Undoing and reconstructing African identities: a cultural approach

Abstract

This study analyses selected literary/cultural texts to show the difficulties in dealing with the questions of individual and collective identity. It examines some African texts' attempts to undo both the oral and written (colonial) traditions' conceptions of identity. The former views identity not so much as a fixed and an immutable essence, but as a construct shaped by various elements that are in constant flux and, therefore, always in the process of definition and redefinition. The latter presents identity as frozen in time and space as the written information and the picture in an ID. Having thus deconstructed both traditions' conceptions, it will be a question of showing how one of these texts reconceptualizes individual and, by extension, African identity as shaped by such abstract terms as liberation (name), Liberty (surname), Justice (father's name) and Dignity (mother's name).

Keywords:

• métissage
• unfulfilled quest
• culture
• construct
• hybridity
• archival research