Abstract:
In this thesis, I make a case for feminist methods of reading postcolonial crime fiction by
using Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s novel, Dust, in order to investigate the gendered
construction of criminality in Kenya. While Dust has correctly been read as an historical
fiction text that challenges the hegemonic narratives which uphold the postcolonial state as
is, much less attention has been paid to the ways in which its female characters have made
this possible. Through the three featured women in the text, I argue that postcolonial feminist
crime fiction proffers ways to interrogate and reimagine phallocratic vernaculars and
structures of nationhood and citizenship, human rights and security, and the historical
framework of what judicially constitutes a life, and what does not. By reading women’s
silence and women’s memory as forensic tools against the state’s masculinist storytelling
praxis, I attempt to contribute to the dismantling and reconstruction of the ‘human’ in art,
human rights work, legal policy, and other social imaginaries.
