DISCARDING EMPATHY FOR THE OTHER IN DANGAREMBGA’S NERVOUS CONDITIONS AND HABILA’S OIL ON WATER

 

Ocholi V. Idakwo¹, Steve A. Ogunpitan^2* and Innocent E. Chiluwa^3*    

 ¹Doctoral Student, Covenant University Ota, Nigeria / Principal Lecturer, Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro, Nigeria, ocholi.idakwo@stu.cu.edu.ng, ocholi.idakwo@federalpolyilaro.edu.ng

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0504-1162

²Assoc. Prof. Lagos State University, stephen.ogunpitan@lasu.edu.ng

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6429-594X

³Prof. Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria, innocent.chiluwa@covenantuniversity.edu.ng

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4420-9709

*Corresponding Author

 

Abstract

Trauma novelists usually deploy narrative tools which aspire to reflect perspectives that illuminate the mind of the reader on the kind of suffering that stems from revolting experiences. Expectedly, they involve the reader as an intimate witness or a distant observer of the fictional world that portrays trauma. As this reality unfolds, it is expected that they will evoke catharsis or create a gap between the reader and the personalities that are affected by the unfolding events.

The study makes certain assumptions by which it scrutinizes the degree of empathy that is usually provoked or impeded in prose narratives that reflect colonial reality, where the pain suffered by the characters is registered along racial and cultural divides. Two novels, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (2004) and Helon Habila’s Oil on Water (2010) are discussed as representations of such traumatic reality by engaging Pieter Vermeulen’s proposition that the West habitually classifies the tragedies of non-Europeans as unworthy of recognition. To this end, tragic experiences that do not directly implicate the westerner are classified in colonial notions as irrelevant and lacking of melancholic affectation. This segregation has provoked postcolonial pundits to hypothesize that there actually exists a wide gulf between the interest of the colonizing West and that of the subjugated natives of sub-Saharan Africa. Attention is therefore drawn to the need for scholars to seek pragmatic means of understanding the differentiated traumatic hangovers that came with the colonial encounter. To this end, the study implores literary critics to evolve tools that will intellectually assess the tragic realities of citizens of the postcolony who have featured interminably as the most precariously situated.

Keywords: Affectation, Empathy, Tragedies, Trauma, Witness.