UTOPIANISM AND CHARATERISATION IN AMINATA SOWFALL’S THE BEGGER’S STRIKE AND SEMBENE OUSMANE’S XALA

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Department of English and Linguistics

Most international communities in existence today are based on varieties of political-economy, varying from little more than gated villages to LETS (Local employment trading schemes) barter systems to warker co-operatives like mondragon. The principal difference between these projects and communism is that they suppose an “Opting-out” from the problems of modern society rather than any attempt to challenge the power of multi-national capitalism.

EARLY UTOPIAN IMAGININGS

Plato (428-347 BCE) wrote The Republic in 360 BCE, an idealization of a slave society with a rigid class system, divided between philosophers, warriors and commoners. Justice and social stability were ensured because everyone was assigned to a station in life appropriate to their interests and virtues. The structure of the republic was an image of Plato’s conception of the structure of the human being reasons, spirit and desire.

Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1515, looking forward to a world of individual freedom and equality governed by Reason, at a time when such a vision was almost inconceivable with the reformation in Germany and numerous independent republics enjoying freedom in northern Italy, modern, egalitarian ideas were spreading and a number of utopian ideas were published in the sixteenth century.

SOCIALIST UTOPIAN EXPEIMENTS

Robert Owen (1771-1851) set about putting Utopian Ideas into practice by building a model township called New Lanark based on his own mills. Owen persuaded a group on the way o America to abandon their journey and come to work in his mill instead. The environs, the wages and the conditions and the education provided for the children was more than a century ahead at his time.

Robert Owen’s New Harmony founded in the U.S in 1825 was a co-operative rather than communist society, sponsored the first kindergarten, the first trade school, the first free library and the first community-supported public school in the U.S Engels described Harmony Hall in the chartist papers in 1844.

There were other such settlements in the 1890’s inspired by Lawrence Gronlund’s The co-operative commonwealth (1884) and Bellamy’s Looking backward but with rapid expansion of the second international in late 1880’s utopianism gave way to political,  social-democratic socialism.

DYSTOPIA

Dystopia is the opposite of utopia (as in dysfunction). Dystopian visions are used to issue warnings about dangers within the society or to demonstrate the absurdity of the dominant ideology of the day by following the idea through to its “logical conclusion”.

H.C walls’ Time machine (1895) warned of the dangers of growing inequality and demonstrated the dangers of class society by projecting class divisions forward to their limit. Dystopian Novels appeared throughout the twentieth century. Among these are The iron Hell (1907) by Jack London, My (1924) and we 91925) by tergeny Zamyatin, Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) by George Orwell. The concept of dystopia is a frequent theme for movies such as matrix, mad max etc.

Dystopia is an effective ideological weapon, while the post modern distrust of progress makes utopias unconvincing to people in modern capitalist societies. This was not always the case however and utopian visions have been powerful levers for action in the past.

1.2     Aims and Objectives

The aims of the research work are to pay adequate attention and focus on the concept of utopianism and characterization in Aminata Sowfall’s The Beggar’s Strike and Sembene Ousmane’s Xala. This research work will also focus on how utopianism and characterization is seen and visible in the two texts.

1.3     Justification

While Thomas More, Campanella and Bacon gave in to their monastic ideas and wrote about utopia, this research is to dig out the importance of utopianism using characterization in Aminata Sowfall’s The Beggar’s Strike and Sembene Ousmane’s Xala. It will also dig out the types of characterization and how they contributed to the success of Aminata Sowfall’s The Beggars’ Strike and Sembene Ousmane’s Xala.

1.4     Scope and Delimitation

This research work will be based on the concept of utopianism and characterization embedded in Aminata’s The Beggar’s Strike and Sembene Ousmane’s Xala. The plot structures in the novels will also be discussed. This research work will also cover the characters in the Novels and the features of the novels of past experience to which Aminata Sowfall and Sembene Ousmane’s novels belong.

 1.5 Scope and Delimitation

This research work will be a detailed analysis of concept of utopianism and characterization in Aminata Sowfall’s The Beggars’ Strike and Sembene Ousmane’s Xala. This research topic in review needs no interview or questionnaire for data analysis purposes. The selected data will be subject to quantitative analysis.

The novelist narration will be the major and primary source of data while published books, journals, articles, materials sort from internets, already concluded project works on this research topic or related ones will be consulted as secondary sources of data