Spectral Struggle: Necro power and Narrative Resistance in Ben Okri

Abstract

This paper examines the intersection of postcolonial theory, necropower, and narrative resistance in the fiction of Ben Okri, focusing primarily on The Famished Road and related novels. Drawing on the work of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Homi K. Bhabha, and Achille Mbembe, the study identifies Okri’s spectral aesthetics—particularly the abiku child and the spirit‑world—as sites of counter‑discourse against necropolitical regimes that consign the poor and the politically inconvenient to half‑alive, “living‑dead” existence. The paper argues that Okri’s magic‑realist narrative strategies function as forms of narrative resistance that re‑center indigenous cosmologies, re‑map the postcolonial subject’s temporal and spatial condition, and reinscribe testimony and memory into the national archive.