Indigeneity, Globalization, and African Literature AFRICAN HISTORIES and MODERNITIES

Indigeneity, Globalization, and African Literature AFRICAN HISTORIES AND MODERNITIES Series Editors Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin Matthew M. Heaton, Virginia Tech Editorial Board Aderonke Adesanya, Art History, James Madison University Kwabena Akurang-Parry, History, Shippensburg University Nana Amponsah, History, University of North Carolina, Wilmington Tyler Fleming, History, University of Louisville Barbara Harlow, English and Comparative Literature, University of Texas at Austin Emmanuel Mbah, History, College of Staten Island Akin Ogundiran, Africana Studies, University of North Carolina, Charlotte This book series serves as a scholarly forum on African contributions to and nego- tiations of diverse modernities over time and space, with a particular emphasis on historical developments. Specifically, it aims to refute the hegemonic conception of a singular modernity, Western in origin, spreading out to encompass the globe over the last several decades. Indeed, rather than reinforcing conceptual boundaries or parameters, the series instead looks to receive and respond to changing perspectives on an important but inherently nebulous idea, deliberately creating a space in which multiple modernities can interact, overlap, and conflict. While privileging works that emphasize historical change over time, the series will also feature scholarship that blurs the lines between the historical and the contemporary, recognizing the ways in which our changing understandings of modernity in the present have the capacity to affect the way we think about African and global histories. Published in the series Contemporary Africa: Challenges and Opportunities (2014) Edited by Toyin Falola and Emmanuel M. Mbah African Postcolonial Modernity: Informal Subjectivities and the Democratic Consensus (2014) By Sanya Osha Building the Ghanaian State: Kwame Nkrumah’s Symbolic Nationalism (2014) By Harcourt Fuller Prisoners of Rhodesia: Inmates and Detainees in the Struggle for Zimbabwean Liberation, 1960–1980 (2014) By Munyaradzi B. Munochiveyi Mugabeism? History, Politics, and Power in Zimbabwe (2015) Edited by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni Indigeneity, Globalization, and African Literature: Personally Speaking (2015) By Tanure Ojaide Indigeneity, Globalization, and African Literature Personally Speaking T a n u r e O j a i d e INDIGENEITY, GLOBALIZATION, AND AFRICAN LITERATURE Copyright © Tanure Ojaide 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-54220-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission. In accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN The author has asserted their right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of Nature America, Inc., One New York Plaza, Suite 4500, New York, NY 10004-1562. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. E-PDF ISBN: 978–1–137–56003–2 ISBN 978-1-349-56338-8 ISBN 978-1-137-56003-2 (eBook) DOI: 10.1057/9781137560032 Distribution in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world is by Palgrave Macmillan®, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ojaide, Tanure, 1948– author. Indigeneity, globalization, and African literature : personally speaking / Tanure Ojaide, Ph.D. pages cm. —(African histories and modernities) ISBN 978-1-349-56338-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. African literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. African literature—21st century—History and criticism. 3. Politics in literature. 4. Africa—Politics and government—1960– 5. Africa—Intellectual life. I. Title. II. Series: African histories and modernities. PL8010.O3295 2015 809Ј.8896—dc23 2015013927 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Contents Introduction vii Section I 1 The Perils of a Culture-less African Literature in the Age of Globalization 3 2 Contemporary Africa and the Politics in Literature 19 3 Homecoming: African Literature and Human Development 43 4 Defining Niger Delta Literature: Preliminary Perspective on an Emerging Literature 55 5 Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in World Literature 75 Section II 6 After the Nobel Prize: Wole Soyinka’s Poetic Output 89 7 An Unusual Growth: The Development of Tijan M. Sallah’s Poetry 101 8 An Insider Testimony: Odia Ofeimun and His Generation of Nigerian Poets 119 9 Traditional Izon Court and Modern Poetry: Christian Otobotekere’s Contribution 133 10 Reviving Modern African Poetry: An Argument 145 Section III 11 The Imperative of Experience in Poetry: An African Perspective 161 12 Indigenous Knowledge and Its Expression in the Folklore of Africa 169 vi CONTENTS 13 Policy Studies, Activist Literature, and Pitching for the Masses in Nigeria 183 14 The Politics of African Literature: Production, Publishing, and Reception 195 Section IV 15 Inviting the World into the House of Words: The Writer, His Place, People, and Audience 213 16 Personally Speaking: The Beauty I Have Seen 223 17 Revisiting an African Oral Poetic Performance: Udje Today 237 18 Performance, the New African Poetry, and My Poetry: A Commentary 255 19 Two Tributes: Chinua Achebe and Kofi Awoonor 267 References 273 Index 283 Introduction As a creative writer and a literary scholar, I am very concerned about the direction of African literature in its production and interpreta- tion. Since literature is a cultural production, and so an aspect of culture that is dynamic, it is bound to be dynamic too. This means that literature will continue to change with time or history and according to the context, place, or nation in which it is produced. Each period of history, call it generation, has its own zeitgeist or intellectual climate that affects the inspiration of creative works. After all, the writer is an antenna of society and responds to what is happening around him or her. As history is always moving forward inexorably, the happen- ings are set in place. Place in its widest meaning of nation, homeland, and geography, among many other aspects of setting, becomes where humans act out their experiences at particular times. Since writers live in a place and gain their experiences from what is happening around them, they are rooted somewhere. As they are based somewhere, they can feel what is happening near and far and respond to those hap- penings according to their own set-out missions of what they want to achieve with their writings. It is from the land or place that the fic- tion writer and dramatist frame their characters that act out a vision. The poet, on the other hand, experiences from the interaction with human and nonhuman beings and the world around. Each culture changes as a result of internal and external factors. Often there are stresses from within about what things people no longer find relevant or cumbersome and so abandon. As there are changes informed by internal factors, so also are changes brought about by external factors. A people may find some new things relevant and so absorb them into their culture. That is why there is the continuous dynamism of culture as history marches on resulting in changes in the way of life of a people. Modernity has brought changes that have turned traditional modes in Africa into a new dispensation. From the nonliterate societies of precolonial times emerged literate societies. Similarly, changes came in the political, economic, and social spheres in the lives of Africans. While the oral still exists, the written has taken its place in Africa’s viii INTRODUCTION modernity. The new literature has merged African traditional and oral methods with European modern writing traditions into a modern African literature. Africa has had a lot to contend with in modernity: colonization, struggle for political independence, self-rule, and managing political independence. In all, it has been a difficult history transiting from foreign rule to self-government. The modern state has posed a problem for Africans. The experience of political independence has not been as positive as expected. Civil wars, military dicta- torship, corruption, and lack of good leadership have bedeviled many African states. It is not Uhuru yet in most African states where there is poverty, ethnic conflicts, insecurity, poor health, and other afflic- tions that have placed most African states at the bottom of human development in the world. The cultural producers of literature live in these societies and respond to them in their respective individual ways. This is because the situation in each country is different and so the national experience is somehow unique. Even there is diversity within the national experience as a result of many factors within the state. For example, it makes a difference if one lives in Francophone or Anglophone Cameroon as in North or South Cote d’Ivoire or Nigeria. It matters if one is from one region or the other within a country. However, nationhood tends to be a cohesive factor for a country’s citizens. But despite the uniqueness of each nation’s experiences, there are some general or rather continental similarities; hence without writers not meeting to form groups or associations they still tend to express the same senti- ments, especially on political, economic, and social issues that many African nations share.

Load more