Aporia and Ambivalence in Armah’s and Kourouma’s Novels: A Deconstructive Study

This paper discusses the digression of two postcolonial African novelists from their avowed philosophy of disillusionment which dominates almost all their writings. The novelists’ treatment of the precolonial African society in their historical novels shows that the era was replete with abuses; and condemnation and indictment ultimately trail it for it constitutes a major source of the woes Africa is facing today. In spite of the ubiquitous decrepitude and moral turpitude that characterise such society, Armah presents its core values, encapsulated in the ‘way’ and ‘healing,’ almost as fool proof moral blueprint and as remedies for the decay of the contemporary time. Kourouma in a bid to totally condemn the pre-colonial kingdoms and dynasties is busy actually lauding their actors as heroes and legends. Both believe, and take it for granted, that nothing is good in the postcolonial regimes. This study, therefore, found out that these irreconcilable accounts constitute strings of contradiction behind which are aporia and ambivalence; aporia being unarguably caused by ambivalence. Moreover, it revealed how the iniquities of the postcolonial society are the replicated forms of ancient crimes and social ills prevalent on the continent. It used the comparative approach to examine the novelists’ presentations of the two periods in history: the (pre-)colonial and the post-colonial, basing its analyses on data obtained from the novelists’ works.