The instabilities of national allegory: the case of Dambudzo Marechera's 'The House of Hunger' and 'Black Sunlight'

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Periodical article

Title:	The instabilities of national allegory: the case of Dambudzo Marechera's 'The House of Hunger' and 'Black Sunlight'
Author:	Vambe, Maurice Taonezvi
Year:	2001
Periodical:	Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa
Volume:	13
Issue:	1
Pages:	70-86
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Zimbabwe
Subjects:	nationalism literature
About person:	Dambudzo Marechera (1952-1987)
Abstract:	This article explores Dambudzo Marechera's (Zimbabwe) use of allegory in 'The House of Hunger' (1978) and 'Black Sunlight' (1980) in the context of African writers' search for a postcolonial idiom of resistance against the legacy of colonialism. Marechera's allegories modify and sometimes reject the glib application of binaries such as coercion and consent, violence and democracy, barbarism and civilization, or acquiescence and resistance that have come to dominate the description and analyses of African postcolonial politics. By subverting the allegory of nationalist models of resistance, Marechera is attempting to generate a new idiom of that same resistance, a resistance that recognizes the provisionality of its values and thus remains open to new experiences. Bibliogr.