ShodhPatra: International Journal of Science and Humanities

The Unruly Chorus: Polyphony, Postcolonial Futurity, and the Limits of Manifesto Form in Bernardine Evaristo’s Manifesto: On Never Giving Up

Bernardine Evaristo's Manifesto: On Never Giving Up (2021) occupies an unusual position between memoir and manifesto. It is a personal narrative that repeatedly extends beyond the individual self. It is also a story of success that repeatedly reflects experiences of rejection, exclusion, and institutional failure. This article examines how Evaristo employs polyphonic techniques, such as shifting pronouns, interpolated lists, and recursive temporal structures. These formal strategies function not merely as aesthetic experimentation but as a challenge to what may be termed the monologic memoir. Drawing on Bakhtin's theory of polyphony, postcolonial critiques of linear historicism by Chakrabarty and Mbembe, and recent scholarship on Black British publishing, the article explores how Manifesto imagines a collective mode of self-representation. It argues that the text constructs a form of postcolonial futurity that is neither teleological nor conventionally utopian. Instead, futurity emerges from repetition, endurance, and collective cultural memory. The article also examines a key tension in the text, as Evaristo's frequent formal experimentation can lead to exhaustion rather than resolution. This raises an important question about the limits of polyphony within autobiography. Can a single life narrative fully escape the pull of the heroic individual subject? Through close readings of Evaristo's reflections on rejection, her counter-archival catalogues of overlooked Black British writers, and her direct addresses to readers, the article argues that Manifesto derives its force from this unresolved tension. The text succeeds as a manifesto of endurance because it embraces formal instability rather than overcoming it. Its fragility ultimately becomes one of its most distinctive postcolonial features.