Vernacular Critique, Deleuzo-Guattarian Theory and Cultural Historicism in West African and Southern African Literatures Elinor Victoria Rooks Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English September 2014 1 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Elinor Rooks to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2014 The University of Leeds and Elinor Rooks 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr Brendon Nicholls for his invaluable assistance as my supervisor. He has been a truly great teacher and mentor. His critiques, insight and advice have immeasurably strengthened my thinking and writing. I am also very grateful to him for his logistical and moral support. Rigorous, kind and humane, he has been the best supervisor I could have asked for. It is impossible to adequately thank my parents, Drs John and Pamela Rooks, for their love, help and inspiration. They are the reason that I have always wanted to undertake a PhD, and I would not have been able to do it without them. I am terribly grateful to Dad in particular for following me on this intellectual journey, even though he has never actually enjoyed A Question of Power. It has been ridiculously enjoyable to share this material with you. Thank you, Mom, for your eagle-eyed proofreading and attention to formatting; if there are any mistakes in this dissertation, they are my fault and not yours. It was also your idea, all those years ago, to compare A Question of Power and The Palm-Wine Drinkard. If you had not suggested such a fertile idea for that undergraduate essay, I do not know where I would be today.150 I must also thank Ash Edge, my dearest friend, not only for the delight of his company, conversation and help, but for introducing me to Alan Watts: you opened vast horizons to me, and it has been so much fun to watch the galaxy-rise with you. When we talk, ideas catch light, and you help me see the world anew. Thank you for being the best housemate I could hope for and for staying by me through the dark. 3 Abstract In this thesis I use concepts from Deleuzo-Guattarian theory, combined with a vernacular theoretical understanding, to perform cultural historicist readings of texts that lack clear contextual referents, as I demonstrate with an extended close reading of Amos Tutuola’s problematic classic The Palm-Wine Drinkard; I then demonstrate the approach’s versatility by using it to read a very different text, Bessie Head’s A Question of Power. Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard draws on vernacular theories of the bush common across West Africa, in which the bush is a discursive space for exploring personal and social traumas. Tutuola’s Bush of Ghosts, I argue, engages with the Yoruba Wars, the slave trade, and colonial capitalist development of Nigeria to the mid-twentieth century. I demonstrate not only how Tutuola uses ghosts as critical historical tools, but how he develops a peculiarly open textual space which serves as an alternative and a challenge to developmental trends. From history enacted across ghostly landscape I move to politics as a highly personal nightmare in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power. From communal vernacular theoretical traditions, I move to Head’s ‘schizophrenic’ vernacular theories. I argue that this text speaks to contexts far beyond Head’s personal experience of Apartheid. I read it as a schizohistory of Botswana’s developmental and political history, and as a lament of authoritarian tendencies across Africa a decade after independence. Head combines politics with mysticism, drawing on Hinduism to forge a politics of interconnectedness. 4 Texts like Tutuola’s and Head’s become far more accessible through historicist readings, and these readings become possible once we are equipped with a theoretical vocabulary flexible enough to translate across a wide variety of discursive spheres. The approach I demonstrate encourages and facilitates a more interdisciplinary and contextually-grounded approach to African literature, clarifying formerly obscure texts. 5 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ 2 Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 3 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 1 Deleuzo-Guattarian Theory and Vernacular Theory ..................... 13 1.1 Vernacular Theory as Cultural Matrix ........................................................................13 1.2 The Smooth and the Striated ..........................................................................................14 1.3 Vernacular Theories of Smooth Space ........................................................................24 Chapter 2 The Bush: Trauma, Disease and Critique ........................................... 28 2.1 The Bush and its Ghosts ..................................................................................................28 2.2 The Bush as a Physical Resource .................................................................................36 2.3 The Haunted Bush .............................................................................................................41 2.4 “Running to Bush”: The Bush and Madness .............................................................44 2.5.1 Sleeping Sickness and Uncertainty .................................................................................. 49 2.5.2 History of Trypanosomiasis................................................................................................ 52 2.5.3 Resettlement and Striation ................................................................................................. 61 2.5.4 Nomadism and Contamination .......................................................................................... 63 2.6 The Market as the Bush and the Bush as the Market .............................................65 2.7 The Unmappable Bush .....................................................................................................82 Chapter 3 Yoruba Schizohistories ............................................................................. 84 3.1 Vernacular History and Schizohistory .......................................................................84 3.2 The Yoruba Wars: A Century of Violence ..................................................................88 3.3 Fragmentation ....................................................................................................................92 3.4 Hostility and Violence ......................................................................................................97 Chapter 4 A Close Reading of The Palm-Wine Drinkard .................................. 103 4.1 Reading Palms and the Palm Economy ................................................................... 103 4.2 Entering the Bush and Entering Folkloric Space ................................................. 108 4.2.1 Leaving Home ......................................................................................................................... 108 4.2.2 Encountering Gods and Death ......................................................................................... 110 4.2.3 The Complete Gentleman .................................................................................................. 114 4.2.4 The Half-Bodied Baby ......................................................................................................... 121 4.2.5 Drum, Song and Dance ........................................................................................................ 127 4.2.5 Ferryboats and Highwaymen ........................................................................................... 130 4.3 The Bush of Ghosts: Site of Suffering and Recuperation .................................. 135 4.3.1 White Creatures ..................................................................................................................... 135 4.3.2 The Termites’ Market and the King of Refuse ........................................................... 141 4.3.3 Wraith-Island .......................................................................................................................... 144 4.3.4 Greedy Bush ............................................................................................................................ 149 4.3.5 Unreturnable-Heaven’s Town ......................................................................................... 155 4.3.6 The Faithful-Mother in the White Tree ........................................................................ 165 4.3.7 Red-Town ................................................................................................................................. 177 4.4 The Drinkard’s Return .................................................................................................. 199 4.4.1 Deads’ Town.. .........................................................................................................................