Ngugi Wa Thiong'O'S Moving the Centre and its Relevance to Afrocentricity

Abstract

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, the well-known Kenyan novelist, dramatist, and essayist, has examined the relationship between literary craft and the sociopolitical issues facing contemporary Africa in its relationship to the West. Moving the Centre: Strugglefor Cultural Freedoms (1993) is composed of selections drawn from lectures, speeches, and publications from 1980 to 1992. collection is divided into four sections, the first three addressing cultural disengagement from Eurocentrism, colonial legacies, and racism. final section, Matigari: Dreams and Nightmares, recalls Ngugi's Yale University experience and a visit to Tanzania in 1987. Certain essays in Moving the Centre were originally published in African American journals. The Writer in a Neo-colonial State was published in the Black Scholar and Many Years Walk to Freedom: Welcome Home Mandela! in the popular African American magazine Emerge in 1990. signature essay of the collection was originally published in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature (Ngugi, 1991). retrospective nature of Moving the Centre has prompted responses concerning the currency of Ngugi's thought and the development of his ideas in the post-Cold War era. One such response by Boehmer (1993) in an edition of Wasafiri takes Ngugi to task for dated political arguments.

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