Nationalism and the Development of Identity in Postcolonial Fiction: Zoe Wicomb and Michelle Cliff

To many progressive activists in the 1960s, the writings of Frantz Fanon served not only as a source for intellectual development but also as guidebooks for revolutionary praxis. Fanon's critique of neocolonialism and cultural nationalism along with his call for direct political and militant engagement with the enemy as the basis of national culture in the process of decolonization is at the core of the following discussion. This essay locates Fanon's anticolonial view of cultural production as it has been represented in literary texts by African and diaspora women writers. Zoë Wicomb (South Africa) and Michelle Cliff (Jamaica) serve as examples of postcolonial writers who explore the potential of national consciousness as a necessary stage in the politicization of female characters struggling to decolonize their minds.