WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AFRICAN?

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF IMAGINARY FORMATIONS IN EXCERPTS OF AMERICANAH (2013) BY CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

Abstract

This work aims to analyze what images of black/African and white/European people are conveyed in the imaginary formations play present in the discourse of characters in some excerpts of the book Americanah (2013) by the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Based on French Discourse Analysis framework, we aim to inquire about which positions the subjects assign to themselves and to each other in the discursive process and to explore through the anticipation mechanism, which can be observed due to the presence of an omniscient narrator in the story, what images of these subject positions are conveyed (PECHÊUX, 2014; ORLANDI, 2015). Stressing that the picture painted by the book tells a story of Nigerian immigrants living in first world countries, we use the theoretical contributions of Hall, Silva and Woodward (2014) to understand the dichotomy “white/European” – “black/African” and the meanings attributed to them in systems of representations and Kilomba (2019) about the experiences of black people in this socio-political context. We identify that power relations, which interfere in the construction of systems of representation, emerge in imaginary formations, showing the black/African under negative meanings, although the story reveals that the black/African subject is aware of this representation and uses that in his favor, as a tool to survival in this context, through assimilation or disruption of these images (FANON, 2001; JONES, SHORTER-GOODEN, 2004).