Wole Soyinka: Literature, Activism, and African Transformation

Bola Dauda, Toyin Falola

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781501375774
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

This timely and expansive biography of Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer, Nobel laureate, and social activist, shows how the author's early years influence his life's work and how his writing, in turn, informs his political engagement. Three sections spanning his life, major texts, and place in history, connect Soyinka's legacy with global issues beyond the borders of his own country, and indeed beyond the African continent. Covering his encounters with the widespread rise of kleptocratic rule and international corporate corruption, his reflection on the human condition of the North-South divide, and the consequences of postcolonialism, this comprehensive biography locates Wole Soyinka as a global figure whose life and works have made him a subject of conversation in the public sphere, as well as one of Africa's most successful and popular authors. Looking at the different forms of Soyinka's work--plays, novels, and memoirs, among others--this volume argues that Soyinka used writing to inform, mobilize, and sometimes incite civil action, in a decades-long attempt at literary social engineering.

PART 1

Introduction and Context

1

Studies on Wole Soyinka

As a student of African history in the 1970s, my supervisor, John Iliffe, advised us all that there was one African writer we had to read, “the closest Africa has come to its own Shakespeare.” His name was Wole Soyinka.

NICHOLAS WESTCOTT, “SOYINKA’S CULTURAL ANTIPHONIES,” 2014¹

Introduction

Wole Soyinka is one of the greatest writers Africa has ever produced, remaining an imposing figure whose ideological convictions have been espoused in his many writings. Culturally and politically informed, Soyinka continues to command enormous social and intellectual attention within and outside the continent because of what he represents. Culturally, Wole Soyinka is a “conservative,” with an obvious bias for African cultural expressions and their applications. His adeptness in Western scholarship does not dogmatically influence his views on the African ontological and epistemological viewpoint, as he effortlessly compartmentalizes the two perspectives and considers them different in their inalienable rights, in terms of who is covered by them, their makeup, or the arenas in which they are applicable. Soyinka represents the African cultural compass directed toward cultural heritages and their acceleration as the path toward self-fulfillment. He also became a cultural activist and the theme of cultural revolution reverberates in most of his intellectual product. From the perspective of Wole Soyinka, the African ontological reality has been the victim of a malicious narrative from the West and efforts to suppress it yielded predetermined results. For a very long time, Africans viewed their culture through the lens of Europeans and passed a negative judgment, hence their gravitation away from it.

Politically, Soyinka presents himself as an irrepressible voice that challenges both colonial and postcolonial political actors. On many occasions, he has solitarily engaged the Nigerian political class through his writing and physical activism. It is irrefutable that Wole Soyinka is one of those foresighted Africans who envisioned an African continent that is devoid of dependency on external aid and is capable of producing for itself the essential materials required for economic independence. It is entrenched within Soyinka’s philosophy that the slow pace of development in Africa cannot be separated from its continued dependence on the Western world, or any other external power for that matter. Any expectation for the redemption of the continent’s image cannot be based on the efforts of the same party that was responsible for its denigration in the first place. The people need to channel their collective revolutionary actions toward a more effective direction, where their political activities can present solutions to their existential challenges. Soyinka understands that the estrangement of African ontological values that encapsulate all of their cultural expressions is an effort to keep them in a constantly inferior position.

Soyinka became a compelling character of the twentieth century, establishing himself as a culturally and politically radical African writer whose anti-imperialism pierced through the heart of totalitarian colonial and postcolonial leaders. As if eternally blessed by his muse, Ogun, Wole Soyinka survived countless acts of deliberate brutality unscathed and he has continued his activism into the twenty-first century with a more refined approach. This explains why scholars from various academic fields dedicate so much attention to looking at the life and works of Soyinka in order to advance understanding about the African environment and the sociopolitical currency that necessitated the emergence of such an enigma.

We are attracted by the growing body of study on the intellectual giant and intend to concentrate on the analysis given of Soyinka by different writers to see how their various evaluations of him represent his ideological convictions and revolutionary action and combine to produce a portrait of him and his work. In what follows, we identify many of the most important works.

Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance: The Invention of Cultural Identities in African, African-American, and Caribbean Drama by Tẹjumọla Ọlaniyan

Ọlaniyan’s material,² although laden with exposition about African drama and its evolution, also offers an overlapping experience with Eurocentric, Afrocentric, and post-Afrocentric perspectives and reveals the intellectual depth of Wole Soyinka as demonstrated through his distinctive literary style and methods that are usually drawn from African epistemic perception. Ọlaniyan observes that the literary productions of his selected African writers, including Soyinka, are an enunciation of their racial and political experiences interlaced with power politics from the hegemonic structure. Ọlaniyan contends that Soyinka is a cultural purist who specifically roots for Afrocentric cultures or values, as it enables African cultural emancipation from the complex politics of nuanced identities. Although Soyinka tends toward repudiating the erroneous mindset that African drama is a branch of its Western counterpart, as the system and form are an offshoot, Ọlaniyan notes that at the heart of Soyinka’s drama is a conscious effort in support of an African inscription of its unique identity and the independent formation of its style.

In his examination of the work of selected dramatists including Soyinka, Derek Walcott, Amiri Baraka, and Ntozake Shange, Ọlaniyan reveals the various individual cultural struggles that collectively serve as the pretext for these writers’ revolution protesting the inferiorization of African identity through their plays. It is against this background that Soyinka uses his literary ingenuity to challenge the hegemonic agenda of the Universalist, who views African drama exclusively through the Eurocentric lens. It indicates something interesting about Eurocentric interpretations of African drama or other indices of culture through which the identification of people is possible. This book argues that the affixation of the historical rise of African drama within the ambit of European exploitation in Africa underrepresents the African indigenous ontological expertise in this discourse and unduly promotes the Western bias against African epistemology, especially in the dramaturgical domain. Whereas the intellectual product of Wole Soyinka and others continues to reveal that this one-sided interpretation reeks of pompous arrogance because African drama is different in its own right and constitutes an independent canon, not a dependent variable or an appendage to its Western counterpart. Making that kind of claim is an indirect validation of a master-subordinate relationship.

Here, the author demonstrates that Soyinka, among others, is irrevocably convinced that the styles, techniques, and aesthetic values of African drama are distinct from other traditions and therefore invalidates the assumption that they are only worthy of being treated as a dangling appendage behind European drama.³ Wole Soyinka believes that the application of an inferior status placed on African drama is another subtle front in the war for superiority, which seeks to impose Western dominance on the African people, as was done in religion, politics, and then in science and technology. Those who would seek such an imposition are working from unfounded claims and their generalizations often made about African drama are demonstrations of hegemonic dominance in the sense that they attempt to force the African identity out of currency. Knowing this allows African dramatists, chiefly Soyinka, to shape their dramatic techniques, aesthetic, and other aspects of their work in ways that reveal Africanness and establish their essential capacity for difference rather than deference to Western traditions. When Frantz Fanon remarks that “there is a fact: White men consider themselves superior to black men,”⁴ he was alluding to the underlying imperialism of Europeans in Africa and its resulting convoluted politics of dominance imposed on Africans and their epistemological existence. Accordingly, writers like Wole Soyinka use their art to protest this insidious condescension, which seeks to establish that Africans are grossly incapable of equaling the cultural establishment.

To the extent that the contention of the validity of independent African “drama” was a widespread discursive engagement, Ruth Finnegan, one of the foremost researchers on African oral legacies, lends her voice to the existing controversy surrounding it. She questions the originality of the form, owing to her understanding that Africans historically tended toward oral heritages like poetry, panegyrics, and others.⁵ This understanding is premised on the unsupported conclusion that the elements of African drama are derivations of their European counterparts, since they share certain similarities and so are not independent concepts on their own. The maintenance of this mindset instigates divisive thinking about the originality of African drama and tries to smash its prospects by concluding that its points of difference with the Western domain are indications of weakness and inferiority. This inferiorization of African drama discredits its identity and inaptly places it below its European counterparts as an appendage of minimum or zero value. Consequently, the ascription of tragedy to African drama is derisively discredited.

This, coupled with the systematic racism embodied in the struggle for hegemonic dominance in scholarship, becomes the existential hurdle that African dramatists must jump over. Wole Soyinka produced a chronological sequence of dramas that not only disarmed these misconceptions but also unmasked the underlying imperialism that motivated them. African drama evolved from the cultural pressure to establish a dramaturgical difference that reflects not only the African identity but also validates its racial essentialism against the impression that it is an extension of the European formulation—and its consequent erroneous misrepresentation as residue in the hegemonic structure and dominance of the West. The centuries-old relationship has reconfigured many African practices so much that the separation of facts and fictions appears difficult, which necessitates the hybridization of their ideas and cultures, and this informs the West’s misrepresentation that Africans do not have a specific cultural history from which the genre of drama can be drawn. This misconception is disrobed though by the production of dramas that do not share Eurocentric characteristics, such as Soyinka’s plays.

The valorization of Wole Soyinka comes from the understanding that his works make a distinct departure from such uninformed conclusions as they betray the collective identity understood in the Western world. Because their prolonged imperialism created an unbalanced relationship, the Europeans believe that the only cultural space from which Africans can negotiate their existence is the one handed to them by their colonizers. Therefore, when Africans did come up with a dramatic identity in which the identifiable common characteristics of Europeans’ identity is cleverly rejected, the counter-reaction became necessary to avoid the appearance that they were giving up their quest to be considered as the foundation of progress and civilization from which every other expression of humans, especially Africans, is drawn. It is for this reason that Soyinka’s dramatic productions are exclusively nationalistic, espousing cultural traditions that are neither produced in Europe or its imagined or real territories. Based on the reality that African drama is actually an intersection of Eurocentric, Afrocentric, and then the post-Afrocentric discourses, Ọlaniyan contends that “many manifestations of the post-Afrocentric, on the other hand, evince suggestions of a performative cultural identity.”⁶ Africa, regardless of the fact of even a racial category that seemingly brings the people together tied to the experience of slavery in which the Europeans played essential roles to sustain, is an environment where heterogeneous cultural traditions are rife and the idea of diverse sociopolitical realities is inevitable.

It is exciting that Wole Soyinka is a cultural purist who chooses to expound on an aspect of African culture that should be retained and celebrated by his generation. He prepares the mind of his audience for the dangers to African culture inherent in the visitation of Europeans in Africa. He laments its dislocation, which is a byproduct of their racist prejudices and the corresponding hegemonic relationships, and rebuffs the idea that European cultural praxis is the very foundation for African practices because of his conviction that African culture is self-sufficient. Therefore, it became imperative for Africans to fight against traces of the Eurocentric hegemony that roots for constant dislocation of the African identity. The fact that the Western world denied for ages the existence of anything under the tag of “African Literature” became the very point of resistance because the promulgation of such unsubstantiated ideas could only destroy African knowledge systems further. Soyinka’s negation of this superstructure seeks to achieve a very subtle goal: the essentialization of African knowledge systems, especially in the literary industry. Soyinka continues to make known in his works and ideology that the glorification of African history does not necessarily mean the devaluation of its European counterparts, but that this celebration is necessary because it enables the shattered African identity to be reclaimed and for the world to accept their self-dependency.

Principally, Soyinka contends with the racial prejudice inherent in European exceptionalism, which seeks bragging rights for some unwarranted sense of superiority. In his own words, as quoted by Ọlaniyan, and given in reaction to the idea that drama originated from Europe:

I remember my shock as a student of literature and drama when I read that drama originated in Greece. What is this? I couldn’t quite deal with it. What are they talking about? I never heard my grandfather talk about Greeks invading Yorubaland. I couldn’t understand. I’ve lived from childhood with drama. I read at the time that tragedy evolved as a result of the rites of Dionysus. Now we all went through this damn thing, so I think the presence [sic] of eradication had better begin.⁷

In essence, he found it irreconcilable that the dramatic productions that he and many other Africans, had access to in his childhood are attributed to Europeans—even to groups that have not gained any access to Africa. He became very uncomfortable with such an uninformed conclusion and decided to challenge its authenticity in his intellectual productions. As such, Soyinka’s drama shows Afrocentric cultures and patterns, without being indebted to Western styles and systems. He considered them complementary.

Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, and Postcolonialism by Biọdun Jeyifo

Predominantly, Biọdun Jeyifo⁸ explores the interconnectedness of Soyinka’s writings and their political essence, bolstered by the understanding that his works evince radicalism against every structure of domination and subjugation. The Nigerian environment in which Soyinka was raised has had different phases of colonization and, by extension, imperialism that saw the subjugation of the people’s resolve and their quest for democratic leadership. Although he was too young to use his literary ingenuity to challenge colonial power in the heyday of the colonial occupation of Nigeria and the turn against colonialism in the wake of the Second World War that necessitated or compelled the British disengagement from its colonies, and accepting the imminent reality of the need to prepare for Nigeria’s self-government, Soyinka dedicated his revolutionary works to the excoriation of hegemonic dominance of both the West and neocolonial Africans, which continued beyond the era of colonization. Jeyifo’s book examines how the different experiences of political brutality culminated in the commitment to challenge power regardless of the inherent consequences.⁹ The acrimonious relationship between Wole Soyinka and the Nigerian government was caused by his uncompromising dedication to struggles for political emancipation from all predatory actors, whether the colonial power, their neocolonial accessories, or others of the same mindset.

Jeyifo provides the political background that encouraged the literary radicalism of Soyinka, just as it did for the majority of African writers of this period. African countries had been experiencing an overwhelming rise of political recognition, secured for them by their successful dislocation from European imperialists in their political arena, through either persuasion or some show of resistance. The reality that they remained immersed in the Western strategy of governance, however, brought them in...