Abstract

This essay argues for a structuralist approach to reading the recurrence of formal, geographic, and epistemological schisms in the Zimbabwean novel from the 1970s through today. The essay makes this claim within a wider context of plurality's fetishization in African literary studies and postcolonial theory. Whereas the postcolonial-cum-global field tends to prioritize categorical expansiveness and dissolution in African writing, equating structural and conceptual more-than-oneness with pluralism of a clearly political expression, “Plurality in Question” suggests that a robust pluralist practice in fact demands categorical delineation and opposition. In this way, Zimbabwean writers' frequent reliance on binary oppositions becomes the starting point for theorizing an argumentative novel form, which responds to but may not directly reflect the antipluralist commitments of lived imperial and/or nationalist politics. In the context of African literature specifically, the essay also offers a new through-line connecting key liberation-era fiction (e.g., Charles Mungoshi, Dambudzo Marechera) with some of its current transnational successor texts (e.g., NoViolet Bulawayo, Christopher Mlalazi).

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