Collective Memory Research In Contemporary African Drama:Farewell To A Cannibal Rage And The Black Hermit

Owing to its involvement of cultural elements such as music,dance,masks and witchcraft,Africa drama has an unique charm.The indirect rule in South Africa and reservation system in East Africa marked the collective memory of black people.Thus,colonization became an integral element of African drama.Economic monopoly,segregation of land,penetration of religion,and programming of language all pushed black people to the brink of memory.Years of colonization have left the collective memory of Africans in a state of dissociation.Even after gaining independence,African countries have not been able to completely shake off the shadow of colonialism,and their collective memory has not been completely restored.Contemporary African dramatists are acutely aware of this crisis,and hope to use their works to awaken people’s self-awareness,help them restore collective memory to acquire a new cultural identity,and indirectly change the fate of Africa.Among them,Femi Osofisan in Nigeria and Ngugi wa Thiong in Kenya are outstanding representatives.The former has always been a voice for the "silent" people,and most of his more than 50 dramas contains Yoruba elements,from which the resistance of lower class can be shown.The latter focuses on Kenyans’ tireless struggle for freedom and land,and reproduces the real life of Kenyans in the post-colonial era.Although from different writing background,both Ngugi and Osofisan’s works are good interpretations of the problems brought by colonial legacy on the African land.In recent years,although more attention are paid on African literary,scholars focuses more on African fiction,leaving a research gap in African drama.Besides,the relevant studies of Osofisan and Ngugi are mainly in a post-colonial context.To widen the research perspective of African drama,taking Farewell to A Cannibal Rage and The Black Hermit as examples,the thesis analyzed the deformation process of collective memory in blacks from West Africa and East Africa under the influence of colonial legacy.Family conflict is the maturest theme in Farewell to Cannibal Rage,which explicitly reflects the real life of the Nigerian people under "indirect rule" and is an indispensable part of the collective memory of the them.In fact,the bloody killing in the play is the epitome of Biafran war.By skillfully using illusions and switching back and forth between stage scenes,Osofisan shows the contradictions created by the colonial conspiracy in Nigeria and the harm caused by such contradictions.In The Black Hermit,Ngugi portrays Remi’s painful struggle in the nation and himself from the third-person perspective,showing the indeterminate state of intellectuals in the early days of independence between traditional and foreign cultures.Remi’s self-confrontation reflects the importance of the establishment of identity to the nation.As members who were deeply invaded by colonialism,both Osofisan and Ngugi had strong national tendencies.Thus,multiple memory carriers are inserted to interchange the return of black identity.On this basis,this thesis takes collective memory as the theoretical basis,explores the collective memory framework of black people under "indirect rule" and "reservation system",and deeply analyzes the causes and consequences of collective memory distortion in the two plays,as well as the use of various traditional symbols during the memory reconstruction process.Research shows that Osofisan embeds myths and metaphors into theatrical performances,which not only leads the audience and readers to face up to the past when blacks fell into the traps of whites,but also reveals the more subtle colonial conspiracy that allows blacks to kill siblings.On the other hand,Ngugi reveals the negative impact of Westernized education on black’s consciousness by portraying the self-estrangement of young people in the new era.The two playwrights use a vivid style of writing created splendid theatrical space,shows the the proportion and serious negative impact that colonial legacy did in memory of blacks by the characters with their own experience so as to guide the audience and readers to correctly understand the colonial culture and colonial means,thinking seriously the identity issue that Africans must face and solve after independence.