Parasites, or the Politics of Textual Poetics in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road
This paper discusses Ben Okri’s novel The Famished Road in the light of Michel Serres’s analysis of the paradigm of the parasite, both as an animal and/or human predator, and as random noise that disturbs a system through interference. The Famished Road creates textual “noise” through the systematic...
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| Veröffentlicht in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ces, |
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| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprache: | Anglais |
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Commonwealth Essays and Studies
2021
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| Online Zugang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Zusammenfassung: | This paper discusses Ben Okri’s novel The Famished Road in the light of Michel Serres’s analysis of the paradigm of the parasite, both as an animal and/or human predator, and as random noise that disturbs a system through interference. The Famished Road creates textual “noise” through the systematic shift from realism to the supernatural world of spirits, creating textual magic to explore the transition from colonialism to a travesty of democracy. Revisiting the figure of the abiku, transforming motifs like the abiku’s buried secret objects, Okri creates a system of encroaching parasites (rats, thugs) which infect the community and transform potentially positive human beings (like the larger-than-life Madame Koto, whose triple pregnancy represents the fate of the fictional equivalent of Nigeria). Thus the novel portrays the precarious lives of a landscape threatened by deforestation and of human beings like the emblematic Mum and Dad, whose resilience equals dispossession. |
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