• SAYAN

The debate over the possible points of intersection between postmodernism and post-colonialism is by no means settled in literary discourse, and the case of Ben Okri raises interesting questions in this regard. Stephen Slemon notes that postmodernism is variously defined by Fredric Jameson as ‘the pastiche energetic of Western society under late capitalism, where a ‘new depthlessness ‘in representation – one grounded in the fetishization of the image as simulacrum – marks off a profoundly a historical drive which seeks to efface the past as ‘referent ‘and leave behind itself nothing but ‘ texts ‘ 1, and by Ihab Hassan and others as ‘ a catalogue of figurative propensities ( indeterminacy, multivalence, hybridization, etc. ) whose ludic celebrations of representational freedom… are grounded in a ‘ dubious analogy ‘ between artistic experimentation and social liberation. ‘2 Like Slemon, Helen Tiffin agrees that there are many elements of post-colonial writing that have postmodern characteristics – ‘… the move away from realist representation, the refusal of closure, the exposure of the politics of metaphor, the interrogation of forms, the rehabilitation of allegory and the attack on binary structuration of concept and language ‘3– but she argues that ‘they are energized by different theoretical assumptions and by vastly different political motivations. ‘4Therefore, ‘the postmodern label should… be resisted. ‘5 Acknowledging these distinctions, I believe it is nonetheless helpfully descriptive to apply the label ‘postcolonial postmodernity ‘to writers who do two things : first, they ‘ resist the European master narrative of history because they can essentially oppose its incursions with alternative ontological systems … [ especially ] within the societies whose own opposing or differing epistemes are still recuperable ‘ ( as Tiffin says Chinua Achebe and Raja Rao do6 ), and, secondly, they are markedly experimental in their narration, carrying into their fiction many of the postmodern stylistic characteristics described above. The latter is indeed appropriate in the context of Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (1991), a work revealing a multiplicity of narrative dimensions and cultural interdiscursivity. The novel’s parodic intertexts arise from its interlocking narrative modes, a distinctive combination of the African and the European which reflects the collective modes of discourse underlying postmodern parody.

postmodernity, postcolonialism, Intertextuality, narrative, etc.

"Postcolonial Transfigurations and Postmodern Reworking: The Maze of Fictional Intertextuality in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road ", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.5, Issue 8, page no.612-620, August-2018, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1808566.pdf

"Postcolonial Transfigurations and Postmodern Reworking: The Maze of Fictional Intertextuality in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road ", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.5, Issue 8, page no. pp612-620, August-2018, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1808566.pdf