CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

This thesis deploys New Historicist concepts of narrative fashioning, power relations, historicity, Othering practice and epistemic violence to the study of the presentation of civil war and insurgency in Adichie‘s Half of A Yellow Sun, Amadi‘s Sunset in Biafra, Iyayi‘s Heroes and Habila‘s Oils on Water. In doing so, the study investigates othering practice in the selected texts in order to authenticate how the actuality of the conflict situations generates discourses which create insights that have wider subjective implications. To achieve this, the study is premised on the New Historicist claim that a literary text is not reducible to a single meaning or metanarrative as well as on its rules of situating any text in cultural context or of interpreting a text in its relation to nonliterary materials. In other words, new historicists hold the view that a literary text is subject to multiple interpretations with none of them laying claim to absolutism or metanarrative. They thus declare that a ―literary text, then, is always part and parcel of a much wider cultural, political, social and economic dispensation‖ (Bertens: 2008).

The tendency by the New Historicism to see literary texts as subject to multiple interpretations and so part of a much wider cultural, political, social and economic dispensation invariably makes it a part of postmodernism. Essentially, its acceptance of multiplicity of meaning or plurality and rejection of metanarrative links it up with postmodernism‘s adoption of petit or little narratives which, by implication, is a rejection of the ―centering structures that have long given meaning to human history‖ (Joy: 2019:34).

The core paradigm of this study, therefore, is its focus on the little narratives which are constructed and circulated stereotypes, prejudices, and stigmas about the epistemically disadvantaged groups in the selected texts. These little narratives have been mostly ignored, suppressed and undermined in the previous studies of the selected texts in relation to the narratives grandnarratives of the conflict situations. Overtime, the grundnorm in mainstream Nigerian literature about the Nigerian Civil War and the Insurgency in the Niger Delta is largely about the political persecution and victimisation of the Igbos and the Niger Delta people as well as the ideological construct of the conflict situations that dovetails into a questioning of the corporeality of the Nigerian state. Hardly are the texts interpreted as a narrative strategy of othering, which is a ‗strategy of categorising a group or an individual as the ‗other‘, and establishing or reinforcing one‘s own identity through opposition to and, frequently, the vilification of this other‘. The concept of the ‗other‘ consists of a group that describes itself as part of the people united in a ‗we‘ in relation to the other people constructed or perceived as fundamentally different and united in a ‗they‘ category. Michel Foucault, in Sara Rizmyhr Engelund (2021), ―othering is strongly connected with power and knowledge‖.

Therefore, Engelund (2021) states that ―when we ―other‖ another group, we point out their perceived weaknesses to make ourselves look stronger or better. It implies a hierarchy‖. For Foucault, therefore, in Engelund (2021) othering consists of the

‗creation and maintenance of the imaginary knowledge of the other‘. In terms of cultural representation, othering practice is done in service to ‗socio-political power and the establishment of hierarchies of domination‘. 

Othering practice is realised through epistemic violence, that is, a discursive violence, violence exerted against or through knowledge‘, and, in our case, the opportunistic use of knowledge of the conflict situations to undermine and denigrate the ‗other‘. In other words, epistemic violence is the deployment of literary devices like metaphor, metonymy and anthropomorphism- to achieve a premeditated cultural representation.

Bunch (2015) states that ―traditionally, societies have used the discourse of otherness to create a common bond within the in-group‖ and to define others who are ―distinctly different‖ as the out-group. By and large, epistemic violence consists in the ―construction of epistemically disadvantaged identities… understood only by their constructed and circulated stereotypes‖ (Bunch:2015). This means that the distinction between the in-group and the out-group is usually constructed ―along the classic axes of discrimination and power differences like sexuality, gender, ethnicity, ‗race‘, class and so on (Engelund:2021).

The practice of Othering entails a creative deployment of language and literary protocols of narrativity to structure works and foreground particular social, political and cultural realism. As essentially the domain of words, literature becomes an instrument for signifying the realism of social action such as the Nigerian civil war and insurgency in the Niger Delta. According to Greenblatt (1980)

Social actions are themselves always embedded in systems of public significations, always grasped even by their makers in acts of interpretation, while the words that constitute the works of literature----are by their very nature the manifest assurance of a similar embeddedness.

Similarly, Polleinghorne (1988) foregrounds the relationship between literature and social actions when he states that:

Narrative is a form of meaning making--- Narrative recognises the meaningfulness of individual experiences by noting how they function as part of the whole. Its particular subject matter is human action and events play in these actions and events that affect human beings, which it configures into whole according to the roles these actions and events play in bringing about a conclusion--- The narrative scheme serves as a lens through which the apparently independent and disconnected element of existence are seen as related parts of a whole.

 In this wise, narratives embody human actions and experiences.  As such, a literary work becomes what Greenblatt (1980) refers to as a ―collective construction‖. In other words, literary works bear both ―the social presence to the world of the literary text and the social presence of the world in the literary text‖ (Greenblatt: 1980). This implies that the experiences represented in a literary text are both intrinsic and extrinsic to it. This clarifies the argument that social actions like the Nigerian civil war and insurgency in the Niger Delta are embedded in a system of language as codes of expression of the behaviour of the author, of the social worlds of the literary text, and a reflection upon those codes. It is in this sense that Greenblatt (1980) further states that ―the written word is self-consciously embedded in specific communities, life situations, structures of power.‖ Against this backdrop, this study adopts a two-prong approach, which is that, while it accepts as given the wider interpretation of the conflict situations as the putative political persecution and victimisation of the Igbos, the Niger Delta people and the subaltern groups as well as an ideological construct, it nonetheless argues that this mode of interpretation has become a grundnorm in mainstream Nigerian literature. The study further argues that within this wider interpretive or thematic construct are sub-texts which function as rival stories or little narratives that can be aggregated to form another perspective in the interpretation of the selected texts. The study, therefore, focuses on these little narratives which serve as undercurrents in the bigger thematic formations of the selected texts.

In this study, the little narratives are paradigmatically delineated as a construct of the situations of the discursively disempowered, the stigmatised and the stereotyped which are hitherto mostly ignored, suppressed, and undermined in the previous studies of the selected texts. Little narratives (petite recits) are slippery fragments and marginalised stories within a text that help to break down grand narratives (big stories or totalising narratives). Little narratives ‗reveal paradoxes, instabilities, and simulacra‘. They are ―stories that explain small practices, local events rather than large-scale universal or global concepts‖ (Joy:2019:34). Joy (2019) also states that petit narratives are ―always situational, provisional, contingent and temporary making no claim to universality, truth, reason or stability. This study also accepts as given that in postcolonial studies, discourses abound which project the postcolonial nation-state as a site of contradictions and identity crises. Within these nations, many dissident voices or subnational groups emerge to challenge the authority of the state or the entrenched cultural hegemony. This then sets up the paradox in literary works of ‗us versus them‘ paradigm which is obvious in the selected texts.

The study thus draws from the postulations of such scholars as Stephen Greenblatt,

Michael Karlberg, Benedict Anderson, Homi K. Bhabha, Edward Said, A. J. Bunch and Gayatri G. Spivak on the concepts of narrative fashioning, power relations, discourse intervention, epistemic violence, historicity, othering practice, and the historical novel. In other words, the study will assay the narrative strategy employed in the selected texts as that which is couched invariably within the cultural proposition of narrative fashioning, power relations, discourse intervention while determining the historicity of the texts. This study is set against the backdrop of the extant traditions of literature of war, conflict, and violence in the classical, modern European and American societies as well as in Africa to properly foreground how the novel form is used to designate the Nigerian civil war and insurgency in the Niger Delta.

1.2 Statement of the Research Problem

The study notes that since the emergence of New Historicism in the 1980s, it has hardly been applied to the evaluation of the Nigerian civil war and the insurgency in the Niger Delta especially in terms of the contextuality of the novel form as an iteration of othering practices. Previous studies such as Mey (2011), Ohagwam(2018), Onukaogu

(2010), Shain (1993), Obafemi (2009), Okoma (1993), Omoifo (1989), Nwankwo

(2008), et al, have projected the Nigerian civil war and the insurgency in the Niger

Delta as a narrative of instances of political persecution, victimisation of the Igbos, the Niger Delta people and the subaltern groups as well as an ideological construct with Marxist leaning. On the contrary, this study deploys New Historicist poetics such as narrative fashioning, power relations, historicity, othering practice and epistemic violence to analyse how the Nigerian novel signifies the Nigerian civil war and insurgency in the Niger Delta as an iteration of stereotypes, prejudices, stigmatisation and denigration of the other. Consequently, previous studies of the selected texts hardly evaluated the little narratives which add up to become othering practices in the discourse of the Nigerian civil war and insurgency in the Niger Delta. This remiss has therefore created a gap in knowledge which the study aims to fill up. As a point of departure, the study examines the othering narrative strategies in the selected texts by focusing on the little narratives of the stereotyped, the undermined, the stigmatised, and the discursively categorised as out-groups.

The study, while not discounting the possible existence of a plethora of disquisitions on the Nigerian civil war and insurgency in the Niger Delta, contends that since the selected texts are reconstructions of conflict situation they also iterate stereotypes, prejudices, and undermine others. By so doing, they are subjectivised, empathetic, emplotted, and so, partisan. They, therefore, embody instances of the biases, and prejudices of the period of their production, of the society within which they are produced, and of their authors. This sharply contrasts with the early notions of textual value by the New Critics especially, who claim that the meaning of a text is not only ambiguous, ironic and paradoxical but also located only within the structure of the text itself. Therefore, the subjective nature of a text‘s meaning means that the language of a text is discourse or culture-bound because the reality it creates is a social construct. It is against this backdrop that the study is based on the suppositions that:

1.     The selected novels significantly represent the textualisation of the Nigerian civil war and insurgency in the Niger Delta;

2.     The selected novels substantially present the discourse of war and insurgency in tandem with other non-fictional discourses like diaries, historical documents, letters, etc;

3.     The situations depicted in the selected novels are distinct from myth and legend in their historical truth claim; and

4.     The discourses of the selected novels are iterations of othering practices through the use of epistemic violence and therefore, fit into the assumptions and analytical template of New Historicism.

1.3 Research Questions

The study is guided by the following questions as a way of validating its statement of the problem and the suppositions:

1.     How did the texts validate the genesis of the Nigerian civil war and the insurgency in the Niger Delta?

2.     How did the texts undertake the narration of the Nigerian nation in the light of national cohesion, nation-building, and cultural integration? 

3.     As epistemic agents, what biases, prejudices, and stereotypes did the writers express in the course of their use of the novel form to underwrite sub-national concerns and ideals?

4.     To what extent are the selected texts conformable to the discourse of new historicism especially its concepts used in this study?

1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The overall aim of the study, therefore, is to shift attention away from the normative narrative discourse of the Nigerian civil war and insurgency in the Niger Delta in the selected texts to the little narratives or the subtexts to show their significance in creating another, often the binary structure of meaning within the novel form. As such, the objectives of the study are to:

1.     Authenticate the claim by the New Historicism that analysis of any text should go beyond its formal boundaries to assess values, institutions, and practices in the cultural situation from which the text is produced.

2.     Show that literary texts are cultural by the virtue of the social and cultural values like stereotypes, prejudices stigmas and other contexts which they embody.

3.     Illustrate the Historicity of the Nigerian Civil War and insurgency in the Niger Delta and the othering narrative strategies of the selected texts.

4.     Demonstrate that the discourse of the selected novels are iterations of Othering practice through the use of epistemic violence and therefore bear affinity with the assumptions and analytical template of new Historicism.

1.5 Justification of the Study

This study is justified mainly by the proposition that the discourse of war and insurgency in Adichie‘s Half of A Yellow Sun, Amadi‘s Sunset in Biafra, Iyayi‘s Heroes, and Habila‘s Oil On Water iterates stereotypes, undermines the cultures and authority of the out-groups thereby perpetuates othering. This is done through analysing narrative fashioning and power discourse and authenticating the oil wars and politics in Niger Delta. Hitherto, disquisitions on the Nigerian civil war and insurgency in Niger Delta, as well as interpretation of these texts, have side-stepped the motif of othering apparently used in the selected texts to reify stereotypes and undermine cultures and political/ military power. The practice of overlooking these issues has therefore resulted in one-way traffic of assaying the texts. This situation has created what Chimamanda N. Adichie terms a single story which perpetuates stereotypes and epistemic violence against people perceived as out-groups.

This study, by focusing on the epistemically disadvantaged groups in the selected texts will invariably draw attention to the silencing of the groups through epistemic violence.

This silencing as Bunch (2015) puts it is defined as ―the damage to a group‘s ability to speak and to be heard‖ She further states that ―another aspect of silencing occurs when a group is put at a disadvantage because of their exclusion from participating in the creation of social meaning‖ (2015). In so far as literary texts are about cultural representation, the authors of the selected texts acting as epistemic agents (producers of knowledge) stand in an advantaged position in relation to the groups on which epistemic violence is exerted. Admittedly, war and violence may be traumatising, but epistemic violence is not only palimpsestic it also seeks to denigrate and undermine the Other‘s cultural identity.

This study, therefore, seeks to provide a vista for understanding these salient issues often overlaid by grand narratives but whose pulsating presence in the corpus of Nigerian literature can nonetheless be discerned. Such understanding is necessary to instantiate the fact that the art of textual interpretation is varied. As Bhabha notes in The

Location of Culture ―there can never be one coherent common narrative through which a nation and its people can be satisfactorily represented‖ (quoted in Ramider: NA).

While this speaks to the varied nature of the interpretive enterprise, it also calls to attention the fact that the creation of a work of fiction is ―not for aesthetic pleasure alone or for an intelligent arm-chair critiquing of an existing situation‖. (Raminder: NA). Of fact, literary works play a greater and serious role such as Adichie acknowledges when she states that ―stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanise. Stories can break the dignity of the people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity‖ (2009). This study‘s focus on the epistemically disadvantaged groups intends to not only point to the danger of the single metanarrative but also point out how stories have been used to break, malign and denigrate the dignity of groups in the selected texts. This is because the groups are epistemically excluded from any form of intelligibility and are made passive domains and refused reciprocity.

This study‘s proposition is therefore a departure from the normative assaying of the texts under study. In addition to contributing richly to ongoing debates and growing interest in the discourse of New Historicism, this study also utilises non-literary sources which are relevant to it as a way of foregrounding the interpretation of the selected texts. This is because New Historicism has extended literary studies to the precinct of cultural studies to graft non-literary materials into the interpretive enterprise. New Historicists believe that the domain of culture is dynamic; and so, it is a product of infinite forms of interactions and exchanges. This view of culture repudiates poststructuralist notions of origin, presence, and coherence, and regards forms of cultural practices as a form of power. Literature, in this regard, is seen to participate in the consolidation and construction of discourses and ideologies.

Scholars such as Kate McLoughlin have questioned the utility of literatures of war and violence which thrive essentially on mass death, injury, and loss. It is often asked, ‗might war writing even perpetuate war, glorify violence, and obscure suffering?‘ This kind of question strikes at the core of the relationship between literature and violence. Literatures of war and violence mostly warn against the futility of pursuing armed conflict by exposing atrocities committed during the violence and preaching peace. Since Nigerian literature of war and violence provides leverage for those Allie J. Bunch

(2015) terms ‗entrepreneurs of hate‘ to iterate divisive paradigm of ‗Us versus Them‘, it is helpful to pry into such an epistemic agency. This is more so that writings on war and violence mostly serve as means of propaganda and catharsis. Literature of war and violence is also underpinned by language and literary forms like the novel to instantiate the fragmentary effects war and violence have on individual lives, communities, the human body, and the environment.

The novel form is therefore chosen for this study because of its empiricism, expressive nature and scepticism which are actualised through the deployment of its technical resources such as plot, setting, characters, and underlying idea. In Burgess‘s view novel takes the man to be unheroic, unredeemed, imperfect, and even absurd which contrasts it sharply with epic poetry or dramatic tragedy. As such, the use of the novel‘s technical resources makes possible the interplay of extrinsic and intrinsic social and cultural practices that cohere in the selected novels. In other words, these novels conjure an imagined community that is the Nigerian nation with all its chaos, imperfections, sentiments, biases or prevarications. Seen against the backdrop of New Historicism this study will richly contribute to the body of Nigerian and African literature by widening the understanding of the tenets of New Historicism used here especially as they apply to the Nigerian civil war and insurgency in the Niger Delta.

Nonetheless, in the face of the New Media, and as a result of the need to reinterpret discourses on the Nigerian civil war and insurgency, it has become necessary to undertake this study now to assuage the stereotypes being iterated by the texts, to discount the single-story mantra put out by the texts as the definitive story of the civil war and insurgency, and to point to the othering practice that sets up ‗Them-versus-Us‘ paradigm in mainstream Nigerian Literature. This is helpful for enduring nationbuilding and national integration. This study will bring understanding to those who usually treat literature of war and violence as given that cultural production of any kind as an important aspect of nation-building is not neutral or non-partisan.

1.6 Scope and Delimitation

The scope of this study is the examination of Adichie‘s Half of a Yellow Sun, Amadi‘s Sunset in Biafra, Iyayi‘s Heroes, and Habila‘s Oil on Water from the perspective of New Historicism using its concepts of narrative fashioning, power discourse and historicity. This is with a view to discursively assay iteration of stereotypes and perpetuation of othering through the reinforcement of cultural identity. Although, these four novels are not the only ones written on the Nigerian Civil War and insurgency in the Niger Delta they are, however, chosen for this study because they are sufficient to represent fictional works on the civil war and insurgency. They also contain the variables which this study seeks to investigate. This study is therefore delimited by this scope as well as the adoption of the novel form. Notwithstanding the paucity of research undertaking in this area of research interest, this study will proceed to examine the selected texts based on the identified variables. 

New Historicism is chosen over old Historicism because it gives the leverage for the discussion of the Othering practice in relation to the little narratives of the stereotyped and the epistemically disadvantaged groups. The old historicism is a restricted analysis of text to the background which it regards as the context. However, Historicism regards both the text and the context as objects of interpretation.

1.7 Research Methodology

This study is based on the qualitative research methodology widely used in the Humanities. The methodology allows for the use of two sources, which are the primary and secondary sources. The primary sources in literary research allow for the appropriation of information and data from the personal experiences of the author of a text especially through interviews, historical narratives and documents such as letters, diaries and any such memorabilia as well as through non-textual correlates like observations. The secondary sources utilise the library approach to data collection to generate materials for interpreting a text. Both the library and the internet are useful for the utilisation of scholarly critical materials that can be applied to enrich a research undertaking.

Qualitative research methodology thus deals with the interpretation of concepts and ideas and the meanings generated from the two sources. This is in sharp contrast to the quantitative research methodology that deals with the analysis of scientific data generated from experiments. This study, therefore, relies on the general and specific materials on New Historicism, reviews and analyses of the primary texts as well as disquisitions on the Nigerian civil war and insurgency in the Niger Delta.

In the main, it is in the nature of New Historicism to place both literary and non-literary materials on an equal interpretive pedestal. That is why, New Historicists have declared that a text is part and parcel of a wider cultural, social, political and economic dispensation. This then provides a methodological template for this study. 

1.08 Chapter Breakdown

This study is divided into six chapters. In Chapter One the general thrust of the study is stated in its conceptual background to the effect that it will apply the New Historicist its concepts of narrative fashioning, power and discourse, and historicity to discourses of war and insurgency in the selected texts. Other sections of this chapter are the Statement of the Research Problem along with the Research suppositions, Aim and Objectives, Research Questions, Justification of the Study, Scope and Delimitation, Methodology and Chapter Breakdown. Chapter Two reviews literature and foregrounds New Historicism as a theoretical framework. Chapter Three discusses Narrative Fashioning as a process of Othering in Adichie‘s Half Of A Yellow Sun and Amadi‘s Sunset in Biafra with a focus on the iteration of biases, prejudices against the Other. In Chapter

Four, Othering practice and discourse intervention is discussed as a strategy by Iyayi in Heroes to pit the manipulated rank and file soldiers against the military high command and their civilian cohorts. Chapter Five discusses othering practices and historicity of oil wars and insurgency in Habila‘s Oil On Water. Chapter Six presents a conclusion based on the arguments wrought in the study. 

1.9 Clarification of the terms Civil War, Insurgency and the Novel

Civil war and insurgency or militancy are conflict situations which occur within the boundary of a given country. Such conflicts are usually used as means of conventional and non-conventional warfare or rebellion against a constituted authority. Civil war is defined as a ―politically organised, large scale, sustained physically violent conflict that occurs within a country principally among large/numerically important groups of its inhabitants or citizens over the monopoly of physical force within the country‖ (Gersovitz and Kriger :2013). It is further stated that civil wars ―must entail large-scale and sustained internal political violence to distinguish them from intense but limited episodes of political violence that contest the monopoly of force such as political assassinations, mutinies, or coups‖ (Gersovitz and Kriger :2013). On the other hand, Merriam Webster (2019) defines insurgency as ―an active revolt or uprising; a rebellion against a government that is less than an organised revolution and that is not recognised as belligerency.‖

The groups involved in such conflict situations are usually expressing micronationalism, that is, the desire for self-independence within a given country, by using methods such as subversion, armed conflict or guerrilla warfare to actualise their aims. The actions of such groups can be seen in two ways, which are as violent non-state actors and rebellious groups without sovereignty. Usually, these groups pose a security challenge to the existence of a sovereign state through their virulent demands for selfdetermination as micro-nationalist groups. This level of analysis fits into the postmodernist postulation shared by New Historicism on the construct of power, hegemony and the nature of reality. Post-modernists have grappled with the question of how societies agree upon social concerns like values and ethics since according to them reality is perspectival and depends on different individual‘s understanding. In their response to this problematic, postmodernists in Bressler (2002) declare that:

Each society or culture contains within itself a dominant cultural group who determines that culture‘s ideology or using the Marxist term, its hegemony; its sense of personal worth. All people in a given culture are consciously and unconsciously asked to conform to the prescribed hegemony.

The State actor is usually the dominant group. In other words, the state actor is the Nigerian state which exerts its authority and discourse to describe the micro-nationalist groups as violent non-state actors, as subversive, as insurgents or militias. In other words, the Nigerian state uses its state apparatuses not only to profile the dominated groups but also to ensure that they remain subjugated and silenced. Bressler (2002) succinctly enunciates this point further that the dominated groups are constantly harangued and coerced to ―live quietly, work quietly, and think quietly‖. And that the message being sent to the dominated groups by the dominant culture ―has been clear and consistent – conform and be quiet: deny yourself and all will be well‖ Bressler (2002).

All this is because the state views the restive groups as threats to national security that must be contained by all means necessary. And so, once the primary responsibility of the state is threatened or questioned it exerts its authority to subdue or crush the threats. Rasmussen (2001) in Maurice (2013) describes the state as the ―supreme legitimate authority entrusted with the exercise of violent force over a group of people‖.

Legitimate authority, in this case, is not, as Said (2003) puts it, ―mysterious or natural‖. It is as Said (2003) further enunciates:

Formal, irradiated, disseminated, it is instrumental, it is persuasive; it has status, it establishes canons of taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain idea it dignifies, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces.

This seemingly elaborate and all-pervasive authority of the state, in most cases, challenged and contested by the dissenting groups, is usually constructed through

―elaborate cultural, ideological, and political processes which culminate in feeling of connectedness to other national subjects and the idea of a national interest that transcends the supposedly petty divisions of class, region, dialect or caste‖ (Raminder: NA). 

Although scholars like Arjun Appadurai (1993) and Donald Pease (1997) have

discredited and dismissed the notion of the nation-state as, in Pease‘s view, ―an outdated liability---a tolerated anachronism‖ (Raminder: NA), it is still yet a site of contestation and contradiction. In fact, this study argues that the state is perceived as the threatening other that bears the virulence of epistemic violence. In this case, it becomes out-group, the ‗Them‘ against ‗Us‘ This is because the authority acquired by the state always brings it into a confrontation with groups that feel dominated and suppressed. Most times these groups resort to violence stemming from their frustrations about as Bressler

(2002) puts it, ―their direct and personal cultural clashes with the conquering culture and their fears, hopes, and dreams about the future and their own identities‖. The groups, therefore, engage in violent demands for self-determination as a last resort.

The term self-determination is a political concept which deals with the desire of a group of people who feel or perceive themselves as being marginalised, subdued, or oppressed, as is the case with the Biafrans (the Igbo) and the Niger Delta people, to seek freedom from such conditions within a given nation-state like Nigeria. In so doing, the groups often organise themselves within a polity to assert their cultural identity by defining themselves in contrast to the dominant group, culture and a coercive state. The literature created to serve this end becomes protest in nature, and it functions as an instrument of collective search for identity, liberation, self-worth, in the face of a dominant culture. Such literature now tilts toward othering practice as this study argues.

Although the political entities, the Biafrans and the Niger Deltans perceive the Nigerian state as the threatening other, within the post-colonial discourse the Nigerian state itself is a subject/victim of the metropolitan powers and is itself subject to domination. However, the object of interest for this study is how this relationship between the margin and the metropolis playing out within the confines of an entity, a nation-state that is itself a subject at another level of power discourse. Put another way, how one group within a subject nation-state iterates what Gayatri Spivak terms ‗epistemic violence‘ against another group.

The novel form provides the stage where this epistemic violence is iterated. Burgess

(2019) describes the novel as a ―truncation of the Italian word novella (from the plural of Latin Novellus, a late variant of Novus, meaning new‖.) This means that the stories contained in the novel are supposed to be ―new things, novelties, freshly minted diversions, toys, not reworkings of known fables or myths‖ Burgess (2019). The Novel is a sub-genre of prose fiction. As an umbrella term, prose fiction is an imaginary story written by someone in everyday natural language. It explores characters and events within the scope of the writer‘s imagination. The novel is different from other prose fictions in terms of form and is typically about 60,000 words or 300 pages and above.

In his seminal book, The Rise of the Novel, Ian Watts states that the modern novel form emerged in England in the Eighteenth Century. And that it is concerned with issues such as empiricism,  scepticism, and probing the immediate environment in which it is produced. Its early exponents are Daniel Defoe, David Richardson, and Henry Fielding. Akporobaro (2010) is of the view that:

Daniel Defoe can be rightly regarded as the ‗father‘ and pioneer figure in the rise and development of the modern English novel. He transformed the art of narratives in prose from the modes of fantasy and Elizabethan romances of Thomas Nash and John Lyly into the form of the novel as a historical account of individual life, struggles and psychological processes, actualities of human life, by his close attentiveness to ‗facts‘, specificity and narrative suspense.

Burgess (2019) corroborates this distinguishing characteristic of the novel by noting that the novel, in the wake of its emergence, ―attempts to assume those burgeons of life that have no place in the epic poem and to see man as unheroic, unredeemed, imperfect, even absurd‖. He further highlights the novelist‘s task, while quoting W.H. Auden‘s poem, that he must:

Become the whole of boredom, subject to vulgar complaints like love, among the just, Be just, among the filthy too. And in his own weak person, if he can, must suffer dully all the wrongs of man.

This normative task of the novelist is inscribable within the expressive form of the novel which makes it a veritable means for the expression of the interconnectedness of cultural and social practices. That is why there are different kinds of the novel, which are, mysteries, romance, thriller, science fiction, fantasy and historical novel. The technical resources of the novel which makes it suitable for imagining the community that is a nation are its plot structure, setting, characters and the underlying idea or thought.

A novel may embody within its structure a sequence of events which are intended either to celebrate or criticise a given society or nation. Its setting may also be expansive enough to bring together disparate people to form a collective whole even if divergent in their views. These characters that occupy this space can be projected as

citizens/inhabitants of a given setting with names, caste or creed, sexes. Similarly, the characters will speak a certain language as a distinguishing mark of their cultural identity. Thus, through language and the technical resources deployed in the novel form, social actions such as the civil war and insurgency are presented as a narrative act.

According to Greenblatt (1980) ―Similarly, Bakhtin in Hartland (1990) states that ―words can never be innocent because they are imprinted with the world-view which they have been previously used to assert‖. This means that literary works are a

significant part of cultural production.

And so, the literary corpus on both the Nigeria Civil and Insurgency in Niger Delta examines the socio-psychological and political dimensions of the Nigerian crisis. In other words, the imaginative fictional works on the civil war and insurgency are couched in resistance, struggle, protest, challenge and confrontation. Such works affirm the people‘s strong attachment to symbols, label, attitude, and standards. The war and insurgency for them are means of reactions to situations which they perceived as threatening to their collective cultural identity. This thereby creates a literary representation that shows strong attachment to ethnic loyalty or military ideals to the detriment of the overall effort of nation-building.

1.10 Historical Antecedents of The Novel of War and Conflict in Europe, America, and Africa

This section provides background to the evolution of the war and conflict literature tradition across the world. Essentially, this section is meant to properly situate this study and the discourse of Nigerian Civil War and insurgency in Niger Delta in the World tradition of War and conflict literature. In the main, this is supposed to enrich the understanding of the thrust of this study.

Historically, the tradition of war literature in Europe is rooted in classical writings such as The Iliad by Homer, The Aeneid by Vigil, and Beowulf by Anonymous. These epic poetry texts are the earliest influences on the emergence of the war novel. As treatises of war, these poetry texts document the history and mythology of conflicts between societies. For example, The Iliad by Homer recounts the events of the weeks that preceded the end of the Trojan war as well as the siege, by the Greeks, of the city of Troy. The Aeneid by Vigil recounts events after the end of the Trojan War, how Aeneas and a group of Trojans flee to Carthage, the sacking of Troy which brings an end to the Trojan War. The two texts, therefore, focus on the Trojan War which, in Greek mythology, originates in the quarrel between the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Aphrodite, the fairest, receives a golden apple from Paris and makes Helen, the wife of Menelaus, fall in love with Paris in exchange. Paris and Helen elope to Troy. Menelaus brother, Agamemnon and the king of Mycenae leads an expedition to Troy and besieges the city for ten years.

On the other hand, Beowulf by Anonymous is an Old English epic poem that recounts the heroism of Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, for defeating a monster called Grendel. The Danish King, Hrothgar, whose mead hall is under attack by the monster, enlists Beowulf who eventually slays the monster and its mother. Beowulf then goes back home victorious and becomes the king of Geatland. Thus, the poem is a blend of the elements of fiction, legend, and history which heighten the tension that runs through the text. In the drama genre, early war writings include, The Trojan Women by Euripides, and Henry V by William Shakespeare. Euripedes The Trojan Women is the third of a trilogy that deals with the events of the Peloponnesian War in which the Aegean Island of Melos is captured and its women are slaughtered. Henry V by William Shakespeare is the final part of a tetralogy that recounts events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Year War.

Subsequent writings in the prose genre include Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes; Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guenzhong. While Cervantes‘ Don Quixote is a tale about the chivalrous quest that incorporates events such as the conquest of the

Kingdom of Maynila and battles from the Eighty Years‘ War, Guenzhong‘s Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a 14th Century historical novel set in the years leading to the end of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history. It deals with personal and military battles among the three power blocs that struggled to achieve dominance for 100 years.

The modern antecedents of the war novel flourished in the 19th century with works like

The Charter House of Parma by Stendhal; War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy; The Red

Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane; Le Feru (or UnderFire) by Henri Barbusse; All

Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque; Gone with the Wind by Margaret

Mitchell; The Unvanquished by William Faulkner; For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest

Hemingway; The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk; and From Here to Eternity and The Thin Redline by James Jones. Stendhal‘s The Charter House of Parma (1839) deals with the Battle of Waterloo, Tolstoy‘s War and Peace (1869) is on the Napoleonic Wars in Russia, and Craine‘s Red Badge of Courage is based on the American Civil War.

According to Mastin (2009) all these novels ―feature realistic depictions of major battles, scenes of wartime horror and atrocities, and significant insights into the nature of heroism and cowardice, as well as the exploration of moral questions‖.

War novels produced after the First World War include Barbusse‘s Le Feru (1916) (or Under Fire) which Mastin (2009) says ―initiated the anti-war movement in literature that flourished after the war‖. Ernst Junger‘s Storm of Steel (1920) reflects on the war as a ―valiant hero who embraced combat and brotherhood in spite of the horror‖ (Mastin: 2009). The 1920s witnessed what is termed the ‗war book boom‘. During this period novels like All Quiet in the Western Front (1929) by Maria Remarque; Life in the Tomb (1924) by Stratis Myrivilis, a Greek writer; A Farewell to Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway, were published. In the wake of the Second World War, an unprecedented number of war novels were published mostly by American writers, among them Herman Wouk‘s The Caine Mutiny (1951), James Jones‘ From Here to Eternity (1951), and Ernest Hemingway‘s For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). The bombing of London in 1940 becomes the subject of novels by British Writers which include, The Ministry of Fear (1943) by Graham Greene; No Direction (1943) by James

Hanley; and Caught (1943) by Henry Green. For the British writers, according to Mastin (2009) rather than see the war as a ―period of material destruction, war functions instead as a circumstance that alters normality in people‘s lives‖.

Thus, the signification of war in the novel genre since the Second World War manifests the following two distinct tendencies: novels about the Holocaust represented in novels like The Second Scroll (1951) by the Canadian A.M. Klein; If This Is a Man (1947) and If Not Now, When? (1982) by the Italian Primo Levi; and Sophie‟s Choice (1979) by the American William Styron; as well as, the novels dealing with internment or persecution which feature characters who ―find themselves imprisoned or deprived of their civil rights as a direct result of war‖ (Mastin:2009). An example of the novel about internment is Obasan (1981) by a Japanese Canadian Joy Kogawa, which ―recounts her experience of being relocated to the internment camp during the Second World War‖ (Gradesfixer: 2018). Apart from these tendencies, according to Bergonzi (1993), ―in the wake of postmodernism and the absence of wars equaling the magnitude of the two world wars, the majority of war novelists have concentrated on how memory and the ambiguities of time affect the meaning and experience of war‖. Such ambiguity is usually underscored by a resort to self-reflexive accounts of the experiences of war mediated by memory or imagination.

There is a body of discourses on world literatures on war and conflicts. These include works like War and Aftermath: English Literature and its Background 1939-60 (1993) by Bernard Bergonzi; American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam (1982) by Philip D. Beidler; Heroes‟ Twilight: A Study of the Literature of the Great War (1965) by Bernard Bergonzi; The Great War of Words: British American and Canadian

Propaganda and Fiction (1914-1933) (1987) by Peter Buitenhuis; Representing War:

Form and Ideology in First World War Narratives (1993) by Evelyn Cobley; World

War 1 and the American Novel (1967) by Stanley Cooperman; The Language of War

(2002) by James Dawes; The Great War and Modern Memory (1973) by Paul Fussell; Extreme Situations: Literature and Crisis from the Great War to the Atom Bomb (1979) by Michael Egan and David Craig; and A Muse of Fire: Literature, Art and War (1998) by A.D. Harvey.

1.11 Literature of War, Conflict and Insurgency in Africa

Africa has had a chequered history of wars, conflicts, and violence which predates colonialism. It is as the title of Yambo Oulougueni‘s novel proclaims bound to violence. Its history is replete with tales of war between kingdoms, chiefdoms or fiefdoms, and communities. Africa is, indeed, a land of warriors like Chaka the Zulu, Mansa Musa, Idris Alooma, with a pedigree of conquests, of slave raids, of resistance to domination by external forces.

In the wake of colonialism and political independence, many African countries become embroiled in atrocious wars and conflicts which take the form of colonial wars, wars of independence, civil wars, secessionist, national conflicts like sectarian, ethnic or tribal riots, communal clashes, massacres, genocide, and insurgency. However, despite the deleterious nature of these wars and conflicts, Nwankwo (2008) declares that their impact on ―the human condition in African literature and society has not been taken as seriously as it deserves.‖ This means that the Oeuvre of literature on war and conflicts in Africa and its study is, as Nwankwo (2008) emphasises, still ―wrapped in the wool of fanciful and fashionable paradigms‖ thereby making it a ―shoddy and haphazard diagnosis of the ills of the African continent.‖

Although Okey Ndibe and Chengerai Hove have written a compendium entitled Writers, Writing on Conflicts and Wars in Africa (2009) described by Ikheola (2010) as a ―treasure trove of reflections on war by an army of mostly African writers who have been affected by Africans myriad wars and genocides‖, access to such writings is largely determined by language factor. This is to say that works of African writers who write in Portuguese, Arabic and French cannot be easily accessible to English speaking readers and researchers without the agency of translation. This, therefore, accounts for the lack of awareness of the existence of such works.

Apparently, virtually all African countries have experienced some form of conflicts, violence and wars, with many still embroiled in such extreme situations. Some of these countries include South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Algeria, Rwanda, Mozambique, Mali, Uganda, Tanzania, Namibia, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe,

Sierra Leone, Liberia, Egypt, Libya, Sudan etc. As widespread as conflicts and wars are in Africa, writers in African countries have responded in equal measure to the concatenated wars with diversity. This diversity is mostly underpinned by the nature of the conflicts and wars in African countries which are widespread, protracted, and, in some cases, intertwined at inter-state levels. As a result, most literary works especially those from the Southern and Eastern African regions reflect these transnational characteristics of the conflicts and wars. For example, because of the participation or interference of South Africa in the conflicts in Zimbabwe and the civil war in Angola most writers in these countries have based their works on these concatenated wars and conflicts. Similarly, the Ethiopian-Eritrean war of 1998-2000, the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1895-1896 as well as the series of conflicts between Sudan and South Sudan have all variously impacted the East African writings. As such, the survey of literary fictions attempted here is based on regional spread instead of the cumbersome survey based on each country.

The southern African region is made up of ten countries, viz, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mozambique, Angola, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and Botswana.

Out of these ―only Zambia, Botswana, Malawi, and Swaziland can be said to not have been at war at some time from 1960-2000‖. (Rogers: 2005). The fictional works which reflect conflicts and civil wars in the other countries include, in South Africa Sousa

Jamba‘s Patriots (1990); Mark Behr‘s The Smell of Apples (1993); David Medalie‘s The Shadow Follows (2006); J.M. Coetzee‘s Disgrace (1993); and the Border War novels by Wilbur Smith. In Zimbabwe the fictional works include Alexander Fuller‘s Scribbling the Cat; Yvonne Vera‘s The Stone Virgin (1998), Butterfly Burning (2002),

Under the Tongue (1996); Garikai Mutasa‘s The Contact; Alexander Kanengoni‘s Echoing Silences (1997), Effortless Tears (1993) (Short Stories), Vicious Circle (1983), and When the Rainbird Cries (1988); Chenjerai Hove‘s Bones (1985), and Shadows

(1991); Robert Zaleeza‘s Exile; and Charles Samupindi‘s Pawns. In Angola, the only fictional work that this researcher is able to come across is Pepetela‘s Mayombe (1980) which deals with the lives of a group of MPLA guerrillas involved in the anti-colonial struggle in Cabinda.

In East Africa, there is a dozen of fictional works of conflicts and wars cutting across some of the fifteen countries that constitute that region. In Ethiopia there are works such as All Our Names (2014) by Dinaw Mengestu; Beneath the Lion‟s Gaze (2010) by Maaza Mengiste, while in Eritrea there is Heart of Fire by Senait Mehare. In Somalia, the works include Little Mother (2007) by Cristina Ali Farah; and The Orchard of Lost

Souls by Nadifa Mohammed. In South Sudan and Sudan there are War Child (2009) by

Emmanuel Jal and Tears of the Desert (2008) by Halima Bashir respectively. China Keitetsi‘s Child Soldier (2002) and Waiting (2007) by Goretti Kyomuhendo reflect conflicts and wars in Uganda. And in Rwanda, there are Marie Beatrice Umutesi‘s

Surviving the Slaughter, Bazambanzi Rupert‘s Smile Through the Tears (2017), and Leah Chishugi‘s A Long Way from Paradise (2010). According to Tembo (2017) ―the nature of the conflicts in the individual countries of the region shapes the literary and stylistic choices‖ of these authors. While writers from Rwanda, Sudan and South Sudan are preoccupied with the ethnic/racial tensions that precipitate genocidal wars, writers from the Horn of Africa – Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia – focus on the motif of displacement and desperate journeys across land and water as a result of fratricidal conflicts and civil wars in their respective countries.

In West Africa, Nigeria‘s literary tradition is about the most vibrant. It has a swathe of works on conflicts and wars more than any other country in this region. A handful of writers of fiction on instances of conflicts and wars are Yambo Ouolouguem from Mali with his seminal novel Bound to violence (1971), and the Liberian writer Wayetu Moore whose She Would Be King (2018) explores Liberia‘s history weaving magical realism into its plot structure to frame the story of the war in Liberia. Since the focus of this study is Nigeria, the background survey of the corpus of fictional works on its civil war and the insurgency in the Niger Delta will be done in the next section.

1.12 Fictional Works on Nigerian Civil War and Insurgency in the Niger Delta

Since the emergence of the Nigerian Novel in the 1950s, it has wittingly played an active role in reflecting what Oladitan (1979) calls the Nigerian crisis which encompasses gross political disillusionment, corruption, military dictatorship, civil war and insurgency. These socio-political situations feature in Nigerian novels in varying degrees. This reflection follows the phased development of Nigerian literature which is sometimes problematic to delineate because of its protean nature.

A cursory look at the developmental phases of written Nigerian literature shows that sometimes reference is made to three phases which are the pre-colonial, colonial or preindependence, post-independence and post-war era. At other times reference is made to the generational dichotomy such as the first, the second, and the third generations.

Reference is similarly made to periods such as the 1950-60, the 1960-1980, and the 1980-1990s, after which there is what is termed the diasporic literature.

Nonetheless, within the broad precinct of the post-independence writings can be located fictional works on the Civil War and insurgency in the Niger Delta. Within the mainstream of Nigerian literature these fictional works belong to the growing corpus designated as Civil War Literature and Niger Delta Literature respectively. By and large, the terms civil war literature and Niger Delta literature have often been used loosely to describe literary works which focus mainly on the Nigerian civil war and the concerns of the Niger Delta people. As major infractions in the political history of Nigeria, both the civil war and the insurgency in the Niger Delta have attracted a plethora of literary publications and critical commentaries. Nwahunanya in Emenyonu (2008) states that ―in its re-creation and interpretation of history, Nigerian war literature has enriched the existing body of historical writing from Africa, especially historical fiction‖. He further enunciates that ―the war literature also serves as a compass for social re-direction‖ (2008). 

Novels written immediately after the civil war provide a postmortem of the war situation. These novels include Kole Omotoso‘s The Combat (1972), Wole Soyinka‘s Season of Anomy (1973), John Munonye‘s A Wreath for the Maidens (1973), Elechi Amadi‘s Sunset in Biafra (1973), Okechukwu Mezu‘s Behind the Rising Sun (1973), Fola Oyewole‘s Reluctant Rebel (1975), Chukwuemeka Ike‘s Sunset at Dawn (1976),

Isidore Okpewho‘s The Last Duty (1976) Cyprian Ekwensi‘s Survive the Peace  (1976), Ossie Enekwe‘s Come, Thunder (1972); Chinua Achebes‘s Girls at War (1972) and The

Insider: Stories of War and Peace from Nigeria (1971). Munonye‘s A Wreath for the Maidens and Ike‘s Sunset at Dawn deal with the witnesses and records of the events of the civil war. Oladitan (1979) states that Munonye‘s novel ―summarises the major

political events in Nigeria from the last days of colonial rule to the later part of the civil war soon after the fall of PortHarcourt‖. While Ike‘s novel is ―set in the civil war, opening with the beginning of the Biafra adventure after Aburi and ending with the formal surrender after the secessionist leader‘s escape to the Ivory Coast‖ (Oladitan:1979). Similarly, Amadi‘s Sunset in Biafra captures the ―experiences of a conscientious objector who is subjected to arbitrary arrests and detention under deplorable conditions‖ (Oladitan: 1979). In Season of Anomy, Soyinka examines the

―roles of ideology and violence in a revolutionary transformation of the society‖ (Oladitan: 1979). Other novels written later on the civil war include Eddie Iroh‘s Forty

Eight Guns for the General (1976), Elechi Amadi‘s Estrangement (1986), Buchi

Emecheta‘s Destination Biafra (1982), and Wives at War (1992), Festus Iyayi‘s Heroes

(1986), Ken Saro Wiwa‘s Soza Boy (1985), Cyprian Ekwensi‘s Divided We Stand (1980), I.N. Aniebo‘s The Anonymity of Sacrifice, (1974), Nathan Nkala‘s Drum and the Voice of Death (1996), and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s Half of A Yellow Sun (2006).

On the other hand, the insurgency in the Niger Delta is represented in literary works now referred to as the Niger Delta literature Okoroegbe (2012) states that Niger Delta

Literature is ―intrinsically bound within the discursive ethos and matrix of ethnic nationalism and identity formation in postcolonial Nigeria‖. He further points out that Niger Delta Literature:

Chronicles the pains and sufferings that is now a visible trajectory of the region as a result of oil exploration and exploitation. Aside from dwelling on the rapid despoliation of the regions land, water and aerial spaces, this emergent literature laments the abject oppression, neglect and marginalisation this region and her people contend with in spite of the enormous amount of wealth it generated for the national coffers.

According to Okoroegbe (2012), Niger Delta literature is ―any writing that draws consciously from the region‘s customs, habits, and dialectic, and in which the writer defines and identifies himself primarily with the region‘s socio-cultural tensions and dynamics, and consciously portray the predicaments and aspirations of its people‖. In other words, literary works from the Niger Delta explore the region‘s ―history, modernity and changing circumstances and what is presented has become the parameter by which the people imagine the larger Nigerian nation‖ (Okoroegbe: 2012).

Niger Delta literature is classified into three phases. First, the works whose ideological temperament questions the politics of exclusion and marginalisation of the Niger Delta and expresses the Niger Delta people‘s scepticism about the legitimacy of a Nigerian nation as well as attempting to deconstruct it. Second, the works whichfocus on the region‘s cultural politics as it relates to gender discrimination and female predicament in the politics of oil. Third, the works which concentrate on the orgy of violence in the region unleashed by subaltern youths, demanding resource control and adequate compensation for the hazards of oil exploration and production in the Niger Delta,

(Okoroegbe: 2012). And so, the ―dynamics of oil politics articulated in Niger Delta literature accentuate the widely held belief that the modern Nigerian nation is yet a site of agitation, contestation, and contradiction‖ (Okoroegbe: 2012).

Novels  which feature the Niger Delta question and the motif of insurgency include

Tanure Ojaide‘s The Activist (2006), Kaine Agary‘s Yellow Yellow (2006), Helon

Habila‘s Oil On Water (2011), Bena Illagha‘s Condolences (2003) and Crossroads

(2003), Sefi Attah‘s Everything Good Will Come (2005), Gabriel Okara‘s The Voice (1964), Joy Chinwokwu‘s After Midnight (NA) and Clouds at Sunrise (NA).

The four novels selected for this study fit into the body of fictional works of the

Nigerian civil war and the insurgency in the Niger Delta. Adichie‘s Half of a Yellow Sun is a retrospective account of the effect of the civil war on Igbo families resident in the North and Igboland for whom the war is a matter of precarious living, survival and death. Amadi‘s Sunset in Biafra is a vicarious account of a retired Nigerian Army Captian, Amadi, from a minority tribe in the Niger Delta who is caught up in tribal politics on the fringes of the civil war. What these two texts have in common is not so much their accounts of the civil war as their representation of the Other. This othering practice is also a feature of Iyayi‘s Heroes and Habila‘s Oil on Water. Iyayi‘s Heroes tells the story of a journalist who goes through the war to weave a discourse intervention as a strategy of making the subaltern soldiers come to term with their categorisation as docile bodies. Habila‘s Oil on Water is an account of the subaltern youths engaged in the politics and oil wars as a way of confronting the Nigerian State perceived as the threatening Other.

In conclusion, this Chapter encapsulates the paradigm of this study which is the focus on scouring the selected texts to articulate those petit narratives which concern the epistemically disadvantaged groups. As for novels of war and conflict situations, the study also scours through antecedents of war novels in Europe and Africa to properly situate the discourse of Nigerian Civil War and Insurgency in the existing tradition of the interpretive history of war and conflict literature. Also, as an introductory chapter, it sets out the proposition, aim and objectives, methodology as well as the justification of the study and clarification of terms. It also discusses the corpus of fictional works on the Nigerian Civil War and Insurgency in the Niger Delta.

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