Title:   IDENTITY CRISIS AND THE SOCIAL REALITY OF MAGICAL THOUGHT: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF OKRI’S THE FAMISHED ROAD

Abstract
The question of identity remains a controversial issue of post colonialism. One distinguishing characteristic of Nigeria’s return to civil rule is frequent civil strives, economic crises and conflicts. As a postcolonial novel, Okri’s The Famished Road exposes the condition of identity crisis that emerged in postcolonial period. The language of the text gives elaborate explanation of anguished concern with existence and a desire for articulation of singular freedom. However, Okri uses language in its social context not only to reconfigure the nation - state as an abiku child but also to present the abiku phenomenon as the logic of history, time and beginning. Using Norman Fairclough’s module of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) which examines language of texts to deconstruct the essential postulations of power, dominance and inequality that work harmoniously to give meaning to texts, the research reveals that violent history of Nigeria brings about identity crisis and existential angst, and that the empirical validity of magical thoughts are real in their consequences for individual lives and society. It concludes that as Okri asserts Nigeria’s identity in his own terms and push back against western ideas of what Nigerian culture is, he nonetheless creates a new African identity that is not only political but also spiritual.
Keywords: Identity crisis, post colonialism, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), abiku.

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Publication Date: 2023-04-06