Absence in Akwaeke Emezi’s « The Death of Vivek Oji » (2020)

Introduction

The threshold between presence and absence is central to Akwaeke Emezi’s works. From their literary debut with Freshwater (2018) to their most recent published novel, Little Rot (2024), the internationally acclaimed Nigerian writer has indeed constantly focused on bringing to light marginalised voices and experiences, and their second adult novel is no exception. From the very title, The Death of Vivek Oji, it becomes clear that the narrative is haunted by the central absence of Vivek, the queer, gender non-conforming protagonist ((For clarity purposes, the protagonist will mainly be referred to as the name displayed in the title of the novel, Vivek. The pronoun usage will follow the one used in the narrative: Vivek uses the pronouns “he/him” whereas Nnemdi goes by “she/her”. Since the author does not use explicit labels to describe Vivek’s gender identity and sexual orientation, the adjectives “gender non-conforming” and “queer” will be used to refer to the character.)). Set in late-twentieth-century Nigeria, the story addresses themes of grief and identity through a polyphony of voices, as the characters try to come to terms with the mysterious death of their loved one. The first words of the novel announce that Vivek died on the day of a riot in the local market, which initially leads the reader to assume that there is a correlation between the two events; and yet, the narration goes on to focus either on the protagonist’s childhood in Nigeria, or on the aftermath of his death as his family and friends try to find out what caused it. The numerous temporal shifts build up an increasing sense of suspense which mirrors the characters’ incomprehension within the diegesis as they, too, struggle to decipher the enigma of Vivek’s passing. By confronting both the reader and the characters with a looming lack of information as well as the concrete death of the protagonist, Emezi therefore turns absence into the focal point of the novel.

However, while death usually denotes an irreversible state of absence at the end of a life, it quickly appears that death and absence cannot be fully equated with one another: not only does Vivek’s concrete absence become paradoxically tangible throughout the narrative, but his life, too, is retrospectively portrayed as a state of near absence. Absence, or the state of not being there, bears additional meaning in the context of gender politics. Indeed, the term comes to denote the systemic erasure of the LGBTQIA+ community in Nigerian society, as well as the ontological vulnerability of queer individuals, for whom “death really is a constant companion” in the face of concrete and symbolic violence (Emezi, 2020, n/p). Queerness in Nigeria involves a continuous, multilayered danse macabre which Vivek’s life and death epitomise; and yet, the tools of fiction enable Emezi to make him present – or to re-present him – within the narrative. Through an analysis of the blurring of the line between absence and presence, this paper thus aims to explore the poetic and political implications of literary representation in the novel.

1.   Dramatising Physical Absence

The Death of Vivek Oji can be characterised as an uncanny Bildungsroman, depicting both the formation (or Bildung) and the physical absence of its main character, Vivek. The non-linear temporal structure of the narrative allows for a parallel narration of the character’s childhood and teenage years on the one hand, and the aftermath of his death on the other. At first glance, the novel leaves no room for ambiguity as to the definite and definitive absence of the protagonist. “The death of Vivek Oji”, announced in the title, is reiterated in the very first words of the book: “[t]hey burned down the market on the day Vivek Oji died” (1). Visually, the typographic blank surrounding this sentence seems to materialise the void left by Vivek’s passing, thus announcing the paradoxical centrality of his absence throughout the entire narrative. The paradox of the representation of absence is not unique to this novel: as French philosopher Louis Marin argues, in any art form, representation essentially amounts to the substitution of an absence for a presence since its subject is never actually there, but replaced by an artefact to make believe that it is present ((“[…] dans le lieu de la représentation, il y a une absence, un autre et représenter, c’est au fond opérer une substitution, la substitution de quelque chose à la place de cet autre” (Marin, 2005, 72).)). However, this art of substitution is especially striking in The Death of Vivek Oji, since the concrete absence of the main character calls for various forms of replacement to fill the subsequent void in the novel.

Vivek’s passing thus paves the way for grief and mourning, both on an individual and a collective scale. The focalisational shifts in the narration allow Emezi to portray a kaleidoscopic landscape of grieving characters, including Vivek’s cousin and lover, Osita, who sinks into alcoholism, or Vivek’s best friend, Juju, who simply falls silent. Regardless of the shapes it may take, grief is so acute that it renders the characters utterly powerless, while taking on a dimension of agency which is rendered within the language itself: for instance, Osita is “powered by senseless grief” (44) as he pushes away the stranger trying to assault him in the hotel, while Vivek’s uncle, Ekene, observes “the veil of grief that ha[s] woven itself around the tableau” (203) during the wake-keeping. The grammatical shift from passive to active voice crystallises the personification of grief into an almost physical force which seems to fill the void of Vivek’s absence: his physical body is metaphorically replaced by a painful emotional wound.

Beyond individual grief, the indirect impact of Vivek’s absence manifests itself by reshaping the dynamics of the mourning community. Absence can draw people apart, and Vivek’s death widens the distance between his parents, Chika and Kavita. Conversely, it can tighten the bonds between the living, as is illustrated during the wake-keeping at the Oji family house, where the entire community gathers in spite of previous tensions. This scene showcases the importance of mutual interdependence and care, as the shared vulnerability of grief prompts the characters to support one another: the Nigerwives ((The Nigerwives is an association for immigrant women who have married Nigerian men.)), for instance, are compared to “protective birds” who are “flocking” around Kavita, Vivek’s grieving mother (203). Such a powerful demonstration of community bonds can be interpreted as a symbolic reassertion of life and presence in the face of death. Nonetheless, this positive interpretation of collective mourning is undermined by the fact that it is also extremely ritualised, and even performative to a certain extent: even the “flock” of the Nigerwives starts bickering again soon after the burial. The conventions which seem to compensate for the absence of the deceased therefore indirectly hint at the irrevocable void of death, looming underneath the surface of decorum.

Indeed, the tangibility of absence in the novel also emerges through a ubiquitous, uncomfortable sense of lack surrounding the circumstances in which Vivek died. Kavita is dissatisfied with the shallow comfort of condolences and easy conclusions, which is why she decides to investigate in order to find the truth about her child’s death. Just as Kavita’s “hungry questions [bend] her into a shape that [is] starving for answers” (86), the lack of information about the death of the protagonist similarly “bends” the structure of the narrative and drives the story forward, leading the novel to resemble the genre of the African noir according to scholar Liamar Durán-Almarza (2022, 1). Through the temporal and focalisational shifts, the narration carefully skirts around the circumstances of the event, until the truth is finally revealed by Osita in the second-to-last chapter. All this but illustrates the haunting yet paradoxical ubiquity of absence in the narrative, on both a diegetic and a structural level.

2. Gender Politics and Symbolic Absence

While absence becomes palpable, presence, too, calls for a redefinition in The Death of Vivek Oji. Just as the title announces the seemingly unequivocal absence of the main character, the first pages of the novel convey the impression of a clear-cut contrast between life and death, or presence and absence. Through an analepsis, the narration thus draws an uncanny parallelism between the gruesome sight of “the back of [Vivek’s] skull […] seeping into [the] welcome mat” and Kavita’s memory of his “boy skull, the soft hair and the warm skin underneath” (12). Nonetheless, this distinction is ultimately thwarted as it soon appears that Vivek’s life, or physical presence on earth, was paradoxically marked by absence. Therefore, the title of the novel becomes imbued with additional meaning: The Death of Vivek Oji does not so much denote the punctual event of dying as it evokes the “death-in-waiting” (Stanley, 2011, 1) of the queer protagonist.

Throughout childhood and adolescence, Vivek is plagued by a feeling of heaviness which he cannot shake off, and which brings him to the brink of death as he slowly lets himself starve. The character compares his life to a state of near death: “I always thought that death would be the heaviest thing of all, but it wasn’t, it really wasn’t. Life was like being dragged through concrete in circles” (89). Such a description evokes the author’s account of their own experience of depression linked to “gender dysphoria” (Emezi, 2018, n/p). Even though those terms are never explicitly mentioned in the novel, it becomes apparent that Vivek’s distress is linked, at least in part, to gender expression. From the start, the protagonist is depicted as a frail, sensitive child, but society keeps imposing heteronormative gender norms onto him, whether it be his father wanting him to “toughen up” (16) or the boys in school, who pick up fights with him because of his slender looks (113). As a teenager, Vivek starts growing out his hair, “thinking that the weight dropping from [his] head would lighten the one inside of [him]” (90), thereby transgressing the social codes of heteronormative masculinity. After Vivek’s death, Juju reveals that the protagonist used both “she and he” (217) pronouns and that he had started going by a feminine name, Nnemdi, in addition to his birth name. Yet, even if the journey towards non-heteronormative gender expression ultimately saves Vivek from an “inexorable sinking” (110), it also condemns him to another form of symbolic absence.

Indeed, the fact that Vivek’s long hair becomes a recurring point of contention with his family highlights the importance of complying – at least outwardly – with social norms related to gender and sexuality in Nigeria. The Nigerian society of the late nineties portrayed in the novel is pervaded by deep-rooted homophobia, which exposes an openly gender non-conforming individual like Vivek to potential violence. This is why the “most likely scenario” (219) for his death, according to his parents and friends, is that he was lynched because of his feminine appearance. For queer individuals in Nigeria, mere existence involves “dancing with death everyday”, as Vivek asserts (244), but the concrete risk of death conceals a more insidious form of violence. Indeed, since queer lives, such as Vivek’s, are constantly faced with the immediate possibility of death and “only felt as vital in [their] proximity to extreme forms of violence” (Durán-Almarza, 2022, 18), they become seen as disposable, doomed to a state of ontological non-existence. Consequently, to quote Judith Butler, “[i]f certain lives do not qualify as lives or are, from the start, not conceivable as lives within certain epistemological frames, then these lives are never lived nor lost in the full sense” (2009, 1).

Therefore, Vivek’s constant hiding of his gender non-conforming identity behind the closed doors of his friends’ rooms testifies to his absence, in the sense of a symbolic lack of existence, in the eyes of Nigerian society. Even if Vivek’s death is ultimately revealed to have been an accident, it remains significant that the protagonist should die as Nnemdi, in the public space of the market, breaking away from her cousin’s hold. Osita had indeed urged her to come home with him because he was worried about “[w]hat would happen if someone looked too closely at her” (235). From a metaphorical perspective, Nnemdi also seems to be trying to break free from the well-meaning yet alienating injunction not to be seen by others. Ultimately, a fundamental question lingers: “[i]f nobody sees you, are you still there?” (38).

3. Re-Membering the Dead

The inextricable link between visibility and existence highlights the importance of representation, not only as a poetic art of substitution but as a political act. The term “representation” itself, through its prefix, encompasses the idea of redoubling or insisting on a certain presence, which, according to Louis Marin, creates “an effect of legitimation, institution, authorisation, and presence” (2005, 73, translation mine) ((“Il y a donc deux effets du dispositif représentatif, un double pouvoir de la représentation, un effet de présence et un effet de sujet ou encore un effet de légitimation, d’institution, d’autorisation, de présence” (Marin, 2005, 73).)). By giving centre stage to a gender non-conforming, queer individual like Vivek in the narrative, Emezi makes him visible, thus symbolically remediating the systemic erasure of the queer community in Nigeria. Cédric Courtois thus classifies the novel as a “dissensual Bildungsroman” (2022, 181) which both sheds light on the dynamics of systemic oppression against “those who have no part” (Rancière, 1998, 30, quoted in Courtois, 2022, 176) and visibilises the marginalised LGBTQIA+ community itself. This intentional act of visibilisation on the author’s part constitutes a form of activism, as it allows for a “‘dissensual’ reconfiguration of heteronormative and heterosexist space” (Courtois, 2022, 182) through the literary medium. Literature becomes a subversive space where those who are usually absent from the public sphere, or invisible to the public eye, can be seen – or re-presented, therefore attesting to their existence.

Nonetheless, the representation of the vulnerable queer community in Nigeria inevitably raises ethical questions, as it entails the risk of reiterating a form of violence. Indeed, portraying queer individuals as helpless victims of concrete and systemic oppression would further perpetuate their alienation. Asserting the presence of this community therefore calls for a delicate balance between the depiction of the homophobic and heteronormative dynamics of oppression which these individuals face on the one hand, and the representation of their agency as fully-fledged human beings on the other. In The Death of Vivek Oji, Akwaeke Emezi thus follows what social anthropologist Gudrun Dahl identifies as the “Agents not Victims” trope (2009, 392). Through the creative potential of literary representation, the deceased protagonist is offered a new form of life and becomes an agent in the narrative, even beyond the boundary of death.

Consequently, remembrance gives way to re-membering: the voice of the absent main character haunts the narration from beyond the grave, as Vivek becomes the first-person narrator in several short chapters. Not only does this ghostly voice symbolically allow the protagonist to assert his own presence by voicing his version of the story, but it also grants new-found materiality to Vivek’s absence on the page. Nevertheless, this disembodied, acousmatic voice cannot engage in a tangible dialogue with the other characters in the diegesis, as the silent conversation created at the end of the narrative illustrates. While chapter twenty-three depicts Osita’s despair as “the grave [of Vivek/Nnemdi] sa[ys] nothing back” (243) to his guilt-ridden words, the final chapter, narrated by Nnemdi, offers an indirect yet powerful answer to her lover’s plea for forgiveness: “I want to tell him he’s already been forgiven for everything and anything he could ever do to me” (244). This tragic contrast simultaneously dramatises the impossibility of a dialogue between the dead and the living and re-creates this dialogue through the tools of fiction, thereby portraying Vivek as a living, agentic entity within the literary medium.

The process of re-membering culminates in a paradoxical yet powerful reassertion of life, uttered by the protagonist in the last words of the novel: “[s]omewhere, you see, in the river of time, I am already alive” (245). The seemingly antithetical phrasing of “already alive” suggests that life and death – or presence and absence on earth – form a circular journey rather than a linear one: as a result, death becomes a natural step in the cycle of life rather than an irrevocable ending. This worldview characterises Igbo spirituality, according to which “everyone is in a cycle of reincarnation anyway” (Emezi, 2018, n/p). Vivek’s new-found presence within the narration thus hinges on what scholar Walter D. Mignolo (2009) calls “epistemic disobedience”, as Emezi disrupts Eurocentric ways of knowing in order to reframe Vivek’s “gender trouble” (Butler, 1989) as a spiritual journey and to offer a new form of life to the protagonist. The hopeful note which brings the novel to a close does not negate the existence of homophobic and transphobic violence; nonetheless, it ultimately foregrounds queer life as an undisputable presence, in the face of a society which, to this day, only sees and tolerates queer death ((Nowadays, same-sex relationships are punished by Nigerian law according to the “Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act” passed by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014.)).

Commented excerpt

This excerpt from the end of the second chapter follows the moment when Chika and Kavita learn that Ahunna, Chika’s mother, has passed away on the same day as their first and only child, Vivek, was born.

This passage crystallises the blurring of the boundary between life and death in the novel: even Vivek’s birth becomes a moment of mourning. This blurring is rooted in Igbo spirituality, as the pervasive contrast between dichotomous isotopies of birth and loss evokes the Igbo belief in reincarnation. Chika first dismisses it as mere “superstition” before retrospectively acknowledging that “[a] thing cannot be in two places at once”, with a gnomic tone which presents this epistemological framework as the truth: within the narrative, Vivek is the reincarnation of Ahunna. Yet, this ultimately dooms the child to embody a form of absence, since he will remain the living reminder of his grandmother’s death throughout his life. Absence, once again, becomes tangible – it “mark[s]” Vivek, just as his own death will “mark” the people around him.

However, beyond spiritual matters, that Vivek’s “whole life” should be compared to “a mourning” sheds light on an undercurrent of tragic irony in the excerpt. This image inevitably foreshadows the protagonist’s “death-in-waiting” (Stanley, 2011, 1), as a queer individual who is born both “into grief” and into a world which cannot accept him for who he is. Indeed, Chika’s initial reaction to the possibility of his mother’s reincarnation exemplifies the symbolic erasure which will go on to plague the protagonist until the end: “Vivek was a boy and not a girl, so how can?” As innocent as it may seem, this remark demonstrates that in the eyes of society, Vivek does not and cannot exist as anything else but a cisgender boy – which he is not, as he will reveal later in the narrative (131). Paradoxically enough, the narration of the protagonist’s first days on earth already bears the signs of his ontological absence: the death of Vivek Oji has therefore already begun.

Bibliography

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Cette fiche a été rédigée dans le cadre d'un Master 2 à l'ENS de Lyon.

Pour citer cette ressource :

Alexandra Savard-Chambard, Absence in Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji (2020), La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), février 2025. Consulté le 04/03/2025. URL: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/litterature/litterature-postcoloniale/absence-in-akwaeke-emezi-s-the-death-of-vivek-oji-2020