Inequality In J Augmenterai's Nervous Conditions

The existence of social stratification or social inequalities can be said to be as old as human existence itself. As such, it will be wrong to assert that the societies referred to as egalitarian are complete equal systems. Our assertion is founded on the postulate that the human being himself has established formal organizations to create the conditions of power, prestige and social status. But it cannot be otherwise for inequality and authority have themselves a divine source. Addressing Eve in the Eden Garden after their sin, the Lord told her: “I will increase the suffering of your pregnancies … your desires will be turned toward your husband, but he will have a dominant power over you” (J’augmenterai la souffrance de tes grossesses … tes

It relates the story of Tambu in her ceaseless quest to redefine her personhood, but equally the political, historical and cultural forces that impact the fabric of her community. The book is about her high school years at the Young Ladies’ School of the Sacred Heart during the war of liberation, a period of a new experience of life, of selfishness and repressed identity, of uncertainty and frustration. In a word, the novel is as the title reveals the story of Tambu’s ‘unbecoming’. It is clear for the interpreter-reader then to decode the reasons for this unbecoming for nothing good can be achieved in an insecure

In the African societies under the yoke of colonization, formal education was seen as a key to happiness and emancipation. It allowed entire families or communities to get into touch with the modernizing world, a world mainly dominated by western influence. Thus, to have somebody educated in the western way becomes a new source of power and prestige exactly as large families and physical force represented in the old days. The social milieu surrounding the individual undergoes a transformation, making the colonizer’s language, the dominant language. This is the reason for which we are of John Balland’s view when he asserts that: “the domination of a people’s language by the language of the colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized” (3). Just like the Igbo society of Nigeria, the shona society of Zimbabwe has thus understood the necessity to give formal education, a leading place in the process of children’s education. Unfortunately, tribal and ideological assumptions rooted in patriarchy make little room for the girl child to benefit by that education. Here, preference is given to the male child who surely will perpetuate the family’s name through the offspring rather than the girl who is supposed to perpetuate another family’s