Colonial Education and Agency In Francophone and Anglophone Literatures
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Date
2023
Authors
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Publisher
MouloudMAMMERI University of Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
This thesis deals with the issues of colonial education and agency in four selected autobiographical novels: MouloudFeraoun’sLe Fils du Pauvre (1950), CamaraLaye’sL’enfant Noir(1953), NgugiWaThiong’o’sWeep Not (1964), Child and Francis Selormey’sThe Narrow Path(1966). It aims at inscribing the authors under discussion into the national literature of heroism and anti-colonial struggle despite the absence of direct and bold condemnations of the colonial education in their fiction. My approach is comparative and foregrounds the importance of locating agency within literary and socio- historical contexts. This thesis suggests that different socio-historical backgrounds generate different kinds of agency. For the purpose at hand, it puts the reactions of the Francophone authors concerning their colonial educational experiences in juxtaposition with those of the Anglophone ones. This thesis is divided into three parts. The first part cautions against the restrictive theorizing of agency and offers a new understanding of the term in postcolonial context so often overlooked by critics. Relying on, mainly, GayatriSpivak, Louis Althusser, and HomiBhabha’s ideas, it argues that agency depends, so much, on the authors’ ‘temporal orientations’ and requires reflexive skills to use language strategically and to communicate the desired messages which may be either direct or indirect. The first part reveals that agency is a term highly embedded in subalterneity. As a result, this part concerns itself with the methods, strategies and the suggested plans of the colonial educational policies of Assimilation and Indirect Rule and it demonstrates how the two policies depart from each other in aim and application. The two subsequent parts which deal with the analysis of the four autobiographical novels bring to the surface, in the light of the new understanding of agency, the authors’ agency which they have maneuvered through their strategic writings, comments, selected themes, and the traits of their chosen characters. The analysis of the four novels shows that the Francophone authors adopt different reactions to the experience of colonial education from the Anglophone authors. The thesis, therefore, contributes to the field of postcolonial literature towards a greater recognition of the contextual specificities that characterize each literary work as it invites critics to reread works so often excluded from the literature of commitment using the new understanding of agency.
Description
258 f. ; 30 cm.
Keywords
Colonial Education, Postcolonial Literature, Agency
Citation
Literature