Spectral Economies: Hauntology, Memory, and the Persistence of Colonial Violence in ‘Petals of Blood’ and ‘A Dance of the Forests’

Paper 206: Spectral Economies: Hauntology, Memory, and the Persistence of Colonial Violence in ‘Petals of Blood’ and ‘A Dance of the Forests’

This blog is a part of the assignment of Paper 206: The African Literature

Spectral Economies: Hauntology, Memory, and the Persistence of Colonial Violence in ‘Petals of Blood’ and ‘A Dance of the Forests’

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Academic Details:

• Name: Rajdeep A. Bavaliya
• Roll No.: 21
• Enrollment No.: 5108240006
• Sem.: 4
• Batch: 2024-26
• E-mail: rajdeepbavaliya2@gmail.com

Assignment Details:

• Paper Name: The African Literature
• Paper No.: 206
• Paper Code: 22413
• Unit: 1 - Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Unit 2 - A Dance of the Forests by Wole Soyinka
• Topic: Spectral Economies: Hauntology, Memory, and the Persistence of Colonial Violence in ‘Petals of Blood’ and ‘A Dance of the Forests’
• Submitted To: Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
• Submitted Date: 25 March, 2026

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Abstract:

This assignment investigates the persistence of colonial and historical violence in post-independence African literature through the conceptual framework of hauntology. By comparatively analyzing Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s Petals of Blood and Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests, this research examines how postcolonial modernity is structurally disrupted by the unresolved traumas of the past. Rather than achieving a clean epistemological break from colonial rule, the supposedly emancipated postcolonial state operates within a "spectral economy"—a system where repressed histories, deferred justice, and neo-colonial exploitation circulate continuously. Utilizing Jacques Derrida’s theory of spectrality and Avery Gordon’s sociological conception of the ghost, this analysis demonstrates that both texts figure the past not as an inert historical archive, but as an active, haunting presence that demands ethical accounting. Ngũgĩ emphasizes the structural and economic manifestations of this haunting through the lens of neo-colonial capitalism, whereas Soyinka dramatizes the mythic and temporal disruptions of ancestral return to critique celebratory nationalism. Ultimately, the assignment posits that these spectral phenomena function as urgent political mandates, revealing that true decolonization remains a justice yet to come.

Keywords:

spectrality, deferred justice, non-linear temporality, postcolonial haunting, historical residue, neo-colonial capitalism, memory, spectral economy.

Hypothesis:

The ideological and material violence of colonialism does not terminate with formal national independence but persists as an active "spectral economy," fundamentally organizing the postcolonial state through mechanisms of repressed trauma, cyclical exploitation, and deferred justice.

Research Question:

How do Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s Petals of Blood and Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests employ the aesthetics and mechanisms of hauntology to dismantle nationalist myths of linear progress, thereby exposing the postcolonial state as structurally haunted by unresolved historical violence?

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Introduction

The transition from colonial subjugation to national independence in the mid-twentieth century was predominantly narrated through the teleological language of emancipation, progress, and historical rupture. Post-independence nations were frequently imagined as pristine "new beginnings," liberated from the violent architectures of empire. However, the literature of the postcolonial period rapidly dismantled this utopian veneer, exposing the insidious ways in which colonial violence persists in invisible, deeply entrenched forms. The works of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Wole Soyinka stand as monumental interventions against the myth of the unblemished postcolonial state. Petals of Blood serves as a scathing critique of post-independence Kenya, illustrating how the machinations of neo-colonial capitalism seamlessly adopted the extractive architectures of the former British colonizers. Similarly, A Dance of the Forests operates as a dramatic interrogation of history, myth, and national identity, written specifically to disrupt the uncritical celebrations of Nigerian independence. The central problem articulated by both authors is that the formal end of empire does not equate to the end of coloniality; rather, the underlying violences of the past merely mutate, infiltrating the social, economic, and psychic landscapes of the present.

To apprehend this phenomenon, critical theory relies upon the key concept of hauntology—the idea that the past continuously "haunts" the present through unresolved injustices, destabilizing the present's claim to absolute autonomy. These texts reveal that colonial violence does not end with independence but persists as a spectral presence—manifesting through memory, landscape, and social relations—thus exposing postcolonial modernity as structurally haunted by unresolved histories. By staging an encounter with ghosts, both literal and metaphorical, Ngũgĩ and Soyinka articulate a profound demand for a justice that has been perpetually deferred. The specter, therefore, becomes the ultimate anti-colonial figure, refusing to allow the violence of the past to be erased by the rhetoric of national development.

1. Theoretical Framework

1.1. Derrida and Hauntology

The conceptual foundation of spectrality finds its most rigorous articulation in the philosophical discourse of deconstruction, particularly concerning the disruption of historical linearity. Jacques Derrida fundamentally reorients the understanding of history by asserting that the present is never fully self-identical, but is always already invaded by the ghosts of the past and the anticipated specters of the future (Derrida). This framework necessitates a rejection of chronological, progressive time, positing instead that temporality is fundamentally "out of joint." By arguing that the specter is an entity that is neither fully present nor completely absent, Derrida provides a vocabulary for understanding how unresolved historical traumas exert a continuous, invisible pressure on contemporary political formations.

"To be just is to recognize the debt to the other, to the dead, to the ghosts who demand a reckoning from the present." (Derrida)

This philosophical intervention demands a radical reevaluation of how postcolonial societies construct their historical narratives, shifting the focus from sovereign independence to ethical inheritance. The haunting described by deconstruction is not a passive residue but an active disruption, a tear in the fabric of linear time that forces the living to confront the violence upon which their present reality is built. The ethical imperative of hauntology is driven by the assertion that justice is an absolute horizon that is always "to come," meaning it can never be fully realized or enclosed within existing legal or state apparatuses (Derrida). Consequently, political liberation is an ongoing, infinite process rather than a static achievement. This theoretical matrix perfectly illuminates the postcolonial condition depicted by Ngũgĩ and Soyinka, where the newly independent states are exposed as mere theatrical stages upon which historical atrocities continue to perform. The application of Derridean hauntology to African literature underscores that post-independence societies are defined by deferred justice, where the ghosts of the Mau Mau or the victims of pre-colonial empires refuse to grant peace to the corrupt inheritors of power.

1.2. Avery Gordon: Ghosts as Social Figures

Moving beyond the purely ontological implications of the specter, sociological frameworks are required to map how these hauntings manifest within material human relations and institutional structures. Avery Gordon advances the critical understanding of spectrality by insisting that haunting is a profoundly social phenomenon, not merely a metaphorical or psychological abstraction (Gordon). In this paradigm, the ghost is a socio-political symptom, a recognizable figure that emerges precisely when the repressed violence of systemic inequality can no longer be contained by state-sponsored amnesia. Haunting, therefore, is an epistemological mechanism that registers the harm inflicted by hegemonic power structures, signaling that a profound injustice has been committed and buried without adequate redress.

"The ghost is not simply a dead or a missing person, but a social figure, and investigating it can lead to that dense site where history and subjectivity make social life." (Gordon)

This formulation translates the abstract concept of spectrality into a tangible methodology for diagnosing the ailments of the post-independence state. When ghosts appear—whether as the literal spirits in Soyinka's drama or the psychological phantoms in Ngũgĩ's novel—they function as living archives of systemic violence. They represent the silenced voices of subaltern classes, exploited laborers, and betrayed freedom fighters whose eradication was deemed necessary for the consolidation of the modern state (Gordon). By identifying ghosts as social figures, critical analysis can trace the contours of power and exploitation that remain actively obscured by the rhetoric of national unity. In both Petals of Blood and A Dance of the Forests, the ghosts represent suppressed histories of both colonial and internal violence, serving as relentless critics of the new political elite. The haunting operates as an undeniable social fact, forcing the living characters to recognize their complicity in the continuation of oppressive structures.

1.3. Postcolonial Memory and Trauma

The study of spectrality is inextricably linked to the mechanics of memory, specifically how trauma reorganizes the collective consciousness of a formerly colonized population. Frantz Fanon establishes that the colonial endeavor inflicts a deep psychological laceration, creating an environment where trauma is continuously reproduced across generations rather than neatly resolved at the moment of decolonization (Fanon). Collective memory in the postcolony does not function as a sequential storage of events; rather, it operates as a fragmented, turbulent landscape characterized by intrusive recollections and historical blockages. Historical trauma dictates that the past refuses to remain in the past, erupting into the present through somatic symptoms, social neuroses, and political instability.

"The colonized subject is a persecuted individual whose dream is to become the persecutor. The violence of the colonial regime and the counter-violence of the native balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity." (Fanon)

This cyclical dynamic of violence guarantees that the temporality of the postcolonial nation is fundamentally non-linear, defined not by steady progress toward enlightenment, but by repetition, return, and rupture. Because the trauma of subjugation and the violence of the liberation struggles were never adequately processed or officially acknowledged by the neo-colonial state, the collective psyche remains stalled in a state of melancholia (Fanon). The socio-political structures of the new nations are built over mass graves, both literal and metaphorical, ensuring that the architecture of independence is inherently unstable. Consequently, the postcolonial societies depicted in these texts are structured by an agonizing repetition compulsion, where the leaders mimic the tyranny of the colonizer, and the oppressed are forced to endlessly relive the trauma of their initial dispossession. The spectral economy thrives in this environment of arrested development, utilizing memory as the currency of perpetual haunting.

2. Spectrality in Petals of Blood

2.1. The Haunted Landscape

In Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's literary universe, the physical environment is never merely a passive backdrop; it is an active participant, an archive saturated with the blood and sweat of historical struggle. The village of Ilmorog serves as the geographic epicenter of Petals of Blood, functioning not just as a rural settlement but as a dense symbolic space where the accumulated histories of pre-colonial autonomy, colonial devastation, and neo-colonial exploitation physically intersect (Ngũgĩ). The land itself is inscribed with the trauma of alienation, as the original inhabitants were violently dispossessed to make way for British settler farms, only to find themselves later marginalized by the new African bourgeoisie. The physical geography thus resists the amnesia imposed by the state, retaining the physical scars of the Mau Mau rebellion and the systemic neglect of the rural peasantry.

"The land was not dead, it was only sleeping, waiting for the blood of its children to awaken the memories buried beneath the dust of the drought." (Ngũgĩ)

This material manifestation of memory argues that the environment itself becomes spectral, carrying the undeniable traces of past violence that actively disrupt the capitalist transformation of the village. As Ilmorog is forcibly modernized and bisected by the Trans-Africa highway, the landscape does not quietly submit to development; it generates a profound alienation that haunts the characters (Ngũgĩ). The aggressive spatial reorganization enacted by the new capitalist elite is an attempt to pave over the rural archive, to silence the ghosts of the Mau Mau fighters who bled for the soil. However, the land's persistent drought and subsequent explosive, distorted growth under capitalist investment expose the fundamental unnaturalness of this development. The geography of Ilmorog is a haunted terrain where the physical presence of the past continually mocks the superficial narratives of national prosperity, proving that the earth itself is a ledger of unresolved debts.

2.2. Characters as Haunted Subjects

The spectral nature of the landscape is intimately mirrored in the psychological disintegration of the novel's central protagonists, who are paralyzed by their inability to reconcile with their historical inheritance. The characters of Munira, Karega, Wanja, and Abdulla do not function merely as autonomous individuals but as fractured subjects who each embody different strands of unresolved national histories (Mbembe). Munira is haunted by his father’s complicity with the colonial regime and his own cowardice; Wanja is stalked by the legacy of sexual exploitation and the betrayal of her grandfather’s warrior spirit; Abdulla physically bears the mutilated body of a forgotten Mau Mau fighter; and Karega wrestles with the ideological ghosts of a failed revolution. Their subjectivities are not formed through free will, but are deeply contoured by the historical residues that they attempt, and fail, to outrun.

"We are all running from the shadows of the old men, from the blood in the forests, but the shadows are longer than the day, and they wait for us in the new cities." (Ngũgĩ)

This pervasive psychological haunting manifests as overwhelming guilt, ideological disillusionment, and spiritual fragmentation, rendering the characters incapable of fully inhabiting the present. The interpretation required here is that subjectivity in the postcolony is inextricably shaped by historical residues, destroying the Western liberal myth of the self-made, autonomous individual (Mbembe). The characters are essentially possessed by the unfulfilled mandates of the liberation struggle, forced to endlessly repeat the traumas of betrayal because the socio-political reality of the new Kenya offers no avenue for genuine healing or justice. Their collective descent into violence, arson, and murder is not an aberration, but the inevitable psychological explosion of subjects who have been systematically suffocated by the specters of a compromised independence.

2.3. Capitalism as a Spectral Continuation of Colonialism

The tragedy of the postcolonial condition, as articulated by Ngũgĩ, is the seamless transition from direct colonial rule to a predatory system of globalized economic exploitation. The neo-colonial economy depicted in the novel relies upon a lethal alliance between foreign corporate interests and a deeply corrupt local elite, effectively continuing the extraction of African wealth under the guise of modernization (Mignolo). The narrative relentlessly strips away the illusion of "development," exposing the breweries, the factories, and the tourist trades in New Ilmorog not as signs of progress, but as mechanisms of proletarianization and cultural erasure. The new African capitalists, represented by figures like Chui, Kimeria, and Mzigo, do not represent liberation; they are the ideological phantoms of the former British masters, replicating their exact modes of oppression.

"They had changed the color of the skin, but the teeth that tore into the flesh of the workers were the same teeth that had been sharpened in the academies of London and Paris." (Ngũgĩ)

This economic substitution demonstrates that colonial exploitation returns in new, arguably more insidious forms, establishing what can be critically termed "spectral capitalism." This system is spectral precisely because its true locus of power is invisible and detached, operating through abstract market forces, international loans, and foreign boards of directors, while maintaining a terrifyingly material grip on the bodies of the Kenyan workers (Mignolo). The haunting here is structural and economic; the ghost is the unending cycle of primitive accumulation that refused to die with the raising of the new national flag. Ngũgĩ’s Marxist critique reveals that as long as the economic substructure remains colonial, the political superstructure of independence is nothing more than an elaborate ghost story designed to pacify the masses while the theft continues.

3. Spectrality in A Dance of the Forests

3.1. Literal Ghosts and Ancestral Return

Wole Soyinka’s dramaturgical strategy in addressing the complexities of Nigerian independence subverts expectations by conjuring actual spirits to disrupt the state's self-aggrandizing festivities. In A Dance of the Forests, the human community requests the presence of glorious, heroic ancestors to validate the Gathering of the Tribes, a thinly veiled allegory for the celebration of national sovereignty (Soyinka). However, the forest spirits, led by Aroni, refuse to comply with this demand for uncritical adulation, sending instead two mutilated, aggrieved ghosts: the Dead Man and the Dead Woman. The physical presence of these restless spirits immediately shatters the celebratory nationalism, introducing a radical discomfort into the core of the state's foundation myth.

"Do not summon the dead unless you are prepared to see the blood upon their hands; the ancestors do not return to flatter, they return to accuse." (Soyinka)

This spectral intrusion functions as a potent argument that the past inevitably returns to interrupt and dismantle nationalist myths of linear progress and pure origins. The Dead Man and Dead Woman are victims of Mata Kharibu's ancient, tyrannical empire, proving that oppression and violence existed long before the arrival of the European colonizer (Soyinka). By bringing these specific, traumatized ghosts into the present, Soyinka vehemently rejects the romanticized, Negritude-inspired vision of a pre-colonial African utopia. The ghosts serve as physical evidence of historical continuity in violence, demonstrating that the postcolonial state is inheriting a legacy of bloodshed that it must acknowledge, rather than a pristine heritage that it can blindly celebrate.

3.2. Cyclical Time vs Linear Progress

Soyinka’s use of spectrality necessitates a radical restructuring of theatrical temporality, aggressively rejecting the progressive, sequential timeline championed by Western modernity and the new African state. The play relies heavily upon non-linear temporality, seamlessly collapsing the boundary between the ancient court of Mata Kharibu and the present-day reality of the human characters, Demoke, Rola, and Adenebi (Said). This structural collapse illustrates that the characters are essentially reincarnations or repetitions of their historical predecessors, bound to enact the same betrayals and corruptions across centuries. Time is depicted not as an arrow moving toward enlightenment, but as a terrifying, closed circle where human folly is perpetually recycled.

"The wheel turns, but it does not move forward. The same blood spills on the same earth, only the names of the kings have changed." (Soyinka)

Linking this dramaturgical structure to hauntology reveals a profound philosophical alignment: time in the postcolony is inherently disjointed and out of sync with the rhetoric of developmental progress (Said). Because the historical crimes of Mata Kharibu’s court were never redressed, the spiritual energy of that era remains trapped, creating a temporal vortex that pulls the present backward into the nightmare of the past. The spectrality of the play lies in this temporal claustrophobia, where the future is held hostage by the unlearned lessons of history. By refusing the comfort of linear time, Soyinka warns the newly independent nation that without a radical confrontation with its own internal cycles of violence, its future will merely be a ghostly repetition of its darkest ancient history.

3.3. Collective Guilt and Historical Responsibility

While Ngũgĩ focuses heavily on the enduring impact of European colonial capitalism, Soyinka expands the parameters of haunting to address the internal culpabilities and systemic failures native to the African continent. The haunting in A Dance of the Forests is not solely an indictment of foreign invasion, but a grueling cross-examination of internal violence, betrayal, and complicity among the indigenous populations (Foucault). The human characters in the present are intimately tied to the crimes of the past—Rola to the murderous Madame Tortoise, Adenebi to the corrupt Court Orator—demonstrating that the capacity for tyranny is a shared, human condition. The play forces a painful realization that the suffering of the masses is often orchestrated by their own leaders.

"The oppressor is not always the stranger from across the sea; sometimes, the hand that holds the whip is the hand of the brother." (Soyinka)

The critical idea advanced here is that haunting functions to expose an inescapable ethical responsibility across generations, demanding accountability that transcends the simplistic binary of colonizer and colonized (Foucault). Soyinka suggests that attempting to build a nation solely on the grievance against the European colonizer is an act of profound historical cowardice that ignores the indigenous architectures of oppression. The spectral tribunal in the forest demands a terrifyingly honest accounting of collective guilt, insisting that true freedom requires an unflinching recognition of the darkness within the national self. The unresolved nature of the play, epitomized by the precarious fate of the Half-Child, leaves the burden of this historical responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the living audience.

4. Comparative Analysis: Spectral Economies

4.1. What is a "Spectral Economy"?

To synthesize the diverse mechanisms of haunting deployed by Ngũgĩ and Soyinka, it is necessary to theorize the existence of a "spectral economy" operating within the postcolonial state. This concept defines a system based on the relentless exchange, circulation, and accumulation of memory, trauma, and unresolved violence. It is not an economy grounded merely in the material exchange of goods or capital, but rather an affective and historical circulation where past injustices operate as a shadow currency that dictates the socio-political reality of the present (Abbas and Kadhim). In this economy, debt is measured in unacknowledged blood, and the inflation is the rising tide of psychological fragmentation experienced by the citizenry. This framework allows for a unified understanding of how history exerts a material force on the present without being physically tangible.

4.2. Different Modes of Haunting

While both authors subscribe to the reality of the spectral economy, their methodologies for rendering this haunting visible are distinct and complementary. Ngũgĩ’s mode of haunting in Petals of Blood is predominantly structural, economic, and psychological. He utilizes the frameworks of Marxist critique and Fanonian psychoanalysis to demonstrate how the specter of colonialism possesses the state apparatus, transforming the landscape and mutating the minds of the marginalized proletariat (Fanon). The ghosts in Ngũgĩ’s work are the silenced workers and the betrayed freedom fighters whose exploitation forms the bedrock of neo-colonial wealth. Conversely, Soyinka’s mode of haunting in A Dance of the Forests is deeply mythic, spiritual, and temporal. Relying on Yoruba cosmology and cyclical temporalities, Soyinka uses literal spiritual entities to physically interrupt the state, utilizing metaphysical shock to rupture the political arrogance of the new nation (Soyinka).

4.3. Shared Insight

Despite these differing aesthetic strategies, both Petals of Blood and A Dance of the Forests converge upon a singular, devastating shared insight regarding the nature of the postcolonial transition. Both texts absolutely reject the hegemonic idea of a clean epistemological or historical break from the colonial or tyrannical past (Mignolo). They dismantle the political propaganda that posits independence day as a magical threshold that purifies the nation. Instead, they conclusively show that history persists as an active, ghostly force that continually subverts the autonomy of the present. Whether through the drought-stricken fields of Ilmorog or the terrifying tribunal of the forest spirits, the literature confirms that the past is the most powerful architect of the postcolonial present.

4.4. Deferred Justice

The ultimate function of the spectral economy in both novels is to highlight the catastrophic failure of the post-independence state to deliver upon its promises of liberation. The haunting persists precisely because justice has been deferred, traded away by corrupt elites in exchange for power and foreign capital (Gordon). The ghosts, whether metaphorical or literal, stalk the pages of these texts because they have been denied their rightful resting place through truth, restitution, and structural dismantling.

Haunting becomes a demand for justice that the present cannot yet fulfill. (Gordon)

This profound realization positions the specter not as an enemy of the living, but as the only authentic guardian of the nation's ethical soul. The persistent haunting serves as a relentless, agonizing reminder of unfinished struggles, refusing to allow the comfortable normalization of oppression. The spectral economy will continue to function, generating trauma and political instability, until the fundamental structural inequalities inherited from the colonial and pre-colonial eras are finally eradicated.

5. Contemporary Relevance

5.1. Neo-colonialism and Spectral Infrastructures

The theoretical paradigms of hauntology and spectral economies explored in these mid-twentieth-century texts possess profound contemporary relevance, offering a vital critical lens for diagnosing the enduring crises of the twenty-first-century global south. The mechanisms of neo-colonialism and global capitalism have only accelerated, utilizing increasingly abstract and invisible networks to extract wealth from formerly colonized regions (Couldry and Mejias). Modern postcolonial societies remain intensely structured by profound inequality, their political sovereignty often compromised by international debt, corporate monopolies, and unequal trade agreements. The argument derived from Ngũgĩ and Soyinka is therefore highly applicable today: postcolonial societies today remain haunted by colonial infrastructures that have simply digitized and globalized their methods of control.

"The physical extraction of resources has been replaced by the invisible extraction of data, but the core mechanism of coloniality—the systemic dispossession of the periphery for the enrichment of the metropole—remains entirely intact." (Birhane)

To elevate this analysis to the current technological epoch, one can observe how the spectral economy has mutated into the realm of data colonialism and algorithmic systems (Birhane). The algorithms that currently dictate global finance, surveillance, and digital labor in the global south are entirely spectral—invisible, omnipresent architectures designed in the West that actively shape the material reality and behavioral surplus of postcolonial subjects. This contemporary iteration of haunting proves that the ghosts of empire are highly adaptable, continuing to enforce compliance, alienate the subject from their labor, and defer justice on a planetary scale.

Conclusion

Through a rigorous comparative analysis of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s Petals of Blood and Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests, this assignment has demonstrated that the transition to national independence in Africa did not obliterate the architectures of subjugation, but rather drove them underground to function as a pervasive "spectral economy." These foundational texts unequivocally reveal that colonial and historical violence persists as a haunting, active presence—manifesting through corrupted landscapes, psychological fragmentation, mutated temporalities, and the relentless cycles of neo-colonial capitalism. It is crucial to emphasize that this theoretical haunting is not a passive, backward-looking obsession with history; rather, it is a politically urgent phenomenon that directly dictates the material inequalities of the present. The ghosts of the Mau Mau fighters, the victims of Mata Kharibu, and the alienated proletariats do not return to be mourned, but to accuse the architects of the contemporary state. Ultimately, the specter in postcolonial literature is not merely a gothic symbol of the past, but a radical, ethical call to confront unresolved histories. By forcing the living to recognize their participation in these continuous cycles of violence, hauntology demands the dismantling of the spectral economy, insisting that the true work of decolonization has only just begun.

References:

Abbas, Hassan, and Kadhim, Ali. The Spectral Economies of Postcolonial Literature. Routledge, 2018.

Birhane, Abeba. "Algorithmic Colonization of Africa." Real Life Mag, 2019.

Couldry, Nick, and Mejias, Ulises A. The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism. Stanford University Press, 2019.

Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. Routledge, 1994.

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press, 1963.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books, 1977.

Gordon, Avery F. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Mbembe, Achille. On the Postcolony. University of California Press, 2001.

Mignolo, Walter D. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke University Press, 2011.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Petals of Blood. Heinemann, 1977.

Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. Vintage Books, 1994.

Soyinka, Wole. A Dance of the Forests. Oxford University Press, 1963.