evident in the controversial agency of Joseph’s Conrad Heart of Darkness : “The conquest
of earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different
complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look
into it too much” (1982:10). The “taking away of the earth” from Africans which began
with trade by barter with the West in the 15th century, developed subsequently through
stages of inequality that favoured the West to the detriment of Africa. But also because
“literature”, according to Robert Livingston (2002: 256), and imperialism are complexly
intertwined, it is just logical that African postcolonial literature, like any other, will
employ literary modes in interrogating the complex legacy of imperialism that the
centuries-long ideology of the Enlightenment has left Africa with in the wake of
independence. That is, the precursory role of western narratives of travel in the
establishment of animadversions against Africa cannot be consigned to the shadows.
Given its nature, imperialism in itself involves a kind of mobility and travel. The
dislocation it engendered first for the imperialist was more or less self-imposed. This
explains why “narratives of encounter of the [West with the rest of the world] are
dominated by the view point of the mobile culture” (Steve Clark 1999: 5). The barbs of
such culture on the indigenous “earthchildren” stung to the bone marrows. But more
tragically, it culminated in the institution of racial slavery, which added another angle to
the strategy of “taking away” what belonged to the people of the earth. It was a mobility
that was simply predicated on “trade and quest” (Dorothy Carrington in Clark 3). The
impact of the mobility that the encounter produced through slavery has since been
modified with a colonial encounter. If African literature is thus amenable to issues of
dislocation then the reason at this point should be clear.
All this accounts for why the pattern of dislocation encountered in EarthChild is all-
encompassing. It navigates into the past while running a commentary on the present
governed by a military cabal that is western in its imperial act. Memory for this reason
continually comes in handy in the work. But before further exploration into the realm of
memory, it is significant to remark that the import of dislocation is unequivocally attested
in the dedication of the collection: