Resistant Voices: an Analysis of Identity and Selfhood in Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra

Abstract

Over the ages, man and women have tried to voice their doubts on his/her own 'identity' and 'self'. The analysis I have worked on is a comparative study of Articulation of this articulation of identity and self in Indian and African setting with regard to women's narratives. Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra, induced in me a very raw and passionate response. It was hitherto, the most violent narrative I had read. The constructs of ‘identity' and ‘self' found a very effective voice in this novel, and it inevitably is what I consider as ‘resistance' in every meaning of the word.

This narrative is fixed on a single protagonist, Debbie Ogedemgbe Here, I attempt to study the evolution of self and identity, and eventually, how it is asserted by the protagonist. As the narrative unfolds, the protagonist's constructs of Pan-Nigerian and humanism, fall apart in the light of experiences with war. But she is seen to overcome it and assert a Pan-Nigerian concept not out of ignorance this time, but taking into view the cultural differences and the realities around her.

Buchi Emecheta's protagonist is different in the sense that, she has been sketched in great detail, and she evolves. So we start with the protagonist's fixed notion of what she thinks is her identity to deconstructions of it, and final understanding and articulation in the light of engaging experiences. Therefore, the protagonist here, throws away the ‘conformist' patterns and etches out her own patterns of coming out of those constraining notions.

 If we look at the categorization by Susan Arndt in The Dynamics of African Feminism: Defining and Classifying African Feminist Literatures [2002], we can say that, Emecheta's text would fall under the radical category which argues that men as a social group, inevitably and in principle discriminate against, oppress and mistreat women. Her protagonist begins with the typical notions of colonial ‘selfhood' and then, through a painful process of struggle, arrives at a radical awareness of the new frontiers of selfhood which her experience as an African woman in the postcolonial ethos opens up before her.