Remembering the City: Lagos and National Time

Abstract

This chapter explores the significance of Lagos as a repository of memory for Nigerian writers. It brings works of contemporary writers such as Sefi Atta and Teju Cole in conversation with older representations of Lagos. While the more recent novels destabilize earlier binaries, they institute other dualities through their relationship to time. The chapter pays attention to how versions of Lagos – past and present – are contrasted to make the cityscape a template for measuring temporal effects. Crucially, the nation-state is the point of reference and the ultimate objective of progress. Lagos is no longer measured against the village but situated in transnational competition with European and American cities where Nigerians commute in person or imaginatively. Through a comparative and diachronic reading, the chapter offers an archive of Lagos representation while arguing that the authorial emphasis on national time as homogeneous often rests on a corresponding de-emphasis of the subaltern times signaled by narrative polyphony.