Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

that ident~fy post-colonial reglmes of do~n~nat~on
The writing of Ngugi's Devzl on the Cross was in more than one sense a
product of the post-colonial violence to which Mbembe draws our attention. It was
written while Ngugi was in detention and marked the actual enactment of violence in a
post-colony through the capture and isolation of the body under the guise of the Public
Security Order inherited from the colonial regime. In Detained (1 98 1 a:3), Ngugi
confesses that the novel was written 'with blood, sweet and toil'. Written in one of the
largest prisons in post-colonial Africa, the Ka~niti Maximum Security Prison, this
novel helped Ngugi to keep his sanity. It is significant because it stands as a defiance to
Kenyatta's regime which put him in detention so that his 'mind would turn into a mess
or rot' (Ngugi 198la:lO) which is reminiscent of Gramsci's prosecutor who, under
Mussolini's orders in 1926, asserted: 'We must stop this brain working for twenty
years! ' (Gramsci 197 1 :xviii). Having failed to control Ngugi, the Kenyatta regime
sends him to solitary confinement which is, as Michel Foucault (1984:2 10) reminds us,
'certainly the most frenzied manifestation of power imaginable'. In writing this novel,
Ngugi seems to have refused to succumb to the dictates of violence to which the
Kenyan regime often resorts in silencing all its critics. The novel became Ngugi's
weapon for preserving the body and for overcoming the state of fragmentation imposed
by the regime. Wariinga, the heroine of toil and the harbinger of freedom, whose image
looms large in the text, was conceived in cell 16 in 1978 (Ngugi 198 1a:3). If the
regime's aim was to break Ngugi and to reconfigure his body, in Devil, he turns this
attempt upside down. Instead, it is to the obscene body of the post-colonial regime
weighed down by its 'impotence', that Ngugi directs our laughter. But, first, the content
of Devil on the Cross.
The novel deals with a group of six protagonists travelling together in a matat~l
taxi to Ilmorog. The protagonists discover that they are all mysteriously invited to a
Devil's feast, where thieves and robbers ofKenya enter a competition for the election of
the seven cleverest thieves and robbers. The characters are Wariinga, Wangari,
Gatuiria, Muturi, Mwireri and Mwaura the driver. The narrative operates at two levels:
the allegorical story illustrated by the competition or feast organised by the Devil, and
the Story of Wariinga who is the pivot of the plot. Like Petals ofBlood (1 977), the novel
takes place mainly in Ilmorog and partly in Nairobi. The novel is dedicated to 'all
Kenyans struggling against the neo-colonial stage of imperialism' (Ngugi 1987:5). It is
no wonder, then, that the major trope in Devzl should be neo-colonial dependency, with
the devil on the cross as the structuring symbol. This is best illustrated in Wariinga's
nightmare in whlch the white colonialist devil is crucified by the masses, apparent
reference to political independence, only to be rescued by the local comprador.
Significantly,
[tlhe Devil had two IIIOU~~S, one on his forehead and the other at the back of
h~s head HIS belly sagged, as rfit were about to glve btrth to all the ev~ls of
the world 111s skill was red, 11ke tl~atofap~g (Ngug~ 1987 13)
This is significant because the physical features of the Dew1 draw attention to h ~s
Ngzlg~, the Bod>> and Power
e image that he gives to those that rescue him and in turn serve
, the Devil rewards his rescuers by fattening their bellies. It
ast' is arranged by the local 'thieves' to commemorate a visit
rticularly from America, England, Germany, France, Italy,
s part of 'the International Organisation of Thieves and
vil's feast, where national robbers and their foreign allies
veal their tactics and motives, provides Ngugi with the space for
g, through the grotesque and the obscene, the banality of
. Ngugi uses the Bakhtinian notion of the grotesque and
lers of post-colony into objects of ridicule. But he moves
se of the grotesque and the obscene as vehicles of public ridicule
province of ordinary people. It is to the local comprador
about their cleverness and their cunning on how to steal from
w to bow to foreign control, that the grotesque is restricted. He
how state power-represented by the local co~nprador-draina-
ce through an absurd ceremonial display of their wealth as
ulation by the ruled. It is in this .feast that Ngugi erects the
capitalism as a fetish. The worshippers of the fetish gather to
e fiction of its perfection' (Mbernbe 1992:21). Each and every
stage demonstrates, in their blunt testimonies, that the post-
into a stage for bizarre self-gratification; an absurd display of
s in the feast of 'modern robbery and theft'. The feast
leged language through which power speaks, acts and coerces. The
leader of the foreign delegation of thieves and robbers-he
cal delegates 'to drink the blood of [their] people and to eat their
rial powers have done to the Africans over the centuries], than to
gi 1987:89)-is greed and power magnified to their full and logical
o their essences. Yet the actual idiom ofthis display, its organization
focuses on the body: specifically the belly, the rnouth and the
thieves display striking forms of deformity. Hi? portrayal of the local
e foregrounds the grotesque image of the body in whlch the belly and
out. The satire on the comprador class conveys Ngugl's mockery of
wer, and is best captured In the narrator's graphic descr~pt~on of
u hada belly that p~otruded so tar that it would hdvc touclled thc ground
been supported by the b~aces that held up 111s trousers It seemccl as
had abso~bed all h~s lrrnbs and all the other o1gan5 ot his body
neck-at least. h~s neck W ~ not S vls~blc HIS arms and leg?
ips HIS llead liad shrunk lo the slze of a iist jNgug~ 1987 99)
in the act of becoming: 'it is continually built, created, and