Table Of ContentI ndigeneity, Globalization, and
African Literature
A FRICAN HISTORIES AND MODERNITIES
S eries Editors
T oyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
M atthew M. Heaton, Virginia Tech
E ditorial Board
A deronke Adesanya, Art History, James Madison University
K wabena Akurang-Parry, History, Shippensburg University
N ana Amponsah, History, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
T yler Fleming, History, University of Louisville
B arbara Harlow, English and Comparative Literature, University of Texas at Austin
E mmanuel Mbah, History, College of Staten Island
A kin Ogundiran, Africana Studies, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
T his 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.
P ublished in the series
C ontemporary Africa: Challenges and Opportunities (2014)
E dited by Toyin Falola and Emmanuel M. Mbah
A frican Postcolonial Modernity: Informal Subjectivities and the Democratic Consensus
(2014)
B y Sanya Osha
B uilding the Ghanaian State: Kwame Nkrumah’s Symbolic Nationalism (2014)
B y Harcourt Fuller
P risoners of Rhodesia: Inmates and Detainees in the Struggle for Zimbabwean
Liberation, 1960–1980 (2014)
B y Munyaradzi B. Munochiveyi
M ugabeism? History, Politics, and Power in Zimbabwe (2015)
E dited by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni
I ndigeneity, Globalization, and African Literature: Personally Speaking (2015)
B y Tanure Ojaide
I ndigeneity, Globalization, and
African Literature
P ersonally Speaking
T anure O jaide
INDIGENEITY, GLOBALIZATION, AND AFRICAN LITERATURE
Copyright © Tanure Ojaide 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-54220-5
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First published 2015 by
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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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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,
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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
809⬘.8896—dc23 2015013927
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
C ontents
I ntroduction v ii
S ection I
1 T he Perils of a Culture-less African Literature in
the Age of Globalization 3
2 C ontemporary Africa and the Politics in Literature 1 9
3 H omecoming: African Literature and
Human Development 4 3
4 D efining Niger Delta Literature: Preliminary
Perspective on an Emerging Literature 5 5
5 C hinua Achebe’s T hings Fall Apart in World Literature 7 5
S ection II
6 A fter the Nobel Prize: Wole Soyinka’s Poetic Output 8 9
7 A n Unusual Growth: The Development of Tijan
M. Sallah’s Poetry 1 01
8 A n Insider Testimony: Odia Ofeimun and His
Generation of Nigerian Poets 1 19
9 T raditional Izon Court and Modern Poetry:
Christian Otobotekere’s Contribution 1 33
1 0 R eviving Modern African Poetry: An Argument 1 45
S ection III
1 1 T he Imperative of Experience in Poetry: An African
Perspective 1 61
1 2 I ndigenous Knowledge and Its Expression in
the Folklore of Africa 1 69
vi CONTENTS
1 3 P olicy Studies, Activist Literature, and Pitching
for the Masses in Nigeria 1 83
1 4 T he Politics of African Literature: Production,
Publishing, and Reception 1 95
S ection IV
1 5 I nviting the World into the House of Words:
The Writer, His Place, People, and Audience 2 13
1 6 P ersonally Speaking: T he Beauty I Have Seen 2 23
1 7 R evisiting an African Oral Poetic Performance:
U dje Today 2 37
1 8 P erformance, the New African Poetry, and
My Poetry: A Commentary 2 55
1 9 T wo Tributes: Chinua Achebe and Kofi Awoonor 2 67
R eferences 2 73
I ndex 2 83
I ntroduction
A s 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 cul-
ture 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.
E ach 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 rel-
evant 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.
M odernity 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 mod-
ern African literature. Africa has had a lot to contend with in moder-
nity: 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 indepen-
dence 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.
T he 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 experi-
ence 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. Thus, each generation is influenced by its zeit-
geist to which it responds. Let me give an example with what I call
the second generation of African poets. Kofi Anyidoho and Abena
Busia of Ghana, Odia Ofeimun, Niyi Osundare, and Chimalum
Nwankwo of Nigeria, Jack Mapanje, Frank Chipasula, and Lupenga
Mphande of Malawi seem to demonstrate that as generations form in
each African country, they spread across the continent. In The New
African Poetry: An Anthology, Tijan M.Sallah and I have assembled
poems from across Africa. These poems seem to express comparable
themes with similar techniques; hence we call the works “the new
African poetry.” Thus, while there are individual writers and nations,
African people still share similarities in their postcolonial, modern,
and contemporary realities.
M y angst is that much as cultures worldwide change, some seem
to influence others with their values and ways without a reciprocal
change in them from interactions with others. There is a Western
INTRODUCTION ix
canon of literature and there is no dispute about its Greco-Roman
origins. Similarly, Western values have Judeo-Christian origins and
Westerners talk of “our values.” African oral literature is generally
seen as functional and the early generations of African writers seem
to have carried the functionality on. The positions of many African
writers have affirmed the importance of literature beyond its enter-
tainment value. For instance, Chinua Achebe sees the writer as a
teacher. Sembene Ousmane and Ngugi wa Thiongo see writers as at
the vanguard of their people’s struggle. Many other African writers
also fashion their respective visions to improve their societies.
I n this work I interrogate modern and contemporary African lit-
erature, especially since the 1980s, to see how the cultural produc-
tion of literature is faring. Of course, this has to be in the context of
history. Since modern African literature seems to parallel the history
of the continent and realities of the people at particular times, I have
to talk about how politics has shaped the African creative vision. And
that brings me directly to what is African in literary works produced
by Africans who are in the flux. With globalization, which has led to
accelerated communication and migration, Africa and what is African
are changing fast. Universal attention has been drawn to so many
issues by globalization—democracy, human rights, climate change,
sex and sexuality, and many more. Africans have migrated outside
to mainly North America and Europe for economic and other rea-
sons and advantages in stable societies. The liberal attitudes in the
West and developed publishing tradition have attracted many African
writers. As discussed in the book, there are now African writers in
diaspora and African writers at home, a condition that is complicat-
ing the African literary tradition. What I have noticed is that because
Africans have migrated a lot outside their cultural region, unlike
Westerners, African literature is undergoing a crisis of cultural iden-
tity. While globalization is ongoing and strong, there is still a move
for indigeneity to retain Africanness despite changes. This tension
between indigeneity and globalization seems to be driving contem-
porary African literature.
A s I stated earlier, I am both a cultural producer and interpreter.
I have attempted to “interprete” modern and contemporary African
literature from my writer-scholar position. I have thus interrogated
the general trend of African literature while at the same time doing
a reading of particular writers, especially poets. I have also looked
at the intersection of culture, society, economics, and other aspects
of contemporary African reality in the literature. I have devoted a
section to my own experience of writing; hence my research in oral
