Abstract
In this study I explore the concept of spectrality as a decolonial alternative theoretical framework to analyse the representation of Global South women in the literary imaginary.The entire thesis seeks to rethinkthe ways in which women’s experiences depicted in the chosen literary texts represent ghosts that have returned to haunt various forms of modern power matrices that continue to subjugate them. In addition, thehauntological approach employed by this research privileges the ghostly voices of marginalised women in order to achieve a clear perspective of how they negotiate their experiences from the standpoint of their own realities. To achieve this, a comparative study in which I focus on the development of decolonial feminism in Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Joys of Motherhood (1979); Karen King-Aribisala’s The Hangman’s Game (2007), Kicking Tongues (1998), Bitter Leafing Woman (2017) and, Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater (2018), The Death of Vivek Oji (2020) and Bitter (2022) is conducted. Importantly, the re-reading of these novels through adecolonial lens serves a dual purpose: it delinks from the hegemonic homogenisation of Global South women’s experiences while also responding to the world of Global South literary studies. This is to say, it delinks from the so-called conventional epistemologies and ways of knowing that have since been used to silence Global South knowledges. In doing so the study challenges modern colonial matrices of power that continue to reproduce colonised knowledges and ways of being that marginalises specific groups. The spectral trope aids in unravelling and unveiling existential complexities that most modern literary approaches have overlooked. I refer to these complexities as transhistorical issues endured by the marginalised. Furthermore, besides reconceptualising the notion of time as a decolonial modality that challenges universal ways of understanding the world and its knowledges, the spectral presence signals a call towards the need to create new existential spaces that are stripped of any hegemonic sentiments. In closing, the research suggests new theoretical and methodological approaches as a way of engaging with both literary and social ghosts.