'I Cannot Be My Mother's Son': The Politics of Identity and Reading Otherwise in Contemporary Nigerian Literature

本文以尼日利亚当代文学为研究对象，借鉴唐纳德·温尼科特的理论框架，拓展非殖民主义研究的范围。在这项独特的研究中，我将客体关系或自我发展理论转化为政治视角，探索尼日利亚文学叙事最近的转变。我审问了支撑这部小说的亲子范式，并将它们与一个政治框架联系在一起，该框架声称尼日利亚是一个“停滞不前”的国家：与暴力和依赖的循环捆绑在一起。我的研究表明，作家们是如何利用文学来反驳这种叙事的，他们策划了一种“潜力”，并写出了一个超越殖民主义的未来。

This thesis reads contemporary Nigerian literature otherwise using the theoretical framework of Donald Winnicott to develop the scope of decolonial studies. In this unique study, I turn object-relations, or ego development theory, into a political lens to explore the recent shift in Nigeria's literary narrative. I interrogate the parent-child paradigms underpinning this fiction and relate them to a political framework which claims Nigeria is a country 'stagnated': tied to cycles of violence and dependency. My study shows how authors are using literature to counter this narrative by curating 'potential' and writing a future beyond colonialism.