On freedom and complexity in the (captive) nation

ABSTRACT

In Biodun Jeyifo's readings of the Chibok girl's captivity in The Nation magazine (Nigeria), he reveals his desperately optimistic insistence on collective substantive freedoms. Jeyifo's response to the situation is one of doubling complexity, pointing to the systemic violence that not only made the girls vulnerable, but also produces the young male perpetrator/victims who hold the girls captive and that holds the nation captive as well.  In this paper, Murphy argues that Jeyifo's complex reading of denied substantive freedoms in (what he might now call) a captive era in Nigerian history also provides a lens for removing the “familiar mask of the righteous judge” represented by the Western iteration of the #BringBackOurGirls movement. The paper interrogates the way in which Boko Haram tapped into the exaggerated post-9/11 fears that Islamic militants were a threat to Western values and freedom and provided evidence for Christian fundamentalist mythologies of a clash of civilizations. The paper suggests that the fervent discourse regarding the Boko Haram kidnappings point to a contest of fundamentalist ideologies, two opposing but tactically similar movements that ignore the structural lack of substantive freedoms that bring members into their fold.

KEYWORDS:

• Boko Haram
• freedom
• #BringBackOurGirls
• sex slavery

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura T. Murphy

Laura T. Murphy is associate professor of English and director of the Modern Slavery Research Project at Loyola University New Orleans. She is author of Survivors of Slavery: Modern Day Slave Narratives (Columbia University Press, 2014) and Metaphor and the Slave Trade in West African Literature (Ohio University Press, 2012, winner of the ALA First Book Award). She is currently working on a book titled The New Slave Narrative, which is slated to be published in 2019.