Research in African Literatures

ABSTRACT:

In a yet-unpublished interview the Kenyan novelist Meja Mwangi deplores the Big Man syndrome as an unjust form of power prevalent on the African continent. Mwangi's understanding of the Big Man as someone who is above the law resonates with certain interpretations of Big Man power proffered in political theory. In contemporary African literature, Big Men are a recurring subject of literary representation and this article explores selected contemporary African novels as texts that simultaneously affirm and subvert Big Man power through a strategic redistribution of what Alex Woloch terms "character-space" (13–14). As characters inhabiting (gendered) human bodies, the bodies of Big Men become the site of the performance of sovereign power. This article contends that if sovereignty is understood as not monopolized by the state but as shared by both state and non-state actors—Big Men emerge as playing a fundamental role in its constitution. Not only do mode of dress and stature become important markers of that which is sovereign; the ability to command one's body and will violence, or life and death on other bodies, becomes the mark of sovereignty par excellence. While the literary text attests to the sovereignty of Big Men, it also carries with it its own subversion and contests Big Man power by juxtaposing their bodies with those of alternative characters that draw the reader to more just forms of power. It is this ability of the author to manipulate character bodies that enables the writer to both represent brutal forms of power and the resistance to it.