Zitationsvorschlag
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Dieses Werk steht unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung - Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen 4.0 International.
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Reversing Victimology: Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King as a War Narrative of Female Agency
ABSTRACT Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King (2019) is a fictional retelling of the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1936). If war narratives are often told from the perspective of the male gaze, Mengiste’s novel reverses such common practice by recounting the tale of the Ethiopian women who fought against the Italian soldiers. Even though at the beginning of the novel the female characters appear as victims of a patriarchal society, the author de facto constructs a narrative of female agency that goes beyond victimology: once the war breaks out, the women actively refuse the submissive role imposed on them by society, instead taking up arms to fight the invaders. This chapter analyses how the female characters in the novel transition from a condition of victimhood to a politics of agency, defying the constrictions of both their own patriarchal society and of the foreign gaze of the colonisers.
KEYWORDS African literature, female agency, Maaza Mengiste, war narrative
