groups have come to believe that their cultures are inferior to the colonizers’. The colonized attempts to identify with the colonizers have resulted in serious psychological problems, as Ngugi Wa Thiong’O, and Frantz Fanon famously explained: alienation, fragmentation, displacement, hybridity, ambivalence, dislocation, and identity crises. These psychological problems will be investigated in the contexts of Algeria (colonized by France) and Kenya (colonized by Britain). The thesis will focus on selected works by novelists Mouloud Feraoun (Algeria) and Ngugi WaThiong’o (Kenya) and by the theoretician of colonialism, Frantz Fanon (Algerianist and Africanist). Frantz Fanon’s work is particularly relevant to the thesis because he identified precisely the two main tools the colonialists used to subjugate the colonized: schools, which he called “magnets”; and force, which he called the “cannon”. He argues that colonial oppression resulted in either “mindless bodies” or “bodiless minds”. The ultimate goal of this research thesis is to offer some suggestions for liberating Algerian and African minds from inside after about fifty years of decolonization from outside. I will argue that even though Feraoun, Ngugi Wa Thiong’O, and Frantz Fanon have made significant inroads in curbing the nefarious effects of colonialist discourse, there is still a lot to be done to fully liberate and emancipate the Algerian and African minds: (1) Algerians and Africans still face major challenges in their pursuit of intellectual and cultural independence and sovereignty, (2) Feraoun’s writings are sometimes ambivalent towards colonialism, and (3) Ngugi Wa Thiong’O and Fanon are too tightly tied to Marxism, which some scholars argue is an “imported” ideology. What is needed for Algerians and Africans to fully become independent is nothing short of a paradigm shift towards Algerian-centric and afro-centric modes of thinking. In the end, the thesis finds that even though some Algerian writers made significant inroads in curbing the nefarious effects of colonialist discourse; they fell short of freeing themselves from such discourse; only Kateb Yacine was able to seriously, openly and fully subvert it. KEY WORDS: Decolonization, Comparative, Literature, Literary, Theory and.