Nomadic London: Reading wandering in Sam Selvon’s the lonely Londoners and ben okri’s “disparities”

Abstract

This article presents a way of reading that recognizes migrancy, wandering, and fragmented experience as fundamental narrative features in colonial and post-colonial literary contexts. Drawing on contemporary network theories and discussions of walking as a social practice, the article argues that Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956) and Ben Okri’s “Disparities” (1986) demonstrate the creative potential of wandering insomuch as it allows migrant characters’ ground-level views to be incorporated into textual representations of London’s topography and its concomitant meaningfulness. The analysis identifies a narrative practice in which metropolitan space is constructed by the lived, mobile experiences of colonial migrants and post-colonial immigrants who sidestep the controlling pressures and modulating flows of local and global network systems, especially as they are exerted by urban design, social organization, and immigration policies. This reading of mobility as aesthetic practice proposes a way of understanding these stories of im/migrants as composed of complex paths and unexpected intersections rather than as confrontational or hierarchal. It suggests that critical attention should be paid to networks as compelling structures of order and influence that, paradoxically, also offer potential for an indirect, multi-layered agency.