The word and Nation-Formation: Towards a Utilitarian Reading of Literature in Kenya

Abstract

This short essay is about literature and nation building in Kenya. In more ways than one, it is a mixture of statement: and questions seeking answers an haw literature may be harnessed as a tool for promoting national consciousness and understanding, and establishing and enhancing a cultural identity. Mast of the essay is therefore both speculative and programmatic. A reading of Jomo Kenyatta ’s Facing Mount Kenya as a political, literary and nationally uni/ying text sets off the project. My conversations with historian Atieno Odhiambo pit his discipline against the stance of the literati even as debates rage about what literature, oral and written, contribute to the construction If the nation and its identity or identities. In the final analysis, all literature is the word, oscillating between the real and unreal, the realised and unrealised, the now and the coming and thus participates in mapping what the nation is, was and aspires to be.