Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer
cjls

Articles

CJLS: VOL. 11, NO. 1, JUNE 2023

Between Sociopolitical Nightmare and Nativitist Longing: Ambivalence of the Vernacular Cosmopolitan in Noviolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names

Submitted
October 19, 2024
Published
2024-10-31

Abstract

Drawing from NoViolet Bulawayo’s pungent depiction of the horrid state of an African state in We Need New Names this paper argues that the modern African states constitute a sociopolitical nightmare that prompts exilic impulses in their citizens. The paper contends the point that the novel simply aims to satisfy an African voyeuristic appeal of the Western audience as argued by some critics.  Against a vast growing literary production that focuses on the global cosmopolitans of African descent often referred  to as Afropolitans, Bulawayo portrays a different category of migrant Africans that reflects Homi Bhabha’s  term, Vernacular Cosmopolitans. This paper, therefore, examines how the socio-political crisis necessitated by leadership failure and various forms of external interferences in modern African states constitutes foreboding reflexes against the African homeland. It is observed that while the experience in the homeland prompts exilic desires, challenges of integration into the mainstream culture and nostalgic yearnings instigate a longing for the homeland. Hence, the characters form an ambivalent disposition towards global mobility.

References

  1. Adesanmi, P. (2005). Redefining Paris: Trans-modernity and Francophone African migritude fiction. Modern Fiction Studies, 51(4), 958-75.
  2. Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, Culture and Society, 7, 295-310.
  3. Armah, A. K. (1968).The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  4. Arnett, J. (2016). Taking pictures: The economy of affect and postcolonial performativity in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 47(3), 149–173.
  5. Bhabha, K. H. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
  6. Bulawayo, N. (2013). We Need New Names. London: Vintage.
  7. Bwesigye, B.(2013). Is Afropolitanism Africa’s new single story? A Journal of Literature and Art Criticism. Nov. 22.
  8. Chidora, T. and Ngara K. (2019). Harare (in the) North: The metaphor of an irresolvable exile dialectic. Kairos: A Journal of Critical Symposium, 4(1).
  9. Chitando, A. (2016). “The girl child’s resilience and agency in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Journal of Literary Studies, 32 (1), 114–126.
  10. Cobo-Pinero, M. R. (2019). NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names: Mobilities and the Afropolitan picaresque. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 55(4), 472–485.
  11. Ede, A. (2015). Narrative moment and self-anthropologizing discourse. Research in African Literatures, 46(3), 112-129.
  12. Fanon, F. (1967). The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove.
  13. Frassinelli, P. P. (2015). Living in translation: Borders, language and community in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 51(6), 711-722.
  14. Foucault, M. (1984). Of other spaces: utopias and heterotopias. Trans. Jay Miskowiec. Architecture/Mouvement/ Continuite October.
  15. Gikandi, S. (2010). Between roots and routescosmopolitanism and the claims of locality. In J. Wilson, C. Şandru & S. L.Welsh (Eds.), Rerouting the Postcolonial/New Directions for the New Millennium. Routledge: New York.
  16. Habila, H. (2013). We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo: Review. The Guardian, June 20.
  17. Irele, F. A. (2001). The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  18. Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
  19. Krishna, S. (2009). Globalisation and Colonisation: Hegemony and Resistance in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
  20. Mbembe, A. (2001). On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  21. Mdlongwa, T., & Thamsanqa M. (2014). Look East or look least? The Zimba-
  22. bwean experience of Chinese economic investment in selected texts and examples. African Journal of Governance and Development, 3(2), 5-15.
  23. Moji, P. B. (2015). New names, translational subjectivities: (Dis)location and (re)naming in NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 27(2), 181-190.
  24. Nasser, M. (1997). Culture and Weight Consciousness. London: Routledge.
  25. Ndaka, F. (2020). Narrating global asymmetries of power: Children’s play/games and photography in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 1-15.
  26. Ndlovu, I. (2016). Ambivalence of representation: African crises, migration and citizenship in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. African Identities, 14(2), 132–146.
  27. Neumann, B. (2018). Vernacular cos- mopolitanism in Anglophone world lite- ratures: Comparative histories of literary worlding. Arcadia, 53(2), 239– 257.
  28. Ngugi wa Thiong’o. (1991). Petals of Blood. 8th ed. New York. Penguin Books.
  29. Ojaide, T. (2008) Migration, globalization and recent African literature. World Literature Today, 82(2), 43-46.
  30. Obioha, V. (2014). Africa: NoViolet Bulawayo – The new African voice. This Day, 15 March.
  31. Said, E. W. (2002). Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  32. Selasi, T. (2005). Bye-bye Babar. LIP. The LIP Magazine, March 3.
  33. Stobie, C. (2020). Precarity, poverty Porn and vernacular cosmopolitanism in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Meg Vandermerwe’s Zebra Crossing. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 1-15. DOI:1080/17449855.2020.1770494
  34. Taylor, C. (1991). The Ethics of Authenticity Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  35. Toivanen, A. (2015). Not at home in the world: Abject mobilities in Marie NDiaye’s Trois Femmes Puissantes and NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names. Postcolonial Text, 10(1), 1–18.
  36. Wainaina, B. (2008). How to Write About Africa. Nairobi: Kwani Trust.
  37. Walder, D. (2011). Postcolonial Nostalgias: Writing, Representation, and Memory. Routledge: New York.
  38. Werbner, Pnina. (2006). Vernacular cosmopolitanism. Theory, Culture & Society, 23, 496-498.