Narrativising Injustice, Political Emancipation and the Authentic Life in Sam Ukala’s <i>the Placenta of Death</i>

Abstract

The human desire to live together as a community or a nation is predicated on the conditions of equity, justice and fairness to all. However, the urge to dominate others has entrenched social injustice in society. This nature of human living breeds different kinds of human reactions which philosophers have identified. In his phenomenological ontology, Jean-Paul Sartre developed some concepts he believed to define our relationships with the world around us and how that world responds to our desires: Being-in-itself, Being-for-Itself, Facticity, Bad Faith and Authenticity are some concepts explored in this study. Sartre argues that because humans are ongoing projects with future possibilities, attaining our full potential as human beings only become valued through the ways we respond to these ideals. In the application of the above concepts using Sam Ukala’s The Placenta of Death, this study, through a content analysis of the qualitative research method, interrogated human attitudes in an oppressive and unjust world seeking justification or otherwise for human actions that would provide us with what human society should be like for our experience of it to be what it ought to be. Our findings, among others, revealed that oppression and injustice in society breed political and material denials which lead to resentment and the consequent desire for political struggles. It also discovered that those who resign to bad faith (self-deceptive and compromised persons) are afraid to take responsibility for their past and present actions and thereby closing future possibilities for themselves and others. The study concluded that in a society of entrenched oppression and injustice, it is obligated and justified that one takes a political stand: one against oppression and injustice, but in favour of political emancipation and freedom.