Med skrivandet som vapen: Strategier för motstånd i Buchi Emechetas författarskap

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to examine the relationship between fiction and resistance from a postcolonial and feminist perspective. More specifically, the study is an examination of this relationship in ten novels by the Nigerian writer Buchi Emecheta. The resistance is studied by examining the way it is depicted in the texts, as well as whether the texts can be seen as a form of opposition. Both the resistance and its context are studied. The analysis is performed through a content analysis of ideas concerning the following four dimensions in Emecheta’s texts: intersectionality, colonialism and imperialism, traditional patriarchal structures and strategies of resistance. The study shows that Emecheta’s novels have a clear political perspective and perform a powerful critique of both imperialist exploitation and traditional patriarchal structures, whilst at the same time illustrating the way different power structures are interoperating. The main strategies for resistance in the texts are based on solidarity, decolonization and self-definition. The context for resistance that is presented to the reader in Emecheta’s novels is a highly variable reality in which different power structures interact and change, which implicates that the methods of resistance varies too. The novels depict as well as constitute resistance, through the ideas conveyed and by the act of writing. The novels present a counter argument against imperialist and patriarchal notions, at the same time as they are offering an opportunity for increased self-understanding, self-definition and transcendence of given positions.