Ethics of Memory, Contested Pasts and the Poetics of Recall: the Kenyan Political Autobiography

Abstract

The genre of autobiography is increasingly becoming a reliable mode of historical and literary expression in contemporary Kenya. Through this genre, Kenya continues to witness an upsurge of oppositional narratives occasioning serious re-writings of national histories. Armed with the need to (re)tell and write themselves into these contested pasts, political leaders, (mis)using autobiographical recall, engage in collective amnesia, thereby implicating the ethics of memory. This article argues that the autobiographical contract that exists between the writer and the reader is problematic and creates a space of discursive and direct oppression, that cunningly replaces the microphone to a lying aging politician. Locating itself within post-colonial theory, this article uses a biographical method to interrogate four autobiographies from four architects of Kenya’s post-colonial project; Jaramogi Odinga’s Not Yet Uhuru, Bildad Kaggia’s Roots of Freedom, Joseph Murumbi’s A Path Not Taken and Raila Odinga’s Flame of Freedom.