Poverty, Power, and Sexual Resistance in Festus Iyayi’s Violence: A Marxist-Fanonist Reading of Hunger and Desire
Poverty, Power, and Sexual Resistance in Festus Iyayi’s Violence: A Marxist-Fanonist Reading of Hunger and Desire

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between poverty, power, and sexual resistance in Festus Iyayi's Violence, using Marxist-Fanonist theory. The study examines how Iyayi presents poverty not simply as an economic deficiency, but as a systemic form of oppression in postcolonial Nigeria, which functions to dehumanise, marginalise, and silence the underemployed lower class. Drawing from Karl Marx’s theory of class struggle and Frantz Fanon’s conception of the “wretched of the earth,” the paper argues that poverty in Violence is a form of structural violence and a systemic means of control and exploitation imposed by both colonial legacies and post-independence capitalist elites. More importantly, the paper examines how sexual resistance becomes a crucial form of survival and agency, especially for the female characters. Through the characters of Queen and Adisa, Iyayi portrays the body (sex) as a contested site exploited by oppressive forces but also reclaimed as an instrument of resistance. These female characters deploy sexual agency not out of moral weakness, but as designed reactions to the social, political and economic disability they suffer. Within this framework, sex emerges as a subversive tool, a means to negotiate power and assert control within a society shaped by class stratification and political domination. Ultimately, the analysis highlights how hunger and desire, both literarily and symbolically, foster a subtle revolutionary consciousness in the novel. By reading violence through a Marxist-Fanonist perspective, this study demonstrates how literature can unmask the socio-political mechanisms of inequality, while also illuminating the nuanced forms of resistance that arise from within oppressed communities.

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