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Introduction Notes Introduction 1. In what has come to be known as ‘bolekaja’ criticism, this position is mili- tantly argued in Chinweizu’s and Madubuike’s Toward the Decolonisation of African Literature. See Gerald Moore’s Twelve African Writers for a similar but more nuanced argument. 2. In an interview with Jane Wilkinson, Okri refuses to acknowledge that Wole Soyinka or Amos Tutuola influenced him but readily cites the ancient Greeks as his literary forebears. He also claims similarities in the ‘worldviews’ of African and the ancient Greeks (see Wilkinson 87). 3. In Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben contests Benveniste’s interpretation. He believes that Benveniste has fallen for what he calls a ‘scientific mytholo- geme’; the theory of the ambivalence of the sacred (75). He does not, however, provide any evidence for his claims of its inaccuracy as a theory. He is more interested in proving that the Latin homo sacer – he who may be killed and yet not sacrificed – cannot be related to the religious category of the sacred, but instead ‘constitutes the first paradigm of the political realm of the West’ (8). 4. Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss begin their essay Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function (1889) by pointing to the ‘ambiguous character of sacred things, which Robertson Smith has so admirably made clear’ (3). In 1915, Émile Durkheim, Mauss’s uncle, suggests that the ‘greatest service which Robertson Smith has rendered to the science of religions is to have pointed out the ambiguity of the notion of sacredness’ (409). Roberson Smith’s work proved crucial also to James Frazer’s argument on the evolution of society and his theory of magic, and to Freud’s Totem and Taboo. 5. Douglas claims that Frazer takes up a minor thesis of Robertson Smith, that of magic, and ‘sent comparative religion into a blind alley’ (19). 6. See Frazer, Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, vol. 2, 23, 109 and Taboo and the Perils of the Soul 224. 7. The ethnography on which Durkheim based his entire theory has been faulted. Steven Lukes points out that Central Australian totemism, on which Elementary Forms is based, is highly atypical, even within Australia. He also argues that there is no evidence that Australian totemism is the earliest form of totemism, or that these Aborigines have the least developed kin- ship system or totemic organisation, or that it necessarily follows that a less technologically advanced people have a simpler religion (see Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work 477–9). 8. For a detailed discussion of Robertson Smith’s influence on Durkheim, see Douglas, Purity 19–21. 9. See Anthony Giddens, Durkheim 93. 10. The indication of a social-structuralist approach at this point is merely to point out that I have not chosen the epistemological route, which has 172 Notes 173 received a contemporary treatment in Robin Horton’s ‘return’ to E. B. Tylor and, to a limited extent, James Frazer (see ‘Neo-Tylorianism: Sound Sense or Sinister Prejudice?’ and ‘Back to Frazer?’ ). Horton’s refutation of a distinc- tive religious experience and his definition of religion as ‘an extension of the field of people’s social relationships beyond the confines of purely human society’ (‘A Definition of Religion’ 31–2), do not seem particularly useful to my approach. In fact, Horton does admit that when he tried to make ‘intel- lectualist’ analyses of various African religious theories, he always came up ‘against the fact that they were above all theories of society and the indi- vidual’s place in it. Hence it was impossible to gain understanding of them without taking detailed account of the social organisations whose working they were concerned to make sense of.’ (‘Neo-Tylorianism’ 62) 11. More details of Turner’s analysis will be explored in the chapters that follow. 12. Turner’s argument has been criticised on various fronts. Max Gluckman suggests that Turner’s opposition between communitas and structure may be a false one after all as communitas has meaning only ‘within an established structure which is asserted again afterwards, and which indeed is asserted during the liminal period itself, by inversion’ (‘On Drama and Games and Athletic Contests’ 242). Brian Morris faults Turner’s characterisation of structure and claims that Turner failed to see the egalitarian aspects in cer- tain structured relationships (see 122). In Chapter 3, we shall see that it was precisely the comradeship in certain structures of Gikuyu traditional society that led to the development of the anti-colonial nationalist movement in Kenya. Another problem I see with Turner’s argument is his use of Weber’s ideas of the ‘routinisation’ of charismatic authority (discussed in Chapter 3) to suggest the inevitability of the demise of communitas-inspired action, its ‘decline and fall into structure and law’ (The Ritual Process 132). Moreover, in his work after The Ritual Process, Turner came to see liminality in almost every facet of contemporary society and he eventually claimed a neurobio- logical basis for his social theory (see ‘Body, Brain and Culture’ 221–45). 13. Mathieu Deflem suggests that Turner’s ‘social drama approach transgresses the static framework of classical structuro-functional analyses to reveal social structure in action’ (2). For a brief overview of Turner’s methodological framework, mode of analysis, and his innovative contributions to the study of ritual and religion in anthropology, one cannot do better than Deflem’s article. 14. Mathieu Deflem points to other divergences of Turner’s symbolic analysis from French Structuralism. The structuralists emphasise mythical thought whereas Turner focuses on ritual performance. For the structuralists, oppo- sitional symbols correspond with relationships between different categories of thought, whereas Turner foregrounds the efficacy of symbols in action. As Turner put it, he wanted to bring the ‘human co-efficient’ into the study of symbol in rituals (Dramas, Fields and Metaphors 33). 15. Studies of the use of ‘myth’ have focused almost solely on the works of Wole Soyinka. See Stephan Larsen’s A Writer and His Gods, Ralf Hermann’s Creation Snake and Mobius Strip and Ketu H. Katrak’s Wole Soyinka and Modern Tragedy. 174 Notes 16. Brenda Cooper’s Magical Realism in West Africa will be discussed in Chapter 4. 17. Acknowledging that there is no consensus among linguists, anthropologists, folklorists and literary critics on the definition of myth, Priebe defines myth as ‘a narrative that explains, explores or attempts to resolve the primary ontological, psychological and physical contradictions that man has recur- rently faced’ (12). There are many shortcomings, as one might expect, with this definition. Armah, Awoonor and others are certainly not writers of myth unless all writers of fiction are considered as such. Also, his definition of myth would place a writer such as Milan Kundera, who deals, in his recent novels, with the recurrent problems of aging and death that humans face, as a mythical writer. Most importantly, however, is a logical problem, a petitio principio, in his definition of myth and his distinction between ethical and mythical writers. Thus, according to Priebe, a mythical writer has a mythi- cal consciousness which ‘insists on viewing life with regard to open and perpetual contradiction’ in contradistinction to closed didacticism of the realist writer. 18. For Soyinka, Achebe is a mere ‘chronicler’, albeit a creative one (see Priebe 13 and Soyinka, ‘From a Common Backcloth’). 19. The naturist view of religion was forwarded most comprehensively by Max Müller (see ‘Comparative Mythology’ in the 1856 Oxford Essays). According to this view, religion emerges with the sensory perception of the physical world and with the imagination’s encounter with natural phenomena. The sense of being overwhelmed by nature translates, through a deforma- tion in language, through a literalisation of the metaphoric into religious discourse. 20. For example, see Douglas’s Purity and Danger and Andrew Apter’s Black Critics and Kings 97–9. 21. Although the works of Amos Tutuola provide interesting material for an exploration of the sacred, I have chosen not to address them in a com- prehensive manner in the book because they do not bring to the fore this encounter and, being transformed folktales, they provide, at least for me, less interesting material for the analysis of formal and thematic deviations from Western literary models. 22. There are fleeting references to the representation of the rupture of geron- tocracy in some articles and books that deal with specific texts and writers. I shall refer to these when they arise in my discussion of the texts. However, to my knowledge, there has been no attempt not only to address this issue fully within a single text but also to provide a comparative basis by relating it to a range of texts. 1. Realising the Sacred: Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God 1. As a man of letters, Achebe derives axiomatic statements about the ‘Igbo world-view’ through an analysis of proverbs, cautionary tales and proper names. 2. In ‘The Writer in His Community’, written more than a decade after the chi essay, Achebe offers another element that limits the power of the individual Notes 175 in Igbo society. He uses the fate of Ezeulu in Arrow of God as illustrative of the fact that the individual is ‘subject to the sway of non-human forces in the universe’ (39). The sociological perspective in the earlier essay is replaced by a religious one. In fact, Achebe clarifies his religious position – a belief in what he calls the ‘Powers of Event’, a Platonic-Christian hybrid, which function as the ‘repositories of causes and wisdoms’ (39). Whereas Achebe prioritises the ‘total community’ as the fundamental curtailment of the excessive expression of Igbo individuality in the chi essay, in the later essay he deems supernatural forces as ‘more important’ to this process (‘The Writer’ 39).
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