Relevance of the Portrayal of Masculinity in Ebrahim Hussein’s Plays to the Tanzanian and Kenyan Societies

Abstract

This paper examines the relevance of the portrayal of masculinity in Ebrahim Hussein’s Kinjeketile and Kwenye Ukingo wa Thim, in response to the scholarly need to establish the relevance of the literary portrayal of masculinity in the plays to the Tanzanian and Kenyan societies.  The study is qualitative and adopts Butler’s (1990) Gender Performativity Theory and Connell’s (1995) Gender Order Theory that were both used as a framework for reading, analyzing and interpreting characters’ expressions and performances of masculinity in the selected readings. A Constructivist Paradigm was employed, and it comprised of a number of stages, namely identification of the plays as the primary texts, a close reading of the plays and a review of literature on the gendered portrayals in Hussein’s plays. The researcher finally found that the dramatic portrayal of masculinity in Hussein’s Kinjeketile and Kwenye Ukingo wa Thim is realistic and relevant to the Tanzanian and Kenyan societies. Therefore, the present study is very significant since it gives significant knowledge of the reality and relevance of the two dramatic works of art to the Tanzanian and Kenyan societies with regard to the dramatic portrayal of masculinity in them. The study fills the knowledge gap of the relevance of the literary portrayal of the master-servant relationship between Tanganyikans and the Germans from 1890 to 1904 and the famous 1987 Kenyan ‘Otieno case’, and how masculinity was represented both positively and negatively in both cases.

                DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/kcl.v21i2.4