Self-Representation in the Contact Zone: An Autoethnographic Reading of The Conscript

Abstract

Considered the first post-colonial Eritrean novel, The Conscript by Gebreyesus Hailu was originally written in Tigrinya in 1927 and published in the same language two decades later. The novel follows Tuquabo, a young soldier recruited by the Italian colonial army to fight Arab nationalist forces in Libya. The emergence of post-colonial African literature was shaped by what Mary Louise Pratt has conceptualized as contact zones I develop Pratt‘s notion of the contact zone as the site not only of cultural clashing but also of undoing harmful beliefs and false narratives. This article posits an autoethnographic reading of The Conscript because of its status as the first book formally published in Tigrinya, the ironic response to Italian colonialism in Eastern Africa, and the incorporation of multiple oral story-telling methods.