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Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS The Pressures of the Text: Orality, Texts and the Telling of Tales, ed. Stewart Brown. [Birmingham University African Studies Series; 4]. (Birmingham: Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham, 1995), 145 pages, £ 6.00. ISBN 0-7044-1557-7. This vohune, consisting of papers delivered at a conference at the Centre of West African Studies at the University of Birrningham in 1993, can be seen to explore and re-think the traditional hierarchical dichotomy between the no­ tions of literacy and orality, the pressure of the text. While traditional scholars have tended to discuss oral literature as a fonn of authentic folklore, this vol­ ume attempts to argue that oral literature is not inferior to written literature but that the relationship is more complex. To a certain extent several of the papers succeed in this aim and map out the problematics of the terrain. While the pa­ pers deal with both African and Caribbean written and oral literatures in Eng­ lish, the topics of the essays, written by both scholar-critics and creative writ­ ers, vary remarkably: they extend from the oral roots of Tutuola's, Okri's or Ngugi's fiction to Yoruba poetry as music, and to the linguistic problematic in Jamaica. in tenns of style, content and quality, the essays are very different from each other, too. Even the main theme is dealt with in ways which almost con­ tradict each other. Some of the contributors feel the need to emphasise the specificity of oral literature and its connection with perfonnance. Thus, for instance, for some contributors written poetry appears to lack the musical elements so emphasised and paramount in oral poetry; thus the textual repre­ sentation is inferior. Several essays in the collection (philip Nanton's for ex­ ample) fail to recognise that both oral and written literatures can be seen as texts and as elements in discourse which are constructed in certain historical and cultural contexts. Far too often the pressures of the text are interpreted along the axis of oral/authentic versus written/inauthentic and the basic con­ cepts are not submitted to a critical analysis but orality is privileged per se. The volume does however include some essays which succeed in re­ conceptualizing the oralitylliterary continuum, which makes it worthy of the attention of scholars and readers of African and Caribbean literatures. A par- 334 BOOK REVIEWS ticularly interesting example is Karin Barber's analysis of the role of the written script in Yoruba popular drama. While drama groups have an initial written synopsis at their disposal, the produced plays vary remarkably from one performance to another as they depend on the conditions and resources available. While the group creates the play differently, adapting to new cir­ cumstances, and relying heavily on orality in the rehearsals and actual per­ formances, the actors like to think that there is a detailed written text of the play according to which one should act. This is what Barber labels an "imagined script." Barber suggests that the emphasis on the text, however imaginary it may be in this case, derives from the local importance of literacy, understood as a form of progress and "Enlightenment." This is interesting since, according to Barber, in Western Nigeria writing is not seen as a form of colonial domination threatening the authentic and local. Thus, the imagined text is associated with the possibility of achieving a better life. The historical reasons for the pressure of the notion of the text, however, are yet to be un­ covered, as she also mentions. Ato Quayson' s essay on the oral roots of the fiction of Amos Tutuola and Ben Okri is also worth a mention though his conclusions are presented in a rather tentative mode. Quayson's contribution brings into question the prob­ lematic nature of traditional orality in the contemporary postcolonial world where cultural traditions are confronted by different pressures and changes. As life-styles change in connection with the transition from the rural world to the urban ghetto, the field of culture has to react to these changes in its tum. According to Quayson, Okri succeeds in The Famished Road in addressing several new issues, the importance of which is increased by social moderni­ zation, as he draws on his oral cultural heritage and develops that in a new di­ rection. What the analysis suggests is that the repertoire of the oral tradition can be worked on to respond to new challenges; it is not an essence. Another essay worth mentioning in this context is Stewart Brown's dis­ cussion of Edward Kamau Brathwaite's way of using the word processor as a means of stepping out of the dichotomy between speech and writing. In recent years Brathwaite's poetry has increasingly exploited the typographical pos­ sibilities provided by technology. For Brathwaite, technology does not threaten the writer and the conditions in which he writes but "the computer has made it much more easier for the illiterate, the Caliban, actually to get himself visible" (126). Brathwaite's interest in exploring the possibilities of technology stems from his dissatisfaction with the official and dominant Eng­ lish language. As Brown points out, Brathwaite's view stems from historical and cultural origins rather than formalist and poetic ones. For Brathwaite the official language contrasts with nation-language, an auraVoral form which is able to counter the primarily textual dominant language pressing the subordi-.
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