The Anticipation of Independence

Abstract

The second half of the twentieth century was the age of the new state: decolonization led to over a hundred new states being recognized by the United Nations in less than fifty years. Both in theory and practice, the process of decolonization was distinguished by its emphasis on futurity, even if this has tended to be overlooked in the retrospective emphasis of postcolonial theory. This chapter looks at the works of two novelists—George Lamming and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o—who deployed techniques of suspense plotting to give form to the temporal anticipation of decolonial independence. Even though both novelists later came to see that the promise of independence was unrealized, their novels nevertheless capture the anticipation of independence as a movement towards an inevitable yet unknowable future.