Trans-mediating nationhood in the imaginings of the new pan-Kalenjin co-presences

Abstract

The thesis is a literary and cultural examination of the trans-mediation of the Kalenjin pan-ethnic nation constituted at the end of Daniel Moi’s tenure in 2002 as the president of Kenya. The study is concerned with the trajectories of imagining the Kalenjin pan-ethnic ethos, since the group’s formation in the 1940s, documented in selected media and cultural texts. I depart from the historical and political approaches which associate the Kalenjin mediation with historical and political events that direct the members of the group towards the federal outfit against the individual ethnic identities. I propose that events are less constitutive by their instructive attribute than by the power to perform and complement each other in producing meaning. Hence, I contend that the making of the Kalenjin pan-ethnic nationhood should be understood through a literary and cultural lens to account for the dramatic interaction of the group’s historical and contemporary events. I suggest that the Kalenjin historical and contemporary cultural dramas are represented adequately in four journalese stories, one inquiry report story, four popular songs, two Facebook group discussions, two sermons, two documentaries, and two comedies, which incorporate notions of Kalenjin nationhood the end of the Moi presidency. I consider the rise and end of Daniel Moi’s presidency as the narrative range within which the Kalenjin mediation story should be examined. This relates to how Daniel Moi established himself as a central figure in the group in the post-independence ethnic politics which coincided with popularising the pan-ethnic identity among the Kalenjin constituent groups. Thus, I submit that the discontinuation of Moi’s power represents the disorientation of the group’s pan-ethnic life and, hence, the narrative premise by which the signification of the new Kalenjin nationalism is ingrained. I approach the study from a social drama perspective which offers that seemingly unrelated events bearing on a collective can be ordered into a narrative of a dramatic process. I observe that social drama is appropriate given that it embraces the interface between historical and cultural accounts as a viewpoint about the constitution of collective realities. I also draw on theories on nationhood that highlight the relationship between social situations and groups concepts of selfhood and otherness to assess how social drama represents varying temporal concepts of nationhood. Hence, I compare the documentations of the major historical events in the Kalenjin community since its formation in the 1940s with cultural expressions produced between 2002 and 2019 to determine how they engage with the end of the Moi presidency to re-imagine the Kalenjin nationhood. I affirm that the Kalenjin trans-mediation story relates significantly with the four stages of social drama which are breach, crisis, redress and reintegration. The stages represent the concepts of nationhood produced in the various trans-mediation junctures. The most significant comprise the function of suspense and surprise in the stretch that culminates into breach, victimhood in crisis, honour in redress and ethics of entanglement in reintegration.