Ifá, the Fantastic, and Women in Literature of the African

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Ifá, the Fantastic, and Women in Literature of the African CONTAINERS FOR CREATION: IFÁ, THE FANTASTIC, AND WOMEN IN LITERATURE OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA by LAURA E. EDMUNDS (Under the Direction of Karim Traoré) ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the role of Yoruba cosmology, found primarily in the Ifá corpus and its practice in Nigeria and throughout the Yoruba diaspora, in narrative strategies among select women writers in the African Diaspora. Theories of the fantastic genre by Tzvetan Todorov and of female power in literature by Theresa Washington are used to reveal the rhetorical strategies that Nalo Hopkinson, Edwidge Danticat, and Esmeralda Ribeiro have in common, and argues that their works are best understood in a dynamic, global context. This study also makes significant use of Henry Louis Gates’ theory of African-American literary criticism by attempting to extend it into literatures from Canada, Haiti, and Brazil. This study finds that the writers under study here transform the Fantastic mode by favoring the use of culture over the social science of psychology, and engage in partial signifyin(g) relationships through rhetorical strategies and figurations borrowed from Ifa. Examples of these are the family structure as organizing principle, and the deities as metaphors. INDEX WORDS: African Diaspora Literature, African Literature, African Diaspora Criticism, Caribbean Literature in English, Fantastic, Subjectivity, Identity, Ifá corpus, Ifá as rhetorical strategy, Narrative, Yoruba cosmology, Nalo Hopkinson, Edwidge Danticat, Esmeralda Ribeiro CONTAINERS FOR CREATION: IFÁ, THE FANTASTIC, AND WOMEN IN LITERATURE OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA by LAURA E. EDMUNDS B.A., York College of Pennsylvania, 1994 M.A., Fairleigh Dickinson University, 2002 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2014 © 2014 Laura E. Edmunds All Rights Reserved CONTAINERS FOR CREATION: IFÁ, THE FANTASTIC, AND WOMEN IN LITERATURE OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA by LAURA E. EDMUNDS Major Professor: Karim Traoré Committee: Akinloye Ojo Ronald Bogue Freda Scott Giles Robert Moser Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2014 iv DEDICATION sí ìyá mi v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Adventures like these can never be realized without the support and assistance of many and diverse people. This particular project is the result of the excellent guidance and unwavering support of University of Georgia Professors Karim Traoré, Akinloye Ojo, Ronald Bogue, Robert Moser, and Freda Scott-Giles, who believed in me even when I did not, and waited patiently for far too long while I reached across the abyss of transition to find the reason to write it. For their continued support, I am especially grateful. At Georgia Perimeter College, I am thankful for my colleagues in the English, Arts, and Humanities Department and on the Newton Campus, who stood in my office doorway and shook fingers me, saying “just finish!” I must especially thank Carissa Gray and Stuart Noel for several semesters of advantageous teaching assignments and schedules that allowed me the time I needed to focus. Steve Pearson, Kris Roney, Ronita Bhattacharya, Mike and Rachel (Klue) Paparone, John (Magnus) Fowler, Cameron and Sharon (Carlson) Bogue, Paget (Harris) Fink, and Nate Vacher: you cannot know how your friendships have sustained me. There is a little bit of each of you contained within these pages, and I will always be thankful for our TA Office education, Friday lunches, and Happy Hour at the Globe. Bronwyn Averett...when Orunmila asked me to choose a fate, I feel sure your waiting-to- be-born spirit was there next to mine. I am grateful for your friendship and the intellectual kinship we share. I owe so very much to you. vi I am also grateful for the support of my husband, Robert, for continuing to believe this could end well, and keeping our daily lives managed while I concentrated my energies on writing. Finally, to my family, for a lifetime of all kinds of support, I am infinitely grateful. I am most especially in the debt of my mother, my most constant supporter, who had to leave me to join the ancestors before seeing the completion of the very work that praises her. It is for her that my efforts take shape, and to her that I dedicate the following pages. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................v LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... viii LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................1 2 REFIGURING THE FANTASTIC ............................................................................3 3 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE FANTASTIC IN THE WORKS OF NALO HOPKINSON: THE IMPORTANCE OF ÈṢÙ ......................................................54 4 DEVELOPMENTS IN THE FANTASTIC IN THE WORKS OF NALO HOPKINSON: THE IMPORTANCE OF ÀJÉ ̣ AND EZILI .................................99 5 PLAYING WONN AND SWALLOWING FROGS: NARRATING FROM THE TRANSITIONAL GULF IN EDWIDGE DANTICAT’S CLAIRE OF THE SEA LIGHT .......................................................................................................................143 6 READING IN YORUBA: THE IFÁNTASTIC AT WORK IN ESMERALDA RIBEIRO’S SHORT STORIES .............................................................................171 7 CONCLUSIONS ......................................................................................................204 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................214 viii LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1: The Roles of Gold in Gates’ Signifyin(g) Chain ...........................................................201 ix LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1: The Interrelated Domains of Ajé ...................................................................................39 Figure 2: William Bascom’s “Basic Figures of Ifá” ......................................................................45 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Purpose of the Study The intent of this study is to reveal the connections among narrative and figurative strategies of Nalo Hopkinson, Edwidge Danticat, and Esmeralda Ribeiro, women writers from diverse regions of the African Diaspora, and to suggest that those commonalities are the result of creative choices, specifically the use of the Ifá corpus and its corresponding myths. The Ifá corpus is a collection of texts that is highly structured and stylized, and that is also an ever- expanding and dynamic repository for cultural and spiritual practices among the Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria and the diverse communities influenced by those practices in the diaspora. The study posits that the comprehensiveness, flexibility, and structural qualities of the Ifá system make it ideally suited as a tool for critical, literary analysis. How This Study is Original Rather than treating the Ifá corpus as a databank of artifact, this study incorporates its literary qualities, specifically its organizational and figurative strategies, to bring together patterns of narration that have emerged from diverse “national” traditions of writing. It aligns the authors and texts under study in a more global rhetorical continuum than has been previously suggested or studied. This study also charts several significant transformations to the Fantastic genre as defined by Tzvetan Todorov, the most recognized theorist in the field, that have taken place with the incorporation of these specific cultural and spiritual practices. While no works of African American authors are considered here as primary texts, this study also attempts to extend 2 the influence of Henry Louis Gates’ The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism, which is also based on an Ifá paradigm, beyond the literatures of the United States and into Canada, Jamaica, and Brazil. While drawing on the influences of Theresa Washington’s Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Àjé ̣in Africana Literatures and Georgine Montgomery Bess’ The Spirit and the Word: A Theory of Spirituality in Africana Literary Criticism this study differs from both of those in that it looks specifically at a single genre, the Fantastic, and analyzes the ways in which contemporary female authors use the Ifá paradigm to transform the genre. This study is informed by anthropological considerations: treating culture, cultural transmission, and cultural transformation, as important influences in creative choices and audience reception. Expected Results Results of this study are speculative. It posits a sibling genre to both Fantastic and Diaspora literatures. It also attempts to draw out some of the common formal elements of those genres, including narrative traits and features of figuration. The conclusions suggest that culture trumps race in the literary productions and hermeneutic tools under study, and that the Ifá paradigm has a potentially wider application for the analysis of texts. 3 CHAPTER 2 REFIGURING THE FANTASTIC There is a hilarious scene in the 1991 film, The Commitments1, in which Jimmy Rabbite, an unemployed but ambitious young man living on the wrong
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