'Saids' and 'Not saids' in Ifemelu's Blogging: A Hooksian-Machereyian Approach to Chimamanda Adichie's Americanah

Abstract

This article focuses on Ifemelu’s blog posts in Chimamanda Adichie’s third novel, Americanah (2013), as seen through bell hooks’s (1989) concept of ‘talking back’ in conjunction with Pierre Macherey’s (1966) notion of ‘disparate text’ or ‘symptomatic’ reading to shed some light on the construction of the racialised condition of Black female immigrant subjectivity in America. It is argued that Ifemelu’s writing blog posts as a way of talking back to white supremacy leads to the (re)definition of Black female consciousness and autonomy. Drawing on the notion of the ‘not-said’ explicated by Macherey, the article then addresses the articulate silences in blog posts, trying to make the lacunae of the narrative speak, to picture a reverse racial narrative, and to reveal ideological gaps between racial minorities. Through a symptomatic reading, this article attempts to explain how the aesthetic silences, absences and the not-said in Ifemelu’s blog posts reflect the conflict between hegemonic and counterhegemonic discourses in the context of the struggle for social justice and racial equality in the United States. The study concludes that Ifemelu’s blog posts present a revealing picture of the Black female experience in America and illustrate the workings of racial injustice with their saids and not-saids.