What place for polygamy in postcolonial Africa? Ethnic reconfigurations in Niketche, by Mozambican writer Paulina Chiziane

Abstract

The survival of poorly acclimated colonial practices, such as monogamous marriage among multi-ethnic African groups, is central to the plot of Niketche: A History of Polygamy (2002), by Mozambican writer Paulina Chiziane. This work connects the cultures of decolonization through the presence of a female diction that underlies a project of liberation of the female voice and reflection on the female condition in the postcolonial era. Through an analysis of the “in-between place” of the survival of this age-old institution in this post-colonial space, we propose to analyze the discursive strategies employed by Paulina Chiziane in order to account for the current state of “cultural ambivalence” born of an incessant dialectic between the local and the global.