Abstract

Abstract:

This essay offers a critical reappraisal of Francis Imbuga's three plays that were written in the 1980s as response to sociocultural constraints and political turmoil in a highly disguised postcolonial Kenya: Man of Hafira (1984), Aminata (1988), and The Burning of Rags (1989). It uses specter hermeneutics to broaden understandings of cultural and political ideologies in these selected texts. First, it anchors the author's argument in hauntology; then, it traces how Imbuga's dedicatees and dreaming characters resurface throughout these plays as haunting "presences." The essay conceptualizes Imbuga's configuration of these presences as a subtle means of critiquing cultural and political realities within post/neocolonial contexts.

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