Identity Crisis In Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions: A Post -Colonial Perspective

Abstract

The impact of colonizers on the colonized societies and people has been widespread and multi-dimensional. The present paper critically deals with the issue of identity crisis as faced by the natives of Rhodesia when they were colonized by the British colonizers. The text under study is a postcolonial novel Nervous Conditions (1988) written by a black Zimbabwean woman, Tsitsi Dangarembga. Rutherford’s (1990) idea of colonizer /colonized and Ashcroft’s (2002) idea of place/displacement are utilized to deal with the issue of identity crisis in the selected work. The ideas of mimicry, assimilation, and ambivalence by Bhaba (1994) are also utilized where needed to probe deeply into the dilemma of identity crisis. The novel under consideration is a postcolonial novel giving a description of how colonized native community suffers when it is colonized.  The period shown in the novel is that of the 1960s. The present study is delimited to an analysis of only two young female colonized characters, Tambudzai and Nyasha. Nyasha is shown to be a sufferer of this identity crisis while Tambu is saved from becoming a victim of this crisis, though she idealizes the West in the beginning. It is mostly through these two characters that the writer speaks of identity crisis as a threat to natives. The researchers have found that Dangarembga (1988) has condemned colonialism for its disastrous effects on the colonized with a special reference to identity crisis of the natives.