The Politics of Form: Ideology, Form and Technique

Decolonization agonistics begins with a search for adequate form to embody the novelist’s vision of history and the universe. In Africa, Polynesia and the West Indies, the existence of a rich indigenous tradition of literature, albeit an oral tradition, means that novelists’ first and formative aesthetic experience comes from the indigenous culture. Many novelists have therefore generally begun by looking inwards to their own myths, epics, legends, folktales, songs, riddles and proverbs, and other literary performances.