POLITICS OF THE DOMICILE IN THIONG’O’S MATIGARI

My paper offers a reading of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Matigari (1989) and investigates the use of the home space as a site of protest. It is the home space that Matigari struggles to retrieve in the novel. The journeys undertaken by Matigari are metaphorically interwoven with his journeys within-the journeys in the realm of memory. In Matigari (1989), Matigari’s search for a home space in the aftermath of the independence of an anonymous nation (identified as Kenya) culminates in the grim discovery of the neocolonial oppression that marks the collapse of the nationalist dreams. Hence, my main aim in this paper is to analyse the journeys undertaken by the characters in the novel, and in doing so, I will also try to explain the spatial politics that define these journeys.