Collective (Un)Consciousness: A Magic Realist Reading of Carpentier’s The Kingdom of this World (1957) and Wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat (1967)

Abstract

The uniqueness of Latin American and African experiences has rendered them subject to detailed research and thorough discussion. Throughout the course of history, most Third World nations have witnessed various switches in ruling regimes which have in turn resulted in traumatic shifts of consciousness. Among these nations are the Latin American and African countries that have long been subject to colonialism which have exercised political and social domination over them, inducing a traumatic consciousness that can only behold itself as isolated and discontinuous. This paper selects the Cuban Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of this World (1957) and the Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat (1967) as representatives of these two unique historical and cultural cases. Dealing with such special political and cultural nature requires an equally unique means of expression, hence the use of magic realism. This study traces the use of magic realism as a mode of writing adopted by Alejo Carpentier and Ngugi wa Thiongo in their novels The Kingdom of this World and A Grain of Wheat respectively, to represent the common individual and collective traumas induced by two seemingly distinctive colonial experiences that have led to the presence of hybrid communal identities. Besides investigating the role of magic realism as a means of political and cultural resistance in both Cuban and Kenyan