The Contemporary Phase of Postcolonial African Poetry
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INTRODUCTION: THE CONTEMPORARY PHASE OF POSTCOLONIAL AFRICAN POETRY Far from being unitary or monolithic or autonomous things, cultures actually assume more “foreign” elements, alterities, differences, than they consciously exclude. (Said 1993: 15) Background That postcolonial poetry is vibrant, diverse and worth scholarly attention is undeniable. Although suggestion to the effect that fiction is the genre that most appropriately renders postcolonial experiences has been made by scholars such as Jenkins (2002), modern African poetry has been very active in projecting the inner experiences of the people as well as mediating socio-cultural and political experiences since its inception. Thus, as a genre for making both profound and artistic statements, the recent past bears witness to its potency (2002: 575). Evidently, poetry is no less powerful a medium for registering the postcolonial condition and the cultural aftermath of Empire which is often described using metaphors of mixing, and other cognate concepts illustrating this inclusiveness characteristic of postcoloniality – such as „integration‟ (Ruth Finnegan and Brian Street), „hybridity‟ (Homi Bhabha), „dialogism‟ (Bakhtin), „double writing‟ (Wole Soyinka), syncretism, creolization, bricolage, metissage or fusion – all of which inform the theoretical frame employed in this study. In light of its nature and potency, modern poetry as a genre speaks to, reflects or refracts, as well as dialogues with the realities of postcoloniality. This is why Ramazani (2001), for example, considers it as the perfect mode for expressing the complex cultural experience associated with post-independence Africa. While postcoloniality is often characterized by hybridity, Begam and Moses (2007), among others, persuasively argue that hybridity is not just an aspect but indeed the basic fabric of the postcoloniality. It is a basic fabric because the interactions occasioned by colonial encounters, as well as those characterizing postcolonial existence, ensure that mixed socio-cultural practices are the norm – and are manifested in expressive arts such as poetry. Central therefore in this study is the argument that dialogue or dialogic relations in contemporary African poetry are not limited to interaction or exchange between some central-colonizer and periphery-colonized, but rather characterized by what John Haynes (1987) describes as a “scatter” of cognate texts written or 1 spoken in Africa. Among others, Rajeev Patke (2006) highlights the dynamics between poetry and colonial history. Taking into consideration the definite – almost one-to-one – relationship between art, literature or poetry in particular on the one hand, and the totality of relations of production (between artist and the society), it is inevitable that hybridity is articulated in this poetry with characteristic pungency. There is minimal dissonance between African people, life in its various ramifications and experiences thematized in pre-colonial African poetry and those transmuted in postcolonial written African poetry. Consequently, the postcolonial socio-cultural, political and even economic predicament in Africa is best imagined or perceived through what Ramazani (2001) has called the “hybrid muse”. It is so-called because it benefits from dialogism in the Bakhtinian sense of a text whose interpretation entails positing more than one founding centre (Hanks 1989: 114). The contemporary African poem/text is thus a „contact zone‟ or site providing space for the creative interaction of multiple cultures that in a way challenge the colonial and cultural hierarchialization of groups, metaphorically enunciating the diversity of experiences interacting or coming into contact and therefore exemplifies the “intercultural energies of postcolonial poetry” (Jenkins 2002: 580). In this study I read contemporary poets as reaching out to forms of expression and experiences beyond established boundaries, whether genre, ethnic/linguistic or discipline. The focus of this thesis is essentially on the hybridity of postcolonial African poetry from East and West Africa. This introduction therefore begins by examining what contemporary African poetry and the concept of hybridity refer to in this study. While the contemporary is read in relation to the general modern (or written) African poetry in English, I use the notion of the era (the contemporary) as being marked by a diversity of source texts or „influences‟ to define hybridity. I then outline the field from which poets writing in the contemporary period draw textual material, poetic ideas and aesthetic influences. Thereafter, I proceed to define the theoretical framework used for analysis. This sets the stage for a comparative study of East and West Africa and the poetics these diverse sources inscribe in contemporary times. A rich and vibrant poetry has issued from the hybridization of the English muse with the long- resident muses of Africa, India and the Caribbean (Ramazani 2001: 1). Contemporary poets, unlike their predecessors, use the concept more poignantly to dramatize postcoloniality. Recent poetry uses elements of hybridity more openly than its antecedent, to the extent that it has come 2 to loosely mean philosophical acceptance of diversity beyond the traditional colonizer-colonized divide. Ramazani‟s study echoes the fact that some cultures, or epochs in a tradition, are more vividly and inorganically hybrid than others (2001: 182), which is true to a large extent of modern African poetry tradition in English. Through the incorporation of hybrid techniques, language (medium or mode) as well as thematizing hybridity, this poetry rejects various forms of hegemonic policing, transcending borders which were earlier believed impermeable. It is not just „double poetry‟ as Ramazani argues, or simply a product of „two worlds‟, but rather results from a multiplicity of consciousnesses as I detail shortly. This poetry often tends to absorb and assimilate poetic traditions from different cultural backgrounds that have at one time or another had contacts with Africa or encountered it through formal or informal education in its metre, structure, diction, poetic „language‟, tone and rhythm. Contemporary poetry‟s rejection of rigid scripts and techniques, in favour of protean hybrid forms is more an articulation of the desire for freedom and democracy, which earlier poetry may have expressed, but not with the poignancy and force marking the era. Rather than what Evan Mwangi (2001) calls a mere capitulation to foreignness as was predominantly the case with most of their predecessors, hybridity among contemporary poets examined in this study leans more towards aesthetic enrichment than a culturally politicised gesture. Contemporary times are typified by a new critical, theoretical and ideological milieu of creative practice, which inevitably and obviously has implications on the emerging textualities. My thesis is that, apart from the influences of the socio-economics of the times or what Tanure Ojaide refers to as “the conditions of the age” which place their stamp on the African imagination, an interplay of past and contemporary or „new critical, theoretical and ideological contexts‟ (1996: 136) is largely responsible for the shift in poetics. First, contemporary poetry to some extent exhibits national and hence region-specific features. Creative writers and critics of modern African poetry, notably Ojaide and Chidi Amuta, observe that in the new1 poetry, poets or voices are unabashedly local and they attempt to reach a particularized audience as well as talk to their compatriots (1996: 69) – a view I consider relevant to my present concerns. 1 Here used not to mean poets being read for the first time, but rather newly published volumes or collections. 3 Whereas foundational poetry2 tended to address the whole world and humanity in its diversity, if not the entire African continent, contemporary poetry shifts focus to national and consequently accentuate a regional temper. The validity of this argument is interrogated across the two regions, East and West Africa. The claim that, like never before a significant concern for and of the people, or „masses‟ – in particular what Amuta (in relation to the poetic temper of Odia Ofeimun) designates as “impeccable patriotism” and poetry‟s insertion within everyday realities (1989: 194), marking modern African poetic discourses is evaluated. My point is that as the nation-state focus is privileged in the contemporary period, a tendency and inclination towards regionalism becomes inevitable – bearing in mind that material and ideological conditions underpinning poetics tend to overflow neat nation-state borders. Emphasis is, however, laid on the interplay and dialectic between national and regional realms as explicated in the theoretical frame adopted for the study. Positing that region as the basic unit of literary analysis seems more congruous with realities on the ground than the much narrower nation-states which have sharper internal ethnic divisions, I argue that contemporary poetry tends to manifest itself more at a regional level. Besides the pronounced “national” character, a certain “radical Marxist bent” distinguishes the works of contemporary poets from that of the first and second generations of modern African poetry (Garuba 2005: 15), or what I refer to as the foundational generation in this study.3 I, therefore, investigate the extent to which the nationalist focus is manifested in each region. How, for instance, can one argue that the