Abstract:

Abstract This study explores how Abdulrazak Gurnah’s (2020) novel, Afterlives engages itself with the themes of settler colonialism, genocide and oppression, and language appropriation. Using settler colonialism as a theoretical framework, we aim to trace the oppression and genocide faced by the native Africans as a result of settler colonialism. As Gurnah (2020) has also appropriated the dominant language of the colonizers to foreground the role of the local language in the transmission of indigenous cultural values, Bill Ashcroft et al.’s (2002) ideas on language appropriation and abrogation have been taken into account to find out how the novel becomes an illustration of a postcolonial text in terms of its strategic use of the colonizers’ language with a fresh signification. Patrick Wolfe (2006) who proposed the theory of ‘settler colonialism and the elimination of the natives’ argues that German and British settlers used various strategies to eliminate the native Africans’ history, language, and culture. Following Wolfe’s (2006) insights on settler colonialism, this study will highlight how the novel delineates European colonialism as affecting the socio-economic life of the African people by imposing linguistic and religious hegemonies and forced exile. The infliction of European policies was unacceptable to the African people, and it, therefore, caused a clash between colonizers and colonized in colonial settings.

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