‘Doubly Discriminated’: Depicting the Othering and Marginalisation of Ogoni People in Ken Wiwa’s In the Shadow of a Saint

Abstract

This article analyses a non-fictional narrative from Nigeria, In the Shadow of a Saint by Ken Wiwa, which thematises, among other things, the discursive negotiation of ethnic and national identity during periods of transition. I interrogate how marginal subjects from peripheral sites of nationalist expression – in this case Ogoniland in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta – are positioned within dominant national narratives, and how the author uses public memory in (re)imagining Nigerian history and Ogoni identity. The overarching objective of this inquiry is to make evident the specific ways in which Wiwa’s text (as a veritable form of cultural expression and literary historiography) portrays the (re)construction and naturalisation of ethnic and national subjects and their ‘others’ within particular periods of critical socio-political transformation.