Alienation, Abjection and the Mobile Postcolonial City: Public Transport in Ousmane Sembène’s “Niiwam” and Yvonne Vera’s Without a Name

Abstract

This chapter analyzes portrayals of travel by means of public transport in two African literary texts: the short story “Niiwam” (1987), by the Senegalese author Ousmane Sembène, and the novel Without a Name (1994), by the Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera. Featuring protagonists carrying the corpse of their dead child on a bus, both texts invest a bus ride with alienating and abject meanings that are repeatedly contrasted with more banal and everyday experiences of travel by public transport. Through their portrayals of the alienating and abject bus journey, “Niiwam” and Without a Name also provide insights into the exclusionary aspects of the (post)colonial city and its kinetic modernity. By deploying the notion of the mobile chronotope and by paying attention to the narrative roles of the space contained within the vehicle and also the bus ride itself in the texts, this chapter explores the ways in which mobility may affect the literary form.