Dodging the Question: Language, Politics, and the Life of a Kenyan Literary Magazine

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the artistic and linguistic strategies employed by the Kenyan literary magazine Kwani? during a period of intense social and political upheaval. Between the peaceful end of Daniel Arap Moi's dictatorship in 2002 and the violence that followed the contested Presidential elections of 2007, writers for the magazine used a language called sheng&mdasha youth-affiliated urban slang comprised of a complex, rapidly shifting blend of Kiswahili, English, and other local languages&mdashto negotiate between the global hunger for English and their country's complex cultural, political, and linguistic demands. The dissertation builds on a growing body of scholarship in literary criticism, linguistics, and cultural studies to document sheng's emergence as a literary idiom within Kenya, as well as the way it evolved as it traveled beyond the country's borders via inclusion in primarily English-language texts such as Uwem Akpan's short story collection Say You're One of Them.