Resistance to Colonial Hangover in Thiong'o's Matigari: A Foucauldian Reading

Abstract

The present research on Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Matigari tries to explore the inherent and underlying paradoxes of postcolonial sense of freedom from the perspective of Foucauldian concept of power and discourse. This research gives a general introduction to disordered, instable and anarchic experience of Kenyan people during the time of postcolonial era and also tries to unveil the maladies inherent in Kenyan postcolonial political system which has been masked with strong cocoon of postcolonial freedom. It further deals with the condition of marginalized and downtrodden people who have been sabotaged to the bottom rugs of social ladder. It studies the passivity and submissiveness of powerless people as well as their emerging rebellious and dominant role to assert their identity but eventually fall prey in the vertical axis of power dynamics.