Narrative as a process of re-negotiating ethnic identities among Abanyole of Western Kenya
Date
2011-06-23
Authors
Kweya, Dishon, G
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Whereas there is an accumulation of a large body of research in oral literature, it is mostly
confined to what is considered as the “fabula” and “folk wisdom” (tsingano) genres. Such
understanding of genre eschews oral history because it is designated as a “factual” genre and
ceded to historians. Using material collected ethnographically among the Abanyole of
Western Kenya, this study combines historical and literary methods to investigate the Nyole
expression of ethnic identity through the oral historical narrative. The study shifts attention
from the perceived mutual exclusiveness of factual and fictional genres by focusing on the
processes of the constitution and narration, and the purpose of narration of akakhale (the
past) by the Nyole to cast light on the methods of fashioning the Nyole historical and social
imagination. Thus, the study suggests alternative methods of reading the oral historical
narrative by highlighting the discursive processes and the predominance of language use in
the production the texts of the Nyole past.
Taking the notion of the past as the storehouse of a people’s idea of origin and ethnic identity
as the point of departure, the study investigates how Abanyole talk about their ethnic identity.
In the process the study shifts attention from the external dimensions, which have
predominated discourses on ethnicity, to the internal processes or the intra-community
dimensions of ethnicity. The thesis demonstrates that narration of the Nyole past is not meant
to reproduce kernels of truth-as-it-was; the purpose which the narration process is deployed
to serve, and the meaning of the narrative is unveiled by interrogating the Nyole social and
historical contexts, and the dynamics of the immediate context of narration which include the
narrator’s conscious selection in the process of integration of what should constitute the ideal
community history. Hence, the thesis underscores the implications of the exclusive Nyole
social structure, the uncertainty produced by population explosion and scarcity of land, the
interpretation of the objective of ethnographer, the need to represent the past in an acceptable
and non-threatening manner; and oral history as narrative to highlight how textuality and
performativity are deployed to deal with issues of legitimacy and the desire to have a more
inclusive definition of being Nyole. The thesis appropriates narrative as a socially symbolic
act as a model to explicate the multiplicity and contradiction in the Nyole narrative of origin,
and the uncertainty in the conception of belonging to the Nyole sub-group of the Luhya
ethnic nation.
Description
PhD, School of Literature and Language Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011
Keywords
Abanyole, Kenya, ethnic identity, narrative process