Dambudzo Marechera's "House of Hunger"

The following body of text is the introduction of an essay written for the class 'Decolonising Literature'. The brief/title for the piece is included in bold below,

Analyse how colonisation or decolonisation is explored at the level of the individual, or the level of the institution, or both, in any text or texts on this unit.

While the understatement that decolonisation is a complex and an ambiguous concept is too generalised, it is also nearly the only definitive statement you can make about the process. The extraction of nearly a century of foreign rule, that exerted its perceived power through violence and oppression, is not a one step process. Beyond this, as with most trauma, long after the physical wounds have healed over, the mental ones remain present. For the sake of brevity this essay will focus on how the processes of decolonisation of a colonised mind manifest themselves at the level of the individual with a focus on the novel The House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera. The aesthetic of this writer in particular has been described as “metaphoric surrealism” which presents images of violence though a chaotic structure in order to illustrate the brutal psychological consequences of the colonial experience in Rhodesia.[1] Marechera’s voice is layered with a scholarly understanding of European tradition, as there are multiple references to the Classics in the novel, coupled with the self-consciousness that is aware of broader political contexts and contradictions. Through this poetic articulation and the construction of what David Buuck refers to as an “anti-narrative” that transcends the categories of “African” or “European”.[2] This is a significant stance as it was the aim of many African authors to try and write for their “home” audience using their own language.[3] However, Marechera, along with many other critics, have labelled this approach as inadequate due to its adoption of a nationalist stance which duplicates the Western polemic they claim to oppose.[4]Mbuelo Mzamane labels Marechera as a “rebel” rather than a “revolutionary” due to his intention not being to “destroy” the entrenched power as other writers have done before him. Mzamane says this is due to Marechera being too “cynical and disillusioned” to “discriminate properly”, and while he certainly is a cynic, a more appropriate reason for this would be Marechera’s focus on his own personal journey.[5] This author writes to deconstruct what the seat of power means for him personally, but not to claim it for himself.[6] Amadi-Tshiwala argues for the statement that culture is dymanic and fluid, which goes against the commonly assumed premise that African culture managed to stay static for centuries under white rule, and was simply waiting for the white man to leave in order for it to emerge in a pristine condition.[7] This is reflected in Marechera’s body of work, as it is here that he undermines assumption that there is a fixed sense of “African personhood” or “history”.[8] In the words of the author himself “Life is not a plot you know. It does not have one coherent theme but many conflicting ones.”[9]

Citations [1] David Buuck, "African Doppelgänger: Hybridity And Identity In The Work Of Dambudzo

Marechera", Research In African Literatures, 28.2 (1997), 118 – 131

<https://doi.org/www.jstor.org/stable/3820447>, p. 124 [2] Ibid., p. 122, 127 [3] Gerald Gaylard, "Dambudzo Marechera And Nationalist Criticism", English In Africa, 20.2

(1993), 89–105 <https://doi.org/www.jstor.org/stable/40238714>, p. 89 [4] Ibid., p. 94 [5] Ibid., p. 89; David Pattison, "Call No Man Happy: Inside The Black Insider, Marechera's

Journey To Become A Writer?", Journal Of Southern African Studies, 20.2 (1994), 221–

239 <https://doi.org/www.jstor.org/stable/2637388>., p. 226 [6] Gaylard, p. 98 [7] Pattison, p. 227 [8] Theory From The South: Or, How Euro-America Is Evolving Toward Africa (Routledge,

2011) <https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bristol/detail.action?docID=4186058.>

[Accessed 15 January 2020]., p. 52 ;Buuk, p. 118 [9] Dambudzo Marechera in Gaylard, p. 84