Abstract:
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s oeuvre is often read through the prisms of anti-colonial resistance and the struggles of workers and peasants against capitalist exploitation. Yet, while scholarship has extensively interrogated Ngũgĩ’s representation of the farm and the factory as emblematic sites of class struggle and decolonial consciousness, comparatively little attention has been paid to the spatio-technical infrastructures of transport that animate some of his fictional worlds. This paper examines three of Ngũgĩ’s texts—Mercedes Funeral, Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus, and Petals of Blood—to explore how technologies and infrastructures of mobility serve as epistemic sites where knowledge is generated, contested, and reimagined. Public transport spaces in Ngũgĩ’s works function not merely as utilitarian conduits of movement but as dynamic arenas of social encounter, cultural invention, and political negotiation. Within these mobile spaces, narratives of belonging, resistance, and innovation unfold, challenging dominant epistemological hierarchies that privilege fixed, elite centres of knowledge. By tracing how Ngũgĩ situates epistemic production within the everyday rhythms of movement, this study argues for a reorientation of knowledge towards what may be termed a decentred epistemology—one that emerges from collective experience, mobility, and intersubjective interaction rather than from institutional or individual authority. The paper thus poses three interrelated questions: How does Ngũgĩ mobilize road infrastructure to frame colonial and postcolonial experience? Whose aspirations and worldviews does he portray? And finally, what alternative modes of knowing are made possible through the epistemic lens of movement and transport?

Bio:
Miriam Maranga-Musonye is an associate professor of literature. She holds a doctoral degree in literature from the University of Nairobi, Kenya, where she is currently the chair of the Department of Literature. Her research interests include narrative studies focusing on urban realities, children, and refugees. She has conducted research among refugee children both in Nairobi and Kakuma Refugee Camp. She also researches on matatu, the Kenyan public transport system, focusing on the artistic forms and performances and the cultural expressions and aspirations embedded in this transport sub-sector. Her academic publications touch on various subjects including migrancy; children’s narratives; mchongoano, a Kenyan verbal dueling sub-genre; online comedy and matatu culture. She is a published poet and author of children’s stories.