A Postcolonial Analysis: The Relationality of Gender and Politics before and during the Biafran War in Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun

Abstract

Even after liberation, colonial rule is responsible for shaping of a type of nationalism that is problematic in the sense that it is based on ideologies of oppression and violence. Patriarchy is consequently intensified and women in the postcolonial worlds have to deal with being doubly colonized by both patriarchal and colonial oppression. In the field of postcolonial feminism, racial prejudices within white feminism and gender-blindness of colonization have to be challenged. This thesis looks at both by evaluating the relationality of gender and politics in Nigeria during the Biafran war on the basis of a postcolonial reading of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2007), to assess the re-envisioning of Biafra and the consequences of the colonial aftermath. Postcolonial studies provides methodological tools for analyzing forms of resistance in this colonial process. In rewriting history, Adichie has used narratological devices such as symbolism, metaphors and polyvocality that contribute to the construction of several stories, including love stories against a political backdrop of war that together problematize the nation and question gender roles for both women and men: everyone falls victim to patriarchy. This thesis encourages a pluralist and collective, postcolonial consciousness with different historical affiliations, endorsing a multidimensional view of the Biafran war and women’s contribution in the Biafran war, since both have been silenced too often, and highlights how the uprooted perspective of absences is able to open up a change of perspective regarding Nigerian society and community, one that calls for a different relationship, rather than a commitment, to the nation-state.