public/private spheres in Adimora-Ezeigbo’s 'The Last of the Strong Ones'

In modern socializations, the public sphere is often a political space that gives entrée to the citizenry for unrestricted participation in public discourse. Expectedly, it opens up discursive spaces in which people either as individuals or as collectives can engage in critical debates for the transformation and growth of the common weal. This, more or less corroborates Jürgen Habermas’ (1989) treatise in which no individual or group may be marginalized or excluded from the democratic process. This paper examines Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s contestation of the expropriation of public spaces by both the imperialist ideology of the colonialists and the patriarchal orthodoxy of Umuga, the nineteenth century setting of her first novel, The Last of the Strong Ones (1996). In this novel, the author demonstrates that the contours and constructions of the female body in particular, inevitably intersect with discourses of the political sphere which sets in motion the dialectic debates of the public/private spheres. She thus, rigorously contends for what this paper describes as an inclusivist public space in which the interlocutors treat each other as equals in a cooperative on matters of common concern. To this end, Adimora-Ezeigbo’s women, once included in public spheres, shape, impact, and redefine them by producing alternative discourses, symbols, and images about womanhood, citizenship, and political participation in Umuga for the transformation of that society.

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Stichproben - Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien / Vienna Journal of African Studies

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Stichproben - Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien / Vienna Journal of African Studies