Many major debates in media theory in the past decade have centred on the contrast between an increasingly hegemonic and homogenizing global media, primarily based in the US, (e.g. Herman and McChesney, 1997) and the potential for ‘hybridization’ and ‘agency’ in the consumption of these media forms (for instance, Appadurai, 1996, and Hannerz, 1996). This paper furthers this examination of agency and international media through a reading of Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo’s 2007 novel, Wizard of the Crow. However where previous theorists, such as Appadurai, have stressed the links between agency and consumption, this paper focuses on the agency of self-representation through these media forms. Exploring the strategic manipulation of international media by a variety of characters for different purposes, I argue that rather than passively acquiescing to stereotypical depictions of ‘Africa’ and ‘Africans’ in international media, the characters utilize these stereotypes to further particular agendas within the nation state. In particular, I consider the televised scenes of begging at the beginning of the novel, elucidating how the spectacle of begging intersects both with a broader politics of begging and with Nyawĩra’s belief in ‘the theatre of politics’.
Furthermore I read the palimpsestic structure and complexly focalised narration of the novel as an invocation to think through media forms critically: to gather information from a range of sources (from local gossip to globally disseminated media) and to be conscious but discerning of the potentials inherent in each. I argue that the novel portrays how different sources of ‘media’ representation, defined broadly – from folkloric proverbial sayings to global media networks such as CNN – can be instrumentalised, particularly according to different time scales or for differing degrees of urgency. I show that, while the long-form, accumulative structure of the novel suggests that more ‘patient’ media forms are needed for truthful representation, Ngũgĩ simultaneously recognises the remarkable short-term mobilising power of international media, especially as a pressure point upon the state.
In this respect I contribute to, and complicate, discourses on contemporary media representation of Africa, particularly in its relation to literary forms, which present Africa’s media presence as necessarily disabling – as in Helon Habila’s diagnosis of ‘western-media-coverage […] poverty-porn’. In particular, I develop upon Tiziana Morosetti’s work on the strategic use of stereotypes ‘to awaken the reader’s conscience about African history and politics […] that, if subverted, that is, if put to the people’s good, can eventually achieve real independence and freedom’. (2013, 60) However, where Morosetti focuses on the strategic invocation of literary stereotypes by the novel/ novelist, I extend the discussion into the deployment of stereotypes by characters within the novel, drawing upon George Ogola’s work on the Kenyan media ecology to consider the characters’ understanding of global media institutions and the global media environment.