Postcolonial Psychosis and Recovery Process in Osita Ezenwanebe’s Withered Thrust and Helon Habila’s Measuring Time

Abstract

A dialectical study of the histories of colonization according to scholars like Mohan (2012), Ashcroft (1989) and Bhoemer (1993) are the histories of the collisions between the natives and the European communities, and since colonization involves direct territorial appropriation of another geopolitical entity, combined with forthright exploitation, appropriated cultural power with political sagacity, colonized nations are bound to be subjected to the position of inferior. The outcome of this conflict leads to the emergence of postcolonial theory, whose multiple discourses and trajectories, significations and positional ties has made its conceptualization difficult. Nonetheless as a set of unstable formations, it claims as its special provenance the terrain that in an earlier day used to go by the term ‘Third World’, describing the emergence of new cultural productions as a result of colonized-colonial relations. This paper however discusses the problems the colonized nations faced after the expiration of the so-called colonialism and through the study of Osita Ezenwanebe’s Withered Thrust and Helon Habila’s Measuring Time the paper reveals the postcolonial psychosis encountered by nations that have undergone the experience of colonial rule.