Space, Culture and Power in Buchi Emecheta’s Novel Called Kehinde

Öz

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Space
• culture
• subordinate
• power
• postcolonial
• Emecheta
• female

Space, Culture and Power in Buchi Emecheta’s Novel Called Kehinde

Abstract

When it is considered related with power, possible meanings of space and culture gain a more importance. In postcolonial literary theory, power is introduced to be something in the hands of the people belonging to Western world. Due to this, the colonizer’s cultural knowledge about the colonized’s culture and space determines the social rank and location of non-Western people. Cultural superiority of western world over non-western world is formed due to power- knowledge relationship in postcolonial literary theory. According to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, knowledge in postcolonial context isn’t guiltless because it is the output of its producers. Thus, dominant power gives a new shape to such concepts like space, culture and power belonging to subordinate people. Within this context Buchi Emecheta’s interesting novel called Kehinde tells the story of a couple trying to decide on staying in London and returning to their own country, Nigeria. In the novel Kehinde as a female and her husband Albert as a male experience the multifaceted influence of both living in the center and belonging to periphery and reflect the influence of space, culture and power in their life, family and social circumference. Hence, it is anayzed in the study how Emecheta tries to show the reader the fact that power dominates everything and causes complication in man’s life referring to postcolonial literary theory while constructing the postcolonial identies in the novel.

Keywords

• Space
• culture
• subordinate
• power
• postcolonial
• Emecheta
• female

Kaynakça

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