Myth And Memory In Narrating A Nation: Jennifer Makumbi’S Kintu

Abstract

This study examines the use of myth to create the narrative of a nation. The study seeks to understand how the myth of a clan (Kintus) has been married to that of Buganda Kingdom and Uganda along a course that converges and diverges as the stories of the characters in the novel intersect. The study places myth at the center of nation narration. The myths of a people are important in grafting, imagining and narrating their past. Makumbi uses myth to create a narrative of the Kintus and that of (B)Uganda. Myth becomes a memory reservoir for the Kintus who are united by an imagined shared past. Myth and oral history are presented as both the existing and legitimate evidence of a peoples’ past successes and failures. Makumbi places Africa’s precolonial past as an important point in the reconstruction and creation of national narratives and the formation of nations. The problems that the characters in Kintu face are associated with and can be traced to the curse that Ntwire put on Kintu’s family. Political instability in post independent Uganda can also be traced to the past where assassinations and violence was there in Buganda kingdom. Shared memory and forgetting are presented as necessary for people to imagine and view themselves as one. Family spaces intersect with national spaces as the narrative of the nation develops. These two spaces complement and supplement each other as the narrative of a nation develops. The nation operates at the micro and macro levels. Different communities have similar or distinct memories. The difference is a reflection of different journeys that gave these communities similar or related experiences. With these heterogeneous narratives and journeys, the result is a shared experience in terms of sufferings, glories and mistakes.