درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Theorizing the roots of feminism in the specific African experience has been a quest by a number of prominent African female writers. They have avidly reflected on it in their various creative and critical outputs. The inherent ideological differences among these writers in their quest for an African variant of feminism, owing to the peculiarities of their respective sociocultural settings, has led to what critics have contentiously regarded as ‘voices’ in African feminism. Against this backdrop, on the one hand, Charles Nnolim (1994) [2010] argues that feminism in African literature is “a house divided”. On the other hand, Chioma Opara (2013), in contention with the former, posits that it is rather “a house integrated”. The present study thus establishes the two critical poles as wherein the entire gamut of critical and theoretical points of contentions in African feminism is largely subsumed. Neither of the two paradigms is discredited in favor or defense of the other, noting their huge critical substances. This paper rather attempts to strike a balance in-between, ultimately with a view to delineating its own critical perspective. By drawing instances from three prominent Nigerian female writings, the study moves away from the aforementioned established critical patterns to a novel paradigm which conceives feminism in African literature, with specific reference to the Nigerian context, as rather ‘a house of affirmations and denials.’.

The progression of culture and literature in the three subsequent eras of Modernism, Postmodernism and Post Postmodernism since the late-20th-century can be considered as one of the vivid factors that has led to the chain of transformation of man. In Modernism, the superiority of authentic and governmental power over people was dominant and later in the era of Postmodernism or the late capitalism, the notion of fragmentation controlled the life of the people; but in the third one, Post Postmodernism, a freshgenus of humanism was introduced by innovative authors such as David Foster Wallace who, in his philosophy of writing, illustrates not only the pain and limitations of man but also the healing instruments. Philosophically speaking, through the critical gates of Wallace’s philosophy, the subjectivity of man is given a niche, and thanks to the opportunity he has gained in the social networks, he could have made it possible to create a type of sharing and mutual communication amongst the fragmented individuals. That is to say, all alienated and limited individuals can have the role of active agents, communicators, and producers instead of being passive watchers, readers, and one-way communicators organized by the structures of the past eras. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate David Foster Wallace’s (1962-2008) trilogy—The Broom of the System (1987), Infinite Jest (1996), and The Pale King (2011)—according to his philosophy of Post postmodernism.