CONTRAPUNTALITY AND AFFILIATION IN ABDULRAZAK GURNAH’S DESERTION

Abstract

Edward Said, in his notable book, Culture and Imperialism, asserts that the nascence of the novel, which is a European invention, is inseparable from the thrusts of imperialism, and so, premised on this, identifies two paramount concepts tied to the evolution of the novel and how it should be critically approached. These concepts are filiation and affiliation. The filiative approach proposes that every novel should be treated as an offshoot of the other novels that have preceded it based on Western literary canons, while the affiliative approach proposes that the novel should be read as a cultural artefact of the society that produces it, without any fixation on literary, canonical and traditional inclinations. Both approaches inform Said’s proposal of Contrapuntality as a framework for reading the novel. Hence, this essay applies the contrapuntal framework to the reading of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Desertion. The essay makes the following findings. First, Gurnah’s novel is a postcolonial or cross-cultural text founded on affiliation, which foregrounds cultural specificity. Second, the novel reappropriates, rehistoricises and renarrativises Africa’s historical and cultural realities hitherto desolated and disappeared by European and Arab coloniality. The essay concludes that the contrapuntal framework should be deployed more due to its fluidity in unearthing imperial subtleties.

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