A POSTCOLONIAL CRITIQUE OF SOCIO-POLITICAL OPPRESSION AND NECROPOLITICAL POWER IN ABDULRAZAK GURNAH'S AFTERLIVES

Abstract

This study analyses socio-political oppression and resistance in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives (2020) through a selected theoretical framework based on Frantz Fanon’s ideas on colonial violence and Achille Mbembe’s concept of Necropolitics. Using a qualitative and interpretive research methodology, the study investigates the major forms of socio-political oppression represented in Afterlives and examines how the novel’s characters resist these oppressive structures. Guided by two research questions—what forms of socio-political oppression are represented in Afterlives and how the characters resist them—the analysis systematically explores the experiences of oppressed characters and communities throughout the novel, demonstrating that oppression and resistance extend across the entire fictional world rather than being confined to a single narrative. Textual evidence is interpreted through Fanon’s and Mbembe’s theoretical perspectives on colonial violence and necropolitics. The findings reveal that oppression in Afterlives operates through military violence, racial hierarchy, psychological trauma, social displacement, and the silencing of vulnerable people, while resistance extends beyond open rebellion to include survival, silence, memory, care, endurance, agency, and the recovery of humanity after violence. The study argues that Gurnah presents resistance as an enduring part of human existence despite the destructive legacy of colonialism. It concludes that Afterlives is a distinctive postcolonial novel that critiques socio-political oppression by exposing the material, psychological, and social realities of colonial rule while affirming the persistence of humanity, dignity, and memory under oppressive conditions.