《大河两岸》:后独立时代肯尼亚的社会隐喻

The River Between: A Social Allegory of the Post-independent Kenya

恩古吉的《大河两岸》是莎士比亚戏剧在非洲语境的戏仿。本文拟从《大河两岸》的表层叙事逻辑,即小说开篇与结尾段落的呼应这一细节描述出发,阐释恩古吉如何在小说中建构“失衡-平衡-再失衡”的叙事模式,从而颠覆西方传统戏剧“平衡-失衡-再平衡”的叙事话语,实现重建社会秩序的反思书写。小说问题化的结局实则隐伏着诸多社会冲突,表现了作者欲倚靠肯雅塔文化民族主义思想建构民族主义话语的愿望,更隐喻了后独立时代肯雅塔政府“原谅与遗忘”政策可能带来的政治焦虑。

Ngugi’s The River Between is a parody of Shakespeare’s drama in the African context.Focusing on the two similar paragraphs in the opening and closing sections in The River Between,this article attempts to explain how Ngugi constructs the “disorder-order-and-re-disorder” narrative model in the novel, thereby subverting the “balance-imbalance-rebalance” narrative discourse in the Western traditional drama and realizing the reflective writing about rebuilding social order.The problematic ending of the novel actually reveals many social conflicts. It not only exhibits the author’s desire to rely on Kenyatta’s cultural nationalism to construct a nationalist discourse, but also indicates the political anxiety that the Kenyatta government’s “forgive and forget” policy in the post-independence era may bring about.