MAPPINGTEXTS: IMAGININGAUDIENCES IN POPULAR FICTION

GEORGE OGOLA

he study of audiences remains a critical component of post-colonial cultural studies. Attempts to theorise audiences, however, reveal a great T deal of complexities on the nature of audiences. While there are those

who see audiences as ‘obedient subjects of texts’ (Hofmeyr 322; cf. Tiffin), others see them as active participants in the process of meaning-making. The latter argue that ‘publics and consumers are not simply people waiting out there for something to consume, but on the contrary, they are brought into being as consumers and publics by the process of cultural production’ (Hartley 47).

In the many attempts to theorise audiences, there has been a relative neglect of the text as a significant factor in audience formation. This article attempts to redress this neglect, by arguing for the importance of the text as primary in the understanding of audiences. It is a neglect that has been partly redressed by Barber, though in relation to a different genre, in her discussion of Yoruba theatre. She notes that the Yoruba theatre company ‘constitutes the audience by its use of time and space and by its mode of address - as a particular type of modern collectivity’ (Generation of Plays 204). While I do not necessarily agree with the argument that texts ‘create obedient subjects’, I do nonetheless acknowledge that texts are ‘imbued with extraordinary powers’ (Hofmeyr 323). Texts imagine, construct and manipulate audiences.

From the vantage of the argument adduced above, one seeking the primacy of the text in the study of audiences, this paper analyses a popular text in an attempt to show how writers imagine audiences. We attempt to give insight into how texts, especially popular fiction, imagine and construct audiences. Using ‘Whispers’, a weekly newspaper fiction column published by the Sunday Nation in Kenya, the paper ventures into how texts imagine audiences which, although heterogeneous, are positioned as homogeneously accessible.

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Whispers: A Short (Hi)story

‘Whispers’ is a ‘popular’ fiction column published by the Sunday Nation, the largest circulating newspaper in East and Central Africa.’ It is written by Wahome Mutahi, a renowned Kenyan writer. (Mutahi has published a number of literary writings including novels, plays and collections of essays, some of which include Whispers and Cammisasius (2002), How to be a Kenyan (1997), Jail Bugs (1992), and Three Days on the Cross (1991). Mutahi won the coveted Jomo Kenyatta Prize for literature in 1993 for his novel Three Days on the Cross. This is the highest recognised literary award in Kenya.) At its inception, the name of the column loosely reflected the column’s thematic orientations; the fact that it dealt with ‘things which we do but would rather only acknowledge and discuss privately’. Over its 20 years of existence, the column has become an important site of diverse narratives in and about Kenya. The narratives attempt to understand, explain and narrate the Kenyan nation. (This nation is a complex and heterogeneous entity but imagined as homogeneous; as Kenyan.) The column provides a site where popular discourses are circulated and argued, where rumours are appropriated as national discourses and where these discourses are debated, discounted or affirmed in an attempt to explain and narrate the country’s socio-political and economic existence.

Some of the column’s defining traits are its acerbic satiric tone, quirky humour, diverse content, and relatively casual but penetrative style of writing. Although ‘Whispers’ is often loosely referred to as a satire and the writer as a satirist, largely owing to the column’s satiric tone, the column is not a satire but satire. The distinction is made in an attempt to correct a popular perception particularly in Kenya whereby ‘Whispers’ is regarded as a satire and the writer as a satirist. These two terms are often easily confused, a faux pas clarified by Spacks who notes that unlike a satire, satire is not ‘a genre but a procedure’. A novel, short story or play can be satire but not a satire. Spacks explains that satire ‘occurs in strange combination with other literary modes’ (Paulson, Satire: Modern Essays). Ronald Paulson, in agreement with Spacks, observes that an object of satire is best ‘attacked through a generally understood form that is perverted to convey the satiric message’ (Fictions of Satire 200). Paulson further notes that, traditionally, ‘satire has always borrowed its ground plan, parasitically and by inversion, from other forms of ordered exposition in art or in life.. .’. But even when adopting forms of other literary genres, satire finds some forms more congenial than others. Episodic forms such as the short story have especially been noted for their congeniality to satire. It is this muddied terrain of definitions that easily leads to misinterpretation of fiction such as ‘Whispers’. ‘Whispers’ adopts the short story because of its congeniality to satire. We will therefore be studying short story popular fiction within the newspaper genre and not a satire.

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The Audience as ‘Discursive Community’

Because of their centrality to this study, it is germane that we attempt a definition of such terms, including publics, audiences and readers, as they form our core analytical fields. Although easily interchanged, publics, audiences and readers are not synonyms. Hartley observes that reading is a ‘discursive practice by means of which an individual will sometimes be called into being as an audience, sometimes not’ (67; see also McQuail). In other words, not all readers can be part of a text’s audience. Similarly, a distinction exists between the public and a public. Michael Warner argues that whereas the public is a kind of totality, a public is text-based. A public is therefore never just a congeries of people, never the sum of persons who happen to exist. A public always has a way of organising itself as a body and of being addressed in discourse. Publics are therefore different from persons. The paper perceives of the audience or public not as a congeries of people, or readers or the public, but as a ‘discursive community’ brought forth by and through particular discourses. Therefore, although ‘Whispers’ is ultimately aimed at the public, it constructs publics. We must, however, note that audiences and publics though discursive productions are nonetheless real.

To address audiences is to define the discursive community both in terms of particular demographics as well as psychographics. Defined in terms of demographics, we look at objectifiable categories such as age, gender, occupation and social class. In terms of psychographics we consider categorisation by inferred or cognitive features such as needs, personality types or lifestyles. These are however not invented but merely sharpened versions of the audiences’ own. In other words, stories told are those that they can drop into, a life they inhabit. It is this universe that ‘Whispers’ re- creates. The paper thus argues that besides the modes of address, constructive features of ‘Whispers’ can be mapped against two major paradigms: those of a demographic nature and those of a psychographic nature.

At its inception in 1983, ‘Whispers’ read more like an instruction manual, feebly attempting to pass as fiction. Created without any clear thematic course other than relying on stock mannerisms, it found itself narratively restricted in many ways. The column played the newspaper readership’s moral voice, warning against issues such as drinking and promiscuity, which were some of the most popular themes in 1970s popular writing in Kenya. Instructive writing especially around stock mannerisms is constricting in several respects, not least the fact that it does not easily allow the creation of a parallel universe within which to narrate versions of existing social reality. Secondly, as Jacqueline Bardolf notes, the degree of unity and coherence in this hnd of writing is generally weak. The cast is often vast, ‘with new characters that keep appearing and disappearing which consequently precludes easy identification by the reader’ (127). This writing found in the early issues of ‘Whispers’ is a tradition with roots in several parts of Africa, most notably in

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Nigeria, where it can be seen in the country’s market literatures - especially Onitsha market literature.2 The tradition can also be read in the ‘Sophiatown literature’ and Drum magazine of the 1950s in South Africa.

In an attempt to construct and expand existing publics, ‘Whispers’ has undergone fundamental changes since 1983. A notable change has been its adoption of both permanent and transient characters. These characters have gradually become determinative tropes, and discourse markers for his publics, serving both as social class markers and acting as cues to particular discourses. They attempt to act as points of reference to readerships within the Kenyan society. Among the column’s permanent characters are Whispers, Thatcher, Appepklonia, the Investment alias Pajero, and Whispers Junior aka ‘the domestic thug’. Together, they form a family, loosely modelled on the writer’s family, but arguably representative of a nuclear family in Kenya. Other characters include Teacher Damiano and Father Camissasius, ‘dead’ characters often brought up through flashbacks in the column to act as a commentary on present situations.

Some of the names are telling of the characters’ perceived characteristics and fictions in the column. (Exceptions include Teacher Damiano and Fr Cammisasius. However, these names echo the Italian influence in Central Kenya. Mutahi was born in Nyeri, a small town in Central Kenya, which was also the second settlement of the Consolata Missionaries in the country.) Thatcher derives her name from the former British premier Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher’s demeanour was often unsettling, her style brash, almost boorish. In the column, Thatcher is given some qualities of her model Margaret Thatcher, who is probably the writer’s interpretation of the ideal modern woman. She is bold and aggressive, and capable of holding together her family even in the most exacting of situations. The Investment, Whispers’ daughter, represents the youth in their quest for recognition in a society that refuses to ‘understand them’. Her dress, language, and interests are all attributes of the modern-day rebellious teenager. But even more significant is her role as a discourse marker. She signals many prevailing stereotypes in Kenya and invokes significant socio-cultural realities. Reference to the daughter as ‘The Investment’, for instance, does not only underline the materiality of a cultural practice in most Kenyan communities, that of seeing girls as sources of wealth for the father, it also restates the prevalence of this notion of women as sources of wealth among Kenyans. In effect, the column’s readership, found within the newspaper reading publics, is one that is existent but brought together through such shared beliefs and cultural practices. With this kind of characterisation we see the forging of publics at play both in terms of demographics as well as psychographics. The column defines publics through gender, age and social class, and also through inferred characteristics such as cultural beliefs and stereotypes.

In a general sense, as discourse markers and socio-economic indicators, the characters in ‘Whispers’ are modelled on stereotypes and clichks. Karin

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Barber remarks that stereotypes are a way of ‘making models that can be applied to readers’ own specific circumstances.. . ’ (‘Preliminary Notes’ 357). She also notes that the function of ‘stereotype cliches and formulas in African popular culture generally could fruitfully be treated as the point at which individual experiences and shared concerns intersect’. The creation of publics is about collectivising experiences and in the column, stereotypes are used to this end. Similarly, stereotypes are used in the manner suggested by Catherine Cole, who argues that they act as points where ‘models of behaviour (representation) become models for behaviour (warnings, advice)’ (cited in Barber, ‘Preliminary Notes’ 357). Teacher Damiano, Father Cammisasius and Whispers are some of the characters deliberately loaded with stereotypical cliches. They are characterised, to borrow Barber’s conclusions of Yoruba theatre characters, ‘to embody moral messages specifically for spectators of the same gender or occupying the same social role.. . ’ (Generation of Plays 220). Father Cammisasius, for instance, is sometimes depicted as a priest of the old order, irrevocably and unflinchingly true to the teachings and expectations of the ‘old church’. He refuses to think beyond religious dogma and believes in the infallibility of the Roman Catholic Church. The fact that he is human and that the church is an institution that germinates and circulates popular ideas and therefore should be open to scrutiny is hardly a moot point to Fr Cammisasius.

Teacher Damiano, on the other hand, is inscribed with characteristics of a teacher who has a skewed and dated perception of the teaching profession. He sees himself as the unparalleled mentor of the young. He considers the teacher the sole repository of wisdom, second only to the church. Below is an excerpt from the column that demonstrates how the writer depicts these two characters. Dramatising the excesses of priests and teachers, Mutahi writes:

. . . [Wlhen I was presented to the local Pontius Pilate alias Father Cammisasius, the charge was read. It was that I, namely Whispers the Son of the Soil, aged twelve-and-a-half and in Class Three in Slopes Intermediate School, had ‘committed the senior sin of using the skills of my hand and the contents of my brain to do homework for one Chiru, contrary to known school rules and with sinful intentions.’

The other charge was that I had written ‘a sinful letter to the said Chiru, contrary to church law and to the commandments that had been handed to one Moses on the Slopes of Mountain Sinai.’

I denied both charges but another was added. It was that I had ‘committed sin by saying that an adult, namely Teacher Damiano, was a liar’ (Sunday Nation, 1 April 2002).

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Fr Cammisasius is depicted as seeing himself as the ultimate authority on matters of manners while Teacher Damiano, though mortal, is infallible and therefore cannot lie! Whispers the eponymous character, on the other hand, is your quintessential chauvinistic male, though one incredibly insecure with the female gender, especially with Thatcher. According to the writer, there is a trait of Whispers in every Kenyan male. Here is a man who despite being an ‘urbanite’ still perceives his daughter as an ‘Investment’. His commodification of his daughter is a deliberate act of stereotypical representation, but one perhaps intended to act as a model case for behavioural change. The fact that these characters are shaped and influenced by beliefs within the Kenyan society is a case of the text deliberately wanting to establish a form of association between audiences and the text’s characters.

Weaving this life into a rational, contemporary discourse is the author’s style of narration. The column has necessarily adopted what Norman Fairclough calls ‘synthetic personalisation’. Through this strategy, text and reader are ‘synthesised in a friendly relationship’ (62). The column’s public or presumed public, though anonymous, is engaged in debates by personalised references and dialogue. A space is defined in which writer and reader engage in a friendly, sometimes even antagonist relationship, yet even so an engagement all the same, on various issues of common interest. Through the text, both the social and temporal distances are shortened. Indeed, as Talbot observes, if an actual reader has a great deal in common with the reader implied in the text, they are likely to take up points comfortably. Similarly, if the distance - social and temporal - increases between the two, so does the negotiation. An attempt is therefore made to shorten the social and temporal space through styles of narration.

‘Synthetic personalisation’ can be discerned in the narrative voices adopted by the writer. In the column, although the writer tells his stories in the first person, he often shifts to the oral narrative mode, inviting his readers to a ‘dialogue’, hence creating familiarity and personalising the relationship. Here is an excerpt demonstrative of this style. Mutah writes: ‘. . . [Dlid I hear someone say, Thank God the bore is gone? Did I hear someone say, Please Whis don’t go.. .’ (Sunday Nation, 1 April 2002). The writer imagines a response, yet a rational one, impressing upon the readership to respond. He imagines them as active participants in the process of meaning-making. Equally significant is the fact that the writer also intimates that storytelling is a weaving process that involves both narrator and the audience (Ogude 56).

It is also interesting to note that, although the column employs the first person narrative voice, the writer equally assumes the narrative powers of an omniscient narrator - the third person narrator. He combines first-person telling and third-person observation. Knowledge is gained through introspection and information by reportage. His use of the third-person is essentially to maintain control of the narrative. While he engages the audience

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and calls for its involvement in the meaning-making process, he also takes and defends certain positions.

In his attempts to construct a meaningful contemporary narrative, the writer weaves the past and the present in search of a cocktail that can be understood by his diverse publics, those who, although they do not necessarily share the urban space, still share this public space. Besides narrating relatively familiar national or international issues, most of the column’s themes find their antecedents and parallels in the Kenyan past and that of the column’s characters. To draw these parallels, the column ‘explores a specific time scheme in which the narrative swings from the past time of action to the current time of telling or retelling. In each of the two time zones, the experiences of the past are in themselves a parallel and a commentary on the present situation’ (Ogude 52-53). ‘Whispers’ deals with circulating popular discourses but with echoes of past experiences often acting as allegories of narrative meaning in present situations. These allusions create a shared field of reference between writer and audience. Below is a typical example of this strategy:

Come this Wednesday and I am supposed to go insane. I am supposed to go insane by going to a shop to buy a bunch of weeds in the name of flowers and in the name of a character called Valentine. Valentine is not a member of my Nyaituga clan but all the same I am supposed to buy those wild things in his name and hand them over to Thatcher.

I am supposed to dress in red as if I am a Kanu youth winger. After that I am expected to hold those wild things in one hand, go down on one knee and tell Thatcher that I love her more than the frothy stuff that I drink at the right price and temperature. I am supposed to tell her that if she cuts my veins, she will not find blood. Instead, she will find my love for her flowing in them like River Chania during floods.. .. When we first met, wild leaves in the name of flowers were not part of saying that love was flowing in your vein like River Nyando during floods. There were ways of doing so. One of them was proving to your potential Thatcher you were not a coward. Proving that you were not a coward involved many things. One of them was taking her to the village dance at the local K One, our village Choices. Our K One and Choices were places where we hang out once in a while to dance to the tunes of the time.

In those days, we did not have musicians barking like dogs in the name of music. Instead, they played twist. They did not sing

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songs to make your mother in law shut her ears as it happens these days in the name of a character called Shaggy. They sang songs that advised young men to marry otherwise they would spend all their lives sharing food with cockroaches.. . (Sunday Nation, 11 February 2001).

The excerpt above narrates various issues. In a general sense, the narrative revolves around the concept of love and particularly the notion of Valentine’s Day. The text compares the concept of love in two different epochs, subtly attacking the unbridled acceptance of the ‘Valentine phenomenon’, which the writer sees as patently ‘un-Kenyan’. Within the narrative are several other discourses. He equates the red of Valentine to a Kanu youth winger, hated henchmen of the Kanu regime during the Moi era in Kenya. He also criticises contemporary music, seeing it as ‘artless’. According to him, contemporary musicians ‘bark like dogs’. He takes a swipe at Shaggy, the popular American- based ragga artist, accusing him of singing songs that would make ‘your mother in law shut her ears’. Implicit is the writer’s preferred notions of love, politics and manners. Although the past is not romanticised, it is narrated to act as a commentary on the present issues under debate.

Another significant point germane to this discussion is the column’s reliance on appropriation of rumour as a popular form of disseminating information and forging readerships. Politics is fodder for rumour. In a society where free speech is muzzled either by force by government or through indirect control of public channels of communication, rumour becomes a necessary means of explaining ambiguous situations. Although it would be erroneous to argue that popular forms represent or promote only those views outside the purview of officialdom, the latter generally has a tendency of suppressing ‘the popular’. This has been the case in Kenya. Therefore, while popular discourses are not necessarily subversive, it is important to acknowledge that they narrate histories in ways markedly dissimilar to versions circulated by or through official channels. One reason to explain the existence and populqrity of ‘Whispers’, especially under circumstances particularly exacting on freedom of speech, is the way it narrates ‘popular’ ideas. In John Ruganda’s words, the text ‘tells the truth laughingly’ (This is the title of a book by John Ruganda, in which he discusses Kenyan playwright Francis Imbuga’s drama). As a site that provides space for group problem- solving, a public is easily constituted around a rumour. Ramotsu Shibutani, a leading authority on rumour, argues that rumour develops as ‘people caught together in an ambiguous situation attempt to construct meaningful interpretation of it (the situation) by pooling their intellectual resources’ (cited in Rosnow and Fine 97). Usually, the presence of leaders and other high-status individuals helps build publics around rumour. Similarly, rumours are also juxtaposed with hard news, a strategy which Rosnow and Fine argue is used to give rumour ‘credibility by association’. By introducing potentially

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subversive topics as rumour, the writer also engages in what Czeslaw Misolv calls the ‘art of dissimulation’ (cited in Ruganda 43; this is a strategy that involves a constant and universal masquerade and helps the writer ‘appear conformist and dissentious at once, to be seen as applauding when they are condemning’). He succeeds in distancing himself from the issues under discussion and therefore escapes possible reprisal from both the polity and the butt of his satire. Below is an example of this strategy in the column:

. . . [Tlhe news is that the church boss in the Vatican has confessed that his men in cassocks have been forcing the women called nuns to be their unofficial Thatchers.

The whispers say that the men in cassocks are not trained in matters of telling the people in skirts: ‘I love you like my Kencell Erickson TlOS. I love you more than my lunch. I love you more than my cassock that was designed and made in Rome.’

The characters are trained in saying things to the effect that the man born and brought up in Nazareth walked on water and did not sink like The Rtunic or like Whispers the Son of the Soil the last time he tried to swim in a pond that was not deep enough to hold ten tadpoles. The same characters are trained to tell the world that they are following in the footsteps of the man from Nazareth and so they have no business getting Thatchers of their O M .

Now very loud whispers are saying that the men in cassocks are very busy doing the opposite of what they profess. The whispers from the Vatican are saying that the men in dresses, sorry, the men in cassocks, are doing things that should make them end up at Kamiti Prison. They are waiting for nuns in dark comers and then applying tactics that are seen in the World Wrestling Federation matches.

I don’t need to tell you what follows after that except that some of the nuns have found themselves ready for the maternity hospital. Since no nun has ever been accepted in a maternity hospital except as a nurse, they have been forced to put the little unborn ones into dustbins. If you don’t believe me, ask Ndingi son of Nzeki, the one who says that ‘kondoms’ are manufactured in the devil’s workshop. It was all on Pope FM and in the newspapers last week.

Father Cammissasius must have threatened to rise from the

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grave to murder a few men in cassocks when he heard the news. This is because he could have forgiven you for committing murder but not for breaking the commandment that says you should not eye your neighbour’s wife in a manner to suggest she ought to have married you instead of being the Thatcher of the fool next door. (Sunday Nation, 1 April, 2002)

A number of significant issues are noticeable in the excerpt. First, Pope FM is a fictitious radio station, hence the ‘news’ is introduced as rumour. Second, there is a juxtaposition of the ‘rumour’ with hard news. The text reminds its audience that the story was in the newspapers the previous week. Third, infidelity among the clergy is brought into public debate. The Roman Catholic Church, ‘a stern hierarchy that has always kept its deliberations secret, policed itself and issued orders from the top’ (Erne, 1 April 2002) is ‘undressed’ in a public site and debated. The thematic concern of the story derives from a circulating national and international problem. At the time of publication, the Roman Catholic Church was under criticism following allegations that its priests were sexually molesting young boys. We note an interface between journalism and fiction writing, fact and fiction merging into a powerful hyperbole of meaning, one which readers are now forced to confront. We also see the column act as a site of mediation, ‘glocalising’ issues of international concerns.

‘Whispers’ also attempts to locate its narratives within familiar quotidian contextual referents to construct publics. The column uses what Jane Kitzinger calls ‘media templates’ (61). Kitzinger observes that in every mass society, ‘major social issues have reference points: events that attracted intense media interest at the time and which continue to carry powerful associations’. They are events whose symbolic power lies in their status as templates. They serve as foci not only for demands for policy change but also help shape the way in which we make sense of the world. Kitzinger notes that these events routinely highlight one perspective with great clarity, and serve as rhetorical shorthand to writers. They are instrumental in shaping narratives around particular social problems. These retrospective references help define and consolidate publics. While the referents might exclude some, they also include others by evoking interest through common history and experiences. They consolidate publics through what is referred to as ‘the folklore of collective experiences’ (Dayan and Katz).

At the height of the clamour for multi-party democracy in Kenya in 1992, the discourse of democracy in the country revolved around the repeal of Section 2A of the Kenyan constitution. This section of the constitution made Kenya a de jure one party-state and precipitated the proscription of a number of political parties and opposition politics. Democratic rule in Kenya therefore depended on the repeal of the section. The issue was debated for several years and became a major referential point of interest in the discussion

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of the country’s history. Section 2A and the attendant discourses were quickly appropriated into common speech.

In several issues of the column published in 1992 when the section was repealed through a constitutional amendment, Whispers talks of ‘liberating his wallet from section 2A of the cash economy’. He talks of wanting to make his wallet a ‘multi-currency notes affair’. He also says he wants to make his wallet ‘experience freedom of association and assembly’. These are expressions which although understandably difficult for a non-Kenyan to make sense of, are expressions directly appropriated from the arguments that led to and followed the repeal of Section 2A of the Kenyan constitution. The repeal of the section was perceived by Kenyans as liberating in many respects and is of redeeming historical interest. It would not only result in a multi-party democracy, it also signalled the ushering in of several concomitant freedoms such as freedom of speech, of association, and of assembly. Publics easily relate to media templates, which in this case form the thrust of ‘Whispers’ thematic concerns.

Also running through ‘Whispers’ are deliberate gaps or silences which publics are forced to fill in. The taciturn almost report-like style the writer employs restricts internal monologues but creates appropriate silences in the narratives. The reader is asked to read ‘diacritically’ across these silences. The targeted audience is therefore actively involved in the meaning-making process of narrative. Through the creation of these deliberate silences, a public that shares in the experiences being narrated is imagined by the writer. The reader is forced to actively engage with the text’s ‘unconscious’. We can also argue that through this strategy, the writer exploits the element of dramatic irony in which both the author and audience share knowledge of the subject. During Moi’s reign in Kenya (1978-2002), the column did not mention the former president by name. Instead, Moi was referred to as the ‘man who was born and brought up in Sacho’. Kenyan readers share in the knowledge of Moi’s birthplace, Sacho, a rural outpost in the depths of the Rift Valley. This kind of description served the dual purpose of underlining the ordinariness of the former president and undermining his elevated status, which was part of the writer’s wider goal of attempting to demystify authority. Below is an illustrative excerpt, of instances of the silences that we refer to:

There are certain enemies of peace, love and unity led by one Castro son of Aringo, who have been saying seditious things recently. He is the same man who one day looked at the man who was born and brought up in Sacho and instead of seeing a man of flesh and blood, he saw Jesus Christ. So he said things to the effect that the man from Sacho was the prince ofpeace.. . (Sunday Nation, 13 May 2001).

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The text assumes shared knowledge here with its audience on various issues. ‘Peace, love and unity’ was the political slogan of the Moi era. The text subverts and ridicules its usage in the above example. Indeed in 2001, being an enemy of the Moi regime was deemed to be ‘politically progressive’. Secondly, Kenyan newspaper readerships remember Aringo as one of the most eloquent ministers of the Moi regime. More importantly, however, he was notable as one of the most sycophantic of Moi’s ministers. In a famous speech in which he castigated the opposition for their criticism of the Moi regime, he called the immediate former president ‘the Prince of Peace’, words the Christian faithful use in describing Jesus Christ. Aringo’s speech was particularly significant and necessarily amplified not only this comparison but the fact that it came at a time when various parts of the country were engulfed in ethnic turmoil for reasons attributable in part to the policies of Moi’s government. However, it is also important that we recognise the influence of the medium of the newspaper on the column. Constrained by space, these narrative gaps become necessary.

In another attempt to construct publics, we also see ‘Whispers’ using language in a way usually marginalised in most contemporary works in Kenya, yet used within popular spaces. The text engages in a register that breaks the rules of grammar but reflects prevailing popular narratives. The writing undermines the dominant practices in fiction by reworking and subverting grammatical conventions especially of the English language. Running through ‘Whispers’ are various instances of linguistic code-switching understandable only to those exposed to it. In one such instance, Mutahi writes:

I fear that my Investment, alias Pajero and the sister to the domestic thug called Whispers Junior, will come over to me and say, ‘Buda, chota chapaa za kutosha si you know I need a ka-tumbo cut that is major. How do you expect me to pass my degree if my lecturers don’t see most of my geography? ... Faza, koma kulalia chapaa. Chomoa zingine.’ (Sunday Nation, 16 January 2002).

Even to Kenyans, the above paragraph would make little sense unless one is an ‘initiate’ of this ‘urban-speak’. This register, commonly referred to as sheng, is a mix of English, Kiswahili and a motley of other Kenyan ethnic languages. Sheng mutates quite regularly and although a register associated with the young, it is increasingly definitive of a polyglot Kenyan nation. In the excerpt above, it excludes a number of readers yet it also creates a particular public, that which is interpellated not by English but by a ‘nationhood’, a ‘Kenyanness’ to operate mixed codes.’

Roger Kurtz has attempted to theorise the use of code-switching in fiction, arguing that it is necessitated by a number of circumstantial factors, including

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cases of topical shifts, especially where the speaker is more comfortable discussing in a given language, an aside comment made for a listener other than a primary addressee, the arrival of a participant whom the speaker wants to include or exclude or shifting attention to a new listener. ‘Whispers’ imagines a polyglot nation and while this language inevitably excludes some, an intended readership is still able to decode its meaning. The text imagines a public that can define itself on the basis of a ‘Kenyanness’ partially defined by language.

Conclusion

This article has attempted to redress the relative neglect of the text in the study of audiences, especially of popular fiction. Using a popular fiction column, ‘Whispers’, published by the Sunday Nation in Kenya, the paper has attempted a discussion of the strategies of the text in the construction of audiences. It has attempted to show that audiences even of popular texts, are never simply out there waiting to be addressed but are instead imagined, created, constructed by the texts. It has argued that there is a distinction between audience and reader, and that it is the former that are addressed by texts. But it has also underlined that although audiences are imagined, they are nonetheless real; that although texts targetpublics, or what we have called ‘discursive communities’ their ultimate target is the public.

NOTES

1. According to estimates by the Nation Group of Newspapers, the Sunday Nation sells 250 000 copies per issue.The complex nature of the ‘popular’ needs to be acknowledged. I shall adopt Karin Barber’s definition of the popular as having a ‘powerful sense of the people’. Although this creates a distinction between ‘the people’ and ‘the other’, the former are not to be understood in the study necessarily as ‘victims’. The definition is however used more to indicate an area of exploration.

2. Emmanuel Obiechina describes Onitsha market literature as a literature ‘about young men and women who are intensely alive and who because they are so, have problems arising from the complexities of modem life. Most of those at whom the literature is directed have had only a superficial contact with modem ways and are in need of guidance and help if they are to cope with them’ (18). Stephanie Newel1 has also researched Onitsha market literature.

3. Giving the example of how Ghanaian concert party construct publics, Catherine Cole argues that through language readers are interpellated as ‘citizens of a polyglot nation able to operate mixed codes while still

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remaining capable of addressing the condensed allusion of the discourses.. .’ (cited in Barber, ‘Preliminary Notes’ 354).

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