Nationhood and Ethnic Ideology: Examining Selected Cartoon Paratexts in Kwani?

ABSTRACT The paper interrogates the role of cartoons in the discursive construction of nationhood and national identity with a specific focus on cartoons published in a Kenyan literary magazine named Kwani? between 2007 and 2008. Kwani? employs cartoons to archive specific events in Kenyan history and articulate a particular view of ‘Kenyanness’. Cartoons act as a disruptive art form that guides the process of making meaning out of a text. This function allows cartoons to influence ideological perspectives on certain issues. The article draws on Gerard Genette’s concept of the paratext, and Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque to analyse how selected cartoons in Kwani? influence interpretations of Kenyan nationhood in the context of the 2007/2008 post-election violence. We focus on cartoons that depict the politics of male circumcision, violence in Kibera slums, and International Criminal Court cases that dominated Kenyan political discourse during and after the 2007 elections. The paper examines how the selected cartoons mediate discourses of nationhood and ethnicity in Kenya and concludes that cartoons published in Kwani? in the context of the violence reinforced ethnic polarisation in Kenyan political discourse.