Law and Literature: A Discourse on the Dialectics of Colonial Justice in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise

Abstract

This research investigates the state of colonial justice and fairness as portrayed in Abdulrazak Gurnah's novel, Paradise. It explores the trajectory of the epistemic laws and dispositions of the colonizer towards the colonized, as the cultural values, traditional norms and taboos of the natives were not considered during colonization. Consequently, the literary representation of the irregularities in the established colonizer's epistemic law upon the colonized, makes the empiricism of justice questionable, as the malignancy of their laws hit hard on the colonized. Hence, the literary artist interrogates the dispensation of the alleged universality of justice by the West on colonial subjects, within the functionalities of their established jurisprudence in these colonies. Thus, the postcolonial literary writer, Abdulrazak Gurnah, protests against the subjugation and domination of the established colonials' hegemonic laws against the natives (their hosts), due to the obvious lack of ethical and cultural negotiations. As seen in Paradise, the Nobel Laureate, raises salient thoughts in line with Gayatri Spivak's discourse on law and the subalterns in postcolonial literary discourse. Data were collected through fictional, critical and analytical method based on textual discourse/analysis. Postcolonial literary theory is suitably applied, as it lucidly unravels the disregard and abuse of the fundamental human rights of the margins by the West during colonization in Zanzibar, a major region in Indian Ocean narratives.