Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 2025, 8(11); doi: 10.25236/AJHSS.2025.081102.
Yingjing Xu1, Zhongyong Wang2
1School of Foreign Languages, Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology, Maoming, China
2School of Automation, Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology, Maoming, China
As a classic of postcolonial literature, Ben Okri's The Famished Road demonstrates the national dilemma and identity pursuit of Nigeria in the postcolonial era through unique bodily narrative and political imagination. This study focuses on the physical experience of Azaro, the ghost child in the novel, and explores how the body becomes a carrier of political imagination. It reveals how Ben Okri criticizes colonial legacy issues through body narrative and explores the possibilities of Africa's future, from three dimensions: the trauma of the body and the crisis of national politics, the spatial politics and discipline of the body, and the resistance and reconstruction of the body. The novel allegorically presents the trauma and rebirth of the Nigerian national body through the fragility, pain, and transformation of the body. At the same time, through bodily practices such as dreams and boxing, it explores political imagination beyond postcolonial reality.
Body Narrative, Political Imagination, Postcolonial Literature, Ben Okri
Yingjing Xu, Zhongyong Wang. Body Narrative and Political Imagination in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2025), Vol. 8, Issue 11: 7-11. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2025.081102.
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