The Poetics of Pluriversality and Animist Realism in two Zimbabwean Short Stories

Abstract

This article uses the prisms of pluriversality and animist realism in the critical exegesis of two Zimbabwean short stories, namely, Charles Mungoshi’s “The Mountain” in his short story collection,Coming of the DrySeason ([1972] 1981) and Petina Gappah’s “The Death of Wonder” in her short story collection, Rotten Row (2016). It argues that each of the short stories is informed by, and is a response to its specific context in the manner in which it deploys an animist realist lens to advance pluriversal praxis. Mungoshi’s short story, in a colonial context, tries to recover African indigenous animist epistemologies against the background of their extreme Othering by colonial modernist discourses. It does this via a quasi-cultural nationalist paradigm that, though, is fractured by the choice of narrative voice as well as the mode of narration. On the other hand, “The Death of Wonder,” in a manner that shows the endurance of the coloniality of knowledge, recovers similar marginalised discourses in the 21st century post-colonial context against the background of the cultural nationalism and anti-imperialism rhetoric of the Zimbabwean ruling elite. Through its animist aesthetics, it similarly fractures the essentialist perceptions of this cultural nationalism. Both texts ultimately advance pluriversality that recognises the symbiosis and complementariness of different knowledges in dealing with contemporary realities and challenges in the Zimbabwean context and beyond.