Paper short abstract:

While ZANU PF attempts to arrest the movement of time, artists push back by narrating a present and future outside this arrested imaginary. They depict postcolonial ruination and anticipate its end. Using ruination, this paper reads Bulawayo's Glory, for a possible future free of ruination.

Paper long abstract:

While the ruling ZANU PF has always attempted, through its propaganda machinery to arrest the movement and narrativization of time to what I call the “Chimurenga chronotope”, artists have pushed back on this narrative by depicting a present and future that are unlike and outside this arrested imaginary. Such artists have done two things – pointed out the ruination created by the Chimurenga chronotope and anticipated a better life free of ruin(ation). One such artist to do so recently is NoViolet Bulawayo through her novel, Glory (2022). Using Stoler’s (2008) idea of ruination, this paper reads closely, images that surface feelings of being ruined as a person – to have a psychologically crippling past (unresolved effects of Gukurahundi and other forms of political violence), a present in ruins and continuing to decay, and a future in need of saving from bleakness and ruins. Thus, the paper argues that the novel suggests how to move beyond colonial and postcolonial ruination of people and things.