Sentient pasts mapping memory in the selected works of Edouard Glissant Caryl Phillips and Tierno Monenembo

Abstract

The historical knowledge that the past holds within its purview could be conceived as a catalogue of re-imagined association a reciprocity between a pluralistic history and multifaceted undertaking of memory. This transition is symbolic of a continuous significance of memory in arguing that history alone does not have any particular claim to truth. It is only when the past is counter-questioned through the dichotomy that history and memory share that the present unfolds before us the historicity of colonialism that has purposefully downplayed the memory of its subjects. By acknowledging the nexus between history and memory, this thesis brings into play issues such as: the transmission of intergenerational memory, the role of trauma of the unrecognised and how it vies to claim the past. The primary focus, therefore, is to demonstrate how there is a conscious confrontation with the implications of nationalist discourses that have failed to provide a sense of justice to the marginalised. Drawing upon the theories of memory studies, my research challenges the historicity of colonialism that has purposefully downplayed the memory of its subjects in the works of Édouard Glissant, Caryl Phillips, and Tierno Monénembo as they seek to place their fiction in the aftermath of reparative histories. newline