IMAGINED COMMUNITIES: AN EXEGESIS OF NATIONAL SCHIZOPHRENIA IN BEN OKRI’S INCIDENTS AT THE SHRINE

Abstract

Ben Okri has emerged as a prominent figure in Nigerian Fiction due to his artistic preferences and creative genius. He traverses deep into his mythical world and apprehends reality in an unusual way. His thematic concerns are corruption, moral degradation and Nigerian Nationalism. This research aims to discuss short stories in Ben Okri’s Incidents at the Shrine (1986) in light of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism and Ernest Gellner’s Nation and Nationalism. The argument is that the concepts of Nation and Nationality are locally, socially and historically rooted but they are too complex to fit into a definition. The state apparatuses not only claim Nationalism and human collectivities to be fundamental and essential for social existence but also propagate the idea of a homogenous Nation state, a linguistic entity having a separate historical past that withstands the tests of nationhood. These monotheist thoughts of the Nation- State crumbled it into regionalism and tribalism. Ben Okri realizes these definitions of Nationhood and National aspirations as false pretense in his Nigeria. Okri argues that language and ethnicity, cannot be fit in a permanent framework because they are ambiguous and shifting. Okri wants his reader to repudiate his psyche and perceive the actual meanings, the spiritual aspects of his symbols in the short stories.