Papers by Mary J . N . Okolie
Matatu, Dec 4, 2023
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Journal of Migration Affairs
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Journal of Borderlands Studies
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Identity studies in African-American literature, ov er time, have depicted the interaction betwee... more Identity studies in African-American literature, ov er time, have depicted the interaction between black and white Americans and t he connectedness of black Americans to their root. This study has explored th e t eme of identity as influenced by the milieu to represent the place of African-Americ ans within the larger American society in relation to racism, segregation, culture, migrat ion and social equality. However, most of the analyses of the theme of identity in African -American studies have examined identity either in relation to racism or as a recon nection to the African root. This study analyzes identity from another dimension. It explor es identity as an inevitable imposition, an obligation made on the individual by forces, soc ietal or supernatural, which are beyond their control and from which they have no power of escape, thus, making the individual a pharmakos of a destined self. In analyzing Isidore Okpewho’s Call Me By My Rightful Name and Richard Wright’s Native So...
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Journal of Borderlands Studies, 2019
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International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 2017
Richard Wright’s Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting... more Richard Wright’s Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting its existence as a literary construct. Such readings gear towards identifying the text with such societal ills as racism and environmental impact on the individual, as if these are the only business of the text.In this paper, however, attention shifts from such external referents to the text itself, deconstructing the meaning of blindness already ascribed to the text as well as the meaning of silence as it is denotatively known. The uncovering of the textual meaning of each of these concepts will also serve either to compliment a character or to disparage same, and then the interweave of both concepts will result in reading the text as a tragedy. This study will be anchored on the provisions of Derrida’s deconstructive criticism.
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Journal of Refugee Studies, Oct 5, 2019
Bringing Chinua Achebe’s seminal text, Things Fall Apart, into the current global scholarship on ... more Bringing Chinua Achebe’s seminal text, Things Fall Apart, into the current global scholarship on refugees provides a consideration of the problem of displacement from a literary perspective. While there is a substantial body of criticism on Things Fall Apart, there has not been tangible concentration on the psychology of Okonkwo’s exile in the text. This article expands upon the literature by locating Achebe’s seminal text and the narrative strand of Okonkwo’s exile in the discourse of refugee studies. By examining Okonkwo’s pre-exilic and post-exilic life as intrinsically connected to his exile, it foregrounds the inevitable psycho-traumatic effect of exile on the refugee’s mind that plays out in the form of violence on the self, and on the victim’s human and material environment.
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Okike: An African Journal of New Writing, 2021
Celebrating sixty years of Things Fall Apart calls for a reimagining of the themes and structures... more Celebrating sixty years of Things Fall Apart calls for a reimagining of the themes and structures that have sustained the critical gaze over the past years. The conventional reading of exile in the text has concentrated on the banishment of Okonkwo from Umuofia to Mbanta. Also, hardly have critics examined exile in the text from the existential perspective that implicates other exile characters such as Unoka, Nwoye, Ikemefuna, and Umuofia community as a whole. Filling this gap is the concern of this paper. So, while it critically looks again and remaps the notion of exile beyond the physical to alienation and powerlessness, it exposes Okonkwo"s exile as spanning through the text-from his inner flight from his father, through the actual banishment to Mbanta, to his terminal flight from Umuofia in suicide. The paper claims that these three exilic clusters comprise the fulcrum upon which the narration thrives.
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Dissertation, Stellenbosch University South Africa, 2019
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Mary J. N. Okolie, 2019
The vastness of politics as a subject of discourse can best be grasped in border studies because ... more The vastness of politics as a subject of discourse can best be grasped in border studies because politics encompasses both spatial and imaginary borders that distinguish one nation/state from another. The existence of spatial borderlines creates territorial demarcations that differentiate geopolitical settings within which policies that establish national identity are forged. But where the disparity in policy exists, national identity tends to fall apart. This is the case with Nigeria whose national identity was built on a questionable colonial policy which neglected the diversity of interests and cultures among the various ethnic groups hastily amalgamated into a single political entity. Literature grapples with political complexity and makes it easily comprehensible through narrative performativity. Chukwuemeka Ike’s novel Sunset at Dawn delineates the intricacy of bordering and debordering that shaped (and continues to shape) the Nigerian nation. I argue here that the identity for...
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Richard Wright's Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglec... more Richard Wright's Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting its existence as a literary construct. Such readings gear towards identifying the text with such societal ills as racism and environmental impact on the individual, as if these are the only business of the text.In this paper, however, attention shifts from such external referents to the text itself, deconstructing the meaning of blindness already ascribed to the text as well as the meaning of silence as it is denotatively known. The uncovering of the textual meaning of each of these concepts will also serve either to compliment a character or to disparage same, and then the interweave of both concepts will result in reading the text as a tragedy. This study will be anchored on the provisions of Derrida's deconstructive criticism.
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CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
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Mary J. N. Okolie, 2019
Bringing Chinua Achebe's seminal text, Things Fall Apart, into the current global scholarship on ... more Bringing Chinua Achebe's seminal text, Things Fall Apart, into the current global scholarship on refugees provides a consideration of the problem of displacement from a literary perspective. While there is a substantial body of criticism on Things Fall Apart, there has not been tangible concentration on the psychology of Okonkwo's exile in the text. This article expands upon the literature by locating Achebe's seminal text and the narrative strand of Okonkwo's exile in the discourse of refugee studies. By examining Okonkwo's pre-exilic and post-exilic life as intrinsically connected to his exile, it foregrounds the inevitable psycho-traumatic effect of exile on the refugee's mind that plays out in the form of violence on the self, and on the victim's human and material environment.
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Mary J. N. Okolie, 2019
The vastness of politics as a subject of discourse can best be grasped in border studies because ... more The vastness of politics as a subject of discourse can best be grasped in border studies because politics encompasses both spatial and imaginary borders that distinguish one nation/state from another. The existence of spatial borderlines creates territorial demarcations that differentiate geopolitical settings within which policies that establish national identity are forged. But where the disparity in policy exists, national identity tends to fall apart. This is the case with Nigeria whose national identity was built on a questionable colonial policy which neglected the diversity of interests and cultures among the various ethnic groups hastily amalgamated into a single political entity. Literature grapples with political complexity and makes it easily comprehensible through narrative performativity. Chukwuemeka Ike’s novel Sunset at Dawn delineates the intricacy of bordering and debordering that shaped (and continues to shape) the Nigerian nation. I argue here that the identity formation in Nigeria is largely a function of the tensions that characterize both spatial and ideological borders of ethnicity, highlighting the novel’s exposure of the nuances of socio-spatial negotiation which calls for ethnic inclusivity in nation-building.
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Mary J. N. Okolie, 2019
Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press... more Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies.
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Richard Wright's Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting... more Richard Wright's Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting its existence as a literary construct. Such readings gear towards identifying the text with such societal ills as racism and environmental impact on the individual, as if these are the only business of the text.In this paper, however, attention shifts from such external referents to the text itself, deconstructing the meaning of blindness already ascribed to the text as well as the meaning of silence as it is denotatively known. The uncovering of the textual meaning of each of these concepts will also serve either to compliment a character or to disparage same, and then the interweave of both concepts will result in reading the text as a tragedy. This study will be anchored on the provisions of Derrida's deconstructive criticism.
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Papers by Mary J . N . Okolie