Displacement in Doris Lessing's “The Old Chief Mshlanga”

a settler postcolonial bildung

Abstract

“The Old Chief Mshlanga” is one of the best-known and most frequently anthologized narratives from Doris Lessing’s 1965 African Stories, a collection that explores, among other themes, the small and large cruelties of racism and segregation on white-settler Southern Rhodesian farms, where the author spent her childhood and part of her adolescence. The plot of “The Old Chief Mshlanga” can be associated with two well-known literary cornerstones: the long-established tradition of the bildung, and the highly politicized critical approach to a particular type of colonialism that has been termed “settler postcolonialism”. This article explores the fact that this blend of “coming of age” story and denunciation of the injustices of white-settler hegemony provides fruitful ground for the exploration of several topics of concern for settler postcolonial studies, particularly different implications of the crucial issues of place and displacement, both for the white-settler protagonist and the African characters in the story.