Inongo-vi-Makomè’s Nativas.
In his 1988’s essay on Postmodernism, Marxist critic Fredric Jameson claimed that this concept was closely connected to a late capitalism which established a specific period in history. According to Jameson, this exacerbated capitalism creates “new types of consumption” which is fueled by “advertising, television and the media generally to a hitherto unparalleled degree throughout society.” In short, for Jameson, Postmodernism is an effect of a hipercapitalism which has become the backbone of Western societies.
In today’s postmodernist Europe, and specifically Spain, these new types of consumption have also been created, and its late capitalism has allowed the commodification of not only exotic images but also exotic bodies which, according to more than one critic, is the result of the profound changes that the Spanish nation has experienced since the arrival of a significant number of immigrant “Others.” By employing Nativas (2008), a novel by Cameroon’s born writer, Inongo-vi-Makomè, this presentation will focus on the ways in which black African immigrants are, at the same time, desired, sexually commodified, and rejected in contemporary Spanish society.
The analysis of vi-Makomè’s novel is important as it will reveal a new type of economy basically non-existent in Spain before the late arrival of immigrants. Nativas, will make us reflect on the fact that not only the locals, but also the “Others,” face numerous challenges and ingenuity is sometimes the only way to upward social mobility in “Fortress Europe.”
