Style in African Literature : Essays on Literary Stylistics and Narrative Styles [1 ed.] 9789401207553, 9789042034761

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Style in African Literature Essays on Literary Stylistics and Narrative Styles

154

Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft

Begründet von Alberto Martino und in Verbindung mit Francis Claudon (Université Paris-Est Créteil Val de Marne) – Rüdiger Görner (Queen Mary, University of London) – Achim Hölter (Universität Wien) – Klaus Ley (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) – John A. McCarthy (Vanderbilt University) – Alfred Noe (Universität Wien) – Manfred Pfister (Freie Universität Berlin) – Sven H. Rossel (Universität Wien)

herausgegeben von

Norbert Bachleitner (Universität Wien)

Redaktion: Paul Ferstl und Rudolf Pölzer Anschrift der Redaktion: Institut für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Sensengasse 3A , A-1090 Wien

Style in African Literature Essays on Literary Stylistics and Narrative Styles

Edited by J. K. S. Makokha, Ogone John Obiero and Russell West-Pavlov

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012

Cover Image: Russell West-Pavlov Cover Design: Inge Baeten Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions de “ISO 9706:1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents Prescriptions pour la permanence”. The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. Die Reihe “Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft” wird ab dem Jahr 2005 gemeinsam von Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam – New York und dem Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin herausgegeben. Die Veröffentlichungen in deutscher Sprache erscheinen im Weidler Buchverlag, alle anderen bei Editions Rodopi. From 2005 onward, the series “Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft” will appear as a joint publication by Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam – New York and Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin. The German editions will be published by Weidler Buchverlag, all other publications by Editions Rodopi. ISBN: 978-90-420-3476-1 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0755-3 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012 Printed in The Netherlands

Table of Contents Acknowledgements

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Chin Ce Foreword

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Russell West-Pavlov & J. K. S. Makokha Introduction: Linguistic (Re)turn and Craft in Contemporary African Literature

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Part I: General Perspectives Daria Tunca Towards a Stylistic Model for Analysing Anglophone African Literatures: Preliminary Epistemological Considerations and a Case Study

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Adesola Olateju Current Issues and Trends in African Verbal Stylistics: The Yoruba Example

59

Part II: Perspectives on Fiction K. M. Mathews Nnu Ego on the Verge of Feminist Consciousness: Feminist Stylistics and Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood

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Martina Kopf Narratives of a Wounded Time: Yvonne Vera’s Poetics of Trauma

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Russell West-Pavlov Speaking the Unspeakable in Iweala and Kourourma: The Trauma of Child Soldiers, Literary Stylistics and Story Telling

111

Adeyemi Adegoju Autobiographical Memory and Identity Construction in Tayo Olafioye’s Grandma’s Sun

127

Shawkat M. Toorawa Carl de Souza’s La maison qui marchait vers le large and the Multicultural Mauritian City

147

Adeyemi Daramola A Stylistic Study of Metaphors in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

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Part III: Perspectives on Orature and Poetry Iwu Ikwubuzo Stylistic Features of Igbo Riddles

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Mikhail Gromov On Stylistic Trends in Modern Swahili Poetry

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Michael Wainaina New Wine in Old Wineskins: Stylistic Provisions of Orature’s Call and Response for Contemporary Discourses in Gikuyu Popular Music

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James Odhiambo Ogone and Ogone John Obiero Activistic Understones in the Music of Women: A Psychoanalytic and Stylistic Reading of Agnes Mbuta’s Dhiang’ Othuwowa gi Chuo

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Anette Hoffmann Chronotopes of the (Post-) Colonial Condition in Otjiherero Praise Poetry

309

Bright Molande Metapoesis and ‘the Art of Chameleons’ in Steve Chimombo’s Poetry

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Part IV: Perspectives on Drama and Theatre Naomi Nkealah Female Sexuality under the Male Gaze: Reading Style and Ideology in Bole Butake’s The Rape of Michelle

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Chris Wasike Figurations of ‘troubled motherland’ and Feminization of the Ugandan Nation in John Ruganda’s Plays

381

Victor Yankah Language and Meaning in Efo Mawugbe’s In the Chest of a Woman

399

Ibrahim Esan Olaosun Incantation as Discourse: A Discourse-Stylistic Study of the Confrontational Scene in Ola Rotimi’s The Gods are Not to Blame

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Contributors

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Acknowledgements A project of this range, scope and magnitude naturally involves a lot of people in order for it to be successful. We take this opportunity to thank all the contributing authors for the resilience and intellectual rigor as well as commitment to the discipline we all share. Your patience has finally paid off in this offering to the continent and the science of its arts. We are indebted to the entire team of scholars who participated in the blind peer reviewing process and scholarly evaluation of various components of this edited book: Leonard Acquah, Abiodun Adeniji, Gbemisola Adeoti, Pius Adesanmi, Sola Adeyemi, J. B. A. Afful, Joyce Ashuntangtang, Chin Ce, Reuben Chirambo, Helen Cousins, Felicity Hand Cranham, Kari Dako, Sharae Deckard, Dominica Dipio, Vachaspati Dwivedi, Jens Elze-Volland, G. M. T. Emezue, Harry Garuba, Pierre Gomez, Dag Henrichsen, Lynette Hlongwane, Herbert Igboanusi, Marisa Keuris, Neil Kortenaar, Sarala Krishnamurthy, Beverly Mack, Jack Mapanje, Nokuthula Mazibuko, Ewald Mengel, John Mugubi, Aldin K. Mutembei, Wangari Mwai, Peter Muhoro Mwangi, Evan Mwangi, Helen Nabasuta Mugambi, Divine Che Neba, Ghirmai Negash, Wandia Njoya, Austin Uzoma Nwagbara, Oha Obododimma, Sunday Ododo, Caleb C. Okumu, Andries Walter Oliphant, Esther Peeren, Dobrota Pucherova, Henriette Maria Roos, Rashna B. Singh, Cheryl Stobie, Kennedy Walibora Waliaula, Peter Wasamba and Catherine Woeber. We are grateful to the versatile novelist-poet-critic Chin Ce, one of the important voices in contemporary African literature today, for writing the foreword to this volume. His contribution to the beautiful letters of the continent is already visible and tangible too. We thank Katharina Reinartz for formatting the book meticulously; Nobert Bachleitner for giving the book a welcome in the IFAVL series; Jennifer Wawrzinek, Cordula Lemke and H. Ekkard Wolff, without whose intellectual company the making of this book would have been more of a challenge and less of an academic joy; the DAAD for funding two of the editors to conduct research in Germany; and the respective universities that hosted them. This book finally acknowledges it debt to all the other major works on the study of stylistics especially in literature and at the nexus between language and literary art from the continent of Africa. In honour of Professor Emmanuel Ngara and other African literary stylisticians.

Chin Ce

Foreword The ensuing compendium of perspectives on style in African literature is part of an expansive critical approach to written and oral narratives in Africa and comes at a crucial period in the advancement of literary appreciation in the century. Featuring a total of nineteen essays by younger voices of African literary criticism and edited by the trio of J. K. S. Makokha, Obiero Ogone and Russell West-Pavlov, the volume assures a fairly wide reading list on contemporary issues and trends in stylistic and linguistic approaches to the study of contemporary Anglophone African writing. Many entries here reflect the growing concern for healthier focus on language as the vehicle of narrative and argue for methodical applications of linguistic analysis to literature and literary techniques. Where there seems to have been the emphasis or dominance of social and national concerns to the neglect of language in contemporary African literary criticism, these studies are intended to bridge the gap and fulfil the objective, as proposed in the introduction of this volume, of helping to rectify the shift of emphasis from language and the return to the “fundamental questions of the linguistic underpinning of all social and thus geopolitical interaction” (1). In the past fifty years scholars have expended paper and energy over the critical direction of modern African literature, a trend jumpstarted with the attempt made by European critics of African literature to adopt it as a part of the ‘Great Western Tradition’. The language debates grew to be the favourite pastime of scholars who laid much premium on hunting for blind spots in many a literary or critical showmanship of their colleagues. Ever since the gadfly of modern African literature, Obiajunwa Wali, provoked consternation for Africans writing in English or foreign languages, critics at several fora hotly debated the language of African literature; which work qualified for African literature, and which did not. Nevertheless, this rigorous and scholarly reaction of the host of scholars had scored the positioning of modern African literature in the index of world writing today. And though remnants of western prejudice may still tag it “minority literature” in their university curricular, Africa’s body of works has become a great deluge in world writing since Achebe, NgNJgƭ and Soyinka, to mention but three of the leading lights of the age. Happily too the last few years have seen the renewal of international and confederate organisational strategies with independent African perspectives

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bridging and mapping new connections for stylistic and theoretical appreciation of the emerging literatures of the continent “and the propagation of African thought and aesthetic” (ARI 2000: WP). With the emphasis on linguistic studies of literature as exemplified in this and other volumes to come, the coast has considerably widened to embrace insightful interpretations of style, language and discourse by scholars from all around the world. The enthusiastic response to old and new African writing at present is a refreshing difference from the understandable groping, argumentation and exhibitionism of the past. And contrary to the red light about writing in the language of colonial inheritance, the explosion of thematic and stylistic experiments has enhanced the debate in ways that illuminate the quality and craft of indigenous and a good many Diasporic African writings. In the rather unique quality of this volume, there have emerged four divisions starting out in “general perspectives” with just two papers: One attempting a search for the stylistic model for analysing, the other making an important examination of current trends in the stylistic approach to Anglophone African literature. With this short start, the discourse progresses to the more interesting “perspectives on Fiction”, containing nine essays, three of which involve the metier of primary African novelists: Emecheta and Achebe. This section is led by Kathryn Mathews in determining the “Feminist Stylistics” of Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood as it relates to the belaboured female heroine, Nnu Ego. And so we have, ensconced within the study of Emecheta’s novels and the metaphors of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart by Adeyemi Daramola, a whole new investigation of secondary works featuring some promising studies on narrative, literary stylistics and stylistic creativity which should enrich twenty-first century African literary criticism with their focus on emerging African writers. The subsequent divisions of perspectives on “Orature/ Poetry” in six chapters, and “perspectives on Drama/ Theatre” containing four entries, bring some light to bear on aspects of style in riddles, poetry and music, on the one hand, and the stylistic features of modern African plays, with excellent disquisitions in feminist-stylistics, discourse, semantics and tradition, on the other. The oratorical stylistics of Igbo riddles, modern Swahili poetry, and Gikuyu popular music as evaluated by Ikwubuzo, Gromov, and Wainana respectively are needed ballasts for the primacy of oral traditions in African literature and, where they do not make such case for orature as the starting point of critical discourse in African literature, will serve to “equip scholars of African writings with greater understanding of the challenges of Africa in

Foreword

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contemporary modernity” (Ce 2010: 7). Thus while there have coalesced some healthy methodical arguments that particularise on snippets of linguistic codes and usage in literary texts thereby embodying the orthodoxies of linguistic speciality, there are also few more expansive attempts, in other cases, to expand the limits of stylistic study towards areas that are strictly metalinguistic, and therefore useful complements to the holistic criticism of Anglophone African writing. It is glad to note that the editorial effort of the book project was aided by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Institute for English Philology at the Free University in Berlin, and the Institute for African Studies at the University of Leipzig, for German scholars and German institutions, since Ulli Beier and Willfried Feuser of blessed memories, have been at the forefront of enlightened scholarly investigation and advancement of literary works from around the continent. Against an old argument that the purpose of literature is to purify language, as Emezue (2005) reminds us, and, as Auden is quoted, “the defence of one’s language from corruption” (340), it might prove a prodigious claim for Anglophone African writing to seek the renewal of English through the linguistic transformations that inhere within the environment of postcolonial literature. If it is the inevitable result of the impact of western civilisation from that historic contact that permanently altered progress in the African region since the past two hundred years, such writing can only regenerate or add value in the sense of shared principles, of mutually comparable artistic monuments: a plausible prospect in a truly new information age devoid of cultural domination by any prejudicial world economic, religious, and racial systems. Several writers and critics of modern African literature have warned that the colonial contact that left its linguistic heritage on the continent must be made to pay the price of such extended incursions onto indigenous landscapes. With English carrying the weight of an African experience, as Achebe (1975: 62) has conduced by his works, Anglophone African writing proves a vibrant, refreshing, and invigorating linguistic expedition acknowledged today even by arch pessimists from the empire. But the question still haunts: does this serve the effect of enriching or subverting the colonial inheritance? And, does this work to the growth or retardation of indigenous languages? For when we recognise the heteroglossic capabilities of words, be they of the first or second language situation and which, as Guneratne (2005) correctly notes, “have drawn together the people whom colonialism had dispersed, dislocated and displaced” (WP), the ultimate objective and consequence of their use should then be a critical beacon for literary researchers, which is something that contributors here may have only but tangentially acknowledged.

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There is therefore need to restate the argument that theorising postcolonial African literature within the relevant linguistic and stylistic discourse, as this impressive volume seeks to achieve, is vital and so much more under the present situation when critical directions in African writing continue to waver among an awestruck literati engaged in western paradigms of literary reception, vaguely aware of the role of language in the shaping of cultural and aesthetic imperatives that cross the borders of ethnic, national and world heritage. Indeed as stylistic discourse offers descriptive and evaluative indices for the interaction of language and literature in varied creative dimensions for literary and artistic competence, a compilation of this sort, centering upon familiar and emerging perspectives, should firmly advance African writing and criticism on a course of twenty-first century world literary distinction. However, Africa’s intelligentsia who continue to operate from remote antiquities of western particularities shall have to mitigate its basic lack of synthesis in scholarship – that exclusivist attitude that is barely at home with an indigenous linguistic base of interaction with a world language. It is obvious we can fare our cultural products no better by embalming them in mainstream western precepts and, as I have stated in a previous forum, where we simply pander to, rather than transform, hegemonic linguistic and ideological structures for some convenient artistic or financial respite, we are further threatening to bring a whole circle of African heritage to the cul-de-sac of “mutant traditions” (Ce 2008: 135). Little wonder then that ongoing perspectives and theories on the stylistics of African literature, as with writing distinctively in an inherited language, have carried on with the proverbial caution that attends a wary cockerel in a strange territory. In a way, this is part of what has been noted here by the editors – that the interplay of language in African literary texts has hardly been recognised for its ability to engage readership with an alternative shaping of human social, linguistic and esthetical connections. Hence in terms of theory, reliable and comprehensive studies on the stylistics of African texts would seek to interrogate and not internalise precepts which have denied the African postcolonial discourse its logical place as a major enlargement on the heritage of world literatures. Ultimately then, the study of style and stylistics in African literary criticism must subsist at the behest of the transformative forces that have shaped colonial and post colonial histories. Where language has been a method of cajolement and of enforcement of ‘main’ prejudices of the superstructure to the negligence of a minority ‘other’ existing as the periphery, this must be contended and illuminated for the potential dismantling of the dominion of historical, linguistic, and scientific notions.

Foreword

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Since it is the power of linguistic hybridity both to unmask the language of authority and to fuse another voice with it, as expounded by Bakhtin (AlAhram 2001: WP) here is its most effective prop for African literature where traditional reality, knowledge and craft as evident from her oratures have been seen to defy the arbitrary segmentation and compartmentalisation system of western intellection. The way forward then is to synthesise the various approaches to literary criticism and appreciation and clearly illumine the position and importance of linguistic and other values of stylistic appreciation of African literary expressions. And as knowledge between the fields overlap in a revolutionary age of information development and exchange, a new challenge will be continually posed to our specialists: a challenge, for instance, in which African literature will be further elucidated by the integration of various branches of literary and other significant specialities. Perhaps, only then can the application of stylistic models on literary texts of African origins gain in quality and continental relevance, and the indigenous cultural values and discourse traditions withstand the sweeping deluge of their colonial heritage, never to remain submerged in a monolithic epicentre. By then, the breakthrough in stylistic appreciation of African literature must have risen in equal and significant status with Africa’s indigenous linguistic heritage; the latter playing its deservedly central, if not overarching, part in any modern stylistic or metalingusitic literary study. I must however conclude by stating that this critical anthology will live up to its promise, for its most impressive feature is the theoretical possibility as against the linguistic exclusivity of its coverage. The introduction by the editors is an enthusiastic exposition of a theoretical position, an acknowledgement of historical responsibility, and a forceful case for a sound, pragmatic approach for understanding the complex diversity of current African literary traditions.

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References Abdel-Hakim, S. (2001) “Postcolonial Hybrids. Al-Ahram.” Weekly Online 524 [Web page]. Retrieved 24 Mar 2010 from http://weekly.ahram. org.eg/2001/524/bo6.htm. Achebe, C. (1975) “The African Writer and the English Language.” Morning Yet on Creation Day. Essays. London: Heinemann. Africa Research International [Web page]. Retrieved 24 Mar 2010 from http://www.africaresearch.org. Ce, C. (2008) “Mutant Traditions.” Bards and Tyrants: Essays in African writing. AI-EBS: African Books Network. ——., (2010) Riddle and Bash: African performance and literature reviews. AI-EBS: African Books Network. Emezue, GMT (2008) “Literature and Conflict Resolution in Africa: Discussions with Seven Nigerian Authors.” Journal of African Literature No. 5. 339-359. Guneratne, A. R. Virtual Spaces of Postcoloniality [Web page] Retrieved 7 May 2005 from http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/pol discourse/guneratne 2.html.

Russell West-Pavlov and J. K. S. Makokha

Introduction: Linguistic (Re)turn and Craft in Contemporary African Literature It is curious that despite the prevalence of a much-touted ‘linguistic turn’ in twentieth century theory and cultural production, language has frequently been neglected by literary studies. Even more curiously, postcolonial literary studies, an erstwhile emergent and now established discipline which has from the outset contained important elements of linguistic critique, has eschewed any sustained engagement with this topic. Writers and scholars such as Achebe, Braithwaite and NgNJgƭ have meditated in well-known and frequently anthologized pieces (“The African Writer and the English Language”, 1975; “Nation Language”, 1984; “Imperialism of Language”, 1993) upon the use of English as a lingua franca for postcolonial writers, the development of a specifically postcolonial language, or the teaching of English in the colonial school system. None the less, these important but sporadic excursions into the fundamental fabric of consciousness and communication have resulted in few major scholarly publications. Investigations such as that undertaken by such as Talib in his The Language of Postcolonial Literatures (Routledge 2002), or Gymnich in her Metasprachliche Reflexionen und sprachliche Gestaltungsmittel im englischsprachigen postkolonialen und transkulturellen Roman [Metalinguistic Reflection and Linguistic Artform in EnglishLanguage Potscoloinal and Transcultural Novels] (WVT 2007), published unfortunately only in German, are thin on the ground. Recent re-assessments of the entire domain of postcolonial studies in the wake of challenges coming from quarters such as globalization studies, resulting for instance in the significant collection entitled Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, edited by Loomba, Kaul, Bunzl, Burton and Esty (Duke 2005). Their call to re-embed postcolonial studies in the fields of economics, history, or the politics of development none the less perpetuates a curious blindness to the linguistic underpinning of all these domains. These lacunae in literary criticism are all the more surprising in the context of postcolonial and transcultural literature, areas of literary production where the confluence of several languages, whether indigenous and colonial (post)colonial in the first case, and local and global in the second case, appears to be a central and decisive factor in the formation and transformation of cultural identity. Only recently has there been a slow turn back towards these fundamental questions of the linguistic

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underpinning of all social and thus geopolitical interaction. This is evinced in a slow trickle of publications such as Edmund L. Epstein’s and Robert Kole’s co-edited volume The Language of African Literature (Africa World Press 1998).The present volume aims to make a contribution to that slow return to the ‘linguistic turn’ in postcolonial studies. To what extent language is erased in the attention to literature as merely one form of archival recording is an important shift of emphasis, to the point of imbalance, which the studies in this volume help to rectify. The authors are constantly aware of the status of language in what Mbembe has usefully termed the “postcolony”, on the one hand as an instrument of residual colonial power, and on the other as a problem posed by the neo-colonial context, in which the choice of a particular language as a medium inevitably takes on a political character. The authors never ignore the historical role of language as a central area and tool of colonialization and neo-colonialism. At the same time, they have in mind the ongoing question of indigenous versus metropolitan languages as the appropriate medium of a postcolonial literature, and whether it is possible to renew English through its transformed implementation within a postcolonial literature. In this domain, the metalinguisitic commentaries of postcolonial authors themselves become a valuable part of the diacritical discourse upon language and colonialism, even though they may at times appear to be ‘under-theorized’. However, this may well appear to be inherently part of the location of metalinguistic reflection in the postcolonial context, which is not only to be found in varying degrees of explicit objectivization, but also as a performative dramatization within the fabric of postcolonial literary texts themselves. The present volume contains a plethora of judicious reflections upon the place of language, and on the role metalinguistic theorizing within postcolonial discourse. Stylistics as the chosen domain of study of the present volume entails a number of methodological advantages. Stylistics emerges at the interface between literature and linguistics and is of value because the disciplinary boundaries structuring traditional ‘national’ literary studies often tend to vitiate this sort of border-crossing enquiry. Stylistics also neutralizes the potential pitfalls of empirical approaches to literary-linguistic studies. It opts instead for a highly productive focus upon literary texts’ own descriptive, evaluative or performative confrontation with language. The text-oriented aspect of such study is of particular interest, for it highlights the manner in which postcolonial literature, in its specific literarity, approaches the language(s) in which it is composed by means of a performative-reflective feedback loop. Under the aegis of stylistics, linguistics can be productively combined with literary analysis, and in particular with narratology (especially

Introduction

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the very new branch of postcolonial narratology), is such a way as to produce incisive analyses of linguistic life as one of the central areas where cultural (neo)colonialism and its resistant opponent phenomena can be identified in action. Such is the endeavour that this new edited book of critical essays by an array of distinguished scholars working in African literary studies on the continent and abroad showcase. *** The book is divided into four sections. The first section is based on the topic of methodology in relation to stylistics as praxis and discipline within African literary studies. The three remaining sections are genre-based offering crucial perspectives on various genres such as prose, orature, poetry, drama and theatre by focusing on major works from different regions of the vast continent. The first section opens up the space for engagement with the subsequent sections with cogitations on issues of method and methodology in the pursuit of African literary stylistics. Debates around the question of language in African literatures have been ubiquitous since the 1960s, yet only a relatively small number of studies have undertaken stylistic analyses of African literary works. This is the observation of Daria Tunca in the opening article of the volume. She maintains that there is no clearly defined method enabling one to perform a comprehensive linguistic examination of African literatures in European languages such as English. The critic contends that the causes for this metholodological shortcomings are chiefly epistemological. After reviewing the different factors that have shaped – or hindered the development of – linguistic research into Anglophone African literatures over the years, her article outlines a methodological framework which, if further developed, may form a basis for a model of stylistic analysis for Europhone African literatures in general and African literatures in English specifically. A combination of theories are presented and then briefly used to interpret selected passages from Chimamanda Adichie’s acclaimed novel Purple Hibiscus (2003) as a case in point. This opening article on methodology is followed by a second one by Adesola Olateju who looks at some of the contentious issues and trends in the development of Stylistics as an academic discipline in African universities. He argues that African verbal stylistics has roots in European debates of the 1950s and became established in Africa in the 1960s. Its evolution has not been free of criticism and thus the objective of his article is to generate a discourse that would lead to a better understanding of African stylistics via

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focus on contentious issues dealing with the definition, autonomy, content, and criteria of relevance of stylistics, its learning and teaching. He highlights the interdisciplinary nature of linguistics and literary studies and treats Stylistics as an offspring at the intersection of the two. Considering its constituents (style, linguistics and literature), the article submits that the definition of stylistics as an autonomous academic discipline should encompass the various subject with which it has affinity. He concludes, like Tunca does, that stylistics is not only relevant in the study of African literatures, be they in Afrophone or Europhone languages, but also highly desirable in literary analysis and interpretation. *** The second section of the volume deals with stylistics through the treatment of an array of major works of contemporary African fiction from across the continent. There are seven articles on various aspects of contemporary prose in this section. The first article focuses on Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (1979). K. M. Mathews examines the preferred feminist reading that Emecheta presents in her important novel at the level of discourse. By drawing on Sara Mills’ conception of feminist stylistics that foregrounds context and social determinants such as race, class and gender, she highlights the complex way the Nigerian author represents gender in the novel through the experience, thoughts and dialogue connected with Nnu Ego. The next article is by Martina Kopf and treats the fiction of yet another major voice in women writing in Africa Yvonne Vera of Zimbabwe. Reading Vera’s fiction is an intriguing experience. One encounters disturbing images, shifts between an interior and exterior reality and a bewildering time structure according to Kopf. This complex narrative structure challenges the reader to find her or his way through and one of the striking features is the contradiction between the beauty of Vera’s prose language and the horror of violence and suffering her fiction reveals. It is this discontinuity between aesthetics and content that creates a certain tension which is characteristic of her writing style. Kopf affirms her arguments by analyzing Vera’s Without a Name (1994) and Under the Tongue (1997) by linking literary criticism with psychoanalytical theories of trauma. Her focus is on two significant features of Vera’s poetics: the temporal structure and the contrast between language and event. The two open up a space for communicating the unspeakable – the unlistenable – of traumatic experiences Kopf concludes. Her conclusion leads us to the next article by Russell West-Pavlov who carries on with the discussion of links between literary stylistics and African fiction dwelling on postcolonial

Introduction

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trauma and “the unspeakable”. He shifts our focus back to West Africa to Iweala’s Beast of No Nation (2000) and Kourouma’s Allah n’est pas Oblige (2005). His interest lies in an in-depth discussion about stylistic devices in the two widely acclaimed novels as a vehicle for dealing with trauma, in particular related to the topical issue of child soldiers in West Africa. Still in West Africa follows the next article by Adeyemi Adegoju who shifts focus on questions at the intersection of narrative style and identity negotiation using fiction as a vehicle of memory. He argues that the art of fictionalizing to fill up the lacunae occasioned by memory distortions while trying to remember the self makes an autobiographical narrative worthy of serious critical evaluation. Adegoju carries out a deconstructive reading of Tayo Olafioye’s child memoir, Grandma’s Sun (2000) by stylistically analyzing the autobiographer’s imaginative use of language in evoking memories. These memories revolve around the culture of naming in Africa vis-à-vis the protagonist’s identity, on the one hand, and the representations of motherhood in the African world as epitomized by the protagonist’s grandmother and mother, on the other hand. His focus is more on narrative style as is the case with the article that follows. La maison qui marchait vers le large (‘The house that was sliding towards the sea’) is a 1996 novel by Mauritian author Carl de Souza in which he uses filiation, genealogies and ethnicities to examine the construction of identity in Mauritius. This is the novel that forms the basis of Shawkat Toorawa’s article. Tackling issues of multiculturalism and constructions of identity as well as their negotiation in a typical polyvalent and cosmopolitan African postcolony, Toorawa shows us how the novel is concerned with a house in which different people who are negotiating these and other issues must live, and more importantly, live together. The house is a real house which will face a real problem and it is evidently a metaphor for Mauritius – but is also a metaphor, or double, of the city. As a metaphor for the city, it thus becomes a space which allows all the characters that inhabit it and inhabit the city to be linked. The critic suggest through his discussion of de Souza’s narrative style suggests that Le Maison is a signal ‘multicultural’ African fiction or text because the author sends the emblem of the Mauritian city sliding inexorably toward the sea, then, towards change. The next article by Remmy Shiundu Barasa and J. K. S. Makokha highlight the cosmopolitan Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah’s narrative style. In a country whose postcolonial literature has largely been produced in Kiswahili more than in English, the official language, critics of Tanzanian literature hail Gurnah as its leading fiction writer using a Europhone language. In their article, the two scholars apply narratological theory to elucidate the manner in which the novelist deals creatively and technically

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with the major themes of migration, nostalgia and homecoming as they occur in his sixth novel By the Sea (2001). Making considerable use of concepts derived by (mainly German and American) narratologists such as Manfred Jahn, Wolfgang Iser, Seymour Chartman and Wayne C. Booth, the two critics provide a narratological description of the various narrative stances used by Gurnah in this novel: implied author, narrator(s), narrattee(s) and implied reader. They also examine the notion of narrative voice (omniscient thirdperson narrator, first person-narrator or “we-narrator”) and devote some time to an elucidation of Gurnah’s tendency to create ambivalence, irony and uncertainty through the interplay of multiple narrative levels operating, like mirrors, out of a labyrinth of embedded texts. The section concludes with Adeyemi Daramola’s thorough stylistic study of metaphors in Chinua Achebe’s semi-centennial pillar of African fiction, indeed literature, Things Fall Apart first published in 1958. From the simplest description of a metaphor as indirect use of language or a packed expression that needs to be unpacked, to the Hallidayan (1994) modes of metaphors – grammatical, ideational and interpersonal – Daramola analyses common sayings, idioms and proverbs in the text. In his article, the aspects of Halliday’s theoretical model and stylistics are used. He brings this section of the volume back to its beginning by opining stylistics as a concern with the description of the use of language in literary works. The analysis he conducts sheds a new light, than hitherto, on the linguistic meanings of metaphor in obviously one of the African texts that have received wide artistic appreciation, linguistic criticisms and scholarly attention as well as the test of time. *** The third section of the book deals with aspects of style in a cross-section of works drawn from the rich African oral literature as well as poetical traditions from West to East to Central and Southern Africa. It opens up with a rewarding study on the stylistic features of Igbo riddles. Riddle, which are part of Igbo folkloristic tradition as Achebe’s Things Fall Apart helps us see, have fascinating poetic features. This is especially evident in the language used in posing riddle questions. Iwu Ikwubuzo argues a survey of pervious studies on Igbo riddles shows that more attention has been paid to their collection and sociological values than to the analysis of style in these riddles. It is against this backdrop that his article undertakes to examine the structure, language and rhythm of Igbo riddles with a view to exposing the stylistic qualities of the unique literary genre common across the continent.

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Ikwubuzo looks at how different figures of speech such as metaphor, personification and related ones that constitute poetic imagery and figures of rhetoric are handled in a collection of Igbo riddles, and what psychological impact they have on the listeners. The article concludes by suggesting strategies that will make Igbo riddles receive more attention in contemporary Igbo literary studies, such as forms of oral Igbo poetry. His study is followed by Mikhail Gromov’s analysis of the stylistic features of modern Swahili poetry. From the rich oral heritage of the Igbo language in West Africa that Ikwubuzo focuses on Gromov leads us to the literary heritage of an equally important language in East Africa, Kiswahili. Stylistic aspects of classical Swahili poetry have been the subject of scholarly research since the first half the last century, and the findings made since that time are still very much applicable to the present state of the two main genres of this poetry: tendi (epic poems) and especially mashairi (lyrical poetry), which still comprise one of the main strata of present-day Swahili verse, represented by a significant following of established and aspiring poets according to Gromov. He observes that the “other side”, or a somehow “opponent” strata of modern Swahili poetry is represented by those poets who as early as 1970s established themselves as the “iconoclasts” of traditional Swahili poetry, adapting to their creativity main stylistic traits of the 20th Century Western poetry, such as “graphic” verse, rhythmic variations, tonic experiments among other. Recent developments in the experimentation with style in the context of modern poetry in Swahili and the context of the old debate is the focus of Gromov’s ruminations. The relationship between the old and the new with respect to Afrophone oral poetical traditions continues in Michael Wainaina’s study of Gikuyu oral poetry. Using the concept of “New wines in old wineskins”, he examines the stylistic provisions of orature’s call and response rhetoric style for contemporary discourses in Gikuyu popular poetry (music). Wainaina argues that although contemporary popular music as a socio-cultural phenomenon in Kenya embodies and expresses the social issues and identities that emerge as products of urbanization and modernization, it should best be seen against the backdrop of orature, the African oral literary heritage for which it is a corollary. His article specifically seeks to explore how the rhetoric and stylistic provisions of orature’s call and response form have been reappropriated and syncretised into contemporary popular song using examples from the Gikuyu language. In doing so, he has discussed the form as a stylistic provision for different categories of discourse in contemporary song namely, didactic discourse, contextualized discourse, extended discourse, problematic discourse, subversive discourse, and dramatic discourse. His

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article demonstrates that while operating in and committed to contemporary situations and imperatives, popular music is stylistically tethered to a recognizable body of artistic resources from traditional orature which serves as its inspiration and guide. The focus on the new forms of oral poetry or contemporary music continues in the article by Obiero Ogone and James Obiero that looks at the artwork of another major Kenyan language, Dholuo. The two critics commence with an observation that a large proportion of traditional music sang by and for women in traditional African societies tended to be less confrontational on the matter of how women were treated in the communities. This was probably because in most African communities, women were indeed denied their dignity. But change is afoot in recent times argue the two scholars as they read the narrative style and psycho-stylistics of Agnes Mbuta’s recent pop hit, Dhiang’ Othuwowa gi Chuo (The Cow has Instigated Conflict between Men and Us). Mbuta in this exemplary piece of the Dholuo oral genre of Dudu, a form of music for women, seems to have taken a radically different approach in singing about an issue as core as marriage and bride price (traditionally paid in terms of heads of cattle) in her society. On the surface, her song is about how trapped some women may be in dysfunctional marriages, because of the tie of bride price; yet beneath this banality is a complex message of activism, protest, as well as symbolism that makes her songs very popular as well as a contemporary vehicle for examining the status of women in much the same way as has been witnessed in feminist struggles in academia and other agency contexts. The article adds a psychoanalytic perspective to the stylistic appreciation of Mbuta’s hit song with the hope of exposing how language can be used to bring people and institutions to tolerate issued over which people may hold very divergent opinions in a changing society. From East Africa our perspectives shift to Southern Africa, Namibia specifically among the rich oral heritage of the Herero. Anette Hoffmann offers us a discussion on the chronotopes of this important African postcolony by looking at the synchronicity and the significance of space in Otjiherero praise poetry (omitandu, singular: omotandu, plural). Working with a notion of theorizing through a specific genre, her article moves on to suggest that if praise poetry inhabits a certain sphere of speaking, a genre, and creates this sphere as a frame of expectation as well as intensified exegetic activity, the same can be identified as a space of theorizing. Hoffmann, secondly, proceeds to think through genre, meaning that she does not merely seek to understand praise poetry as a genre but rather explores how the genre shapes ways of accumulating knowledge and enables specific

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ways of processing experience as well as making sense of the world. She uses close reading of sample texts and the exegetic spaces they create to look at the chronotopes created within omitandu. The literatures of Namibia remain an understudied corpus within the context of African literary studies and the insights by Hoffmann should serve as a stimulus for researchers and critics to shift their lenses to the fiction and written poetry of the country as well as other forms of its various oral literature traditions. The section closes with a return to examination of written poetry commenced by Gromov above but with focus now on Central Africa, Malawi to be specific. Bright Molande shows us how Steve Chimombo’s writing is a literary prism from which we can begin to pick out threads and interrogate nuances of Malawian writing that is healing from the traumas of postcolonial political repression. He argues that the poet’s style reveals how repressing writing makes it become increasingly conscious of the boundaries of subversion, its own space and role in society. To do so, Chimombo has had to be metapoetic argues the critic in his article. The poet has had to make creative writing speak about itself from a critical stance of an unsettling moment. Chimombo was a subversive poet in Malawi under Kamuzu Banda. The article establishes two related stylistic tendencies that attest to this claim. It concludes with the announcement of the means by which Chimombo became a master of the art of saying nothing or unspeaking as means of political subversion. *** The last section of the book gives us insights into trends and patterns at the intersection between literary style and thematics in contemporary African drama and theatre. Examples are drawn from Central, East and West Africa and tackle the dramaturgy of some of the important African dramatists of recent years. The first article in the section offers a feminist reading of Cameroonian playwright Bole Butake’s play, The Rape of Michelle (1984). Using Deborah Cameron’s theoretical framing of language as a gendered act, Naomi Nkealah critiques Butake’s style in the play by looking at how style transmits assumed perceptions of women identities. Her essential argument is that stylistic features such as narrative tone, structure, plot and characterization, as well as the play’s deployment of metaphors and symbols, underpin a sexist, anti-feminist ideology that calls into question the playwright’s conceptualization of masculinities and femininities. The concern with gendered style in African drama continues in the next article by Chris Wasike who seeks to unpack the extent to which the Ugandan playwright

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John Ruganda’s three plays The Burdens (1972), Black Mamba (1973) and The Floods (1980) are part of the feminization of the Ugandan nation of the 1970s and early 1980s in which political decline is captured through the iconography of a ‘troubled motherland’. Drawing from the critiques of Mother Africa figuration in post-independence African literature, Wasike demonstrates how Ruganda’s use of this trope in his play is in fact a rereading of the Ugandan nation, not just as a ‘troubled mother’ but a resilient and subversive one who rides through all the tumult and turbulence with enviable stoicism. He hopes to illustrate how Ruganda attempts to frame his sometimes stereotypical female characters as subversive symbols of femininity, who consciously or otherwise, seek to affirm and dismantle the seemingly contradictory Mother Africa trope even as they symbolize the Ugandan nation. To do so Wasike trains his focus on the playwright’s construction and deployment of female characters and symbolism. The third article by Victor Yankah examines language and meaning in the drama of Efo Kodjo Mawugbe who is easily one of Ghana’s most prolific yet unsung contemporary playwright. Out of more than ten plays he has written, only one of them, In the Chest of a Woman (2008), has been published. Yankah observes that a second play A. P. T. S (Acquired Prison Traumatic Syndrome) which Mawugbe reworked as a radio play with the title Prison Graduates won the BBC African Playwrighting contest in 2009. The critic argues Mawugbe’s plays manifest much stylistic variety. Whilst in some of them the language exhibits a style that reflects what is often viewed as an African idiom, in its employment of proverbs and a ponderous sublimity others exhibit a style that approaches the staccato rhythm of absurdist drama. His article, therefore, is a consideration of the use of language in the two plays above that exemplify these aspects of Mawugbe’s style. The final article of the section and the volume is by Ibrahim Olaosun. It examines the texts of incantation in the confrontational scene of Ola Rotimi’s evergreen play, The Gods Are Not to Blame (1971) and analyses them using a discoursestylistics approach. This approach, according to Olaosun, it’s a unity of the procedures used in linguistic stylistics and grammatically oriented discourse analysis. Using this approach on the data from the play, the critic reveals that incantations have power not only because their words build some spiritual connections or derive from mythical sources but also, and most importantly, because they are expressions that point to reality, model real life arguments and logic. He reveals further that the dexterity displayed in the structuring of the grammatical elements of the discourse, which makes it fulfill the qualities of well-organized texts also endows the discourse with extra semantic and pragmatic forces. His article concludes, on the whole, that incantatory

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discourse is a veritable data for elucidating a grammatically oriented branch of discourse stylistics thus affirming some of the concerns raised in the methodological articles at the head of the volume. This new book brings together a total of nineteen articles by academics from different parts of the continent and overseas who responded with stout expressions of interest to a call for papers sent out via H-Net, an interdisciplinary online discussion forum for scholars in the humanities and the social sciences. It is regrettable that such interest from the North Africa or scholars working on North African literatures did not reach us. This explains the absence of perspectives on this rich regional heritage that completes the image of the continent. However, and as has already been pointed out by Chin Ce in his foreword, the publication of the perspectives in this volume endeavor not only to disseminate the current trends and issues at the intersection between African literary stylistics, narratology and thematics but also to serve as an open-ended reference for further discussions and research.

References Ashcroft, B. Tiffin, H. Griffith, G. eds. (2005) The Postcolonial Reader. London / New York: Routledge. Epstein, E. L. and Kole, R. eds. (1998) The Language of African Literature. Trenton, N. J: Africa World Press. Gymnich, R. M. (2007) Metasprachliche Reflexionen und sprachliche Gestaltungsmittel im englischsprachigen postkolonialen und transkulturellen Roman. Trier: WVT. Loomba, A. et.al. eds. (2005) Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. Durham: Duke University Press. Talib, I. S. (2002) The Language of Postcolonial Literatures. New York / London: Routledge.

Part I General Perspectives

Daria Tunca

Towards a Stylistic Model for Analysing Anglophone African Literatures: Preliminary Epistemological Considerations and a Case Study Introduction Debates around the question of language in African literatures have been ubiquitous ever since the Nigerian critic Obiajunwa Wali famously declared, in a 1963 article published in the journal Transition, that African authors writing in European languages “[we]re merely pursuing a dead end, which c[ould] only lead to sterility, uncreativity, and frustration” (1997/1963: 333). Wali’s statement had a two-pronged effect: on the one hand, his declaration unsurprisingly sparked a chain reaction about the issue of language choice in African writing, 1 a question that has to this day remained at the centre of heated arguments; on the other hand, his provocative assertion brought to the fore considerations about the formal specificities of African literatures in European languages. In the sphere of literary criticism, the latter development translated into an increasing interest in linguistically-oriented studies of Anglophone African works, as many commentators attempted to identify the stylistic qualities of novels, poems, and plays written in the former colonial language. However, despite this upsurge in scholarship, no clearly defined method enabling one to perform a comprehensive linguistic examination of African literatures in English has emerged to date. The reasons behind this paradox will be explored in the first part of this essay. I shall attempt to demonstrate that the causes of the critics’ inability to design an extensive model for stylistic analysis are chiefly epistemological. Put differently, I would like to suggest that the aforementioned methodological limitations originate in scholars’ disagreement, or even indecisiveness, over the source and methods of knowledge that should be used to carry out linguistic analyses of African literatures in English. Part of my argument is that these epistemological hurdles have presented themselves on at least two levels: that of the origin of the object of investigation, and that 1

The first of these responses were also published in Transition, as rejoinders to Wali’s piece – See e.g. the texts by Ezekiel (Es’kia) Mphahlele (1997/1963), Wole Soyinka (1997/1963) and Gerald Moore (1997/1963) in issue 11. The entire exchange of opinions that appeared in the journal was later republished in issue 75/76.

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of the discipline of stylistics itself. 2 While the difficulties encountered on these two planes have been chronologically coterminous, they will be considered separately here – not only for reasons of clarity, but also because these obstacles have been encountered in two distinct movements of linguistic research into African literatures: one focusing on the culturallyspecific aspects of texts, and the other attempting a less context-dependent examination of literary pieces. These two parallel movements have hardly interacted over the years, even though, I shall contend, a thorough understanding of the linguistic makeup of Anglophone African literatures would demand that these lines of research be confronted, and any possible synergies between them actively promoted. This type of conceptual development can evidently not be achieved in a single essay; yet, I shall, however modestly, attempt to lay the basis for a reflection on such an integrative model. I shall do this with particular reference to Nigerian fiction, and more specifically by proposing a brief examination of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Purple Hibiscus (2003). Ultimately, I hope to show that only the combined understanding of culturally-specific and context-independent items can lead to a detailed interpretation of Adichie’s book based on its linguistic features. Before doing this, I propose to provide an outline of the different factors that have shaped – or hindered the development of – linguistic analyses of Anglophone African literatures over the years. Indeed, grasping the historical ramifications of what is often referred to as the “language debate” requires that the stakes and complexities of the initial controversy be fully understood.

Historical background: the language debate and linguistic studies of African literatures Only the forgetful reader will need to be reminded that among the most notable responses to Wali’s controversial statement were those formulated by the critic’s compatriot, the writer Chinua Achebe, and, two decades later, by the Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Achebe, disagreeing with Wali, argued that English, the former colonial language in Nigeria, should not be rejected on the sole basis of its being “part of a package deal which included many other items of doubtful value and the positive atrocity of racial arrogance and prejudice” (1975/1965: 58). In an often quoted passage, 2

In this article, stylistics will be understood in the broad sense of “method of interpretation in which primary of place is assigned to language” (Simpson 2004: 2).

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Achebe further expressed the conviction that, even though his mother tongue was Igbo, he felt that “a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings” would “be able to carry the weight of [his] African experience” (1975/1965: 62). Ngugi, on the other hand, followed in Wali’s footsteps by identifying the former colonial languages as “means of spiritual subjugation” in Africa (1986: 9), and unambiguously stating that Europhone writing “reinforce[d] the spirit of neo-colonialism that [had] succeeded independence” (1986: 26). Both Achebe and Ngugi went beyond these theoretical statements, and endeavoured to put their convictions into practice: Achebe developed a writing style which, although grammatically aligned with standard English, mirrored the semantics of Igbo by using idioms and proverbs translated from the novelist’s mother tongue, while Ngugi abandoned the use of the language that he considered a tool of neo-colonial oppression in his creative work, and chose to write novels and plays in his native Gikuyu – while, however, continuing to write essays and give lectures in English. Achebe’s and Ngugi’s opinions, which embody the diverging responses to Wali’s article, are part of a series of reflections which, since the 1960s, have endeavoured to evaluate the appropriateness of using European languages in African literatures. These considerations have ranged from theoretical assessments of the writers’ and critics’ positions – appraisals that have mostly relied on political and cultural arguments – to close analyses of literary pieces. Many of the latter studies have been fundamentally shaped by the debate sparked off by Wali. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, the sheer number of these analyses can partly be put down to the interest in language provoked by the Transition controversy; even more importantly perhaps, the fact that most of these linguistic studies set out to examine the specifically “African” elements present in literary pieces can be understood as an implicit denial of Wali’s claim that Europhone African literatures – and their critics – mindlessly enforced standards dictated by Western academia (Wali 1997/1963: 332). Within the body of research focusing on the culturally-specific items found in African writings, a further distinction needs to be drawn between two types of analyses. Some studies, undertaken by literary scholars, rather successfully assessed the narrative significance of tropes such as proverbs or folktales, but without providing in-depth linguistic examinations of these elements (e.g. Griffiths 1971; Obiechina 1993). Other investigations, more accomplished on the technical level, focused on the influences of local African languages on the prose or verse of writers from the Sub-Saharan part of the continent. Because the thorough analysis of specific semantic and

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syntactic features required the mastering of sophisticated linguistic tools, these enquiries were mostly conducted by linguists (e.g. Bamiro 2006; Igboanusi 2001). No doubt as a consequence of their authors’ area of expertise, these works tended to privilege the minute technical description of selected passages from novels over their narrative interpretation, leaving some literary critics with the feeling that the formal analysis of African literatures did not provide a decisive contribution to the aesthetic understanding of these texts. More disturbingly perhaps, some of these linguistic examinations tended to consider literary extracts as they would any other real-life sample, thereby bestowing on them an aura of authenticity that ignored the crucial input of writers’ creativity. 3 In some cases, representatives of this approach only narrowly avoided succumbing to the linguistic equivalent of what Henry Louis Gates has called the “anthropology fallacy” (1984: 5), which consists in ignoring the aesthetic value of literary texts and considering them as sociological documentaries or anthropological treatises. However, among the studies that have concentrated on the culturallyspecific features of literary texts, one work has managed to perform rigorous linguistic analyses without ever losing sight of how a text’s formal traits could bear relevance to its poetic strategies. The book in question, Chantal Zabus’ The African Palimpsest: Indigenization of Language in the West African Europhone Novel (1991), was arguably groundbreaking at the time of its first publication, and has remained highly relevant since. 4 The study’s long-lasting pertinence can be ascribed to its impressive scope – it tackles a range of linguistic characteristics of West African literatures in both French and English – but also to its methodological incisiveness. To give but one example, Zabus did not take at face-value that the passages in pidgin in Anglophone Nigerian novels perfectly mirrored the language as it was spoken in reality, and she proceeded to analyse such extracts in detail. She convincingly claimed that most of the literary occurrences of the linguistic code only qualified as “pseudo-pidgin,” since many of these renderings displayed numerous influences of English not typically associated with “reallife” pidgin. Importantly, Zabus went beyond these strictly formal 3

4

I do not mean to suggest that that theories usually applied to real-life language cannot be used when examining literary samples, but rather that a prescriptive use of this type of critical framework may not be entirely appropriate in such situations. Moreover, I find it slightly problematic that literary samples should be used to conduct research into nonliterary linguistic topics such as the semantics of Nigerian English. This contemporary relevance seems to be evidenced by the publication of a second enlarged edition of the book in 2007.

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conclusions and, rather than dismiss the fabricated language on essentialist grounds, she attempted to account for its presence and examine its functions within Nigerian fiction. Zabus covered so much methodological ground that few of those doing linguistic-oriented research in her wake succeeded in improving on her findings. Admittedly, some scholars writing during the 1990s managed to gain insight into specific literary texts (see for instance some of the essays contained in Epstein and Kole’s collection The Language of African Literature, 1998). However, even as the literary value of cross-cultural Europhone African literatures had been convincingly established – and thereby the “dead end” scenario predicted by Wali once and for all disproved – critics were, ironically enough, reaching another dead end. Indeed, research into the culturally-specific features of African writing focussed – almost by definition – on language as a cultural (or, in some cases, social) signifier in given contexts, thus completely disregarding linguistic traits that the literatures might have in common with traditions from other continents. As African literary texts began to be consistently considered in terms of their linguistic “Otherness,” language-oriented enquiries ran the risk of losing their critical potency. The scant attention given to the literatures’ possibly universal qualities can partly be explained by the pervasive influence of the language debate. Nevertheless, one might also suggest – perhaps slightly provocatively – that it also finds its origin in another series of incidents that defined the critical climate of the last three or four decades of the twentieth century. Indeed, while Wali had indicted both Europhone African writers “and their Western midwives” (1997/1963: 333), others had denounced some Western critics’ inclination to make sweeping statements about African literatures in the name of universality. There was undoubtedly some validity to this complaint, for certain European and American commentators alleged to uncover “‘universal truths’” which, in Kadiatu Kanneh’s felicitous words, “act[ed] merely as euphemisms for European [or, more broadly, Western] truths” (1997: 81). This tendency was forcefully denounced in the 1970s by the Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah, who even gave it a name, “larsony,” after the literary critic Charles Larson who, in his eyes, was guilty of peremptorily perpetuating cliché-ridden representations of Africa. The term coined by Armah was later used by Chinweizu, Jemie and Madubuike in their Towards the Decolonization of African Literature (1983), in which they condemned Larson’s and others’ wholesale universalism, and explicitly pleaded in favour of a system of aesthetic evaluation based on “authentic” African paradigms.

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Chinweizu et al.’s Afrocentrist reasoning was not unanimously approved. It co-existed with other popular positions in the area of Black and African studies, such as that of Henry Louis Gates, who emphasized the “complexity” of Europhone Black and African texts, a result of their “double heritage” (1984: 4). In the field of traditional literary criticism, many scholars implicitly sided with Gates, in that they continued to analyse African literatures using a mixture of theories originally arising out of Western contexts (the poststructuralist works of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida come to mind) and other models that had been more specifically developed to address the distinctness of postcolonial African situations. In the contentionprone domain of linguistic studies of African literatures, on the other hand, many Europeans and Americans seemed intent on not becoming the next Charles Larson. Thus, while the warnings by Armah and Chinweizu et al. had the positive effect of urging academics to carry out contextualized stylistic research into African literatures, it may also have been one of the factors that discouraged many from undertaking linguistic examinations based on Western theoretical models. As a result, the linguistic criticism of African literatures remained largely – though not totally – impervious to methods of systemic-functional, cognitive and transformative-generative inspiration privileged by Western stylisticians over the same decades. Nevertheless, a few scholars did make bold attempts to apply Western stylistic models to African objects of inquiry. 5 It might not be coincidental, though this is only a conjecture, that most of these studies were conducted by African scholars – who, one may assume, ran a lower risk of being labelled paternalistic in applying “white” models to works written by black authors. 6 Crucially, most of these experimental ventures had a limited impact on the field of African studies. This can be explained by most of the analyses’ modest circulation, but also by some of their weaknesses – flaws which had been inherited from the Western stylistic tradition. Indeed, if the field of African literary criticism had had to contend with its practitioners’ disagreement over criteria of aesthetic evaluation, the domain of stylistics had long hosted its own epistemological battles too. In the field of Western stylistics (a domain that concentrated on the study of European and American texts), the discordance among experts did not 5

6

A few examples include Adejare, 1992, and Akekue, 1992 (both inspired by systemic functional grammar), Adegbija, 1998 (speech-act theory), Essien, 2000 (discourse analysis) and Winters, 1981 (transformative-generative grammar and quantitative stylistics). Needless to say, I do not claim to have had access to the entire body of literature in which Western linguistic models are used to analyse African works; this statement is merely based on observation.

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concern the cultural origin of the analytical models to be applied, but the very relevance of certain methodological choices. The most notable criticism of the discipline came from Stanley E. Fish who, in a well-known article somewhat humorously entitled “What Is Stylistics and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things about It?” (1996/1980), condemned what he perceived as the circularity and/or arbitrariness of stylistic methods, be they computerbased corpus analyses, experiments performed by transformative-generative grammarians or interpretations reached through systemic-functional frameworks. Whether or not one agrees with the tone of Fish’s reproachful demonstrations of inefficiency, one must acknowledge that he put his finger on one of the problems at the very core of the discipline, namely that far too many of its representatives either contented themselves with providing descriptive accounts of their objects of study 7 or took an interpretative leap but masked their shaky landing with a sophisticated technical apparatus (Fish 1996/1980: 96). In the field of Anglophone African literatures, the small group of critics who chose the route of Western stylistic methods was by far dominated by scholars with a leaning towards descriptiveness. Understandably, then, when Emmanuel Ngara published his Marxist-oriented Stylistic Criticism and the African Novel in 1982, he attempted to distance himself from those who listed the linguistic features of literary works but did little else. To this effect, he introduced a distinction between the practitioners of “stylistics” and those of “stylistic criticism”: the stylistician … uses the principles of general linguistics to single out the distinctive features of a variety of [sic] the idiosyncracies of an author. He uses the principles of general linguistics to identity the features of language which are restricted to particular social contexts, and to account for the reasons why such features are used and when and where they are used. … The stylistic critic … certainly must use the analytic tools of the linguist and stylistician …. But more than that he must relate his analysis of linguistic features to considerations of content value and aesthetic quality in art. (1982: 11-12)

7

Significantly, this is the very same flaw as that which can be identified in certain studies of culturally-specific linguistic aspects of African literatures. This suggests that the weakness is, unsurprisingly, one linked to stylistic methodology and not dependent on the object of research.

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The contrast proposed by Ngara is helpful (if somewhat prescriptive), 8 but it did not gain wide currency. Importantly, however, the distinction that he makes here embodies his willingness to develop a rigorous critical framework for the linguistic study of African writing, a challenge to which he attempts to respond in the stimulating introduction to his study. Aware of the complex historical heritage of African literatures, Ngara advises that “the African critic should search for African solutions in criticism, or shouldsearch for those solutions which, though not specifically African, will do justice to African works of art” (1982: 6). 9 As is made clear in the book, Ngara is above all claiming his allegiance to Marxism when writing these lines, but he also argues in favour of using terminology developed in systemic-functional models, for example. Unfortunately, once put into practice, Ngara’s ideas fall short of fulfilling their promise. Although the author skilfully avoids the pitfalls of descriptivism and arbitrariness, his study does not offer the expected methodological breakthrough. His analyses, while often insightful, rest on techniques more akin to close reading than modern stylistic analysis. Yet, the importance of Ngara’s contribution to the field of “African stylistics” should not be underestimated. First of all, even though the language-related examinations that he proposes do not provide the technical basis for a literary-linguistic model, such close readings offer an invaluable prelude to potentially more thorough stylistic analyses. In the case study that will shortly follow, I shall in a somewhat similar vein be arguing that sociolinguistic theory, while not necessarily throwing light on components of style in the narrow sense of the term, can be an effective tool in exploring the worldviews of characters. The results thereby obtained can, in turn, act as helpful stepping stones to more precise investigations into semantic and syntactic features. Secondly, the value of Ngara’s attempt can only be fully appreciated when resituating his study in its historical context. One should indeed 8

9

This reservation is motivated by the presence of the modal auxiliary “must,” used twice in this short passage and repeatedly featured throughout Ngara’s writings (see also his Ideology and Form in African Poetry, 1990). Though I have not studied this in detail and have not been able to locate specific critical sources, I would hazard that such a recurrence might be a characteristic trait of what could be called Marxist writing styles. Even if the phrase “the African critic” refers to “the critic from Africa” in this particular context, Ngara does not advocate that the study of African literatures should be the prerogative of Africans alone. As he writes a few paragraphs later, “If a European critic knows Africa well, is honest and unbiased, and is a competent critic using sound critical standards relevant to African art, there is no reason why his pronouncements on African literature should not be as valid as those of informed African critics” (1982: 8).

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remember that, at the time the author was publishing his book, some of the most influential works in linguistics and stylistics had only just been released – Geoffrey Leech and Mick Short’s Style in Fiction (2007/1981) and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By (1980) had come out respectively one and two years prior to Ngara’s study and, understandably, they do not feature in his bibliography. Other major works, such as Roger Fowler’s Linguistic Criticism (1996/1986), were still several years away. Despite its shortcomings, then, Stylistic Criticism and the African Novel remains a landmark in the stylistics of African literatures. Not only did the author emphasize the centrality of linking the linguistic features of a literary work to its content – as indicated in the subtitle of the book, A Study of the Language, Art and Content of African Fiction – but he also insisted on the importance of creating of a model that might help one to examine African literatures from different formal angles, using critical perspectives that had emerged on the African continent and elsewhere. It may be regretted that Ngara’s pioneering efforts were not emulated – in the words of Charles E. Nnolim, “Ngara […] dangled an apple, but there were no takers” (2000: 14). Until now, that is.

Towards a Stylistic Model for Analysing Anglophone African Literatures? Methodological Clarifications and a Case Study Since Emmanuel Ngara published his Stylistic Criticism and the African Novel, much has happened in the field of Western linguistics and stylistics: the application of systemic-functional models to (mostly non-literary) texts has been fine-tuned by critical discourse analysts; George Lakoff has expanded his theory of conventional metaphor to include creative avatars of the trope (see his work in collaboration with Mark Turner, 1989); and cognitive stylistics, though still an emerging field, has been moving in promising directions during the past few years (e.g. Semino and Culpeper 2002; Stockwell 2002). Added to these developments, significant progress has been made in culturally-specific linguistic examinations of African literatures (see Zabus 2007/1991, mentioned above), as well as in Africaoriented sociolinguistics, creolistics and the study of varieties of English. In short, today’s stylisticians – or stylistic critics, to echo Ngara – have the necessary critical basis at their disposal to design a model to analyse Anglophone African literatures. But three challenges remain: first, that of adapting some of the abovementioned Western approaches to African

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writing; second, that of using all theories in a complementary way so as to lead to novel literary interpretations; and third, that of going even beyond the first two steps and integrating separate theories into a single analytical paradigm. The third point, which constitutes by far the most exacting task, is too complex to be resolved here, but possible lines of research will be evoked in the conclusion to this essay. The first two undertakings, by contrast, will be tentatively tackled in what follows in the hope of offering a preliminary demonstration of how these ideas might be put into practice. Before proceeding to do this, however, a final clarification is needed regarding my methodological approach. Like linguist Katie Wales, I consider the ultimate aim of the stylistic enterprise to be the “ground[ing of] intuitions or hypotheses in a rigorous, methodical, and explicit textual basis” (Wales 2006: 213). If the effort to “ground intuitions” is one of the main goals of stylistic analysis, this does not mean, at least in my view, that the linguistic study of fiction is more objective than conventional literary criticism. What might at first seem as a disavowal of the approach I intend to adopt is in fact a simple recognition that, on the one hand, the aforementioned “intuitions” are as important as the “grounding” that follows them and that, on the other, no single science is founded on “pure” objectivity. 10 The simple fact of choosing a novel to examine and of establishing a theoretical framework to analyse the said text can be considered a subjective – albeit not necessarily uninformed – act. Even if I acknowledged above that Fish had identified some of the problems regularly encountered in stylistic studies of literature, namely their circularity or arbitrariness, I believe that he is mistaken in declaring that “description performed at the direction of a preformulated literary hunch” entails that one “pre-decides [meaning] arbitrarily” (Fish 1996/1980: 111). Being “guided by [a] hunch”, as Roger Fowler puts it (1996/1986: 9), 11 does not mean that one eventually demonstrates what one had in mind at the onset of the procedure. In this regard, Spitzer’s “philological circle” provides an interesting conceptualization of the process of stylistic analysis. The notion is here explained by Leech and Short:

10

11

As Lakoff puts it, “there is no such thing as a neutral way to understand things” (1987: 300). Objectivity, in the sense defined by Lakoff, is not the “God’s eye point of view” of the objectivists, but it rather resides in the ability to recognize that one has a specific point of view, to understand its nature, and to assess a situation from different perspectives (1987: 301). Wales (2006: 13) and Leech and Short (2007/1981: 3) speak of “intuitions”.

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Spitzer argued that the task of linguistic-literary explanation proceeded by the movement to and fro from linguistic details to the literary ‘centre’ of a work or a writer’s art. There is a cyclic motion whereby linguistic observation stimulates or modifies literary insight, and whereby literary insight in its turn stimulates further linguistic observation. This motion is something like the cycle of theory formulation and theory testing which underlies scientific method. (2007/1981: 12)

The movement described here, although circular, is very different from the circularity observed by Fish. One of the most important ideas put forward by Spitzer is that literary assessments and foci of linguistic examinations evolve, in dialectical fashion, as the critic proceeds. Equally important is the fact that the modifications made to the initial hypotheses are based on observation. In other words, the development of the process of interpretation rests on motivation, understood here in the sense of intellectual justification. It is with the concept of motivated choice – rather than that of pure objectivity – that I shall try to operate in the following analysis. This approach naturally involves the use of certain theories rather than others, and the selection of particular passages from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, a novel which I shall first of all briefly summarize. Purple Hibiscus, published in 2003, is told through the eyes of an adolescent narrator, Kambili Achike, and offers a sensitive portrayal of an Igbo family living in the South-Eastern region of Nigeria in the late twentieth century. Kambili’s father, Eugene, is a respected businessman and a human rights champion, but also an extremist Catholic who regularly beats his wife Beatrice and his children, Kambili and her brother Jaja, in the name of religious propriety. Significantly, he also refuses to have any contact with his own father, a follower of traditional Igbo religion, and forbids his children to spend more than a few minutes per year with the old man. In the course of the story, Kambili and Jaja are allowed to stay with Eugene’s more liberal sister Ifeoma and her three children, to all of whom they gradually become closer. Thanks to their aunt, the Achike children also develop a relationship with their grandfather, the very man Eugene despises. In contact with these moderate Catholic family members, Kambili and Jaja, who had been infused with Eugene’s fanatical precepts since childhood, learn to question their father’s uncompromising views, each in their own way. This short summary suffices to establish that Purple Hibiscus explores themes such as traditional and Christian religion, cultural and intergenerational conflicts. While these subject matters that have often been developed in African literatures – starting with the writings of Adichie’s favourite author, her illustrious compatriot Chinua Achebe – the originality of the young writer’s novel lies in its subtle depiction of its protagonists’

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psychological evolution. Crucially, a thorough understanding of both the socio-cultural and emotional factors contributing to the delineation of the characters is needed to reach an interpretation that is reflective of the book’s manifold stylistic strategies. Put differently, any linguistic analysis aiming at a global understanding of the narrative needs to consider these two different planes, which require the use of different methods of analysis. In what follows, I shall briefly attempt to put this idea into practice, and demonstrate how two theories – one of sociolinguistic inspiration, the other with a systemic-functional basis – can help to uncover some of the mechanics of character interaction and evolution in the book. Considering the contemporary African setting of the story and the social status of the characters, it should come as no surprise to the initiated reader that codeswitching – the alternate use of two or more languages within a conversation or even within a single utterance – features as a major technique in Purple Hibiscus. Many of the characters indeed switch between English and Igbo, a change that not only reflects the dynamics of particular conversations, but also more broadly mirrors the characters’ attitudes to certain social conventions. This feature may not always have a substantial impact on the stylistic level for, as will be illustrated in a moment, the author may choose to render words uttered in Igbo fully in English, sometimes with a mention of the language in which the character is speaking. Nevertheless, understanding the motivations behind the protagonists’ choice of language offers revealing insight into their personalities; in this sense, this languagerelated element occupies a central position in the author’s strategy of characterization and deserves close attention in a linguistic analysis of the novel. 12 This assertion should become clearer when examining the following extract, in which Kambili, Jaja, Ifeoma and her children, Amaka, Obiora and Chima, are on their way to a traditional festival in Abagana. They are joined by the grandfather, referred to as Papa-Nnukwu:

12

The scope and length of the present article being limited, my discussion will merely assess the importance of the characters’ choice of language within the narrative. This means that two important author-related areas of investigation will not be addressed here: on the one hand, I shall not attempt to shed light on the reasons behind (and the impact of) the writer’s technical choices in her rendering of Igbo and English (a brief overview of the linguistic techniques used by Adichie to render the presence of the two languages is provided in Tunca 2008: 155-158); on the other hand, I shall not pursue the line of enquiry pertaining to how the author’s stylistic choices within standard English may contribute to the creation of a distinctive type of “African narration”. Both aspects, however, would deserve careful attention.

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“Papa-Nnukwu, good afternoon, sir,” Jaja and I greeted. “Kambili, Jaja. I see you again before you go back to the city? Ehye, it is a sign that I am going soon to meet the ancestors.” “Nna anyi, are you not tired of predicting your death?” Aunty Ifeoma said, starting the engine. “Let us hear something new!” She called him nna anyi, our father. I wondered if Papa used to call him that and what Papa would call him now if they spoke to each other. “He likes to talk about dying soon,” Amaka said, in amused English. “He thinks that will get us to do things for him,” [sic] “Dying soon indeed. He’ll be here when we are as old as he is now,” Obiora said, in equally amused English. “What are those children saying, gbo, Ifeoma?” Papa-Nnukwu asked. “Are they conspiring to share my gold and many lands? Will they not wait for me to go first?” “If you had gold and lands, we would have killed you ourselves years ago,” Aunty Ifeoma said. (2003: 82)

In this passage, Amaka and Obiora, Kambili and Jaja’s cousins, both playfully switch to English so that their grandfather will not understand the remarks jokingly made at his expense. English is repeatedly spoken by Ifeoma and her children in comparable circumstances, because the sole language mastered by the elderly man is a variety of Igbo that has “none of the anglicized inflections” (2003: 64) that the younger speakers have acquired in their speech. Unlike many characters in contemporary African fiction, the children do not seem to switch to English to exploit what Carol Myers-Scotton has called the “indexical” qualities of English in Sub-Saharan countries, i.e. the attributes associated with English in certain situations, 13 but their mastery of the former colonial language is nevertheless an obvious result of their exposure to a Western form of education. The benign domestic episodes in which Papa-Nnukwu is disorientated by his interlocutors’ switch to English shows how monolingualism renders speakers of Igbo as vulnerable

13

English, when used in African contexts, is often regarded as a mark of formality or as signalling the speaker’s high educational level and/or socio-economic status (Myers Scotton 1993: 86). The idea of being “marked” is central in Myers-Scotton’s model, which “proposes that speakers have a sense of markedness regarding available linguistic codes for any interaction, but choose their codes based on the persona and/or relation with others which they wish to have in place. This markedness has a normative basis within the community, and speakers also know the consequences of making marked or unexpected choices. Because the unmarked choice is ‘safer’ (i.e. it conveys no surprises because it indexes an expected interpersonal relationship), speakers generally make this choice. But not always. Speakers assess the potential costs and rewards of all alternative choices, and make their decisions, typically unconsciously” (1993: 75).

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as the old man himself: those who do not speak English in Nigeria must rely on the goodwill of others to remain in charge of their own fate. 14 Differences in language come to symbolize cultural and intergenerational discrepancies, as illustrated by the fragile communication between Kambili and her grandfather. During their first meeting in the book, Kambili reports that “sometimes [she] understood him a moment or two after he spoke because his dialect was ancient” (2003: 64). The cultural gulf between PapaNnukwu and the girl is aptly represented by the time-lag between the moment he speaks and the moment she understands him. Conversely, Kambili’s cousin Amaka attempts to bridge this gap by making consistent efforts to be understood by Papa-Nnukwu. She “hardly pepper[s] her speech with English words” when she addresses him, as the other protagonists “inadvertently d[o]” (2003: 172). Acting consistently with her taste for “culturally conscious” music (2003: 118), she assumes the role of interpreter between traditional society and the younger Christian generations. She also metaphorically fulfils a function as mediator by giving her drawing of PapaNnukwu to Kambili – a picture which, significantly, remains unfinished due to his death, as if the spirit of traditionalism could never be fully captured by those who do not partake of it. The narrative contains other indicators of the characters’ approaches to culture. The use of the Igbo and English languages during religious rituals deserves to be mentioned among these revealing elements. Eugene, like the conservative Father Benedict, disapproves of “native songs” (2003: 4) being chanted during Mass. In Ifeoma’s home, on the other hand, prayers are interspersed with vocal pieces in Igbo, as Kambili discovers to her great displeasure during her first stay with her aunt. In a manner that brings to mind the “English-laced Igbo sentences” (2003: 135) of Father Amadi, the liberal young priest with whom Kambili falls in love, Ifeoma and her children alternate between English and Igbo both in casual circumstances and during religious rituals, thereby demonstrating the complementarity of the languages in the articulation of their identities. The family’s use of English and their belief in the Christian god shows that they have adopted a language and a faith assigned to them by foreign influences, but the inclusion of Igbo songs into their prayers indicates that, unlike Eugene, they deem their mother tongue worthy of carrying the message of a religion imported from Europe. In other words, neither Igbo nor English, but codeswitching itself is, to use 14

Extending this interpretation to the political level, one may argue that individuals who do not master English are alienated from the spheres of power in the country. On the possible parallels between the domestic and national spheres in Purple Hibiscus, see e.g. Lopez (2008: 89).

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Myers-Scotton’s term (1993: 114), the “unmarked” linguistic choice for Ifeoma and her children in the context of prayer. This testifies to an acceptance of the different traditions that have shaped their family; at the same time, however, this linguistic syncretism is infused with a sense of dynamism. Indeed, Aunty Ifeoma’s intertwining of European and African traditions seems to evidence a movement towards cross-culturalism, but does not result in a static consensus accepted by all moderate Christians. For instance, Amaka moves beyond her mother’s views to initiate a more vigorous movement of resistance against the former colonizer’s religion when she refuses to choose a confirmation name, a convention established by the first missionaries who “didn’t think Igbo names were good enough” (2003: 272). In refusing to be renamed, Amaka also defies the pragmatism of Father Amadi, who urges her to “forget if it’s right or wrong for now” (2003: 272). Her principled decision seems to stem from a sense of indignation similar to that of the Nigerian poet Niyi Osundare, who deplores that Africa has, ever since its colonization, never been the “name-giver,” but always the “named” (2002: 36). Such statements find echoes all over Africa, and particularly in a country such as Nigeria, whose name is reported to be a Latinate evocation of the Niger River, invented by the fiancée of the colony’s first governor (Griswold 2000: 6). Amaka’s unwillingness to comply with the authoritarian demands of the Catholic Church is both religious and political, as her emphatic refusal to take an “English name” (2003: 241, 271; my emphasis) demonstrates. 15 In addition to her opposition to the reproduction of colonial schemes in Africa, she further advocates a spiritual “Colonization in Reverse” 16 when commenting on Father Amadi’s move to Germany: The white missionaries brought us their god, … [w]hich was the same color as them, worshiped in their language and packaged in the boxes they made. Now that we take their god back to them, shouldn’t we at least repackage it? (2003 : 267)

Amaka’s plea in favour of an Africanized form of Christianity, though made in jest, captures one of the novel’s fundamental preoccupations, namely the status of religion as a commercial artefact. While the young woman 15

16

Amaka’s use of the adjective “English” shows that she clearly rejects the colonial undertones of Christianity, since Biblical confirmation names are not “English” per se. Of those mentioned in the novel, Ruth and Michael are of Hebrew origin, while Victor finds its roots in Latin. It should also be mentioned that Christianity was mostly introduced into Igboland by Irish missionaries, not English ones (Adichie, cited in Braunstein, 2005) – hence the Catholic rather than Anglican affiliation. This famous phrase is the title of a poem by Jamaican Louise Bennett (1986/1966).

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advocates that Africa should appropriate the Christian religion, she is aware that the spiritual cannot be detached from earthly monetary concerns. Her use of the relative pronoun “which” to refer to the Christian god in present-day English, as if he were an item of merchandise “packaged in the boxes they made”, evokes consumption, even consumerism – an association that not only echoes the economic interests behind the religious conversion of Africa by the missionaries, but also reflects the commercialism that has become attached to religious practices across Sub-Saharan regions of the continent. Kambili’s father repeatedly invokes religion to take the moral high ground, but even his brand of Catholicism does not escape commodification. The attitude of Eugene’s priest, Father Benedict, is also symptomatic in this respect: the cleric “seems to measure a man’s dedication to God through the gifts he bestows on the church” (Adeaga 2005). “Repackaging” the Christian faith, as Amaka proposes, is certainly not an activity Eugene engages in. Predictably, his fanatical devotion to the Catholic religion is mirrored in his single-minded reverence for the former colonizer’s tongue: He hardly spoke Igbo, and although Jaja and I spoke it with Mama at home, he did not like us to speak it in public. We had to sound civilized in public, he told us; we had to speak English. (2003: 13)

By associating English with refined westernization and dismissing Igbo as barbaric, Eugene is claiming allegiance to colonial values, but he may also be trying to conceal the brutal side of his personality from the public eye. Indeed, his use of Igbo is almost systematically associated with outbursts of anger. As Kambili reports, Eugene’s switch to the language is a “bad sign” (2003: 13). If Igbo may be categorized as Eugene’s language of emotion, it is not because, in line with fallacious negritudist views, it is a code spoken by black Africans, but because it is the character’s mother tongue – the language individuals tend to fall back on in emotional situations. Eugene’s attempt to suppress his mother tongue is symptomatic of the domination he wants to exert over the African facet of his identity. This obsessive need for control translates into a form of linguistic mimicry: 17 17

Eugene’s imitation of the former colonizer is devoid of the subversive potential evoked by Homi Bhabha in his essay “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” in which the author states that colonial mimicry “is at once resemblance and menace” (1994: 86). As I have argued in another context, the practice of imitation in which some of Adichie’s characters engage seems to be symptomatic of a “thoughtless yearning for acceptance” by those whose culture and status these protagonists consider desirable (Tunca, forthcoming).

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Papa changed his accent when he spoke, sounding British, just as he did when he spoke to Father Benedict. He was gracious, in the eager-to-please way that he always assumed with the religious, especially with the white religious. (2003: 46)

According to sociolinguistic speech accommodation theory, when “speakers desire their listeners’ social approval”, they “use modification of their speech towards the listeners’ code as a tactic to get this approval” (Myers-Scotton 1993: 66). Eugene acts in accordance with this prediction. Nevertheless, he is unable to retain his British inflections at all times: he sometimes inadvertently “skip[s] a few words so that half a sentence sound[s] Nigerian and the other half British” (2003: 243). The man has an aversion to Igbo culture so deeply rooted that he even avoids physical contact with traditionalists (starting with his own father) by refusing them access to his house, but he is, for all his efforts, incapable of erasing the remnants of a civilization that the likes of Father Benedict have taught him to despise. Therefore, it is deeply significant that the tongue Eugene dismisses as “uncivilized” should surface most perceptibly when he violently reacts against what he deems to be “heathen” practices. The “mix of Igbo and English” he sputters when “out of control” (2003: 210) reveals a disjointed mind unable to come to terms with the multiple heritages it carries. The violence Eugene inflicts on his family for failing to follow his dogmatic vision of Christianity may in effect be the expression of a sense of fear and hatred towards an inescapable part of his being. I have discussed two instances of Igbo-English codeswitching in Purple Hibiscus, i.e. the alternation between the languages in Ifeoma’s family on the one hand, and Eugene’s mixing of the codes on the other. The radically different interpretations I have assigned to these two cases speak in favour of a context-dependent understanding of language use. Languages have no essential qualities when lifted out of their contextual frame. Igbo does not act as a weapon of colonial resistance in Eugene’s mouth and, conversely, the English he cherishes can also be used to subvert his extreme convictions. When Jaja, Kambili’s brother, openly defies his father by refusing to take communion, he says that “the wafer gives [him] bad breath” (2003: 6). The adolescent deliberately fails to use the Latin word “host,” a term which, according to Eugene, “c[omes] close to capturing the essence, the sacredness, of Christ’s body” (2003: 6). Instead, the young man opts for its Anglo-Saxon secular substitute “wafer,” which evokes, as Kambili notices, the “chocolate

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wafer[s], banana wafer[s]” made in one of Eugene’s factories (2003: 6). 18 Jaja challenges his father’s authority not only by refusing to obey him and passing unfavourable comments on the sacred host, but also by purposefully utilizing an informal Germanic word where the more formal Latin one would have been expected. He intentionally dissociates himself from his father by producing speech which departs from the register sanctioned by the man – a strategy known as “speech divergence” (Myers-Scotton 1993: 66), which stands at the opposite pole of the “speech convergence” favoured by Eugene when addressing white ecclesiastics. Kambili’s remark concerning the biscuits produced in her father’s factories indicates that the word “wafer” does not meet with his approval because it is highly suggestive of commercial exchange in the Achikes’ eyes. In this respect, Jaja’s comment also indirectly criticizes the commodification of Eugene’s sacrosanct religion, and ultimately its hypocrisy. This incident demonstrates that words have more than a referential value in Purple Hibiscus. A similar argument could be deployed with reference to some of the grammatical structures used in the book. 19 An analysis of some of these structures, I believe, can act as a crucial supplement to a traditional literary analysis in helping to reveal how some of the underlying themes of the narrative are subtly woven into its form. One such topic, obliquely broached above through the examination of Jaja’s transgressive act of speaking, is that of silence – understood in its broad sense as encompassing all that is left unsaid. Indeed, at the chronological onset of the story and throughout most of the book, Kambili is an eerily quiet character who, because of her shyness, finds it difficult to speak aloud. The heroine’s muteness has left some reviewers frustrated (see Kaplan 2004; Lalami 2003), but it seems to me that, as Karen Bruce (n.d.) has extensively demonstrated, silence is not merely a “form of oppression” in Purple Hibiscus – in the sense that Kambili’s speechlessness can be attributed to “her father’s abuse” – but it also becomes “a mode of resistance.” The crux of the matter probably lies in the simultaneous presence of these opposite functions in single instances where

18

19

The etymology of “host” and “wafer” is detailed in the OED. As suggested in Purple Hibiscus, “host” finds its origins in the Latin word for “victim,” “sacrifice” (OED), while “wafer,” denoting a thin crisp cake, first appeared in Middle English (OED). Both entries indicate that the terms can be used in relation to the Eucharist. On the difference in formality between the Latinate and Germanic registers, see Simpson (1997: 67-68), Verdonk (2002: 64) and Lanham (2003: 160). I have addressed this issue extensively in Tunca (2009b). What follows is a condensed version of this piece merely designed to underline the importance of certain grammatical patterns in the novel.

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words are left unspoken. For example, Kambili and her brother Jaja dare not say some things aloud, but the “asusu anya,” or “language of the eyes” (Adichie 2003: 305), allows them to “speak about subjects [of] which [their] father might disapprove” (Bruce, n.d.). Bruce foregrounds another passage revealing this double quality: after Eugene, furious at Jaja’s disobedience, has thrown his missal across the room and broken Beatrice’s ballet-dancing figurines, the narrator attempts to comfort her mother. The girl reports: “I meant to say I am sorry Papa broke your figurines, but the words that came out were, ‘I’m sorry your figurines broke, Mama’” (Adichie 2003: 10). Bruce, echoing Hewett (2005: 86) and Mantel (2004), observes that Kambili “avoids implicating her father” in his own act of violence. At the same time, however, the critic notices that “through this indirect and veiled manner of speech, [Kambili] is able to broach the subject of Eugene’s abusive behaviour” and “acknowledge her mother’s status as innocent victim.” Kambili’s refusal to overtly recognize Eugene’s responsibility in the words of sympathy she addresses to her mother is even more outright than Bruce suggests. The differences between the clause Kambili considers saying but does not (“Papa broke your figurines”) and the one she actually articulates (“your figurines broke”) can be clearly highlighted using systemic-functional grammar, and more precisely Halliday and Matthiessen’s ergative model of transitivity (2004: 284-95). 20 The two clauses referring to the breaking of the figurines are material clauses, i.e. clauses that “constru[e] a quantum of change in the flow of events as taking place through some input of energy” (Halliday and

20

It is important to clarify here that Halliday and Matthiessen’s use of the term “ergative” in functional grammar is different from the one used in formal linguistics. In its traditional sense, an “ergative” is a verb that can be used transitively or intransitively, so that the “object of the verb in its transitive function becomes the subject of the verb in its intransitive function” (Aitchison 1996: 100). Examples illustrating this point would be “Gunfire scattered the crowd” and “The crowd scattered” (Aitchison 1996: 100). Halliday and Matthiessen’s “ergative model” is unrelated to this definition, as their theory concerns itself with the identification of the “Medium” through which a “Process” is actualized (note that capital letters are used at the beginning of functions by convention). By way of example, the authors analyze an extract from Noah’s Ark in which “‘the great flood’ serves the same ergative role in I am going to send a great flood and the great flood spread” (2004: 284). In practise, however, the traditional notion of ergativity and Halliday and Matthiessen’s theory sometimes overlap, as will indeed be the case here.

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Matthiessen 2004: 179). 21 Using Halliday and Matthiessen’s method, the clause patterns can be represented in a table as follows:

Doing Happening

Agent Process Papa broke

Medium your figurines your figurines Medium

Broke Process

In both clauses, the verbal group “broke” realizes the function of Process, and the nominal group “your figurines” that of Medium, i.e. the role “through which the process is actualized” (2004: 284). 22 However, the clauses display a crucial difference in pattern. While “Papa broke your figurines” is a clause of “doing,” which is to say that “the actualization of the process is represented as being caused by a participant [the Agent] that is external to the combination of Process + Medium” (2004: 285), “your figurines broke” is a clause of “happening,” meaning that “the process is represented as being selfengendered” (2004: 285). 23 As Halliday and Matthiessen further point out, the latter structure corresponds to a particular way of representing “reality”: “In the real world, there may well have been some external agency involved in [the Process]; but in the semantics of English it is represented as having been self-caused” (2004: 290, my emphasis). In other words, Kambili’s formulation “the figurines broke” not only avoids implicating her father, but also refrains from including any form of agency. By presenting the Process as self-engendered, she even staves off the question “by whom or by what?” that might have been raised had she used the receptive “the figurines got broken” (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 290). 24

21

22 23

24

These clauses differ from mental clauses, which express “processes of sensing” and are “concerned with our experience of the world of our own consciousness” (2004: 197) and relational clauses, which express “processes of being and having” and “serve to characterize and to identify” (2004: 210). Other process types include behavioural clauses (2004: 24852), verbal clauses (2004: 252-56) and existential clauses (2004: 256-59). A nominal group in functional grammar corresponds to a noun phrase in formal grammar. Using traditional terminology, clauses of “doing” are called “transitive” and clauses of “happening” are called “intransitive” (2004: 180). Halliday and Matthiessen prefer the term “receptive” to the traditional “passive,” and the word “operative” to “active” (2004: 181-82).

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Kambili masks the brutality of Eugene’s abuse with her words, 25 and her mother engages in a similar act. When a pregnant Mama is beaten so heavily by her husband that she suffers a miscarriage, on her return from hospital she reports to her children: “There was an accident, the baby is gone” (2003: 34). The existential clause “there is” indicates that “something exists or happens” (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 256) – here the use of a material clause, a type of clause that could, in its “doing” form, integrate an Agent, is avoided altogether. In addition, the noun “accident” denotes an absence of deliberate agency. The second part of the sentence, “The baby is gone,” follows the same pattern as “the figurines broke” in Halliday and Matthiessen’s ergative model, and does not leave any room for an Agent in the Process + Medium structure, either. 26 As Debra Beilke has observed, the silence around Eugene’s implication in these traumatic events suggests that his abuse “not only maims [his family members’] bodies but it also serves to control their tongues” (2006: 2). Kambili repeatedly deploys indirect, euphemistic tactics to describe her father’s acts of violence in the course of the novel. As I have demonstrated elsewhere (Tunca 2009b), the systemic-functional framework can help one to establish that, in a 260-word passage relating the first severe beating received by Kambili, Jaja and their mother at the hands of Eugene, the linguistic makeup of the extract does not once present the Achike father as the direct perpetrator of his brutal act. Instead, the stylistic arrangement of Kambili’s report identifies the object used by the man to hit his family, namely his belt, as the true culprit. This textual subterfuge and the construction found in “your figurines broke” are central to the novel’s strategy, for they show how the young narrator’s admiration for her father subconsciously affects her account. I believe such a demonstration to be central to the understanding of the book, for it allows one to challenge the consensus reached by reviewers in their appraisal of Kambili’s narrative voice: the heroine’s tale has consistently been described in terms such as “emotionless” (Okorafor-Mbachu 2004) and

25

26

An analogous point is made by Cooper when she argues that “Words […] do not say what Kambili means and are instruments of concealment of the reality of Papa’s crimes” (2008: 116). However, the critic relates this to the character’s lack of control over her utterances: words “involuntar[il]y” come out of Kambili’s mouth (2008: 116). That Mama’s unborn baby is labelled the “Medium” is independent of the ethical debate around the conception of a foetus as an “unborn person” or a mere “organism.” The examples of Medium + Process structures provided by Halliday and Matthiessen include “the glass broke,” “the baby sat up” and “the boy ran” (2004: 290), which clearly indicates that the term “Medium” can be applied to both objects and people.

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“dispassionate” (Ekwe-Ekwe 2005) on account of its apparent leaning towards factuality. Using techniques from systemic-functional grammar, I have tried to show that, on the contrary, the presence of certain grammatical structures reflect the narrator’s pronounced emotional bias. 27

Conclusion In the above case study, I have successively used sociolinguistic theory and systemic-functional grammar in an attempt to establish how different facets of characterization in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus were defined by the protagonists’ choice of language on the one hand, and by some of the stylistic features of their speech on the other. By examining the culturally-specific act of codeswitching between Igbo and English and the less strongly contextdependent feature of grammatical agency in a single reading of the novel, I have endeavoured to show that the linguistic complexity of this particular African book could be unveiled only if the text was approached from several complementary angles. Admittedly, the above analysis is still considerably removed from an examination that would provide an actual stylistic “model” for the study of Anglophone African literatures. Such an achievement would require several more years of research. Nevertheless, I believe that the outline given here could potentially be developed into a comprehensive analytical paradigm, provided that due attention is directed to three points: firstly, the theoretical referents used in this case study need to be supplemented by a number of others, so as to accommodate genres such as poetry and drama, and to be applicable to the various literary traditions of Anglophone Africa. Such broadening of scope would also require a move beyond an exclusively character-based methodology – one should, in other words, not lose sight of the impact of the author’s style of writing on the interpretation of a literary piece. Secondly, the culturally-specific and context-independent approaches adopted above need to be made to interact more closely, so as to avoid the reproduction, within single analyses, of the epistemological dichotomy perpetuated in linguistic studies of African literatures over the decades. Attaining this second goal would entail significant methodological research, as would the third improvement to be made, namely that all insight gained through systemic-functional techniques should be scrutinized through an 27

Interestingly, this strategy and similar forms of prejudice encoded in the language recede as the heroine becomes emancipated from her father. See Tunca (2009a; 2009b).

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additional cognitive lens. The challenge, once again, resides in combining these approaches rather than merely superposing them. While much work remains to be done in the particular area of “functional cognitive stylistics,” preliminary research has suggested that such a synthesis might lead to fruitful new applications in the domain of textual analysis (see Croft 2009; Stockwell 2000). In sum, even if many questions remain unanswered at this stage, I hope that this article has raised stylistic critics’ awareness of the challenges currently facing them. To attempt to achieve this goal, I started by looking at the past, providing a short history of the language debate and a critical examination of its impact on the linguistic analysis of Anglophone African literatures. Identifying the factors that may have hindered progress in the field of “African stylistics” is, I believe, the first step towards overcoming the obstacles that lie ahead. 28 The second part of this essay has also tried to pave the way for future developments. My analysis of Purple Hibiscus was designed to demonstrate the role of linguistic theory in giving a literary interpretation of the novel but also, and above all, to convince stylistic critics of the need to continue to sharpen their methodological tools.

28

Among these obstacles, I include methodological confinement in general. Indeed, I anticipat that the epistemological crisis faced by African literary-linguistic criticism in the twentieth century will resurface in reversed form as the third millennium progresses, for some commentators might question the applicability of culturally-specific approaches to the works of African writers when these authors live in the diaspora. While such sensitive issues deserve to be examined with care, one should be cautious not to let the debate reach a critical impasse.

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References Achebe, C. (1975/1965) “The African Writer and the English Language.” Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays. London: Heinemann. 55-62. Adeaga, T. (2005) “Style and Other Impediments in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.” Paper presented at Beyond the Printed Word: African Literatures, African Cultures. African Literature Association Conference, Boulder, USA. Adegbija, E. (1998) “Toward a Speech-Act Approach to Nigerian Literature in English.” In E.L. Epstein, R. Kole (eds) The Language of African Literature. Trenton: Africa World Press. 41-56. Adejare, O. (1992) Language and Style in Soyinka: A Systemic Textlinguistic Study of a Literary Idiolect. Ibadan: Heinemann. Adichie, C. N. (2003) Purple Hibiscus. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Aitchison, J. (1996) Cassell’s Dictionary of English Grammar. London: Cassell. Akekue, D. (1992) “Mind-Style in Sozaboy: A Functional Approach to Language.” In C. Nnolim (ed) Critical Essays on Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English. London: Saros. 16-29. Armah, A.K. (1977/1976) “Larsony or Fiction as Criticism of Fiction.” In New Classic 4, 33-45. Bamiro, E. (2006) “Nativization Strategies: Nigerianisms at the Intersection of Ideology and Genre in Achebe’s Fiction.” World Englishes 25, 315328. Beilke, D. (2006) “Blue Tongues of Fire’: Suppressing the Mother(’s) Tongue in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.” Presented at Pan-Africanism in the 21st Century: Generations in Creative Dialogue. African Literature Association Conference. Accra, Ghana. Bennett, L. (1986/1966) “Colonization in Reverse.” In P. Burnett (ed.) The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse in English. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 32-33. Bhabha, H. K. (1994) “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. 85-92. Braunstein, E. (2005) Out of Africa. Salient, 4. [Web Page] Retrieved 23 Jun 2007 from http://www.salient.co.nz. Bruce, K. (n.d.) Listening to the Silences: Women’s Silence as a Form of Oppression and a Mode of Resistance in Chinamanda [sic] Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. [Web Page] Retrieved 20 Oct 2007 from http://www.textualchemy.net/listening%20to%20silences.doc.

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Chinweizu, O. J., & Ihechukwu, M. (1983) Toward the Decolonization of African Literature. Vol. 1. Washington: Howard University Press. Cooper, B. (2008) “Breaking Gods and Petals of Purple in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.” In A New Generation of African Writers: Migration, Material Culture and Language. London: James Currey. 110-132. Croft, W. (2009) “Toward a Social Cognitive Linguistics.” In V. Evans, S. Pourcel (eds) New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 395-420. Ekwe-Ekwe, H. (2005) “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.” Literary Encyclopedia. [Web Page] Retrieved 21 Oct 2009 from http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=6014. Epstein, E.L., Kole, R. (eds) (1998) The Language of African Literature. Trenton: Africa World Press. Essien, A. (2000) “Discourse Analysis and Characterization in the Novel.” In E. N. Emenyonu (ed) Goatskin Bags and Wisdom: New Critical Perspectives on African Literature. Trenton: Africa World Press. 5163. Fish, S. E. (1996/1980) “What Is Stylistics and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things about It?” In J.-J. Weber (ed) The Stylistics Reader: From Roman Jakobson to the Present. London: Arnold. 94-116. Fowler, R. (1996/1986) Linguistic Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gates, H. L. Jr. (1984) “Criticism in the Jungle.” In H. L. Gates Jr (ed) Black Literature and Literary Theory.New York: Methuen. 1-24. Griffiths, G. (1971) “Language and Action in the Novels of Chinua Achebe.” African Literature Today 5, 88-105. Griswold, W. (2000) Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers and the Novel in Nigeria. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Halliday, MA. K., C. M. I. M. Matthiessen. (2004) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 3rd ed.. London: Hodder. Hewett, H. (2005) “Coming of Age: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Voice of the Third Generation.” English in Africa 32, 73-97. Igboanusi, H. (2001) “Varieties of Nigerian English: Igbo English in Nigerian Literature.” Multilingua 20, 361-78. Kanneh, K. (1997) “What is African Literature? Ethnography and Criticism.” In M.-H. Msiska, P. Hyland (eds) Writing and Africa. London: Longman. 69-86.

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Kaplan, E. A. (2004) “Cry, Freedom. Rev. of Purple Hibiscus, by C.N. Adichie.” LA Weekly. [Wep Page] Retrieved 20 Oct 2007 from http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/wls/cry-freedom/13671. Lakoff, G. (1987) Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press. ——., Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ——., Turner, M. (1989) More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lalami, L. (2003) Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie’s [sic] Purple Hibiscus. [Web Page] Retrieved 21 Oct 2009 from http://lailalalami.com/2003/ Chimamanda-ngozi-adichies-purplehibiscus/#000674. Lanham, R. A. (2003) Analyzing Prose. 2nd ed. London: Continuum. Leech, G., Short, M. (2007/1981) Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman / Harlow: Pearson. Lopez, M. S. (2008) “Creating Daughterlands: Dangarembga, Adichie, and Vera.” JALA 2.1, 83-97. Mantel, H. (2004) “I Have Washed My Feet out of It. Rev. of Purple Hibiscus, by C.N. Adichie.” London Review of Books 26.20. [Web Page] Retrieved 21 Oct 2009 from http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n20/ mant01_html. Moore, G. (1997/1963) “Reply to ‘The Dead End of African Literature.’” Transition 75/76, 339-40. Mphahlele, E. (1997/1963) “Reply to ‘The Dead End of African Literature.’” Transition 75/76, 336-39. Myers-Scotton, C. (1993) Social Motivations for Codeswitching: Evidence from Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ngara, E. (1982) Stylistic Criticism and the African Novel. London: Heinemann. ——., (1990) Ideology and Form in African Poetry: Implications for Communication. London: James Currey. Ngugi wa Thiongo (1986) Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey. Nnolim, C. E. (2000) “Trends in the Criticism of African Literature.” In E. N. Emenyonu (ed) Goatskin Bags and Wisdom: New Critical Perspectives on African Literature. Trenton: Africa World Press. 315. Obiechina, E. (1993) “Narrative Proverbs in the African Novel.” Research in African Literatures 24.4, 123-40.

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Okorafor-Mbachu, N. (2004) “Rev. of Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.” Other Voices 40. [Web Page] Retrieved 21 Oct 2009 from http://www.webdelsol.com/Other_Voices/Reviews40.htm. The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Web Page] Retrieved 21 Oct 2009 from http://www.oed.com. Osundare, N. (2002) Thread in the Loom: Essays on African Literature and Culture. Trenton: Africa World Press. Semino, E., & Culpeper, J. (2002) Cognitive Stylistics: Language and Cognition in Text Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Simpson, P. (1997) Language through Literature: An Introduction. London: Routledge. ——., (2004) Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students. London: Routledge. Soyinka, W. (1997/1963) “Reply to ‘The Dead End of African Literature.’” Transition 75/76, 340. Stockwell, P. (2002) Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. London: Routledge. ——., (2000) “Towards a Critical Cognitive Linguistics?” In I. Biermann, A. Combrink (eds) Poetics, Linguistics and History: Discourses of War and Conflict. Potchefstroom: Potchefstroom University Press. 510528. Tunca, D. (2008) Style beyond Borders: Language in Recent Nigerian Fiction. PhD Dissertation. University of Liège. ——., (2009a) “Ideology in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus” (2003). English Text Construction 2.1, 121-131. ——., (2009b) “An Ambiguous ‘Freedom Song’: Mind-Style in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus”. Postcolonial Text 5.1, 1-18. [Web Page] Retrieved 25 Jan 2010 from http://journals. sfu.ca/pocol/index.php/pct/article/view/925/93. ——., (forthcoming) “Of French Fries and Cookies: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Diasporic Fiction.” In K. Gyssels, B. Ledent (eds) Présence africaine en Europe / African Presence in Europe. Paris: L’Harmattan. Verdonk, P. (2002) Stylistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wales, K. (2006) “Stylistics.” In K. Brown (ed), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics.2nd ed. Vol. 12. Oxford: Elsevier. 213-217 Wali, O. (1997/1963) “The Dead End of African Literature.” Transition 75/76, 330-35. Winters, M. (1981) “An Objective Approach to Achebe’s Style.” Research in African Literatures 12.1, 55-68. Zabus, C. (2007/1991) The African Palimpsest: Indigenization of Language in the West African Europhone Novel. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Adesola Olateju

Current Issues and Trends in African Verbal Stylistics: The Yoruba Example Introduction The history of Stylistics as an academic discipline dates back to the 19th century, precisely in the 1950s when it started to be employed as a method of analyzing literary works. Though a relatively new field, unlike history, religion, philosophy and linguistics, which have long histories of existence, Stylistics as we know it today has gone through some developmental stages. All items or topics that we now teach under Stylistics were at that time taught under Standard Criticism. 1 The carving out of Stylistics from Standard Criticism was based on the criticism that Standard Criticism had some connotative traits of impressionism and subjectivity as against the principles of objectivity and scientific analysis known to be paramount in examining the style of literary texts. Though Stylistics had existed for quite some time without much attention, the publication of Bally, a French stylistician and pupil of the Structuralist, Ferdinand de Saussure, made the discipline popular through his book Stylistique (1909). The book was on French stylistics and made a clear distinction between Stylistics as a literary term and an academic field. From then on, interest in Stylistics gradually spread across Europe via the works of Spitzer (1948) and others. This attracted attention to Stylistics. It was in the 1960s that Stylistics actually began to flourish in Europe and America where it drew impetus from linguistics (Wales 1997:437). African verbal Stylistics 2 has undergone its own historical development as well, having emerged over the years as an important field in the study of African literature, whether those written in indigenous African languages or European languages. Citing the case of Yoruba Stylistics as a representative example, African verbal Stylistics as an academic discipline possibly 1

2

What we know today as ‘literary criticism’ has a developmental history of having developed in stages: from rhetorics/rhetorical criticism to standard criticism, and from there to practical criticism. (Fowler 1971). ‘Verbal’ as used here implies ‘verbal art’ also called ‘literature’. It is a product of verbal behavior and could be in the media of writing or speech. African verbal stylistics therefore, refers to the stylistics or the examination of the language style of African verbal art or literature, whether in the written or spoken (oral) form.

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commenced in the early 1960s. According to BámgbósCé (1991:2) 3, the study of Yorùbá language and literature took off in the then Department of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages (now Department of Linguistics and African Languages) at the University of Ibadan. Stylistics was then taught as a mere elective subject or school course. In Ghana, the works of such scholars as Kwesi Ampene (1973) marked the introduction of Stylistics into the Akan curriculum in the 70s at the department of African Languages and Linguistics, University of Ghana. Today, African verbal Stylistics has taken root. In many departments of African languages in tertiary Institutions across the continent, courses in Stylistics are offered in Swahili, Akan, Arabic, Yoruba, and a host of other languages at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and are pursued as a major course or an area of specialty up to a doctoral level. African verbal Stylistics, like any other academic discipline, has not been free of criticism and contentious issues since its evolution. Some of the contentious issues and trends trailing its development are what we intend for discussion in this paper. The aim is to generate a discourse that would lead to a better understanding of what Stylistics is, its constituents, and role in literary analysis. For this purpose therefore, the paper is divided into two sections. The first deals with the contentious issues, while the second relates to the pedagogy, theory and practice of Stylistics. All these constitute the current trends in the learning and teaching of African verbal Stylistics.

Issues in the Study of African Verbal Stylistics The issue of what definition to give Stylistics remains contentious as attempts to give it one universally acceptable definition by scholars has proved futile. Each scholar, for instance, has defined it from his or her own perspective such that there are many definitions instead of a commonly acceptable one. Looking at Stylistics from a linguistic perspective, Hendricks (1974: 7) who prefers to use the word Stylo-linguistics to Stylistics says it is the “act of bringing linguistic theory and methodology to bear on specific literary problems”. Another definition from a linguistic perspective is Widdowson’s (1976), who describes it as “the study of literary discourse from linguistic orientation”. Leech and Short (1981: 13) describe it simply as “the linguistics of Style”, Fowler (1981: 24) as a kind of criticism which employs “the 3

According to Bámgbósé C(1992: 2), the first set of students for a B. A. (Honors) degree in Yorùbá graduated in June 1969 having been admitted for a three-year program in 1966.

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concept and methodology of linguistics”, and Barry (2002) as “a critical approach which uses the methods and findings of the science of linguistics in the analysis of literary texts”. One of those who defined Stylistics from a literary perspective is BánjoC (1982), an African scholar who says it as “an exhaustive study of the use of language in literary works”. Toolan (1996: viii), in a similar vein, defines it simply as a study of language in literature. Using the parameter of relationship between linguistics and literary studies, OClábòCdé (1985), another African scholar, though never defined Stylistics directly, but opined that the definition of Stylistics cannot but be viewed from both the linguistic and literary perspectives. This view, he contended, led to the idea or evolution of two main branches for Stylistics; ‘Linguistic Stylistics’ and ‘Literary Stylistics’ that are now in vogue. Bradford (2007) on his part defines Stylistics as “the analysis of distinctive expressions in language and the description of its purpose and effect”. Given the array of definitions and views cited above, our considered opinion is that they are not sharply off the mark. However, we believe that the role of linguistics in stylistic analysis and interpretation seems to have been over-exaggerated. For instance, Harold Whitehall’s (1951: 19) popular but widely criticized statement that “as no science can go beyond its mathematics, no criticism can go beyond its linguistics” is an exaggeration. We realize that the exaggerations lie in the fact that most of the definitions given by scholars failed to mention or recognize the limitation of linguistics in literary studies. In addition, they never in their definitions proffered or suggested ways of compensating for the inadequacies of linguistics in literary analysis. Looking at the word Stylistics itself, it is clear that it is an amalgam of two separate words: i.e. Style + Linguistics > Stylistics Since Stylistics is a form of criticism 4, and literature is its focus, it is therefore imperative that definition of Stylistics has to embrace all the subjects involved in its study, i.e. style, linguistics, and literature. Consequently, we may define it as a critical study of the linguistic style and cultural artifacts/basis of a literary work of art (or any other discourse that uses language), using all the resources - linguistic, literary, cultural, historical, socio-political, mythological etc. at the disposal of the literary analyst or stylistician as additional sources of information. In other words, style, as one of the major constituents, should not be sidelined in the definition of Stylistics. In fact, the term Stylistics, as explained above, gives 4

See the preface Fowler wrote to his book Linguistic Criticism (1996).

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us an impression of what constitutes stylistics and the relationship of interdependence that exists between the constituents. Another contentious issue is the autonomy of Stylistics. Scholars do not also agree on whether stylistics should be an independent discipline or a part of another discipline. Helmet Herzfeld (1953), for instance, thinks it should be autonomous. Damaso Alonso (1950: 429) also shares Herzfeld’s opinion, saying that Stylistics should be regarded as “the only science of literature”. Wellek (1971: 66), however, thinks otherwise, saying it should be part of linguistics the way semantics remains as an aspect or part of linguistics. Without any attempt to belabor the argument, we identify with those scholars who consider Stylistics as an autonomous academic discipline like linguistics, philosophy or mathematics. Our opinion is that Stylistics has come of age and is no longer a school subject to be taught under any other discipline, but a full independent academic discipline with its own definition, branches and criteria of relevance. Right now, two main areas are already well established, recognized, and practiced as the main branches of stylistics. These are: 1. Linguistic Stylistics 2. Literary Stylistics Because of its interdisciplinary nature, many professionals are coming into the field (stylistics) with their varying knowledge and expertise, thus expanding its scope and relevance. This positive development has made possible a further division of Stylistics, as being currently witnessed in Yoruba studies, into new sub-branches such as Phonological Stylistics (Phono-Stylistics), Statistical Stylistics, Interpretive Stylistics etc. In Yoruba studies, for example, some scholars are already identified as exponents of some of these branches/sub-branches. What is probably needed now is a clear distinction between the various branches and sub-branches. In distinguishing between branches, for instance, Linguistic Stylistics is not simply ‘a criticism of language’ or ‘a linguistic study of style’ as Chapman (1973) calls it, but ‘a criticism using linguistic methods’. According to Barry (2002), Linguistic Stylistics involves “a critical approach which uses the methods and findings of linguistics in the analysis of literary texts. In other words, Linguistic Stylistics is an act of bringing linguistic concepts and methodology to bear on the object of analysis. The object of analysis may be literary or non-literary, oral or written texts, which may be in the indigenous African language or European language. The approach however, is usually through the employment of a technique of accurate linguistic observation and descriptive

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apparatus. By virtue of his training, the exponent of Linguistic Stylistics is able to establish and syntactically analyze the different linguistic structures that dominate a particular text. This exponent is referred to as a Linguistic Stylistician. We already have in Yorùbá studies scholars whose works fall into this category. For the phonological stylistician, adoption of methods and concepts related to phonetics and phonology is crucial, and this distinguishes him from the Interpretive Stylistician whose pre-occupation and emphasis is meaning. The Interpretive Stylistician is marked by his methodology of applying the theories and concepts of semantics as his mode of analysis. The Phono-Stylistician on the other hand places premium on literary exploitation of the phonological properties of the language and how the various sound patterns in a text combine to support or contribute to the over-all interpretation of literary works. For the Interpretive stylistician, he places emphasis on meaning, using all resources at his disposal to ensure that the text is given an acceptable interpretation. It is to be noted, however, that Phono-Stylistics and Interpretive Stylistics derive their impetus from phonetics/phonology and semantics respectively. They are relatively new branches, which need further exploration. However, no Yorùbá scholar has been firmly established as a specialist in Interpretive Stylistics5, OClátéjú’s attempt (1989) may be cited as a work in the new area of Phono-Stylistics. As far as Literary Stylistics is concerned, its method of approach distinguishes it from the others. In explaining and evaluating literature, the literary stylistician examines the stylistic tool-kit of a given language and how they reflect what OClábòCdé (1981) describes as individuality 6 of the author/writer. The Literary Stylistician may and may not wholly adopt linguistic methods in his analysis. This is unlike the Linguistic Stylistician whose ‘modus operandi’ revolves on linguistics. Scholars identified and established by their works as Literary Stylisticians abound in this field in almost all of African languages. There is nothing unusual about Stylistics having branches. Other disciplines, linguistics for instance, has phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics as its four major branches. Secondly, the aims and objectives of the exponents in all of the branches of Stylistics are almost similar; their differences consist in their different methods or approaches and their criteria of emphasis. For example, while the Linguistic Stylistician adopts linguistic methods, with emphasis on the linguistic 5

6

Interpretive stylistics is relatively new and has no scholars in its embrace yet. But for what may look like a representative illustration of how a linguist, a literary scholar, and a stylistician may approach literary analysis, see OClátéCjú (1998: 15-22). According to OClábòCdé (1981: 44-45, 1985: 245), ‘individuality’ refers to the literary artist as an individual recognized through certain identifiable characteristics or style of his work.

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structures and patterns in the text, the Literary Stylistician adopts a literary method, with emphasis on the stylistic devices used in the text. From the foregoing, therefore, our submission is that Stylistics is an independent academic discipline that has its own methodologies and criteria of relevance. It cannot be forced under linguistics or any other discipline as suggested in certain quarters. The third and last contentious issue is the practice whereby certain folkloric materials are treated as stylistic devices. As noted by Ojaide (1998: 12),”the language of modern African literature, whether written in English, French, or Portuguese is peculiarly African. African languages with their proverbs, axioms, rhythms and oratorical structures inform it”. In Yoruba for instance, features of African traditional (oral) poetic materials such as songs (religious, social or festival); eCseC-ífá (verses from ifá divination poetry); oríkì (praise poetry); oCfòC (incantation); òwe (proverb) and other forms of Yorùbá poetry are often regarded or classed as stylistic devices. This practice is common among undergraduates and students of Colleges of Education writing long essay projects for a B. A Hons degree or the Teachers’ National Certificate in Education (NCE). To our mind, it is improper to regard such materials as stylistic devices. These are simply the indigenous literary genres of the Yoruba, each of which is characterized by distinctive thematic, linguistic, and stylistic features. The term Stylistic device(s) should be used strictly for only those features that result from creative efforts and linguistic performance of the artist. Stylistic devices in our view should refer to such features as repetition, simile, metaphor, personification, parallelism, Lexical matching, tonal-counterpoint, wordplay, and other foregrounded features of language (e.g. deviation) which manifest the linguistic performance and creative ingenuinety of the literary artist/writer.

Current Trends in Stylistics Certain new trends and novel perspectives are becoming evident in the field of Stylistics. For quite some time now, African scholars have preoccupied themselves with several issues that bothered on the development of the field; i.e. the theory, pedagogy and practice of Stylistics in African contexts with reference to oral and contemporary literatures in both the native and foreign languages. While the emerging perspectives and issues are pointing new directions and taking new stances in the field, new frontiers are progressively building up, some of which, we believe, are helping to affirm the relevance and scope of Stylistics.

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The first noteworthy trend is the redefining of the scope and depth of Stylistics. The perceived shortcomings of Standard Criticism under which the curriculum of Stylistics was taught led to the evolution of Stylistics as a new field that is based on objective and scientific analysis. For this reason, the methods of teaching and leaning Stylistics have taken a new dimension. Before now, Stylistics used to be an all-comers’ field where anybody was called upon to teach it. Then, the teaching of Stylistics involved the teaching of the life history of a particular literary artist and the conventional stylistic devices found in his text, without adequate analysis and explanation of how the various linguistic devices found in the text are contrived and for what purposes. Today, however, the trend is that Stylistics goes beyond the background history of an author, or mere identification of stylistic devices. It involves the three profound steps of identification, explanation and interpretation of the stylistic, rhetorical and other devices in the text. In addition, relevant linguistic concepts and methodologies are brought in to explicate the text. In other words, Stylistics has become a specialized field of study, which requires both linguistic and literary skills. This is the more reason why a stylistician is different from either the linguist or literary scholar. For the linguist, his core area is linguistics per se, while for the literary scholar, literary studies. Nevertheless, for the stylistician, he is versatile in both. Since literature is a reflection of societal events and happenings, and language its medium, the stylistician uses his linguistic know-how in describing and analyzing the language elements which combine at various levels; phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic, to form networks of patterns in the text, and relating same to the socio-cultural context in the determination of meaning/interpretation of literature. Another development worthy of note, especially in Yoruba scholarship is the increasing awareness in the role of linguistics in literary analysis and the growing relationship between linguists and literary scholars. There has also been a positive change in the attitude of linguists and literary scholars to each other’s discipline. In the past, there had been series of allegations, counterallegations and, controversies on the question of whether or not the linguist had a right to get involved in literary studies and about the role of linguistics in literary analysis, which literary scholars argued was not relevant for being full of technical jargons and irrelevant to life. Contentious issues such as the above are now outdated in the West. However, such issues remained highly contentious in Yoruba studies until very recently. Literary critics/scholars have always believed and insisted they do not need any knowledge of linguistics to carry out literary analysis, The need to bring linguistic theories, concepts and methodology to bear on literary analysis was responsible for

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Owolabi’s (1992) challenge and call to his fellow Yoruba scholars to focus more attention on what roles linguistics can play in literary studies. Presently in Yorùbá studies, the trend is that students of Yorùbá literature in Colleges of Education and Universities are being equipped with adequate knowledge of linguistics (language), while students of language (linguistics) are encouraged to take courses in literature. A good illustrative example of how the two disciplines complement each other is evident in the way some Yorùbá scholars, BámgbósCe (1968) and Yáì’ (1976) for instance, applied linguistic concepts to literary analysis and interpretation. The realization that the linguist needs some knowledge of literary studies, just as the literary scholar requires some knowledge of linguistics to aid his practice is a development that has encouraged interdisciplinary studies. OClábòCdé (1985: 229) once noted that lack of understanding between linguists and literary scholars caused a delay in finding out the areas of mutual benefits between the two disciplines, namely: what linguistics can contribute to literary studies and vice versa. Happily enough today, application of linguistic models and concepts to literary analysis has become fashionable among African/Yoruba literary scholars due to the increasing awareness about the role of linguistics in literary studies. This is unlike the nonchalant attitude of the past. In Yorùbá studies for example, literary scholars, critics, and analysts now bring linguistic theories and methodology to bear on their analysis of literary discourse. A few examples of such scholars include BámisCile (1992) and Àjàyí (1995) who applied the Text-linguistic model to different literary texts written in the indigenous African language (Yorùbá). So also is the present writer (OClátéCjú 1998) who adopted the Transformational Generative Grammar (TG) model in his analysis of Yorùbá literary discourse. All this is a new trend, and a welcome development. With the present situation, it is obvious that linguistics and literary studies have much to benefit from each other. It is also clear that certain literary features (such as parallelism, lexical matching, personification etc.), linguistic conventions (rhyme, cohesion etc) foregrounded features of language (such as deviation) which constitute the hallmark of the language of literature can only be expertly handled by an analyst who has some knowledge of linguistics. Second, there is the recognition of the fact that the language of everyday usage or ordinary discourse known as the standard language (SL) differs in some respect from the language of literature, known as the literary language (LL). This being the case, a stylistician or an analyst with knowledge of linguistics is better equipped to explain the notion of differentia specifica between the two types of language (i.e. SL and LL). The difference consists in the transformations, which produce the two types of ‘language’. For instance, the

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transformations that produce the SL are obligatory, while those that produce the LL are in most cases optional. The implication of this is that LL is the stylistic variant of the SL. (OClaCteCju 1998). Linguistics is not only relevant to literary analysis but also desirable. However, we modestly admit that linguistics is not without its limitations, especially at the level of interpretation. The excerpt below in which Soyinka (1967) blames the death of a victim of a road mishap on the Yoruba patron god of iron shows the extent to which linguistics could go: Death, the scrap - iron dealer Breeds a glut on trade. The fault Is His of seven paths whose whim Gave Death his Agency. (14)

The linguist will certainly be at no pain to recognize and explain the linguistic conventions involved in the personification of death as a ‘scrap iron dealer.’ He is also able to explain the syntax of phrases or expressions such as ’… of seven paths’ peculiar to Yoruba praise poetry. However, at the level of interpretation, he is at a loss because of his limited knowledge or no knowledge at all, of literary/cultural studies. An example is the allusions or oblique references made to the historical and mythological figures of Ogun and Death whose details are omitted in the text. Ogun is the Yoruba patron god of iron, and Death, the scrap-iron dealer is his agent. Ogun is one of the highly revered in the Yoruba pantheon of gods, fiery in anger, brave, and daring in acts. He causes accident when angered and prevents same when appeased. He takes delight in drinking blood instead of water. As the patron god of all artisans who use iron or steel implements in their trade or profession, Ogun is often praised as one ‘who owns seven paths’ in order to curry his favor, and not his anger. The praise name/expression is a mythological reference to Ogun’s creativity, strength of will, and attributes, both human and divine, all of which are beyond linguistics. Recourse therefore has to be made to literary studies and culture to be able to appreciate the historical and mythological references alluded to in the text.

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Conclusion In this paper, we highlighted what we regarded as contentious issues in the study of African verbal Stylistics, using the Yoruba example. One of the major contentions is the definition of stylistics, which in our opinion, is not all embracing enough. Stylistics, being a ‘child’ of circumstance, came into existence to bridge the gulf arising from lack of mutual understanding between the linguist and the literary scholar. Since Stylistics is a discipline that stands astride linguistics and literary studies, and considering its constituents (style, linguistics, and literature/literary studies), its definition should encompass the various subjects with which it has affinity. Regarding the issue of autonomy, we have submitted that Stylistics is an autonomous academic discipline. The fact that linguistics and literary studies have something to gain from each other has culminated in the success and status of Stylistics as a discipline to which both linguistics and literary studies have contributed. Roman Jacobson’s (1960) remarks cited below best captures the relevance and desirability of linguistics in literary analysis, and the need for mutual understanding between the linguist and the literary scholar: … A linguist deaf to the poetic function of language and literary scholar indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant with linguistic methods are equally flagrant anachronisms. (337)

We admitted the limited role of linguistics in literary discourse analysis despite its importance, especially at the level of interpretation. Because interpretation is central to literature, we advocated that references be made to cultural, historical, and mythological information to elucidate meaning and interpretation. Finally, we concluded that the increasing awareness in Yoruba studies about the role of linguistics in literary analysis hinges on the fact that though linguistics and literary studies have some relationship, each of them is an autonomous discipline. The linguist may have some knowledge of literary studies, but does not necessarily have to become a literary critic. Similarly, some knowledge of linguistics may be desirable for the literary scholar, but certainly does not have to abandon his field and become a linguist. Only the stylistician, out of necessity and because of the interdisciplinary nature of his discipline, must be ambi-dexterous to enable him establish a balance between the critic’s findings and the linguist’s analysis of literary texts.

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References Alonso, D. (1950) “La Estilistica Sera ta Unica Licencia de la litiretura.” In Wellek, Warren (ed) Theory of Literature. London: Penguin Books. Ajayi, Y. A. (1995) “OCfòC (The Yorùbá Incantations). A Text Linguistic Analysis.” PhD Thesis. University of IloCrin, IloCrin. Banjo, A. (1982) “A stylistic Trend in Nigerian Fiction of English Expression.” Paper presented at the 7th International Conference in African Literature, University of Ibadan. Barry, P. (2002) The Beginning Theory; An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press). Bradford, R. (2007) Stylistics: A New Critical Idiom [Web Page] http://www.h- net.org/announce/show.egi?D=165466. BamgbosCE, A. (1991) A View from the Ivory Tower. A Valedictory Lecture. Ibadan: University Press. BamisCIle, O. (1992) “A stylistic Study of AdébáyòC Fálétí’s Plays.” Ph.D. Thesis.С University of IloCrin, IloCrin. Fowler, R. (1971) The Language of Literature. London: RKP. ——., (1996) Linguistic Criticism. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Herzfeld, H. A. (1953) A Critical Bibliography of the New Stylistics Applied To the Romance Literatures. Chapel Hill. Hendricks, W. O. (1974) “The Relation Between Linguistics and Literary Studies.” Poetics No 11, 5-22. Jakobson, R. (1960) “Concluding Statements: Linguistics and Poetics.” In T. A. Sebeok (ed) Style in Language. Massachusetts: M. I. T. University Press. 350-377. OClábòCdé, A. (1981) “The Semantic Basis of Metaphors and Related Tropes in Yoruba.” Ph.D. Thesis. University of Ibadan, Ibadan. ——., (1985) “Stlylistics and Problems of Literary Interpretation in Yoruba.” In K. Williamson (ed) West African Languages in Education. Vienna: Afro-Pub. 229-250. OClátéCjú, M. O. A. (1989) A Structuralist Study of Sound Patterns In Yoruba Poetic Discourse. M. Phil. Dissertation. University of Ibadan, Ibadan. ——., (1998) A Syntactic Approach to Literary Discourse Analysis: The Yoruba Example. Ph.D. Thesis. University of Ibadan, Ibadan. OClatunji, O. O. (1984) Features of Yoruba Oral Poetry. Ibadan: UPL. Owolabi, K. (1992) “SCísCe ÀtúpalèC LítírésCòC ní Ìbámu PèClú Gírámà OnídàroCOlófin Àyídà: EwCi géCgéC bí ÀpCCeCeCre.” In A. ÌsCòClá

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(ed) Findings In Yoruba Studies, J. F. OCdúnjoCMemorial Lectures Series. 83-99. Spitzer, L (1928) Stilstudien. 2nd Vol. Munich: Max Hueber. ——., (1948) Linguistics and Literary History: Essays in Stylistics. Princeton: New Princeton University Press. Toolan, M. (2009) Language in Literature: An Introduction to Stylistics. London: Hodder Education. Wales, K. (1997) A Dictionary of Stylistics. New York: Longman. Whitehall, H. (1951) “From Linguistics To criticism.” Kenyon Review 8. 710-714. Widdowson, H. G. (1976) Stylistics and the teaching of Literature. London: Longman Group Limited. Yai, O. B. (1976) “Wútùwútù Yáákí” Yoruba: Journal of the Yoruba Studies Association of Nigeria 2, 43-58.

Part II Perspectives on Fiction

K. M. Mathews

Nnu Ego on the Verge of Feminist Consciousness: Feminist Stylistics and Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood For the Western world, the 1970s were a time for women to move beyond domestic duties and into the public sphere professionally and intellectually. The feminist movement was in its “second wave.” Demands for equal pay, equal opportunities and education were manifest. In Britain, the first Women’s Liberation Conference in 1970 also made demands for twenty-four hour nurseries, free contraception and abortion on demand. Motherhood was to be a choice, not a societal mandate. Later in Britain, legal and financial independence was emphasized along with freedom from intimidation by violence or sexual coercion. Women were actively and aggressively pursuing an agenda that would relieve their lives of centuries of traditional views and values that dictated what it was to be a woman. It was in this context that Buchi Emecheta, an immigrant from Nigeria, wrote the novel The Joys of Motherhood in 1979: a decisively feminist novel that depicts the struggles of an Igbo woman from the Ibuza tribal area migrating to Lagos, the seat of colonial power, in 1939. The story depicted in the novel stresses the obstacles and trials Nnu Ego struggles with as she attempts to hold onto her prescribed traditional gender role as mother in the face of a strikingly different way of life and structure of family in Lagos. The story is rich and complex; yet, the moral of the story seems to be one easily misinterpreted and oversimplified. Literary critics have offered varied interpretations of the themes within The Joys of Motherhood. But more often than not, the criticisms have reflected reader-centered analyses dependent on Stanly Fish’s (1980) “interpretive communities.” Hence, the reader’s experiences and cultural and educational background are what influence the interpretation. Such readings can be problematic when the general reading and interpretive audience is from a Western perspective not fully informed about the social, historical, and cultural context of a work. Western readers have come up with a dominant reading (the reading they perceive to be self-evident) that they can agree on for the most part, but is it the preferred reading that Buchi Emecheta composed her novel to reflect? Is it even possible to uncover Emecheta’s intended meaning? Salome C. Nnoromele (2002, 178) has done a thorough work highlighting what she considers Western critics’ tendency to resurrect stale misconcep-

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tions about African women “as slaves, brutalized and abused by a patriarchal society.” In her work, she exposes numerous stereotypical viewpoints regarding the perceived feminist message Buchi Emecheta constructs. It would seem, according to Nnoromele (2002), that Joys has been reduced to a feminist tract solely committed to lamenting the chauvinistic oppression of Nigerian women by many critics, and Emecheta to a writer whose purpose is to reflect such ideology in her writing. Nnoromele (2002), however, examines Joys differently. She considers her own analysis as one that delves deeper into the “truth” of the novel. Such “truth” is more readily accessed by her due to her own viewpoint as an African woman, and her examination of cross-cultural reading supports this claim. She explains: “Cultural domination and dogmatism” are often not far from the politics of interpreting literature from other cultures (Fishburn 2). Even with the best intentions, misreading almost always occurs because the prejudice the reader inevitably brings to the text often hinders rather than enables understanding. (Nnoromele 2002: 181-2)

Nnoromele (2002: 182) further employs Fishburn (1995) to explain how a reader should approach the text. “The text serves both as an object and an agent of interrogation. Readers acknowledge the cultural gap between them and the text and allow the text to interrogate them, even as they interrogate the text.” Thus, readers must come to a text as open and sympathetic readers ready to examine their own cultural outlook in contrast with the worldview that they are exploring; they must not be oppressive or ethnocentric in their exploration. With this evaluation of readership, Nnoromele (2002) attempts to move beyond the stereotypes and offers an alternative reading of the “oppressed” main character of the text, Nnu Ego. Unfortunately, in her own effort to “reassess and redefine the images of African women,” she seems to fall into reactionary biases founded on liberating the African woman from Western critics (182). In what promises to be a complex analysis of the text, oversimplification takes control by way of limiting the interpretation solely to the “flawed” character traits of the protagonist Nnu Ego: “The Joys of Motherhood is simply the story of a woman who makes devastating choices and sacrifices her health and selfhood in the pursuit of failed traditions, capsulated in the idea of motherhood” (emphasis mine; Nnoromele 2002: 182). “Simply” is our cue to look more carefully at the character Nnu Ego who, in Nnoromele’s (2002) alternative reading of the novel, is called selfish and insane. In contradiction to this claim though, Nnu Ego is also deemed to be completely in control of her life. The critique that Nnu Ego is a character who has the potential to be in complete control of her life is, indeed,

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oversimplifying the oppressive control that socio-economic status can subject an individual. Emecheta, however, creates a complex character living within a complex cultural milieu. One that becomes even more complex as a site of cultural transition between rural agrarian traditional life to urban capitalistic modern life. While Nnu Ego does hang onto tradition, she does so for many reasons other than being selfish or without “enough foresight and selfrealization to know that life is much more than following tradition and doing what is expected of one” (Nnoromele 2002: 184). The reason for adherence to a tradition unfavorable to women requires a greater understanding of the complex psychological processes “by which women come to accept and internalize an ideology and a practice that is oppressive” (Walker 1995: 421). Certainly, Nnu Ego cannot be painted as purely victim either. She does exercise some agency and choice, though her choices and agency are limited and overly subservient to values that do not privilege the female. The solution, ultimately, to reaching a consensus on a preferred reading of Joys, or a more sympathetic reading as Fishburn suggests, is to move beyond a reader-response or Western white middle-class feminist examination of the novel to one that examines more closely the subtleties of the discourse that Emecheta employs along with a fuller context of the novel. By employing a feminist stylistics that privilege an examination of the multiple discourses and contexts acting on a text, we can come to a more contextualized meaning of the text: feminist stylistics opens up the text to external factors that operate to shape, influence and interact with the details inside the text. In this way, the analysis moves away from a closed-reading of the text to a broader analysis of the many factors in the social context that shape the meaning of the text. Sara Mills (1996: 241) explains, “An emphasis on lexical items and the way they interact with their context can help the reader to avoid some of the over-generalized cause-effect relationships posited by traditional literary critics.” These “over-generalized cause-effect relationships” are precisely what Nnoromele (2002) is reacting to when she protests some Western critics’ interpretation of Emecheta’s feminist tract. Notably, Mills is a Western critic who offers a methodology with the potential to yield more objective analyses of texts by examining language in context. Ironically, Nnoromele herself advances an over-generalization by placing all of Nnu Ego’s negative “effect” on Nnu Ego’s weak personality as a complete “cause.” In order to mitigate this over-generalization, feminist stylistics examines language at the levels of word, phrase and discourse to expose how the construction of gender works to position women in their specific social contexts. The level I am most concerned with examining is the discourse

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level. Following Mills’ (1995: 123) assertion that feminists can undertake an analysis at the level of discourse by seeing the “substance of the texts, as something which is the negotiation of textual elements and codes and forces outside the text which influence both the way that the text is constructed and the way that we decipher what it means,” I analyze the various cultural contexts in which Buchi Emecheta had lived when writing The Joys of Motherhood and how her experience influenced the representation of various discourses present in the novel. Though such a reading may not represent the only reading of the text, a stylistic analysis claims a certain objectivity. In other words, examinations of the postcolonial discourse in Joys by various analysts should reproduce very similar results. The caveat, however, is that the analysts must be familiar with the discourse under analysis. Such a caveat reflects James Paul Gee’s (2002: 165) concern about the subtlety of situating meaning: So when anyone is trying to speak/write or listen/read within a given social language within a given Discourse, the crucial question becomes, what sorts of experiences (if any) has this person had that can anchor the situated meanings of words and phrases of this social language?

Mills (1995: 23) offers a valuable tool for approaching the complexity of situated meaning as well as providing an explicit breakdown of the factors informing the interrelated components of speak/write and listen/read and reflect Gee’s emphasis on the necessity of certain experience to establish situated meanings within specific social languages within specific discourses. In her feminist model of text, she presents two major categories that work on a text: the context of production and the context of reception. Under each category, numerous factors work individually and collectively on the text to help produce its meaning and value. Rather than elaborate on each factor, there are a few that I foreground throughout my analysis of Joys. On the cultural production side of the model, I highlight the author, affiliations, sociohistorical factors, current literary trends and the general language. Within the category of context reception, I have already discussed the actual reader in the form of the literary critic along with some of the sociohistorical factors. By employing this model, we can examine both the embedded effects of the different linguistic levels of the novel as well as the external social contexts acting on and outside of the novel relating to both the author and the readers. Within the novel, by examining how characters’ thoughts, actions and dialogue reflect these discourses, we can see how the author has written the discourses into the text as “statements which are enacted within a social

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context, which are determined by that social context and which contribute to the way that social context continues its existence” (Mills 1997: 11). Language and social context are intricately related. There is a circular element configuring the relation between the two as they interdependently act on one another. That language functions “in a fully integrated way as simultaneously a mental, social, cultural, institutional, and political phenomenon” is a point that Gee (1999: vii) stresses and cannot be overlooked when considering the situational context of language. Within any situational context, multiple configurations of language and social context can exist concurrently while still owning the full integration of the factors Gee describes. The configurations, or discourses, often overlap as they challenge, negotiate, complement or accept other existing discourses. New discourses can be constructed as well resulting from the tension between existing discourses. The complexity of Emecheta’s work is that she constructs a dialogue of opposing discourses; she not only includes feminist discourse, but she also includes discourses of colonialism and traditional Ibuza patriarchy. In presenting a diverse array of discourses, she selectively resists and accepts aspects of the discourses via her characters and her narrator. What emerges is a discourse that honors aspects of tradition and feminism simultaneously. Emecheta complicates the totality of any one discourse in favor of a discourse that highlights what Michel Foucault (1979) considered an arbitrariness of the utterance of discourse circulating in any society at present. Emecheta astutely demonstrates his notion of the “strangeness of […] discourses, in spite of their familiarity” (Mills 1997: 26). Familiar discourses are so engrained in a period mindset that the subjects involved in upholding those discourses cannot see the ideological flaws supporting them. Emecheta succeeds in depicting the strangeness for the reader; she succeeds at opening up that strangeness to deliberation. While doing so, she depicts characters who deliberate as well: women who reflect on their societal positioning, their subjugation to unjust discourses, and their collaboration with oppression. In effect, Emecheta produces a consciousness-raising novel: a novel in which “the protagonist moves from feeling somehow at odds with others’ expectations of her, into confrontation with others and with institutions, and into a new and newly politicized understanding of herself and her society” (Hogeland 1998: 23). Recalling Mills feminist model of the text, we find that the consciousness-raising novel reflects a feminist literary trend of the 1970s during the Women’s Liberation Movement in the West. Through the consciousness-raising novel, Emecheta highlights the instability of discourse that Foucault (1979) addressed. Discourses are

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constantly changing due to shifts in history. And due to the socio-historical contextual shift portrayed in Joys, the various discourses trace this shift by interacting with one another primarily in support or opposition. This interactive nature of the discourse is emphasized by Michel Pecheux’s work (1982) emphasizes the tensions between discourses in constant interaction. He maintains that the foundation of discourse structure is ideological struggle. The instance I cite later regarding an incident between Nnu Ego’s husband Nnaife and his colonial employers brings to bear colonial discourse, patriarchal discourse, a discourse of Victorian femininity, and implied discourses of postcolonialism and feminism. Here the reader is encouraged to raise her/his consciousness about the weakness of colonial and patriarchy ideology by examining the contradictions found within the dialogue and thoughts of the characters, thus taking up the standpoint located in feminist postcolonial discourse. Feminist discourse in the context of this novel represents another slippery term. On the one hand, it can be broadly defined as interaction that is based on linguistic principles which foreground a critical representation of gender relations in society and also highlight social determinants such as race, class, nationality and the like. Within this discourse is the explicit understanding that societies are structured as patriarchies that prioritize the needs and desires of men at the expense of the uninhibited mobility, expression, and autonomy of women: at the expense of women’s choices free of maledominated social constructs. On the other hand, feminist theory varies according to the socio-historical context. Traditional Western feminists’ perceptions of gender and experience differ from a female Nigerian immigrant informed by an urban and tribal Nigerian upbringing as well as Western education and experience. Emecheta explains her positioning: Being a woman, and African born, I see things through an African woman’s eyes. I chronicle the little happenings in the lives of the African women I know. I did not know by doing so I was going to be called a feminist. But if I am now a feminist then I am an African feminist with a small ‘f.’ (Emecheta 1988: 175).

Thus, Emecheta perceives and presents gender and feminism differently than many of her readers located in the West. To develop a feminist discourse analysis, context must be understood and kept in mind. Emecheta’s own experience and view of the workings of gender represents a feminist perspective that contributes to the context of production. Examining the author’s own lens of seeing the world is paramount in reaching a more nuanced interpretation of a text, especially one based on an analysis of the language. Mills (1995: 157) says, with a feminist

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analysis, one must question “the seemingly self-evident boundaries of the text itself, arguing that the text is permeated by discourses and ideologies and that the distinction between textual and extratextual cannot really be held to.” Hence, before an analysis of the feminist discourse, which permeates the text, I will look at the context in which Emecheta was writing, for “[T]exts are invaded by sociocultural norms, by ideologies, by history, by economic forces, by fashions, by gender and racial stereotyping, and so on. That is not to say that authors have no control whatsoever about what they write, but that authors themselves are also subject to interpellation and interaction with these discursive forces” (Mills 1995: 157). Emecheta herself describes the process of writing as one that unconsciously picks up extra elements along the way: “A book is akin to a child on a mother’s back. The mother knows she is carrying a baby on her back but the child can use its hands to lift anything that passes by without the mother knowing” (Emecheta 1988: 175). Emecheta’s own contextual situation affects the telling and the meaning of the story. As mentioned in the introduction, Buchi Emecheta wrote the novel in a time of social activism for women living in Britain. Emecheta was a divorced Nigerian immigrant mother of five children. She grew up in the colonial economy of Lagos, frequently visiting her native village of Ibuza. As a young single mother in Britain of Igbo heritage, she struggled to make a career out of writing. She had studied sociology at London University in the early 1970s and had firsthand experience with racism and the difficulty of an immigrant functioning in a non-native language. Emecheta writes in English, but she does not write as a Westerner. Edward Said (1979), in his pivotal work Orientalism, contends that Western writers have depicted the Orient as the Other, and in so doing have necessarily depicted the inhabitants of colonized countries as disempowered, incapable objects often on par with children or as subhuman species, leaving the position of power and action for the Western subjects. Although Emecheta does depict the state of colonial nations wherein the colonizers construct a narrative that demasculinizes the native men and objectifies the women, she does so from the perspective of the ‘native’ peoples showing an alternative view to colonization and the white skin that reminds Nnu Ego of the skin of pigs rather than masters to be idolized (Emecheta 1979: 75). Nnu Ego’s words used to describe the colonialists’ skin reveal a perspective in conflict with colonial discourse: her views are not subjugated to a discourse of white superiority. Hence Emecheta poignantly constructs a critical view of colonialism as she does of patriarchy in its various British and Nigerian forms.

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Teresa Derrickson (2005: 44) has pointed out that, “Nnu Ego is a victim of this newly imported capitalist society, a society in which African women are required to continue performing traditional duties and responsibilities in an economic setting where that labor is no longer of any market value.” She confirms that women like Nnu Ego who made this initial transition from a “tribal moral value system to a Western capitalist system” were stripped of their “former privileges” while being “denied the right to new ones.” Nigerian women were marginalized in the capitalist system as they moved from one patriarchy, in which they had appropriated power and maintained privileges, into a new patriarchy where they had to attempt to forge new platforms of power in an alien system. 1 Judith Van Allen (1976) argues that “traditional Igbo society had a dual sex political system, that is there was a dual system of male and female political-religious institutions, each sex having both its own autonomous sphere of authority and an area of shared responsibilities” (cited in Katrak 1987: 162). Ketu Katrak (1987: 162) further explains, that the British rule effectively destroyed Igbo women’s organizations by promoting men in the political and economic spheres and by encouraging “individual achievement based on wealth and education.” (Does it go without saying that Western education was more accessible to men?) According to Katrak (1987) and Van Allen’s (1976) assessments, the British colonial structure enforced a more rigid and damaging patriarchy onto Igbo women, both in the rural and urban locales. Emecheta presents a text that reinforces the arguments of Katrak (1987) and Van Allen (1976). By positioning Nnu Ego as one longing for tradition as opposed to the aggressively isolating and constricting nature of the capitalist system of Lagos, the reader senses that the lives of women were more comfortable in Ibuza – they had more independence and control over their work and production and more female support and community. Nnu Ego points out that even the traditional men are more respectable and valuable to the women, even within the context of polygamous family structures. After losing her first born male, Nnu Ego finds herself comparing Nnaife to her ex-husband. “That native Ibuza man. That African. […] Yes, Amatokwu measured up to the standard her culture had led her to expect of a man. How would he react if he were forced by circumstances to wash for a 1

Theodora Akachi Ezeigbo offers a balanced and insightful look at “Traditional Women’s Institutions in Igbo Society: Implications for the Igbo Female.” She discusses how Igbo women were able to wield power in their own affairs in various institutions they formed and also expressed the importance for the Igbo female writer to avoid “prejudice and indifference” when representing the historical culture of her people in her own time period (Ezeigbo 1990: 151).

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woman, a skinny shriveled-up one with unhealthy skin? He would surely refuse. That was the sort of man to respect, Nnu Ego thought” (Emecheta 1979: 72). Nnu Ego’s thoughts make it clear that she adheres to her culture’s construction of manhood as she was raised to “expect” something of a man. He is the man; he is the African. The greater implication is that Nnaife is not. He has sold out to the colonialists and submitted himself to what Nnu Ego sees as a weak and undesirable woman. In this excerpt, Emecheta also writes Nnu Ego as resisting the colonialist discourse about Western women’s superiority by underscoring her perception of the white woman’s skin. Nnu Ego goes so far as to wonder “how can our men stand them?” with their “skin pale like pigs” (75). By predicating the white women’s negative difference in skin color, Nnu Ego asserts Nigerian women’s superiority. Similarly, she asserts the superiority of true African men in contrast to Nnaife who has forfeited his African manhood and is no longer respectable. He has been demasculinized by the colonial system in Western and Igbo terms. Nnu Ego, thus, finds herself thinking fondly about a man who took another wife and ignored her when she did not get pregnant. Thus, colonialism is depicted as the greater evil as compared to polygamy, an institution regularly maligned by Western critics. Emecheta (1988: 176, 178) herself, is quoted as saying at the Second African Writers Conference in 1986: People think that polygamy is oppression, and it is in certain cases. But I realize, now that I have visited Nigeria often that some women know how to make polygamy work for them. […] In many cases polygamy can be liberating to the woman, rather than inhibiting her, especially if she is educated. The husband has no reason for stopping her from attending international conferences like this one, from going back to university and updating her career or even getting another degree. Polygamy encourages her to value herself as a person and look outside her family for friends.

Though she was discussing polygamy in contemporary terms, her words confirm that she values it. Even so, she complicates this idea by demonstrating in the novel how it can also be hurtful to women emotionally and physically. Nnu Ego’s marriage to Amatokwu demonstrates the harm that can be done. Amatokwu’s second wife proves to be more fertile than Nnu Ego and his attention to the junior wife leave Nnu Ego frequently babysitting her baby. A particular interaction between the women suggests the tension that Nnu Ego harbors even as the younger wife attempts to show some deference. Upon returning to pick up the child: “The new wife was full of apology the next morning for not having come for her baby. ‘Sorry senior wife. I knocked at your door but you must have been sleeping, so I knew that

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our son must be all right. It’s our husband, he just won’t let me go.’” Nnu Ego replies, “That’s quite all right. Here is your baby” (Emecheta 1979: 34). The new wife attempts to be deferential in addressing Nnu Ego as “senior wife” and using the possessive pronoun “our” referring to herself and Nnu Ego to suggest the familial closeness between them and that the senior wife can consider the child her own as well. It is clear that Nnu Ego will not accept the deference which she may view as forged by asserting that he is “your baby” – and this may be especially due to the rather insensitive remark that “our husband won’t let me go.” It is not clear whether the junior wife is smug in her statement or seeking Nnu Ego’s understanding. After all, one must obey one’s husband. The narrator does point out, however, that the new wife came “full of apology.” It could even be that the new wife believes that she is doing Nnu Ego a favor by letting her take care of her son almost as her own child while she enjoys the full attention of their husband. After all, “A child belonged to many mothers [in Igbo culture]. Not just one’s biological one” (Emecheta 1988: 173-4). Later, Nnu Ego’s father suggests, in reference to Nnu Ego’s infertility, that “anxiety” dried out the “juices” that make a woman pregnant (Emecheta 1979: 35). Where might this anxiety have stemmed except from her internalized obsession and the implicit pressure of the patriarchal order that permitted only mothers to be real women? (53). It is her father’s elderly wives who “were sympathetic and nursed her mentally back to normal. They made her feel that even though she had not borne a child, her father’s house was bursting with babies she could regard as her own” (36). Here the language emphasizes the gentleness and kindness of a group of co-wives. They are not competition to one another, but rather they are shareholders in the responsibility of caring for Nnu Ego and making her feel welcome. Even though part of this communal feeling may be due to their age (no longer feeling the need for youthful competition for their husband’s attention) it also suggests what comfort can be found in a female community of co-wives. Emecheta’s presentation of polygamy reflects her nuanced understanding of experience in general – there is no black and white, only shades of gray. It is precisely this aspect of Emecheta’s writing that often gets overlooked. The discourse reflecting the colonial context that Emecheta employs in the novel runs contrary to the perception of how gender configures in colonial discourse. In Discourses of Difference, Mills (1993: 58) describes colonialism as “portrayed as a male preserve where females have a very secondary supporting role.” She further elucidates, “Most studies which consider women and imperialism consist of descriptions of ‘native’ and British women as the objects of male gaze or male protection within the

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colonial context,” emphasizing that little work has been done to analyze the agency of women in colonial contexts. Emecheta (1979), however, writes in the woman aligned with imperialism. She gives Nnaife’s colonial employer’s wife, Mrs. Meers, a voice, and one that is both authoritative and perhaps ethical: if not in deed, at least in word. When Dr. Meers calls Nnaife a “baboon,” she “straightaway went into a torrent of words, too fast and too emotionally charged for Nnaife, who stood there like a statue, to understand” (41). Hence, Mrs. Meers, at a moral level, does not agree with the derogatory lexicon of her husband who found his choice of words hilarious, probably all the more since his servant did not understand. Thus, Emecheta imbues the wife of the imperialist with authority, as she is the one who has the authority to dismiss Nnaife for the night, while also imbuing her with the moral high ground, which is neither foreign to the construction of British femininity nor with the imperialists’ view of their own moral superiority as compared to the “natives.” Mrs. Meers' authority is limited though. She cannot control her husband though she can loudly and aggressively voice her opinion. Even so, Nnaife, who is stripped of all agency due to the colonial discourse and his status as Mrs. Meers’ servant, stands as a “statue,” wondering why Dr. Meers cannot keep his wife quiet. If he were intelligent as all white men were said to be, he would do so (42). Here it is, a woman defending the dignity of the “native” servant while the servant thinks the master should keep her quiet. Nnaife identifies more with the man and his position of power, even though he himself is subservient to the woman. Though he did not understand the language, he understood the prescribed patriarchal roles of gender. One wonders if he would have changed his mind if he understood what was being said, so the narrator tells us, “Not that he was the type of man who would have done anything had he known its meaning. He would simply shrug his shoulders and say, ‘We work for them and they pay us. His calling me a baboon does not make me one.’” (42). “Foolish woman,” he might add. Interestingly enough, Nnu Ego views the white women as spoiled, which she does not like (75). Nnaife and Nnu Ego are fairly aligned in their view of the role women should have demonstrating Nnu Ego’s collusion with patriarchy. By exposing the colonial and patriarchal discourse through the thoughts and dialogues of the characters, Emecheta highlights the flawed nature of those discourses producing an overarching feminist discourse. Although Mills (1993) seems to be referring to women aligned with colonialism when discussing the issue of agency in her analysis, it is noteworthy that Emecheta writes her female characters as ones who are left to make choices about the survival of their children and their families while

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their husbands are enlisted in the service of the colonialists. On this converse side of women’s agency – that of the Nigerian women as opposed to British – Emecheta all but completely blinds male gaze and annihilates male protection from Nnu Ego’s experience. She is not physically watched nor protected by men as her husband is often absent from her presence. Patriarchal “protection,” however, is internalized and implicit. Emecheta suggests a feminist discourse of agency that runs contrary to colonialist discourse and even complicates the ideal of agency in the Western feminist discourse of the 1970s as a purely liberating factor for women. The women must make choices, but as “victims” of a new system of patriarchy, their choices are limited and often self-defeating for various reasons. Due to the economic and social constraints on the Nigerian women living in Lagos, the choices of the women were indeed limited. Katrak (1987: 167) explains that “Petty trading […] could provide a precarious and uneven income, or selling firewood, the most backbreaking kind of labour which did not require any capital investment. Women were forcibly kept outside the wage market dominated by men in this Nigeria of the 1930s and 1940s.” During this time period, many of their choices to earn an income involved either contradicting colonial expectations of womanhood or engaging in activities which also offended their own cultural and social mores; men could transgress the mores and customs mostly unaffected in the new colonial city, but the women, in many cases, were branded by doing so. On the one hand, Nnaife, could be a house servant who washed the mistress’ underpants. A job so maligned in traditional Igbo society that Nnaife’s manhood was subjected to scrutiny by a traditional perspective but commonly accepted in Lagos as a valid job. On the other hand, Nnu Ego’s co-wife, Adaku, could not choose to abandon the household in an attempt to forge a better fortune for her and her daughters by way of prostitution without serious reprecussions. Nnu Ego reminds her of the impropriety of such activity: “‘Stop! Stop!’ Nnu Ego shouted. ‘Don’t forget we have young girls in this room and don’t you dare insult me by saying such things in my hearing…” (Emecheta 1979: 168). To reinforce the gender social system, Adaku can really only choose this path because she only has daughters. Risks can be taken with girls’ futures that cannot with boys’ in the same way. Besides, she would not have left if she had sons by Nnaife, since much of the tension and unhappiness in the household was due to her not having sons. Nnu Ego comments, “I think you are making a mistake Adaku. Besides, you could have a son when our husband returns” (169). Again, Nnu Ego is positioned as a collaborator. Yet, Adaku has already come to recognize the injustice of the system “with impossible standards for ourselves” that “make life intolerable for one

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another” (169). Adaku recognizes women’s role in perpetuating patriarchal standards. She acknowledges that by colluding with patriarchy, women hurt one another and fail to make alliances that could benefit them. Adaku’s consciousness has been raised and she chooses to opt out of the system, even at the expense of her reputation and possibly the future of her daughters who she plans to send to school with the wealth she makes. Later, upon Adaku’s success at opening a stall to sell abada material for lappas, Nnu Ego realizes she should not deceive herself about Adaku’s situation. “The woman was better off as she was; she would only be socially snubbed.” Meanwhile, Nnu Ego (and her daughters) scraped together money for her sons’ school fees (171). With her recognition that Adaku would get along well and would only lose some social status, Nnu Ego experienced her own consciousness getting past the social construction of propriety for a woman when such a woman would be living in material comfort and easily providing for her daughters. Feminist discourse is written into the text in the form of many more moments of consciousness-raising. For feminists, consciousness-raising signifies a woman’s intellectual movement from one who does not recognize societal restraints placed on her due to her gender to one who is aware of the chains that shackle her to certain roles in society that are difficult to escape due to the heavily entrenched ideologies of the society. Nnu Ego constantly resists moments when she can rise above a false consciousness. The thoughts about the injustice of her position in society as a woman enter her mind, but her allegiance to tradition prevents her from embracing the thoughts and turning to action; she continually returns to her internalized ideology about what a woman is and should be according to Igbo society. One moment of consciousness-raising is especially poignant: The arrival of her twin daughters [her eighth and ninth child] had a subduing effect upon Nnu Ego. She felt more inadequate than ever. Men – all they were interested in were male babies to keep their names going. But did not a woman have to bear the woman-child who would later bear the sons? ‘God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage?’ she prayed desperately. What have I gained from all this? Yes I have many children, but what do I have to feed them on? On my life [. . .] Is it such an enviable position? The men make it look as if we must aspire for children or die. That’s why when I lost my first son I wanted to die because I failed to live up to the standard expected of me by the males in my life, my father and my husband – and now I have to include my sons. (186-7)

In this instance, Nnu Ego seems to have a complete vision of how she and her daughters are oppressed by patriarchy. She expresses that her life is worth nothing unless she bears sons. She even recognizes that the men have constructed the ideology that keeps women longing for children. She really

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tops off her new understanding by asking “But who made the law that we should not hope in our daughters?”(187) as Adaku did when she rejected the socially inscribed gender role. She continues, “We women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change this, it is still a man’s world, which women will always help to build” (187). Seemingly, her feminist consciousness is complete, but in practice, she continues to carry on like a “good wife and mother.” Only in death, when Nnu Ego feared she would still be harassed by women praying to her for fertility was she able to make a choice for herself not to live for others. The people called her “a wicked woman” for she did not answer their prayers for children (224). She did not live up to society’s expectations and acted on her raised consciousness by not acting at all. Paradoxically, in her silence and inaction, Nnu Ego makes a feminist statement. Nnu Ego’s consciousness-raising is often connected to regrets about not making female alliances or joining communities. As feminist Audre Lorde (1984: 112) extols, “Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression.” Indeed, Lorde’s words represent the case of Nnu Ego. Nnu Ego did not cultivate support networks and found herself without resources and female support. Rather than find a sisterhood that could support her in an escape from her psychological dependency on the traditional binds that tied her to a negligent husband and a motherhood that focused primarily on the development of her sons, Nnu Ego continued to struggle alone in her oppressive situation and repress moments of consciousness-raising. Even for women who are not feminists and do not adhere to any sort of feminist perspective, community allows for survival. In Ibuza, women have a long tradition of uniting in solidarity to protect their collective interests and advance desired results, as noted with Nnu Ego and Adaku’s cooking strike below. Women must unite in sisterhood and solidarity to resist. Bell hooks (1984: 293) stresses the enmity patriarchy places between women and the importance of overcoming the patriarchal inscribed dependence on men for women’s validation: [M]ale supremacist ideology [...] encourages women to believe we are valueless and obtain value only by relating to or bonding with men. We are taught that our relationships with one another diminish rather than enrich our experience. We are taught that women are “natural” enemies, that solidarity will never exist between us because we cannot, should not, and do not bond with one another. We have learned these lessons well. We must unlearn them if we are to build a sustained feminist movement. We must learn to live and work in solidarity. We must learn the true meaning and value of sisterhood.

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All this learning and unlearning is a form of consciousness-raising, which Nnu Ego comes to realize little by little. Eventually, she comes to realize the value of the community and friendship various women had offered her: Nnu Ego told herself that she would have been better off had she had time to cultivate those women who had offered her hands of friendship; but she had never had the time […] she had shied away from friendship, telling herself she did not need any friends, she had enough in her family. But had she been right? (Emecheta 1979: 219)

Emecheta reflects the feminist values of female community and consciousness-raising simultaneously. The discourse reflects that the success of a Nigerian woman, as well as women in general, is highly dependent upon her network of women friends who can support her rather than compete with her. Feminists claim that the source of women’s competition comes from a divide and conquer strategy employed by the patriarchy. Without female community women are left with two options: identifying and collaborating with the dictators of societal constructs that suppress women or fighting alone outside of a collective support network. There is strength in numbers, especially for marginalized groups of people. Regardless, even when Nnu Ego and Adaku attempted moments of female solidarity, they were not able to succeed in their ends. The co-wives attempted a traditional technique of refusing to cook in order to pressure Nnaife into increasing their household allowance, but Nnaife unilaterally refused and caused Nnu Ego to call off the strike for the sake of her children. 2 Emecheta suggests that the forewomen transitioning from traditional to colonial urban life were left without their primary forms of defense and unification. An element of female solidarity was essentially stolen from them in the new society that recognized individuality and the nuclear family with one wife as the preference. In many ways, women were left without defenses. Even so, many women in the novel held onto the ideal of sisterhood: “We are like sisters on a pilgrimage. Why should we not help one another?” asked the neighbor who helped deliver Nnu Ego’s first child (Emecheta 1979: 53). Thus, Emecheta not only continually employs language that highlights feminist issues such as consciousness-raising and the value of female 2

Studies of traditional Igbo society offer examples of women uniting to force men to act a certain way. “Sitting on a man” was a subversive act of female solidarity in which women refused to cook or sleep with a man to enforce a certain behavior from him. See Derrikson (2002) for a more in-depth analysis of the political implications of the failed cooking strike and discussion of Judith Van Allen’s analysis of the loss of “powerful gender alliances” in her work “‘Sitting on a man:’ Colonialism and the lost political institutions of Igbo women” (47-48).

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community, but also simultaneously questions some of the limitations of a middle-class Western feminist discourse, specifically discourse that does not take into account the lived experience of women who have choices that are limited by social context and does not consider the benefits that traditional society sometimes offers to women. Since 1979 when Joys was published, feminists have become more involved in their discussions of agency and the socio-economic factors that limit choice as feminist theory also takes on a more global perspective that recognizes cultural differences. Living in Britain when writing the novel, and having attended London University, Emecheta seems to have understood the shortcomings of an overtly Western white middle-class conception of feminism as well as some of the strengths. Her work thus challenges discourses of the predominantly male colonialist as well as the privileged Western feminist while still embracing feminist ideals such as consciousness-raising and the value of female solidarity, community, and sisterhood, the latter also finding their roots in Ibuza. The complexity of The Joys of Motherhood has often been overlooked due to an adherence to a dominant Western reading. Literary scholars have tended to interpret Joys as a critique of traditional African patriarchal society or in reaction to such a view. What scholars have not considered is an interpretation that represents a more nuanced approach examining Emecheta’s complex social positioning as a Nigerian woman writing in a social context that not only marginalized her due to gender, but also due to her race and ethnicity. While she was influenced by a primarily white middle-class British feminist movement, she was also marginalized by such a movement. Emecheta does not blatantly critique traditional Igbo culture nor does she ignore her African feminist persuasions. She constructs a novel that offers multiple critiques of multiple discourses simultaneously revealing the conflicting and overlapping nature of discourse. Not only does she expose the tensions between discourses, but she also reveals that commonly critiqued discourses are not always all negative. By utilizing a feminist stylistics that focuses on the various discourses and contexts in the novel, a reading can emerge that opens up a dialogue between audiences and gives preference to an analysis that recognizes authorial experience reflecting specific social circumstances over generalizations. Emecheta and her characters are constructed by multiple discourses and those discourses reflect the complexity of wider social circumstances. Thus, it is through the examination of discourses within and beyond the text that we can come to a stronger understanding of the meaning embedded in the language of The Joys of Motherhood.

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References Derrikson, T. (2005) “Class, culture, and the colonial context; The status of women in Buchi Emecheta’s The joys of motherhood.” The international fiction review 29 (1/2), 40-51. Emecheta, B. (1988) “Feminism with a small ‘f’.” In K. H. Petersen (ed) Criticism and Ideology: Second African Writers’ Conference, Stockholm, 1986. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies. 173-185. ——., (1979). The joys of motherhood. Oxford: Heinemann. Ezeigbo, T.A. (1990) “Traditional women’s institutions in Igbo society: Implications for the Igbo female writer.” African Languages and Cultures 3(2), 149-65. Fish, S. (1980) Is there a text in this class? Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Fishburn, K. (1995) Reading Buchi Emecheta: Cross-cultural conversations. Westport: Greenwood Press. Foucault, M. (1979) “Truth and power: an interview with Alessandro Fontano and Pasquale Pasquino.” In M. Morris and P. Patton (eds) Michel Foucault: Power/truth/strategy. Sydney: Feral Publications. 29-48. Gee, J. P. (1999) An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. ——., (2002) “Literacies, Identities, and Discourses.” In M. Schleppegrell (ed) Developing Advanced Literacy in First and Second Languages: Meaning with Power. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlaum Associates. 159175. Hogeland, L. (1998) Feminism and its fictions: The consciousness-raising novel and the women’s liberation movement. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hooks, B. (1984) Feminist theory: From margin to center. Boston: South End Press. Katrak, K. (1987) “Womanhood/motherhood; variations on a theme in selected novels of Buchi Emecheta.” The journal of commonwealth literature 22(1), 159-70. Lorde, A. (1984) “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Sister outsider: essays and speeches. Freedom: The Crossing Press. 110-113. Mills, S. (1997) Discourse: The new critical idiom. New York: Routledge.

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——., (1996) “Knowing your place: a Marxist feminist stylistic analysis.” In J. J. Weber (ed) The stylistic reader: From Roman Jakobson to the present. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 241-257 ——., (1995) Feminist stylistics. London: Routledge. ——., (1993) Discourses of difference: An analysis of women’s travel writing and colonialism. New York: Routledge. Nnoromele, S. (2002) “Representing the African woman: Subjectivity and self in The joys of motherhood.” Critique 43(2), 178-190. Pecheux, M. (1982) Language, semantics and Ideology. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Said, E. (1979) Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Walker, C. (1995) “Conceptualising Motherhood in Twentieth Century South Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies 21(3), 417-437. Van Allen, J. (1976) “‘Aba riots’ or Igbo women’s war?’ Ideology, stratification and the invisibility of women.” In N. Hafkin and E. Bay (eds) Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 59-86.

Martina Kopf

Narratives of a Wounded Time: Yvonne Vera’s Poetics of Trauma Introduction Hardly any other African writer has inspired literary criticism and theory on African literature in the past ten years as much as the Zimbabwean novelist, Yvonne Vera. Vera’s work impresses by connecting precise observation with artistic quality and complexity, or, more simply put, knowledge, imagination and art. Her work combines a highly sensitive and sophisticated écriture with powerful narratives of war, sexual violence and colonialism. In the beginning of Butterfly Burning the reader is confronted with corpses hanging in a tree, men who had been killed for their resistance against European colonization at the end of the 19th century. In Without a Name the protagonist, Mazvita, drags her child tied to her back throughout the narrative, a dead infant, strangled by its mother. She carries it back to the village from where she fled after an attack by guerrilla fighters left her raped and homeless. Under the Tongue focuses on a father-daughter-incest, a detail within the larger and overshadowing picture of the same war period, whose consequences prove to be equally devastating on a whole genealogy of women – grandmother, mother and daughter. The Stone Virgins, which is widely considered as Vera’s most overtly political and most courageous piece of work, witnesses in detail the brutal outbursts of violence in Matabeleland after Zimbabwe’s independence. When isolated from their narrative and linguistic composition, the stories are drastic and cruel. Yet, as the author once declared and as the aesthetics of the novels reveal, her writing was deeply motivated by the search for beauty (see the section “Search for beauty” below). This essay analyzes and interprets the discontinuity between content and style as the manifestation of and the confrontation with a more profound epistemological and also ethical problem in the narrative representation of traumatizing violence. Although this poetics of trauma, as it will be called here, underpins all four novels published after Nehanda – and to some degree also in this first novel – this essay concentrates on two of them, Without a Name and Under the Tongue.

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Reading one of Vera’s novels for the first time always entails to some degree bewilderment and uncertainty, as Carolyn Martin Shaw (2002: 25) puts it: At the beginning of each novel, you never know which way is up: Who is speaking? What is she talking about? What is real? What is imagined? By one or by many? What matters?

Without a Name starts with a scene from everyday life: A bus station, a woman waiting for the bus, surrounded by other passengers and playing children. The next moment the image disintegrates: The woman looses her skin. It falls in shreds to the ground. Her neck twists as if it was broken, she screams (Chapter 1). But nobody else apart from the reader seems to have noticed anything, as if nothing actually had happened. As if it had happened elsewhere. The moment contains a different space and time dimension, the everyday scenery includes an entirely different horizon of experience which we cannot but look at in at first amazement without understanding. A similar moment of disintegration appears in Under the Tongue when Zhizha, in the arms of her grandmother, suddenly watches how her grandmother’s skin falls from her and curls up on the ground like lemon peels (Chapter 13). The beginning of this novel leaves the reader even more puzzled about the configuration of time, narrator’s voice and narrated subject.

Time structure As Ranka Primorac (2002: 101) observes, the plots in Vera’s novels are always sparse and if reduced to their bare bones, almost banal. Their complexity lies far more at the narrative level and at the level of language than at the level of the story. Taking this observation a step further, it is through the narrative structure and techniques that meaning is conveyed, or in other words: The novels shift the attention from what is told to how it is portrayed through language. Or, as Primorac (2001: 77) puts it “the configurations of Vera’s worlds are inseparable from her novels’ form of expression.” Following the assumption that the formal aspects of Vera’s novels are the actual place where meaning occurs, I will now take a closer look at one aspect: the construction of time. I follow here a similar argumentation as Primorac (2001) does in her analysis of what she called the space-time of memory in Vera’s novels. Memory, as Primorac asserts with regard to Under the Tongue,

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“represents non-physical movement into the past, against the flow of chronological time. In this novel, too [as in Nehanda] such movement is not conceptualized as going back, but as an act of advancing into another dimension, only describable in terms of space. In all of Vera’s novels, such movement is somehow linked to physical trauma, but her last three texts [Without a Name, Under the Tongue, Butterfly Burning] differ from Nehanda in that the trauma is inflicted by a violation of the most private space of all, the space inside a woman’s body” (87).

The following analysis of the temporal structure in Without a Name and Under the Tongue will be more specifically related to the concept of psychological trauma. The disorientating effect of the novels is derived to a large degree from their time structure. In Without a Name, the narration evolves in two alternating threads which depict two opposite movements: One of them describes Mazvita’s departure from Mubaira and way to Harare, the other one starts with her departure from Harare and follows her way back to Mubaira. Neither of the strands is strictly linear, which adds to the confusing effect. The departure at the beginning of the narration is a pivotal moment: At this point the movement forward towards Harare, towards the freedom and forgetting of the violent past it represents, turns into a movement backwards. If the narration starts with its actual turning point, the actual starting point of the story – the attack on Mazvita’s home village and her encounter with a Shona freedom fighter who rapes her – will be told only later as the narration progresses. This event is addressed for the first time in a dialogue between Mazvita and Nyenyedzi, her lover whom she meets in Kadoma. The version presented to Nyenyedzi in direct speech is scant, highly metaphorical and seems strangely indifferent to the violence of the moment it recounts. [I]t is hard to find words for certain things. I really must go to the city. One day I woke up in a mist, you know, the kind you enter with your shoulders. [...] My arms were heavy as I walked in that early morning to carry water from the river. I only had my arms, because my legs were buried in the mist, but I felt the mist moving upward, toward my face. It was strange to walk separated like that. Then I felt something pulling me down into the grass. This something pulled hard at my legs, till I fell down. I saw nothing into the grass. I had forgotten about my legs. It was a man that pulled me into that grass. He held a gun. I felt the gun, though I did not see it. After that experience, I decided to leave (WN: 30) 1.

By way of flashbacks, the narration will repeatedly come back to that experience and inscribe different versions of it into the text. Nyenyedzi reacts

1

Quotations from the novels are all from the 2002 joint edition of Without a Name and Under the Tongue, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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to this first and only version in direct speech with silence, followed by his suggestion to Mazvita to stay with him in Kadoma. The next five chapters of the same thread relate Mazvita’s relationship with Nyenyedzi (Chapters 2, 4, 6, 9, 11) until her departure from Kadoma while parallel to it the other thread follows her as she ties her – as we don’t know at that point – dead baby to her back and struggles on her way to the bus station. With Mazvita’s arrival in Harare the composition changes briefly its rhythm and remains for the first time two chapters long (Chapter 13 and 14) at the same time level. Her hope connected with her arrival in Harare is expressed rhythmically: as if there were time and space where she could come to rest and make a fresh start. Yet it is not a lasting change. The following chapters resume the to and fro movement between the two time levels until in Chapter 17 when the pattern is again disturbed, as if the text’s composition performed the search for balance and its repeated failure at the narrative level. This time the unloving sex with Joel triggers another flashback. After this ambiguous moment, rhythm and pattern start to fall more and more apart. In Chapter 30 Mazvita kills the baby. The act marks the end of the back story to the image of the woman in the streets of Harare carrying a dead child on her back. At the same time the first circuit of the narration closes here, since this ending is also the missing beginning of the other narrative thread which began at the bus station. This other thread, where the actual plot evolves, has little external action: a bus drive, some conversation among the passengers, being stopped by soldiers, a passenger playing Mbira and sleep. Yet just as the image of the woman at the bus station disintegrates right in the beginning, each of these seemingly unspectacular moments contains images of an invisible inner suffering that made the borders between inner and outer reality crumble. The second circle closes with Mazvita’s arriving “yesterday” in her burnt village (Chapter 32). Thus the first narrative thread runs into the other and vice versa, like two paralleling spirals which curve at the end of the narration and open into the beginning of the other. Under the Tongue, too, has two narrative strands which alternate from chapter to chapter. They are more easily distinguished since one strand is narrated in the first, the other in the third person 2. The first person narrative follows the “hidden places” of Zhizha, the girl protagonist of the novel. They trace a psychic reality in mostly dreamlike, dissociative states of mind which are loosely connected with an outside, objective time through the repeated 2

See Primorac (2001) for an analysis of the narrative composition of Under the Tongue (8388).

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indications “It is night,” “It is morning.” The continuous alternation between night and morning creates a particular rhythm. Nevertheless it does not help to distinguish the various levels of consciousness. Rather they often designate a transition within one and the same dreamlike or dissociative moment. The first time that Zhizha’s narrative is anchored in a concrete place outside of herself occurs in Chapter 5, when she describes her grandmother’s house and moments from her grandparents’ everyday life. From there on her narrative continues to depict in scattered moments a kind of story line which intermingles with the narration of her mental landscape. It remains unclear however if these are memories from a later point of view or perceptions of moments which happen simultaneous to their narration. At the time of the narration, Zhizha lives in her grandparents’ house in a black township. She remembers a conversation between her grandmother and her mother in which the latter revealed that her husband had raped their daughter, Zhizha. Shortly afterwards Zhizha understands from a conversation between her grandparents that her mother has been imprisoned for killing her husband. In both arguments the name “Tonderayi” emerges and subsequently enters Zhizha’s dreams. The name becomes a symbol for a repressed, hidden story, a family secret which traverses the female genealogy and which she can only guess until her grandmother reveals it to her. These elements of a story are embedded into a conglomerate of dreams, fantasies and dissociative perceptions. Indeed the first person narrative creates many layers of consciousness and reality in a way which makes their transitions almost imperceptible. More than in all the other novels the protagonist is written from the interior while the outside reality is formed and filtered through Zhizha’s psychic reality. The novel inhabits the temporality of trauma, which cannot be plotted through conventional realism. […] Stylistically, the experience of trauma is represented in a series of disconnected, almost stand-alone flashes of memory in which narrative is often impeded in its monological pull towards linearity. (Muponde 2007: 36)

Alternating with the first-person present-tense strand, the narrative voice unfolds a parallel strand in the third-person and imperfect. This second strand develops in chronological order the story of Zhizha’s parents, Muroyiwa and Runyararo, and inserts Zhizha’s narrative into the historical context of the Second Chimurenga. It has different layers, too. Its actual story line is, similar to Without a Name, a journey. It follows Muroyiwa’s path from his birthplace Njanja to Umtali, where he meets Runyararo and starts a family with her. It leads to the depiction of what could appear idyllic, if it were not embedded into an atmosphere of paralyzed waiting for the end of the war and

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if it were not informed by the simultaneous reality of a father-daughter-incest which disrupted the idyll even before it came into narrative existence. The two strands finally lead into each other in a similar way as depicted before with regard to Without a Name. The Muroyiwa-narration stops at the point where the Zhizha-narration set in. The third-person-strand thus moves all the time towards the beginning of the first-person-strand, its end designates the pivotal point where one strand reverts into the other. As in Without a Name time in one strand progresses, while in the other it seems to stagnate. Only here the two time orders do not belong to one and the same character, but to two different protagonists. Muroyiwa’s movement away from his birthplace is dominated by progressive, chronological time. Like Mazvita he cannot follow through with his departure. His onward movement disperses in the frozen time of waiting, where it takes a fatal reversal. This reversal will not be narrated in the progressive strand however, but is anticipated in the mention of his death at the beginning of the novel.

Images All of Yvonne Vera’s novels have a strong visual quality. The author, who was also director of the National Gallery in Bulawayo, described her visual orientation as an important part of her technique as a writer. In interviews she declared that Without a Name started with a kind of mental photograph. She imagined a woman tying a child on her back. Then she changed this familiar picture in one aspect: the child is dead. This moment, frozen like that, is so powerful that I can’t lose sight of it, visually or emotionally. From it I develop the whole story, the whole novel: how do we get to this moment when the mother does this? [...] I don’t even have the story at the beginning, I have only this cataclysmic moment, this shocking, painful moment, at once familiar and horrifying because of one change of detail which makes everything else tragic. For me, an entire history is contained in such a moment (Bryce 2002b: 219) 3.

The reader however is not conscious of this detail that changes the whole meaning of the familiar picture and assigns a completely unfamiliar dimension to it. All through the novel we are shown the picture once and again and we are also made to understand that there is something wrong with it, but we cannot grasp this something. This visual moment contains a particular tension which characterizes the narration. The tension is reinforced 3

See also Hoffmann 2001: 25.

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through the way Vera creates a story out of the moment. As shown before the story does not unfold in a linear way. It jumps between contrasting scenes and moments and thus adds to the confusion about the when, who and what of the story. In an analysis of the story “Crossing Borders” Jane Bryce (2002a: 50) has shown the intermediality of Vera’s writing in her use of cinematic techniques to construct meaning. All of this is achieved through detailed attention to physical description, with barely anything you could call ‘event’. What happens? A man comes into a room and switches on the lights, a woman plays the piano. There is only one line of dialogue. Yet through the use of light, sound effects […], the placing of the two figures within the room and in relation to each other, essential information is conveyed. […]. At the emotional level, light/dark signify a relationship to the environment, and this relationship, which is really the theme of the story, emerges cinematically – that is, by way of an accumulation of significance through the use of physical detail and effects of sound, light and space.

Similarly in Without a Name the story evolves cinematically by way of cuts, a montage of scenes and settings, and a concentration of visual impressions held together by variations of one mental photograph. This visually influenced narrative technique together with the specific structuring of time is a key to the universe of the novels. From a perspective of normative realism the narratives are elusive. Instead “[y]ou must enter the heads of Zhizha, the abused daughter; Mazvita, the raped war victim” (Martin Shaw 2002: 25). In the above cited interview with Jane Bryce (2002b: 223) Vera declared: I use the isolated individual to explore how they are connected to everything else. [...] I’m fascinated with the individual, especially the woman, especially the woman in Africa, and how they are forced to endure without having a nervous breakdown – because they cannot afford it. But they collapse inside, and I’m keen to capture that collapse.

Psychic reality With this programmatic statement Vera entered, like her fellow writer, Tsitsi Dangarembga, a terrain as yet little acknowledged in the criticism of African literature. In fact it seems that when it comes to psychic suffering and psychic realities marked by violence and suffering, secondary literature persists with the same assumption Nyasha, Dangarembga’s protagonist in her novel Nervous Conditions, has to confront:

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But the psychiatrist said that Nyasha could not be ill, that Africans did not suffer in the way we had described (201-202).

This assumption seems to be so strong that even when an author settles her narratives explicitly in the inner, psychic and mental reality of her protagonists, and traces the experience of violence and hurt from an inside perspective, African literature studies have been reluctant to draw on insights from psychology and psychoanalysis. A certain skepticism persists rooted in the tradition of anti-imperialistic criticism, which tends to assign psychoanalysis to Western individualism and dismisses the concept of psyche as apolitical and individualizing (see for example Amuta 1989: 6). If I rely here on psychoanalysis and psychiatric knowledge, I have another tradition in mind. It reaches from the beginnings of psychoanalysis, from Sigmund Freud, Pierre Janet, Sándor Ferenczi and others who started to develop tools to understand and treat dimensions of suffering, which had not been taken seriously either medically or socially up to then 4, to psychosocial work with victims and survivors of violence today all across the globe. This tradition embraces Frantz Fanon who worked with victims of torture during the Algerian anti-colonial war 5, as well as doctors, activists and researchers such as Dori Laub, who worked with survivors of the Holocaust and of the civil war in Bosnia, Judith Herman with her focus on domestic violence, Esther Mujawayo, survivor of the genocide in Rwanda who trained as a therapist and co-founded the widows’ organisation AVEGA, and numerous other people, organizations and movements working with trauma survivors in different national and cultural contexts. Indeed trauma theory and research is highly political in the sense that it brings forward, in the process of healing, the voice and narrations of silenced victims and at the same time stresses the importance of political and social contexts and measures. In this aspect the interests of a certain tradition of psychosocial work overlap with one defining feature of postcolonial writing and more specifically with the work of many post-independence Zimbabwean writers like Alexander Kanengoni, Chenjerai Hove or Charles Mungoshi. Stephen Chan (2005: 380) stresses the political significance of voicing individual trauma in post-war Zimbabwe in a review of Kanengoni’s Echoing Silences and Vera’s The Stone Virgins:

4 5

See Judith Hermans (1997) history of trauma research in Trauma and Recovery, 7-20. Postcolonial theory sometimes tends to forget that Fanon’s work as a psychiatrist in colonial Algeria had a great impact on the writing of The Wretched of the Earth. In The Wretched of the Earth as well as in earlier works Fanon pointed to the problem of “healing” a colonized person adequately from neurosis as long as the colonial situation remained intact.

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What the novels point out is atrocity and gratuitousness. They point out lack of public truth. The novels also point out private pain – and that only a reconciliation between what is private and public can take the nation forward, can allow the state sound citizens, and can allow citizens to be sound individuals. But a traumatised privacy cannot be reconciled to an untruthful public condition which continues to rely upon war.

The concept of psyche or psychological trauma has, as stated above, hardly been taken up in analyses of Vera’s works. There seems to be a wide consensus that it is the body who speaks in Vera’s texts, or, more specifically, the “body in pain,” as if violence manifests itself only, or at least primarily, in a physical, bodily dimension. To cite an example, Meg Samuelson (2002: 93) starts her analysis of Without a Name and Under the Tongue with the following statement: The violated, dismembered female body moves to the centre of the narratives as Vera’s novels envisage the means by which the raped body can find recovery.

Yet with the exception of the Stone Virgins, in none of Vera’s novels is there a dismembered female body at the centre of the narrative. In fact the only dismembered body in Without a Name is that of the newborn child who is dragged throughout the narrative. On the contrary I would say that the violence Samuelson refers to is marked by the very fact that it leaves no visible signs on the body. On the physical level the violating act in Without a Name remains literally unspectacular in the sense that the text does not show a picture of it. The only visible physical trace it leaves – textually – is the sperm on Mazvita’s thighs. In Under the Tongue bodily harm and the physical dimension of pain and hurt is more obvious since the text envisages not only sperm but also blood “between Zhizhas legs” (Chapter 23). Yet also this visible physical injury remains restricted to the rape scene in the text. In fact the text never shows Mazvita’s or Zhizha’s body, their physical appearances remain totally irrelevant. I read these as signs that a focus on the body misses the point. Yet the texts are abundant with images of the body expressing fragmentation and hurt. But again I would not describe these as “language of the body” representing authentic experiences of the body. Rather the body, or more precisely, speaking of the body provides a means to refer to the presence of a sort of pain which cannot easily be located. Or maybe it even indicates the absence of any such place where the pain can be located. Her skin peeled off, parting from her body. She had suffered so much that her skin threatened to fall pitilessly to the ground. It hung from below her neck, from her arms, from her whole silent body (WN: 8).

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The body is silent; it does not reveal Mazvita’s suffering. The imminent disintegration of this passage occurs on another level. Maybe the disintegration feels as if Mazvita’s skin would peel off. Maybe this unlikely picture reveals not so much about Mazvita’s feeling, though, than it expresses a narrative problem: Right here language misses something, as if it did not provide adequate means to designate the suffering. Although it creates an image which communicates suffering, there is something wrong with the image: The words are missing the place where the suffering occurs. This failure of language is more evidently addressed in Under the Tongue: This pain cannot be carried in the mouth. There is no mouth. It follows one like a shadow, this pain (UT: 160). Grandmother says that a woman cannot point to the source of her pain, saying, it is here and there. A woman finds her sorrow in her dream and everywhere (UT: 162).

Speaking of the body helps to cover this lack. It bridges an absence in language and evokes empathy, since we immediately associate pain with pictures of skin peeling off, a broken back, a forehead distorted as if something were pulling from behind the ears (UT: 181). At the same time it is misleading because, just as Vera expressed in the passage mentioned above, the body is silent. It is the language of Mazvita’s body which represents, not her body. As for Zhizha it is different. Her body indeed represents, but it does so at the wrong spot: I show her my old wound, on my knee, a tiny scar. [...] I show mother my old wound. Mother touches my knee and says I am too young to know of wounds (UT: 180).

The scar is a materialization, a visible sign. It provides Zhizha with a spot where to fix and show her injury. But what the scar shows and what others read in it – the trace of an accident too long ago for her to remember – is different from what it should represent: Scars are our hidden worlds, our places of forgetting (UT: 182).

The scar in Under the Tongue is a misdirected sign, it again represents a failure. Zhizha uses an already existing sign, one, which is available to her, to signify an inner reality difficult to represent. Again the sign helps to bridge a gap in language. At the same time it communicates that it cannot convey the inner reality. What it conveys is not what it should convey. Showing the scar as physical sign represents the lack of a verbal sign for the experience of

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suffering. I read these moments which indicate an absence in language as hints to be cautious with quick conclusions, with explanations and interpretations which defy the problematical in Vera’s texts.

The concept of psychological trauma Traumatic memories are fundamentally different from what we usually refer to as “memory.” They resist being integrated into language and narrative and allude to the limits of communicating experiences. At the same time they refuse to be banned from memory. There is something imperative about them, as if the same resistance they put up against narrative memory prevents their forgetting. In her classic Trauma and Recovery Judith Herman (1997) describes the conflict between the desire to tell and the will to deny as an integral part of what she defines as dialectics of trauma: The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner which undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom (1).

During the past ten years the concept of trauma has been taken up more and more in cultural and literary studies, where it serves as an analytical tool for the hermeneutics of narratives of violence and loss. Yet the transfer from psychoanalytical and psychological theory into the humanities has resulted in shortcomings and an often reduced understanding of the concept and its complex implications on the levels of language, memory and communication. Two frequent simplifications should be pointed out: 6 First it is important to distinguish between the event and its impact. “Trauma” is often used synonymous with the traumatic event, or the memory of it. Yet what makes an event traumatic is the very fact that it cannot be contained or “experienced.” Trauma must not be mistaken for a hidden or lost memory of past events which only waits to be delivered, as Dori Laub (1992) stresses in his theory of trauma, but rather as a present state of mind:

6

For a more detailed discussion of the intersections of trauma and literature see Kopf (2009) “Trauma, Narrative and the Art of Witnessing.”

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Trauma survivors live not with memories of the past, but with an event that could not and did not proceed through to its completion, has no ending, attained no closure, and therefore, as far as its survivors are concerned, continues into the present and is current in every respect (69).

That is why the concept of Elaine Scarry’s Body in Pain, which Samuelson explicitly refers to and which forms an implicit intertext to many interpretations of Vera’s novels, falls too short or rather misses the point of the narrative problem exposed before. Elaine Scarry parts from physical pain and its destructive effects on language. Her central opposition is the one between pain and language, between an “unmaking” of the world through an experience which cannot be expressed in meaningful language, and the “making” of world through imagination and creation. While I agree with her on understanding physical pain as a disruption of meaning and signifying processes, I would contest any approach that tries to explain the devastating effects of massive violence as rooted primarily in the experience of pain, as Scarry does with regard to war and torture. Neither can the consequences of sexual violence be sufficiently understood in terms of pain. Pain may be one aspect, but it is not the unspeakable - rather it is the unspeakable which constitutes the pain. In the dialectical language of trauma “pain” may become a metaphor for what is felt rather like an emotional absence, or irritation? – a symptom, a shifted sign. The basic experience which makes war, sexual violence and other forms of massive violence traumatic is helplessness in front of an overwhelming force, in a situation which is subjectively felt as inescapable. At the moment of trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak of atrocities. Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning (Herman 1997: 33).

The second point refers to the relationship between trauma and communication. Cultural theory tends to use the concept of trauma synonymous with the unsayable or unspeakable in an almost essentialist way. At the same time representations of trauma in literature are often qualified as “healing” in the sense that they transform the unspeakable and integrate it into narrative memory. While I share the assumption that literature as form of empathic witnessing has a healing dimension, I want to challenge the underlying notion of “unspeakable experience.” Trauma survivors often remember perfectly well what happened and the will to testify to it can constitute a driving force of survival. They may do so in a contradictory way

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in order to avoid re-enactments in speech and communication, as Herman put it. Yet the failure to speak must be equally seen as a failure to listen. Esther Mujawayo gives in SurVivantes (2004) a powerful example of this failure. A friend of hers who like her survived the genocide in Rwanda suffered greatly from never being allowed to tell her story to the end. Whenever she told others of how she lived through the massacres and rescued herself out of a mass grave, they would interrupt her at a certain point saying something like “no, stop it, I can’t bear this.” For her it was a relief when she first met another person who would allow her to go through with her story. So it was not her who was not able to tell, but her social surrounding which was not able to listen, to assist her narration, and thus blocked it 7. Experience here is “unspeakable” in so far as it turns out to be “unlistenable.” Dori Laub (1992: 68) puts a strong emphasis on the importance of listening in the communicative process which brings traumatic memory into language. The absence of an empathic listener, or more radically, the absence of an addressable other, an other who can hear the anguish of one’s memories and thus affirm and recognize their realness, annihilates the story.

As he says, it is only in the process of narration or bearing witness that the story of the trauma comes into being. This process cannot be done alone and Herman (1997: 153) alike stresses the fact that “no one can face trauma alone.”

A wounded time It was time that had been wounded when he lost his sight, not sight (UT: 157).

In the middle of Under the Tongue there is this irritating sentence that leads away from the obvious. At the story level it refers to the blindness of Muroyiwa’s father and does not seem to make sense. If we relate it to the signifying process itself however, which is under way in Vera’s writing, it provides a key to the epistemological problem trauma narratives have to face – on the side of the writer as well as on the side of the reader. The sentence shifts the wound from the material, physical dimension – from the site where the injury originally occurred – to the immaterial dimension of time. This 7

See Mujawayo 2004: 21-23 as well as the chapter “Pour une fois, raconter l’histoire d’Alice jusqu’au bout…” (37-44).

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transposition from body to time also signifies that the wound is of a kind that cannot easily be told and understood. As long as we stick to the obvious, to the visible, physical dimension of the traumatizing event we will not be able to acknowledge the disturbance and disintegration it produces. This is exactly what the novels do. They follow the disintegrating effects of the severe assaults their protagonists have to undergo and they do so by reproducing the shift from the physical to the non-physical through a shift of meaning from story to narrative structure. What breaks apart in Without a Name and Under the Tongue is not the body. Now it would be equally reductive to say the novels deal solely with the mental and spiritual experience of violence and trauma. Rather the complexity of the narrations lies in their accurate observation of the interdependency of inner and outer reality. They follow the way violence expands from the material into psychic and mental dimensions and disrupts the flexible interplay of mental and physical existence as is described with regard to trauma survivors: Traumatic events produce profound and lasting changes in physiological arousal, emotion, cognition, and memory. Moreover, traumatic events may sever these normally integrated functions from one another. The traumatized person may remember everything in detail, but without emotion. She may find herself in a constant state of vigilance and irritability without knowing why. Traumatic symptoms have a tendency to become disconnected from their source and to take on a life of their own (Herman 1997: 34).

As outlined before in the first reading the temporality of the novels irritates and confuses. Only slowly does the narration develop a time frame for orientation and it is not until the end that we can fully understand its temporal structure. In neither of the novels does time pass without hindrance. In both of them the continuity which develops in one strand is repeatedly blocked and disturbed by the stagnating time of the other thread. The narration performs a kind of rupture that has been described in trauma research as well. Trauma survivors often report that their sense of time has frozen with the traumatisation. They do have a sense for objective time, but not for their life time, their development and particularly not for their future. In intrusive symptoms the irritation is carried on. Memories, nightmares and flashbacks feel as immediate as if the event had just happened. They thus demonstrate to the person concerned that time does not pass by (Bohleber 2000: 827). In Under the Tongue the first person passages evoke the impression of time flowing on the spot. The repeated indications “It is night” and “It is morning” do not produce a progression, but reinforce the impression of being captured in time, as if it were the same night and the same morning throughout the

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narration. 8 In Without a Name flashbacks as well as the thread of Mazvita’s return disturb the progression of time. Compared to the other narrative thread, time is extremely dilated here. Although both threads are of about equal length they differ significantly with regard to the narrated time. While the one covers a period of several months from the violent assault until the birth of the child, the other strand which sets in with Mazvita waiting at the bus station, but actually begins with her killing the child at the end of the novel, probably covers only some hours. Just as the images of a broken back, of bursting bones and skin peeling off do, this repeated irruption of a frozen time gives the impression of something irrevocably broken. Yet the impression is not the same. While the images shock, evoke empathy and communicate pain, the rupture expressed in the temporal structure rather conveys a void, or non-being.

Search for beauty As pointed out above, any representation of trauma has not only to deal with the unspeakable, but also with the unlistenable of traumatic experience. It has to overcome resistance on several levels – on the level of language and narration as well as on the level of the intended audience. The incapability or unwillingness to listen to the testimony of what human atrocities produce will keep the circle of suppression and re-enactment closed. The act of telling might itself become severely traumatizing, if the price of speaking is reliving; not relief, but further retraumatization. […] Moreover: if one talks about the trauma without being truly heard or truly listened to, the telling might itself be lived as a return of the trauma – a re-experiencing of the event itself (Laub 1992: 67).

In Without a Name there is a similar moment in the dialogue between Mazvita and Nyenyedzi which precedes the end of their attachment. Nyenyedzi spoke with a brightness on his face, a glow unhidden. He would not leave the land. But Mazvita did not agree with the vision he held for the land. She had no fear of departures. She was restless, though she admired and cared for this man. She turned away from him. She held a heaviness in her mouth that Nyenyedzi failed to fathom (WN: 39, my italics).

8

I have given a more detailed analysis of the performance and transformation of traumatic memory in Under the Tongue in the article “Writing sexual violence” (2005).

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I read this failure as a key moment of the narration. With regard to the things said in the dialogue, the relationship breaks up because of an ideological conflict and diverging ideas and desires of freedom, struggle and land. The dialogue obtains its complexity and tension however not merely from the verbal exchange, but above all from what remains unspoken and unheard. The verbalised conflict conceals and contains a failure on the part of the other as empathic witness and sets Mazvita back on her linear and solitary movement away from remembrance which will turn into a fatal reversal. In fact this failure is already anticipated in the scene quoted above, when Mazvita addresses her violation in direct speech with her lover. Between her words and Nyenyedzi’s answer lies a silent gap. The author does not narrate what this silence contains; it marks a rupture. Nyenyedzi resumes the conversation, but not at the point where it stopped. Mazvita’s account ends up in silence and will not be taken up again. Nyenyedzi “failed to fathom,” his empathy and imagination did not bridge the gap nor create a space where the trauma could be articulated. It remains frozen in the form of a traumatic memory and shortly afterwards intrusively unsettles the temporal structure (see above). In Under the Tongue the communication of traumatic contents is more successful. Dialogue there “becomes a private survival mechanism shared by three generations of women” (Primorac 2001: 88) through which Zhizha and her grandmother mutually encourage each other to remember. The importance of “fathoming the heaviness” the other might hold in her or his mouth as well as the weight of the failure to do so is not only an element of Vera’s stories – and here I want to return to the question of style and technique – but also part of her poetics. In the interview with Jane Bryce (2002) she said: I want you to be there, I don’t want you to hear about it, I want you to be a witness, which means taking part in what is happening each moment, as it happens. But I want to do it without crudity, with a certain elegance, so you feel you can still endure it and see beauty in it. And this beauty can only be in the language, I don’t see where else it can lie. That’s where language becomes important (222-223, my italics).

This poetic statement lays the ground for my opposition to interpretations of Vera’s novels as recovery stories. What I called problematic in Vera’s texts before are the frequent moments of disconnection, moments, where something is not or not quite solved, where something is not or not quite what it seems to be, like in the sentence referring to VaGomba’s wound quoted above. It is not VaGomba’s sight that has been wounded, but time. Of course VaGomba’s eyes had been wounded; the narrative leaves no doubt about that. At the same time it suggests that the wounds are not what we tend

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to see in them. The same holds true for the endings of the novels. In both novels the stagnating, dilated narrative thread which inscribes the traumatic dislocation into the temporal structure, leads back to the scene from where the whole narration actually started. Both Mazvita’s and Zhizha’s story ends with the return of/to the original scene of violation. Yet the end brings no closure. Does the story find its solution there or does it start anew, as if somewhere, invisibly for the reader, a “repeat button” had been pressed? The endings are deliberately left ambiguous and allow for different interpretations. Now if we disregard the problematic, the unresolved and unredeemed in the novels we also overlook the moment when language becomes important. The stories with regard to what they tell have no beauty. If we experience them as beautiful nevertheless, if they evoke confidence in us, it is because they set into motion something different from what they tell and create an additional reality to the reality of the event. Vera worked very consciously with narrative effects and the difference between event and language: My tales are tragic, rather than sad, meaning they have a catastrophic force. Some writers can give you two heartbeats – one for the beauty of the words, another for the event. I want to be a writer who can give you the illusion that you have two hearts (Vera in Mutandwa 2002).

What results from this sharp difference between language and event is, in the process of reading, a feeling of division. We cannot feel the beauty of the language as part of the narrated event, they exist independently from and unrelated to each other. This produces a paradoxical simultaneousness of two extremely contradictory realities. The rape of Mazvita and Zhizha, Mazvita’s killing her child, Tonderayi’s death, VaGombas blindness, the war – they represent events, facts which exist independently from the language that tells the reader about them. The beauty of the language does not change anything about them; it does not and cannot interfere with the event. Language here is not employed to aestheticize violence, but to create an aesthetics which confronts violence. Aesthetics here works as intermediary which helps to listen and to overcome the impulse to say “no, stop it, I can’t bear it” when coming close to the burden survivors of violence carry inside themselves. It restores a sense that speaking and listening is possible in the face of what can only be felt and lived through as destruction of meaning. At the same time, through the extreme division of language and event, it testifies to the difference between artistic recreation on the one hand and the collapse of meaning and signification which persists in the experience of trauma on the other. On the side of the reader this aesthetics together with the

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disconnections and ruptures addressed above produce yet another effect. It makes reading a highly ambiguous experience which makes us feel our presence in the moment of reading and integrates the reader as an active listener and witness into the process of narration.

Conclusion Read in terms of trauma the temporal structure of the novels Without a Name and Under the Tongue works as a signifier. By transposing the wounds from the physical to the dimension of time, the texts compel us to challenge our perception: The wounds are not what we took them for. They have shifted and changed their appearance and expanded from the physical into the psychic and spiritual dimension. A wounded time has become the actual plot. We cannot easily take hold of the wounds there or, since we move on the level of language and narration – we cannot easily put them into words. At the same time the transposition from “body” to “time” helps to better understand the actual wound. By way of their narrative composition, Without a Name and Under the Tongue, do not tell about trauma in terms of a past memory, but mimetically perform it as a present state. The circular structure and the ambiguous endings oppose reading the novels as recovery stories, or more precisely the stories do not allow us to delegate healing to the protagonists alone. Rather their aesthetics works in a way that insists on the presence of the addressable other or a public that acknowledges the suffering caused by violence as precondition of recovery. If the novels give the impression of healing and recovery, it is because they recover a narration in front of the annihilation of meaning and create the presence of the other as an empathic listener.

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References Amuta, C. (1989) The theory of African literature: Implications for practical criticism. London: Zed Books. Bohleber, W. (2000) “Die Entwicklung der Traumatheorie in der Psychoanalyse.“ Psyche 54 (9/10), 797-839. Bryce, J. (2002a) “Imaginary snapshots: Cinematic techniques in the writing of Yvonne Vera.” In R. Muponde, M. Taruvinga (eds) Sign and taboo. Harare: Weaver Press. 39-56. ——., (2002b) “Interview with Yvonne Vera.” In R. Muponde, M. Taruvinga (eds) Sign and taboo. Harare: Weaver Press. 217-226. Chan, S. (2005) “The memory of violence: Trauma in the writings of Alexander Kanengoni and Yvonne Vera and the idea of unreconciled citizenship in Zimbabwe.” Third World Quarterly 26(2), 369-382. Dangarembga, T. (1992) Nervous conditions. 2nd ed. London: The Women’s Press. Fanon, F. (1990) The Wretched of the Earth. Reprint from 1963. London: Penguin Books. Felman, S., Laub, D. (1992) Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history. London: Routledge. Herman, J. L. (1997) Trauma and Recovery. 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books. Hoffmann, M., Schlenk, H. (2001) “Schreiben als offener Prozess: Interview mit Yvonne Vera über ‚Frau ohne Namen.’” Blätter des IZ3W 250, 25-27. Kopf, M. (2005) Trauma und Literatur: Das Nicht-Erzählbare erzählen – Assia Djebar und Yvonne Vera. Frankfurt/Main: Brandes & Apsel. ——., (2005) “Writing sexual violence: Words and silences in Yvonne Vera’s Under the Tongue.” In F. Veit-Wild, D. Naguschewski (eds) Body, sexuality, and gender: Versions and subversions in African literatures 1. Amsterdam / New York: Rodopi. 243-253. ——., (2009) “Trauma, narrative and the art of witnessing.” In B. Haehnel, M. Ulz (eds) Slavery in art and literature: approaches to trauma, memory and visuality. Berlin: Frank & Timme. 41-58. Laub, D. (1992) “Bearing witness or the vicissitudes of listening.” In S. Felman, D. Laub Testimony. London: Routledge. 57-74. Martin Shaw, C. (2002) “The habit of assigning meaning: Signs of Yvonne Vera’s world.” In R. Muponde, M. Taruvinga (eds) Sign and taboo Harare: Weaver Press. 25-36. Mujawayo, E., Belhaddad, S. (2004) SurVivantes. Rwanda, dix ans après le génocide. La Tour d’aigues: Editions de l’Aube.

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Muponde, R. (2007) “Reading girlhood under the tongue.” Research in African literatures 38(2), 36-48. Muponde, R., Taruvinga, M. (eds) (2002). Sign and taboo: Perspectives on the poetic fiction of Yvonne Vera. Harare: Weaver Press. Mutandwa, G. (2002) “Yvonne Vera: The person and the dreamer.” Financial Gazette. [Web Page] Retrieved 17 Apr 2010 from http://weaverpresszimbabwe.com/latest-reviews/22-sign-and-taboo. perspectives-on-the-poetic-fiction-of-yvonne-vera/149-interview-foryvonne-vera-grace-mutandwa.html. Primorac, R.(2001) “Crossing into the space-time of memory: Borderline identities in novels by Yvonne Vera.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 36(2), 77-93. ——., (2002) “Iron butterflies: notes on Yvonne Vera’s Butterfly Burning.” In R. Muponde, M. Taruvinga (eds) Sign and taboo. Harare: Weaver Press. 101-108. Samuelson, M. (2002) “Remembering the body: Rape and recovery in Without a Name and Under the Tongue.” In R. Muponde, M. Taruvinga (eds) Sign and taboo. Harare: Weaver Press. 93-100. Scarry, E. (1985) The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vera, Y. (2002) Without a Name and Under the Tongue. 1st American ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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Speaking the Unspeakable in Iweala and Kourouma: The Trauma of Child Soldiers, Literary Stylistics and Story Telling “What does it mean for the reality of war to appear in the fiction of the dream?” asks Cathy Caruth in a recent meditation on trauma (Caruth 2003: 48). This article looks at the uneasy copula of truthful witnessing and fictional representation, and the articulation of the two in literary stylistics, in two contemporary African novels. Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation (2005) and Kourouma’s Allah n’est pas obligé (2000) (translated in 2007 as Allah is not obliged) are two very recent fictional attempts to bear witness to the horrendous experiences of child soldiers in modern-day conflicts in Africa. The disrupted narrative styles of both novels (the minimal tense structures of Iweala’s narrator and the constant recourse of Kourouma’s narrator to dictionary synonyms) are only superficially mimetic replications of the language of children whose abruptly-terminated education gives them a limited purchase upon English or French. (The application of a mimetic paradigm in to this genre is misguided: the construction of children’s narrative voices from Irmgard Keun to Jonathan Safran Foer has never aspired to mimetic replication of such discourse, but merely to a voice which can be identified as such.) Far more, these narrative styles figure symptomatically the rending of the very fabric of the protagonists’ childhood realities. These narratives are less mimetic accounts of childhoods horrifically alienated by war than indexical approximations of the ‘colateral’ psychic devastation caused by such experiences. By mobilizing stylistic devices which bring their narratives close to the fabric of the dream – or better, the nightmare – they effectively testify to aspects of contemporary postcolonial reality whose nature is, manifestly, so traumatic that they do indeed partake of that negative oneiric quality. The article works with the paradox that fiction may constitute a manner of speaking the unspeakable, of representing experiences which elude representation. Trauma is a state in which “the linguistic encoding of memory is inactivated, and the central nervous system reverts to the sensory and iconic forms of memory that predominates in early life” (Herman 1997: 39). Literary stylistics emerges in this context as a vehicle for disrupting language in its story-telling function precisely to tell the story of that which cannot be

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told. Iweala’s use of the present continuous form, for instance, gestures towards a partial collapse of narrative memory and Kourouma’s apposition of historical narrative and oral narrating create a constant interference which point up the limitations of memory of trauma. Both authors thus mobilize highly salient stylistic devices to convey the “disorder of memory gone awry” specific to trauma survivors’ inability to “make sense of their symptoms in the context of the events they have endured” and the tendency of their “traumatic experiences [to] freefloat in time without an end or place in history” (Rothschild 2000: 36). Narration enacts and indeed repeats the failure of narrativity, but, paradoxically, by framing that failure in the literary work, redeems it and relaunches it back into the circuit of public narration. These exemplifications of the ‘repetition’ and ‘working through’ of trauma in literary creation are significant in their focus upon war as the privileged terrain of memory where modern theories of trauma were first articulated, namely, that of war (see Freud [1917] 1999; [1917] 1958). They are also significant to the extent that they embody a return to narrative referentiality evinced in recent responses to the putative crisis of postcolonial studies (see for instance Loomba et. al. (eds). 2005). These literary representations of traumatic unrepresentability may answer calls for a renewed attention to “the untranscendable horizon of truth and reality” uttered for instance by critics such as Benita Parry (quoting Keya Ganguly in Parry 2004: 79). This chapter voices a need to return to the explicitly political role of literary analysis in postcolonial studies, and situates that role in the much-decried communicative function of literary creation. We continue to read literary works, despite a generation of anti-referential literary theory, for the stories they tell about the world beyond the horizons of our own immediate experience. Such modes of story-telling depend upon the imaginative faculties of identification and empathy. The article thus welds a disciplinary ‘return to the real’ in the referential, communicative-narrative sense onto a typically anti-foundational attention to the ‘return of the Real’ in the Lacanian sense, literally embodied in the somatized but unrepresentable traumas of war. It focuses thereby upon “a current in African Francophone” – and Anglophone – “writing of the last decades that makes the unspeakable readable” and opposes to the “power of neo-colonialism and imperialism … the textual resistance of voicing the ‘unspeakable’” (Canadé Sautman 2003: 110, 111).

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Iweala: Beasts of No Nation The first line of Iweala’s much acclaimed first novel has the young protagonist, Agu, announce, “It is starting like this” (Iweala [2005] 2006: 1; subsequent references are abbreviated to the page number). The beginning is not in the past, nor is it in the simple present. Rather, from the very outset, the protagonist narrates in the continuous present, creating an uninterrupted self-generating span of present time which stretches from the very first page of the novel to the very last. The novel does not consist of a succession of discrete present moments, but rather, of a simultaneity of presents which have somehow become interminable. It is thus entirely typical that the beginning of the novel is permanently extended into an unending, repeating experience: “It is starting like this”. In a sense this incipit is oxymoronic, for an eternal moment cannot begin if it cannot end. Jill Bennett notes that in the normal course of events, experiences are processed through cognitive schemes which enable familiar experiences to be identified, interpreted and assimilated to narrative. Memory is thus constituted as experience transforms into representation. Traumatic or extreme experience, however, resists such processing. Its unfamiliar or extraordinary nature renders it unintelligible, causing cognitive systems to baulk; its sensory or affective character renders it inimical to thought – and ultimately to memory itself (Bennett 2000: 81). In Iweala’s text, the impossibility of encoding traumatic experiences within memory is dramatized in their preservation in an eternal ongoing present. Agu’s friend Strika is condemned to repeat in visual form a traumatic experience he cannot articulate in a narrative of past sequentiality: Over and over again he is drawing the same picture of man and woman with no head because their head is rolling away on the ground. … Since I am becoming soldier I am never hearing the sound of his voice, but now, I am knowing what is his problem. His picture is telling me that he is not making one noise since they are killing his parent. (36) The murder of the boy’s parents repeats in a traumatic return of an experience which cannot be limited by the encoding work of language. It manifests itself in an endless scene which cannot be resolved. Similarly, the execution of Agu’s father, the inaugural loss which catapults him into the arms of the rebel army, is preserved in a present eternity: “I will be finding my mother and my sister, but not my father because he is dying in this war” (93). Freud’s early work on repetition compulsion (Freud [1914] 1999; [1914] 1958) is relevant here, because it points to the way in which trauma subjects tend to repeat their experiences in a raw unprocessed, indeed somatised

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manner. It is because they are unprocessed, incompletely assigned to the preteritivity of memory, that such experiences ineluctably return. Because they cannot be encompassed within the grids of memory, they cannot be grasped or pinned down. As Blanchot has commented, “What haunts is the inaccessible which one cannot rid oneself of, what one does not find and what, because of that, does not allow one to avoid it. The ungraspable is what one does not escape” (Blanchot 1981: 84). The traumatic experience resists encapsulation in narrative, and thus remains as an experience in the present. Likewise, the boy’s first experience of killing appears to be frozen in eternity: “It is like the world is moving so slowly that I am seeing each drop of blood and each drop of sweat flying here and there” (21). The boy’s reaction to this is significant: “I am vomiting everywhere. I cannot be stopping myself” (21). The inability to “stop” translates the eternal return of the traumatic experience, while the gagging translates the vitiation of language and narrativity as a means of binding the traumatic, somatised experience. This act of somatic extrusion, involuntary and interminable (“I cannot be stopping myself”) stands in the place of the modality of orality, such as linguistic communication, which is manifestly short-circuited by traumatic experience of war. Stylistic devices are one site within the process of narration which may be suitable for the partial “working through” of such un-narratable traumas for the simple reason that style appears to be the privileged site where the writerly habitus and the imprint of the writerly body are laid down, less at the level of the signified than at that of the signifier (see Barthes [1953] 1972: 11-14) Iweala’s fiction is, of course, a narrative rendering of such unnarratibility. It cannot offer a faithful representation of trauma for the simple reason that it is a representation of trauma. As Agamben has pointed out regarding narratives of Auschwitz, one of the central trauma’s of the twentieth century, “The language of testimony is a language that no longer signifies and that, in no longer signifying, advances into that which is without language” (Agamben 1999: 19). This should come as no surprise: Iweala, of course, is not Agu; the Nigerian-American writer’s narrative is not the fictional protagonist’s raw, unprocessed experience. Iweala’s fiction is, at the very most, an approximation of what the imaginary child-combatant might, at the very end of the book, have been recounting to his mentor in the rehabilitation centre, but by definition could not have done so: “The ‘true’ witnesses, the ‘complete witnesses,’ are those who did not bear witness and cannot bear witness” (Agamben 1999: 34). It is precisely the impossibility of witnessing or narrating which may be represented in the text. This impossibility may be the key to the value of

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testimony as foregrounding “what it lacks; at its centre it contains something that cannot be borne witness to” (Agamben 1999: 33). Many of the novel’s striking stylistic devices alongside its use of the continuous present form can be accounted for by the mechanisms of traumatic “acting out” (LaCapra 2001: 141-5) which accompany the experience of something which remains unrepresentable. The relationship of this literary text to the traumas it cannot represent may be similar to that of the symptom. Many of the text’s stylistic devices can be understood as being located in the body of the writing, in its grammatical texture, not in its semantic or communicative content. The text’s use of substantives frequently evinces a loss of distinction between plural objects, as in “so many thing” (1), “All the truck is stopping” (40). It is true that Iweala’s “rotten English” is to some extent modelled on Nigerian pidgin, in which nouns often lack definite articles and are often singular (see Elugbe & Omamor 1991: 89-98). However, the singularization of plurals evinces a more significant loss of segmentation, in which objects lose their discrete boundaries just as events lose their temporal limitations and expand into a continuous present (as in “Time is not passing. Day is changing to night. Night is changing to day. How can I know what is happening?” [52]). Occasional exceptions to this loss of substantival segmentation, such as “my feets” (46), are merely examples of hypercorrection in which segmentation is re-imposed, but in the wrong place. Similarly, adjectives are frequently pressed into a continuous verbal form: “luckying “ (37) “angrying”, madding in the head” (41), “tireding” (33). The mechanism at work here is most clearly manifest in the turn of phrase “All the chair is breaking” (47). “Breaking” converts “broken”, the past participle as basic form of adjectival description, into a present form. The achieved state or ‘perfected’ result is transformed into an ‘imperfect’, ongoing process. Once again the preteritive function of narrative is eluded by a repeating, nightmarish experience which imposes itself in a continuous temporality. Iweala describes, in a brief piece documenting the writing of the novel, a short sketch which furnished the preliminary material for the later fiction: “My young protagonist … just hacked and hacked until bits and pieces of world lay before him. It was a terrible, underdeveloped short story, without plot or purpose and little attention paid to the gravity of the event” (Iweala 2006: 10). This perception, however, does not accurately describe the aesthetics of contemporary trauma which Iweala’s own fiction dramatizes. A modernist aesthetics of the fragment (“Things fall apart” [Yeats 1978: 99]; “Son of man … you know only | A heap of broken images” [Eliot 1969: 61]) cannot accurately grasp the central dilemma of trauma. That central dilemma is not an excess of segmentation (“bits and pieces of world”) but rather a

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pathological loss of temporal segmentation. Trauma manifests itself not in hyper- but in hypo-segmentation of temporal form. That the massive use of the continuous present conveys the pulverization of narrativity under the pressure of traumatic experience is corroborated by the rare occasions in the text when other tenses resurface. The past tense is restored, significantly, in relation to the Bible, as a lost fragment from Agu’s remote childhood: “Because my father was schoolteacher and my mother is always reading to me from The Bible, I was already reading when other children are just trying to learn” (27). Here, complex temporal connections are linked to nascent reading competence, both at storyline and narrativediscourse levels. It can hardly be coincidental that the story read by the mother to the son is that of Cain and Abel, which encodes the immemorial Biblical injunction against killing (25). Nevertheless, these recurrences of the past tense are sporadic and uncertain. Rapidly, the narrator falls back into the present: “But these things are before the war and I am only remembering them like dream” (28). Similarly, the use of the future presents equally brief moments of respite from the oppressive present of trauma: “Maybe then I will be feeling older and I won’t be tireding all the time” (33); “We will always be fighting war, but sometimes it is nice to be thinking that there is something else for our future” (37). These moments of utopian dream are brief. There appears to be no escape from the ongong nightmare of trauma and its causes, the endless civil war: “It is taking Luftenant three whole day to be dying … I am thinking that he is getting his wish not to be fighting anymore, and I am fearing because I am seeing that the only way not to be fighting is to die. I am not wanting to die” (116). At this juncture, Iweala appears to be temporalizing what is in fact a spatial phenomenon. Increasingly, armed conflicts around the world are perpetuated within a globalized multinational corporate structure which has replaced that of the cold-war proxy conflicts (see Agnew & Corbridge 1995; Singer 2003). The emergent war industry may even contributing to inciting and multiplying, rather than resolving or constraining, just such conflicts which as those that continue today to enlist child soldiers like the fictional Agu (Singer 2003: 169-90). Agu appears to vaguely sense this ubiquity of war: “I am thinking of all the map and of all the fighting that is going on in this whole world and I am fearing for my life. I am thinking if there is even any way to be getting out” (106). The boy seems to recognize this spatial relationship when he extrapolates from his own corporeal existence to that of the conflicts fanned by multinational interests: “Everything is inside out like my shirt I am wearing”

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(52); “This kind of dark is making me to feel like I am turning inside out, so all of my thought is floating outside of me and all of my clothe is inside of me.” (106). The inside of his own immediate experience is merely the other side of a larger, exterior political reality. More significantly, the protagonist half-apprehends the perverse cause-effect relationships in these corporatesponsored wars (in which often both sides are equipped by the same multinationals) which dictates that the war itself is subordinated to corporate profits: I am like cow and belonging to one owner which is gun. I am sadding when I am feeling this gun in my back because I am thinking that first when this war is starting I am wanting gun because I can be using it to protect myself. At this time gun is belonging to me and it is going wherever I am carrying it, but now it is riding on my back like it is a king and I am servant to be doing whatever it says. … gun is more important than me. (128-9).

It is at this point that the eternal present of trauma manifest in Iweala’s obsessive implementation of grammatical tense is inextricably tied to spatial reality of the global arms race and war industry. This broader political perspective upon trauma as a local, subjective effect of global forces clearly renders any form of resolution extremely problematic. Accordingly, there is, at the end of the narrative, no redemptive return of tenses. There is merely a simultaneity of two facts about the protagonist, now undergoing rehabilitation in a camp run by a Western NGO: “So I am saying to her, if I am telling this to you it will be making you to think that I am some sort of beast or devil. … And I am saying to her, fine. I am all of this thing. I am all of this thing, but I am also having mother once, and she is loving me” (141-2). The non-temporal structure becomes a holding-together of two irreconcilable facts (soldierhood and childhood), thus affordingly a rudimentary, albeit far from a complete form of healing. LaCapra criticizes a tendency in recent trauma theory “to [fixate] on acting out, and on the repetition compulsion, to see it as a way of preventing closure, harmonization, any facile notion of cure – but also, by the same token, to eliminate or obscure any other possible response” (2001: 145). LaCapra wants to retain the possibility of “working through” without falling into the opposite trap of assuming that a total cure can be achieved. He does this by steadfastly refusing to set up a dichotomy between the two processes, seeing them as necessarily intersecting and overlapping. Something of this complex and blurred relationship between “acting out” and “working through” may be glimpsed in Iweala’s closing sentences.

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Kourouma: Allah n’est pas obligé [Allah is not obliged] Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah n’est pas obligé (2000; translated into English as Allah is not obliged, 2007; all subsequent references given with the page numbers of the French and English versions respectively) shares the same focus as Iweala’s novel. It too relates the fate of child soldiers in contemporary African wars, but is nonetheless a very different book. Its sense of past narrative is quite clearly intact. In stark contrast to Iweala’s novel, it manages to maintain a strongly grammaticalized structure of historical narration. However, if we accept that “All grammars leak” (Sapir quoted by Voegelin 1960: 65), it becomes possible to detect here a stylistic rupture no less marked than the one evinced in Iweala’s novel. One of the most striking stylistic devices of a text predominantly couched in the slangy mode of story-telling of its youthful protagonist Birahima is its insertion of long passages of factual historical narration. These passages, often running for ten or twenty pages, reconstruct the political framework of the civil wars in which the protagonist is a child combatant. This historical perspective is hardly plausible from a realist point of view, of course, so that it clearly functions both as a documentary instance and as a means of stylistic defamiliarization. For instance, a long introductory section in chapter 5 sketches the breakdown of civil society and political order in Sierra Leone from independence in 1961 to the mid-1990s (171-185). The style of these passages oscillates between historical narration characterized by precise dating (“Ce pays a été un havre de paix … du début de la colonisation anglaise en 1808 à l’indépendance, le 27 avril 1961” [171]/“from the start of the English colonisation in 1880 right up to independence on 27 April 1961, the country was a haven of peace” [157-8]) and slang (“La Sierra Leone c’est le bordel, oui, c’est le bordel au carré” [171]/“Sierra Leone is a fucked-up mess, a big-time fucked-up mess” [157]). This oscillation causes a constant overlapping of documentary content and colloquial form. Indeed, with Bakhtin, one might say that this is Kourouma’s novel’s specific style, “if the style of a novel is to be found in the combination of its styles” (Bakhtin 1978: 88; my translation). It is in the contrastive interference between storyline often couched in a classical preterite or composite past, and narrative discourse, that the principal stylistic impact of the novel resides: The language is a construct, at first heavily deformed as “le français de Mossa”, the street language of Côte d’Ivoire. Kourouma rapidly modifies this quasidialect for a fascinating register of speech in which the minor incorrections of African speech, e.g. errors of the partitive, Alla “t’a née” (Birahima’s

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grandmother to his mother, 17), “suis dix ou douze ans” (11), figure side by side with poetic French and passé simple that would please a purist (GassterCarriere 2002: 826). The marked interference between a past story and present narrative discourse occasionally results in the naked intrusion of the latter into the former: “Et les troupes de l’ECOMOG opèrent maintenant partout au Liberia et même en Sierra Leone, au nom de l’ingérance humanitaire, massacrant comme bon leur semble” (138)/“ECOMOG troops were now operating all over Liberia and even Sierra Leone and massacring people as they saw fit, all in the name of humanitarian peacekeeping” (126; translation modified). However, the destruction of memorial narrative tense evinced in Iweala’s novel is nowhere to be seen here. Rather, is only in the combination of personalized slang and objectivized historical narration the novel generates its effects. Nonetheless, in loose analogy to the work done by Iweala’s stylistic devices, the constant oscillation in Kourouma’s text between historical narrative and personal narrative, between successive blocks of macro- and micro-perspectives, unified by the continuity of the colloquial register, translates a non-teleological vision of historical progress. Rather than the reduction to a nightmarish eternal present, Allah n’est pas obligé plays with the temporal structure of prose narrative by recasting it as an apparently equally-weighed series of narrative units without a strongly teleological driving force. The protagonist’s rogue’s progress as a child soldier takes him from the NPFL to the Johnson faction of the ULIMO in the civil wars in Liberia to Foday Sankoh’s RUF in Sierra Leone. One insurgent army takes the place of another without any noticeable difference being evinced – everywhere the boy carries a “kalach” [Kalashnikov], the ubiquitous AK-47. The colloquial register is the stylistic equivalent for a temporal forward progress which evinces mere cyclical repetition: La situation générale était désastreuse, elle ne peut être pire que ce qu’elle était. Walahé ! Donc elle était bonne pour nous. Faforo! … Nous pouvions reprendre du service.Yacouba fut installé comme grigriman et moi je rejoignis les enfants soldats. (212-13; emphasis added). The situation was disastrous, it couldn’t be worse than it was. Walahé! That meant it was god for us. Faforo! … We could go back on duty. Yacouba was appointed grigriman and I went back to being a child-soldier. (196; emphasis added, translation modified) Style is the site where the utter disjunction of global historical and personal life narrative is overcome, only to display the absence of teleological progression. Progression is merely repetition, the eternal return

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to the bands of child-soldiers. Repetition and circularity, from the satirical repetition of stock phrases asserting that “Allah is not obliged to be fair”/“Allah n’est pas obligé d’être juste”, which lose all meaning thereby, to the circular structure of the narrative itself, which terminates with the boy narrator opening his story with the same words as the beginning of the narrative, cement the satirical impact of the tale. The logic of this progression is entirely contingent, dependent upon the fortunes of war: “Alors là, nous ne voulions plus, nous ne pouvions plus retourner chez Johnson. Par tous le moyens, il fallait aller en Sierra Leone” (169)/“So we decided that, since we couldn’t go back to Johnson, we had to get to Siera Leone, djogo-djogo, somehow or other” (156). Thus, at the level of the storyline there emerges a form of repetition compulsion which does not spill over into the narrative discourse level except in the polyvalent mode of oral-narrative marking. The narrative is punctuated by recurring stock expressions which serve to mark plot segmentation: episodes are always concluded by obscene Malinké epithets “comme Farforo! (Farforo! signifie sexe de mon père ou du père ou de ton père.) Comme gnamokodé! (Gnamokodé! signifie bâtard ou bâtardise.) Comme Walahé! (Walahé! signifie Au nom d’Allah)” (10)/“like farforo! (my father’s cock – or your father’s or somebody’s father’s), gnamokodé! (bastard), walahé! (I swear by Allah)” (2). These recurring elements are less evidence of some sort of repetition compulsion triggered by traumatic experience, than of a radical different narrative mode, that of oral tradition: “La répétition correpond … à l’oralité” [“repetition marks orality”], Kourouma has himself remarked (quoted in Ouédraogo 2001: 775). The novel reveals many features arising from oral narration. It includes a plethora of redundant elements: “Je courais dans les rigoles, j’allais aux champs, je chassais les souris et les oiseaux dans la brousse” (13)/“I ran through the streams, I went down to the fields, I hunted mice and birds in the scrub” (5; translation modified). It displays a central of a trickster figure, Yacouba the magicician and money changer who plays the role of Birahima’s mentor through the wars in Liberia. Finally, the semi-magical character of some of the events bring it into the orbit of folktale narration. A residual but sporadically recurrent quest narrative structure buttresses these charactersistics of oral narration: “La tante Mahan était la malheureuse que nous … cherchions depuis plus de trois ans dans ce Liberia de la guerre tribale” (220)/“Aunt Mahan was the poor woman we’d been looking for … for more than three years all over tribal war Liberia” (202). It is quite clear that the repeating expletives in Kourouma’s text punctuate it, installing narrative segmentation in a tale which otherwise has little

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sequential logic: “C’est par ce stratagème politique qu’on arrivera à mettre fin à la guerre tribale en Sierra Leone. Faforo (sexe de mon père) ! Gnamokodé (bâtardise) ! Mais nous n’en sommes pas encore là” (185)/“This is the political ruse that will finally put an end to the civil war in Sierra Leone. Faforo! Gnamokodé! But we’re not there yet” (172). The historical narration is couched in the form of a prolepsis which is abruptly interrupted by a present in which the Birahima’s storyline is blurred with his narrative discourse of oral communication. In contrast to this confusion, the expletives mark a partial conclusion in the political storyline and in the oral narrative discourse. They function similarly to the moment of caesura in Lacanian psychoanalysis, where the flow of discourse is terminated so as to foreground a narrative element without employing any explicit commentary. Gasster-Carriere suggests that when Birahima’s “récit is interrupted regularly by the most obscene expletives in Malinké (translated into French)”, these elements “seem to indicate the unspeakable, whether it be disgust or anguish” (Gasster-Carriere 2002: 827). At first glance, this comment appears misguided. Kourouma’s narrative does not trade in the unspeakable in the brutal and shocking manner performed by Iweala’s disjointed but nonetheless often horrifying narration (“The enemy’s … forehead is looking just crushed so his whole face is not even looking like face because his head is broken everywhere and there is just blood, blood, blood” [Iweala [2005] 2006: 21]). Kourouma eschews such effects entirely. He gives no detailed accounts whatsoever of Birahima’s experiences as a child-soldier. The accounts of battle are always highly standardized, consisting merely of a death-count among the child-soldiers and a formalized “oraison funèbre” [“funeral oration”] for one of them (see for instance 192/177). Kourouma’s narrative deliberately skirts around this aspect of contemporary war trauma. Far more, however, these expletives, always terminating a block of narrative, register an ironic closure which is not a closure at all: Alors le dictateur Eyadema aura une idée géniale, une idée mirifique. Cette idée sera activement soutenue par les USA, la France, l’Angleterre et l’ONU. Cette idée consistera à proposer un changement dans le changement sans rien changer du tout. Eyadema proposera avec l’accord de la communauté internationale au bandit Foday Sankoh le poste de vice-président de la République de Sierra Leone … C’est-à-dire un grand changement dans le changement sans changement. … C’est par ce stratagème politique qu’on arrivera à mettre fin à la guerre tribale en Sierra Leone. Faforo (sexe de mon père) ! Gnamokodé (bâtardise) ! (185)

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So the dictator Eyadema will come up with a great idea, a brilliant idea. An idea that will be actively supported by the USA, France, Britain and the UN. The idea is to suggest a change to the changes that doesn’t change anything. With the agreement of the international community, Eyadema will offer the warlord Foday Sankoh the post of vice-president of the Republic of Sierra Leone … This is the huge change to the changes that amounts to no change at all. … This is the political ruse that will finally put an end to the civil war in Sierra Leone. Faforo! Gnamokodé! (171-2). The unspeakable here is lodged at the level of satire. Irony, the art of saying one thing and meaning another which is not said, is the site of the unspeakable in Kourouma’s novel. The constant satire of all forms of religion, the undeniably satirical presentation of all figures of power or authority, encoded even in the names of characters such as Colonel Papa le Bon, install an allpervasive level of narrative derision which stands in for elements cannot be articulated except by displacement into another register. Equally damningly, the unspeakable is registered at the level of international politics, encoded in a flexible use of grammatical tense, and in the oral punctuation and discourse markers of the young protagonist. Kourouma has explained his intentions as precisely this conjunction of interests: “L’Afrique actuelle est victime des guerres tribales. Je voudrais montrer ce qu’il y a de terrible dans ces guerres tribales et en même temps faire ressortir le français d’Abidjan” [“Africa today is the victim of tribal wars. I’d like to show how horrible these wars are at the same time as foregrounding Abidjan French”] (Kourouma quoted in Ouédraogo 2001: 780). The ethical aspect of his highly satirical and critical undertaking and its linguistic manifestation in the oral discourse marking are intimately linked.

Conclusion In a sense, Iweala’s and Kourouma’s novels are chiastic mirror images of each other. Iweala makes use of graphic representations of the horror of child-soldiers’ experience while truncating the aspect of temporalized narrativity to the point where “tenses implode” (LaCapra 2001: 21). Kourouma, conversely, employs a strong and coherent historical narrative without having recourse to elements as graphic as those to be found in Iweala’s text. Kourouma’s text foregrounds a genuine gap in the representation, one aspect of the horror of contemporary war which one would expect in such a novel, but which is not said in the child’s narration. If Iweala’s novel displays a hiatus in the domain of memorial narrativity,

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casting the horrors of war in a continuous present, Kourouma’s narration leaves them un-recounted, except by the means of satirical narrative punctuation or the employment of stylistic contrasts. The absence of representations of trauma in Kourouma’s novel is in a sense a more faithful adherence to the unrepresentability of trauma than Iweala’s attempts to convey horror via stylistic deformation. The simple absence of narratives of horror may be one manifestation of the “cryptic realism” Abraham and Torok take to be the mode of melancholy non-representation appropriate to traumatized narrative (Abraham & Torok 1978; see Baucom 2005: 132). The internalized absence of melancholy (“crypt”) becomes a mode of nonrepresentation (thus “cryptic”) which is manifest in Kourouma’s text by the white spaces between the blocks of narrative. These spaces inevitably succeed expletives such as “Faforo (sexe de mon père) ! Gnamokodé (bâtardise) !” (185)/ Faforo! Gnamokodé! (172), thus indexing in typographical form that which is not said and cannot be said by the oscillations by historical accounts and slangy orality. The “antimetaphoric hyperrealism” of the “cryptonymic” text (Baucom 2005: 132) brings us back to the manner in which a post-representationalist literary aesthetics may nonetheless bring us back, via the detour of a traumatic Real which evades representation, to the issues of global reality and its discontents so central to postcolonial criticism. Both Iweala and Kourouma work in close proximity to such realities: Iweala’s fiction has been closely aligned by critics with transcripts of child-soldiers’ testimonies about their experiences of the horrors of war (Hawley 2008: 23), and Kourouma has stated that “Je voudrais montrer ce qu’il y a de terrible dans ces guerres tribales … J’ai des raisons de m’en approcher parce que j’ai des parents qui ont participé à cette guerre” [“I’d like to show how horrible these wars are … I’m particularly keen to focus on them because I have relatives who have been involved”] (Kourouma quoted in Ouédraogo 2001: 780). Stylistics, however rigorously it may rupture an aesthetics of realism in such texts, is clearly linked in quite direct ways to political content. Blanchot famously sketched a split between a unified subject of political activism and a split subject of writing, joined only by a dialectical tension (Blanchot 1980: 125-7). Similarly, in a more recent comparison of postcolonial and postmodern theory, Ato Quayson has claimed that “the key dimension that postcolonialism forces us to consider is that of agency, whilst the postmodern angle would make us settle on the … potential for the fragmentation of subject positions” (Quayson 2000: 147). Child-soldier fictions such as those of Iweala and Kourouma, however, demonstrate that these two perspectives are not so easily polarized. The shattered subjectivities

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of traumatized under-age combatants are regarded by these postcolonial authors as a reminder of the imperative to pursue political action and as an incentive to continue to search for forms of agency which are appropriate and effective in our not-so-postcolonial times.

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References Abraham, Nicholas, Torok, Maria (1978) L’Écorce et le noyau: Anasémies II. Paris: Aubier Flammarion. Agamben, Giorgio (1999) Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. New York: Zone Books. Agnew, John, Corbridge, Stuart (1995) Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy. London: Routledge. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1978) Esthétique et théorie du roman. Paris: Gallimard. Barthes, Roland [1953] (1972) Le degré zéro de l’écriture suivi de Nouveaux essais critiques. Paris: Seuil/Points. Baucom, Ian (2005) Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, and the Philosophy of History. Durham: Duke University Press. Bennet, Jill (2000) “The Aesthetics of Sense-Memory: Theorising Trauma through the Visual Arts.” In Franz Kaltenbeck, Peter Weibel (eds) Trauma und Erinnerung / Trauma and Memory: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Vienna: Passagen. 81-95. Blanchot, Maurice (1980) L’Ecriture du désastre. Paris: Gallimard. ——., (1981) The Gaze of Orpheus. New York: Station Hill. Canadé Sautman, Francesca (2003) “The Race for Globalization: Modernity, Resistance, and the Unspeakable in Three African Francophone Texts.” Yale French Studies 103, 106-22. Caruth, Cathy (2003) “Parting Words: Trauma, Silence, and Survival.” In Carol Jacobs, Henry Sussman (eds) Acts of Narrative. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 47-61. Gasster-Carriere, Susan (2002) “Review of Allah n’est pas obligé.” The French Review 75:4 (March), 826-7. Eliot, T. S. (1969) The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot. London: Faber & Faber. Elugbe, Ben Ohiomamhe, Omamor, Augusta Phil (1991) Nigerian Pidgin: Background and Prospects. Ibadan: Heinemann. Freud, Sigmund [1914] (1958) “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through.” Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Woks of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 12. London: Hogarth. 145-56. ——., [1914] (1999) “Erinnern, Wiederholen und Durcharbeiten.“ Gesammelte Werke. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Vol 10, 125-36. ——., [1917] (1958) “Mourning and Melancholia.” Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Woks of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 14. London: Hogarth. 237-60.

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——., [1917] (1999) “Trauer und Melancholie.” Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 10. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. 427-46. Hawley, John C. (2008) “Biafra as Heritage and Symbol: Adichie, Mbachu, and Iweala.” Research in African Literatures 39:2, 15-26. Herman, Judith L. (1997) Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books. Hron, Madelaine (2008) “Ora na-azu nwa: The Figure of the in ThirdGeneration Nigerian Novels.” Research in African Literatures 39:2, 27-48. Iweala, Uzodimna [2005] (2006) Beasts of No Nation. New York: Harper Perennial. Iweala, Uzodimna (2006) “P.S. Insights, interviews and more” In Beasts of No Nation. New York: Harper Perennial. 1-20. Kourouma, Ahmadou (2000) Allah n’est pas obligé. Paris: Seuil. ——., (2007) Allah is not obliged. London: Vintage. LaCapra, Dominick (2001) Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Loomba, Ania et.al. (eds) (2005) Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. Durham: Duke University Press. Mudimbe, V. I. (1988) The Invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ouédraogo, Jean (2001) “Entretien avec Ahmadou Kourouma.” The French Review 74:4, 772-85. Parry, Bettina (2004) “The Institutionalization of Postcolonial Studies.” In Neil Lazarus (ed) Cambridge Companion to Post-Colonial Literary Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 66-80. Quayson, Ato (2000) Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice or Process. Cambridge: Polity. Rothschild, Babette (2000) The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment. New York: W.W. Norton. Voegelin, C. F. (1960) “Casual and Non-Casual Utterances within Unified Structures.” In Thomas Sebeok (ed) Style in Language. Cambridge: M.I.T Press, 57-68. Singer, Peter Warren (2003) Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Yeats, W. B. (1978) Selected Poetry. London: Pan Macmillan.

Adeyemi Adegoju

Autobiographical Memory and Identity Construction in Tayo Olafioye’s Grandma’s Sun Introduction Autobiographical writing has been a subject of great interest not only to the psychologist but also the literary critic. One major strand in this field of study that the two categories of scholars have shown keen interest in investigating is the concept of autobiographical memory. While the paths of the psychologist and the literary critic may cross in applying the tenets of the literary theory known as psychoanalysis to probe the disposition of certain characters in a literary text, our focus in the present discussion is not to dwell on this aspect but to shed light on the place and limitations of memory in the narration of an autobiographical account. We may define an autobiographical memory as the area of memory where people store information about themselves, particularly memories that centre on their identity, emotional experiences and general or specific events. But the question that arises is if it is possible for the individual to remember exactly everything that has happened in the past. Citing Tulving (2002), Lindsay (2006: 1) argues that “autobiographical reminiscence can be described as mental time travel, with the rememberer transported into the past to re-experience, albeit only partially, a moment of his or her personal history”. Lindsay (2006: 2) notes that the naive view of autobiographical memory as a storehouse, and of remembering as playback, has been strongly challenged by many memory theorists who have shown that recollections are reconstructions that are influenced by the rememberer’s beliefs and desires. Thus, Futamura (2008: 2) sees writing as an “exercise of imagination” that can help to recover memory. Accordingly, memory becomes reconstructive, as Phil Salmon comments: Probably no one now would claim an autobiography to represent an accurate record of past events. The past is a foreign country, to quote L. P Hartley. Or, in the phrase of Esther Salaman (1970), we are all exiles from our past. But perhaps even beyond the fundamental problem of part-estrangement from our lives, the very project of autobiography, as it has generally been defined, carries its own further kinds of distortion (1).

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Since details of past experiences become blurred with the passage of time, the autobiographer is faced with the serious challenge of inventing characters and events that feel real to the reader. Therefore, although the author may stick closely to his or her real life story, he/she changes enough of the details to make the work pass for an autobiographical fiction in which the author tries to supplement the resource of memory with imagination or narrative inventiveness. Agreed that the autobiographer cannot but inject a good dose of fiction into the narrative to suit his/her evolving purpose, shall we then say that the fictional element undermines the question of “truth”? Fredman (2007) argues that a fictional novel does not have to tell the truth but an autobiography has to. Although “truth” in itself is problematic, as it is a highly subjective phenomenon, the reader can suppose that an autobiography tells the truth even if the autobiographer changes, adds or leaves out parts or aspects of the whole story. In any case, no matter the level of fictionalising, there is still authentic individual experience to be found although the reader may not be able to draw a line of demarcation between the actual and imagined experiences. Be that as it may, one aspect of autobiographical writing that has attracted the attention of scholars is the textual identity construction motif. Howard (2006: 8) argues: ‘A contemporary phenomenon of transmutation has emerged in autobiographical writing. Elements of one’s self-identity have been projected on to the many, with which others can identify. A transfer has taken place from personal to universal’. Such a dimension to the invocation of memory is termed ‘generic memory’, involving the blending of personal memories into a generic image of common experiences (Howard 2006: 9). This is why the autobiographical genre of literary writing has been widely acclaimed to be a site for identity construction and a form of cultural expression in Africa, for Geesey (1997: 1) notes: ‘…looking at the development of the contemporary African writing, autobiography would certainly seem to stand out as a major component in the vast array of cultural productions from that continent’. The background information provided thus far substantiates the view of de Vries et al. (1990: 3) on the reemergence of autobiography as a major source of contemporary literature. Therefore, this study focuses on Tayo Olafioye’s Grandma’s Sun as an African autobiographical fiction and sets out to achieve the following objectives: (i) foreground certain memories in the autobiographical narrative that revolve around the protagonist and other personages relative to their identity, struggles and representations;

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(ii) interpret such memories in light of the autobiographer’s evocative use of language in configuring and reflecting on them; and (iii) examine the autobiographer’s role as social critic by way of telling his own story. The next section after this introductory part gives an overview of Tayo Olafioye’s literary world. Following this is the explication of the theoretical framework for the study from where we proceed to the analysis and discussion of the autobiographical narrative. Finally, we give the concluding remarks.

Tayo Olafioye’s Literary World A prolific Nigerian author who spent many years in Diaspora, Tayo Olafioye has produced many literary works. His collection of poems include: My Heart Swims in the Tears of Happiness (2004), The Parliament of Idiots (2002), A Carnival of Looters (2000), and A Stroke of Hope (2000). His works of fiction include Tomorrow Left Us Yesterday, (2004), The Thunder in a Woman (2002), and Bush Girl Comes to Town (1988). As a town crier and social critic, Olafioye reflects in his works the problems of corruption and inept leadership that have bedevilled his motherland, Nigeria. As a poet, Olafioye has won many international awards in poetry such as Golden Poet Award (San Francisco), Poetry Manifestation Award (Belgrade, Yugoslavia), Austrian PEN Award (Vienna, Austria), and Poetry Manifestation Grant (Sarajev, Bosnia and Hezogovina). He is a member of PEN international and Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA).

Analytical Framework Widdowson (1980: 236) sees stylistics as “a method for accumulating linguistic evidence which the literary scholar can draw upon to support his intuitive judgements”. To further underscore the interdependency relation between linguistic and literary criticisms of a text, Ching et al. (1980: 23) submit thus: “no critical theory which ignores the artist’s use of language is a complete theory; nor is any linguistic theory complete whose principles cannot be used in any way to account for the function of language in literary art”.

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Drawing on the viewpoints above, we analyse Olafioye’s Grandma’s Sun by setting linguistic evidence in correspondence with intuitive judgement. This is in line with Widdowson’s (1980: 236-237) method of stylistic analysis of proceeding “shuttlecock-wise, moving from intuitive impression to linguistic observation and vice-versa, adducing evidence to support aesthetic judgements and the evidence to develop further hypotheses as to its significance”. This “task of linguistic-literary explanation”, according to Leech and Short (1981: 13), proceeds by “the movement to and fro from linguistic details to the literary ‘centre’ of a work or a writer’s art”. They further describe this movement as a cyclic motion whereby linguistic observation stimulates or modifies literary insight and whereby literary insight in turn further stimulates linguistic observation. Thus, we can analyse Olafioye’s Grandma’s Sun by engaging in straight textual interpretation, supporting the impressionistic hunches of common readers with hard linguistic data. Based on such linguistic evidence, we also attempt to suggest new interpretations of the autobiographical fiction, thereby giving a dimension of the narrative which the ordinary reader could be unaware of and which may as well contain material which could alter our interpretation of the work. This is because we subscribe to the idea that reading and interpretation are not just reproducing what the writer thought and expressed in the text, as the reader has a “vital role in constructing and reconstructing the multiguous meaning and effect either initiated or permitted by the language of the text” (Ching et al. 1980: 7). In the words of Barry (1995: 71): “…deconstructive reading uncovers the unconscious rather than the conscious dimension of the text, all the things which its overt textuality glosses over or fails to recognize”. Explaining the task further, Barry (1995: 72) says: … the deconstructive process will often fix on a detail of the text which looks incidental – the presence of a particular metaphor, for instance, and then use it as the key to the whole text, so that everything is read through it.’

However, rather than stick outright to “oppositional reading” of the text, we still engage meaningfully in its “preferred reading”, thereby neutralising the post-structuralist extreme position of radical textual independence where the work is not determined by intention or context. This eclectic approach gives us room in the analysis to move from “preferred reading” – the familiar/known/conscious – to “oppositional reading” – the unfamiliar/unknown/unconscious. In fact, the latter is not automatic, as its evocation largely derives from certain textual landmarks that may personally strike the reader as being significant.

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Analysis and Discussion Our concern in this section of the study is to analyse the autobiographer’s linguistic signals in terms of the cultural practice of giving people names that carry social meaning, and in terms of the images of motherhood in Africa.

Memories of Identity: The Example of Naming Culture Naming in the African world carries a lot of socio-cultural meaning and significance. Therefore, the autobiographer’s style of naming in the narrative deserves close analysis. According to Osundare (1995: 348), … most African names are anthroponymic, deriving their meaning and import from the historical, social, cultural and linguistic circumstances of family and community. There is therefore a lot in a name, the instant summary of the essence and personality of the bearer… For the African writer, the meaning and the significance of the name plays a major role in the depiction of character and the development and furtherance of plot.

The protagonist’s name, Olu Yaro, from all indications, is a creative invention of the autobiographer wittingly to underline his motif. The name is derived from two major Nigerian languages, as Olu is Yoruba and Yaro, Hausa. In many names among the Yoruba, “Olu” appears as an abbreviated form of a longer structure. For some names, it is used to stand for “Oluwa”, meaning “The Lord”, as in “Oluwabukunmi” (The Lord has blessed me). This name in the Yoruba language will still retain its original meaning even if the free morpheme “Oluwa” is shortened to “Olu” to drive “Olubukunmi”. It is noteworthy that when used in this sense, both sexes answer the name. However, there is another sense in which “Olu” could be used without referring to “The Lord”. In Yoruba culture where a lot of importance is attached to the male child in the family, “Olu” is used to underscore the significant role that the male child is culturally configured to fill in the family lineage as to perpetuating the ideals of the family as well as the occupation(s) the family is renowned for. Thus, a male child in Yoruba land is popularly named “Olumide”, meaning “My principal child has arrived”. Little wonder then that when a family in traditional Yoruba society loses a first-born male child, they pray that they have another male child as a substitute for the deceased. If, however, their prayer is not answered and the next child given birth to is a

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female, she is named “Kumolu” (Death has snatched away the valued one). This is why there is a Yoruba proverb, “Bi ko ba nidii, obinrin ki i je Kumolu” (No woman is named Kumolu without a cause). The name given to the female child could be a sort of lamentation that the female child regrettably would not be able to stand in the gap for the deceased male child. Or it could mean that since the male child banked on is no more, the onus rests on the family to prop up the female to fill the vacuum as a passive acceptance of fate. Yaro is also a cultural name among the Hausa used mainly for a male child. Although one may be tempted to suggest that it may be the surname since the two names appear separately without a hyphen to show that they are a compound name, the parallel cultural import of the names within the Yoruba and Hausa cultures seems to be what the autobiographer exploits to give vent to the cultural message he intends to pass across. This does not, however, suggest that there may not be some cross-cultural variations that confer on the bearers slightly different rights and privileges. So the combination of these cultural names as one for the protagonist is a stylistic invention whereby the name serves a signifier that culturally depicts the protagonist’s position and role in the family. His grandmother justifies this position in one of her tête-à-tête with Olu Yaro on the value of his sex to the family: You see, in this culture, a family without a son, is fate’s laughing stock. Females were not cherished as boys. Their importance was not allowed to be felt in society. After all, women were seen proverbially as those beings who urinated from the behind… For not being made to act male is our culture’s metaphor of demotion to insignificance for women. (Grandma’s Sun, 19)

A dominant image used to denigrate womanhood here is “those beings who urinated from the behind”. It is nature’s design for a woman to urinate from a position at variance with that of a man that is harped on here as a metaphor for the perceived ineptitude of women in society. The adjunct element ‘from the behind’ with the head word being ‘behind’ is a place deictic expression with which the society tries to define the place of women as opposed to their male counterparts who supposedly are in the vanguard of moving society forward. Therefore, in traditional Yoruba society, the image is a signifier which is often used to undermine the capacities and capabilities of women in the face of family and societal challenges. It tends to give the impression that a woman is unable to do things in an orderly and approved manner that would

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bring the desired result. In fact, the impression, more often than not, is given that the best should not be expected from a woman. This face-threatening image undermines the potential and achievements of women in society such that the family so much celebrated nature’s design of Yaro’s not being a female. However, the autobiographer tries to counteract this negative labelling of women in a patriarchal African world. So, when, as an adult, Yaro had his first child, the narrator says, “That the child was female did not faze him” (Grandma’s Sun, 176). In view of this disposition, he shared the views of his friends’ wives who expressed enthusiastic desires to have baby daughters that they could cherish, cuddle and nurture to become their companions. He, however, berated their husbands who reacted fiercely to their wives, with one even proclaiming: “No son, no child. I am the chip of my father’s block” (Grandma’s Sun, 177). This statement of absolute finality in a world where both male and female have significant roles to play in society development is what the autobiographer challenges when he uses one of the wives, who snapped at her husband for that reckless proclamation, as his authorial voice, saying: If a child was truly yours, one with whom you had a genuine bond, it wouldn’t matter a bit if the child was male or female. Many would prefer a daughter of peace and progress to a son of turmoil and imprisonment. Many would prefer a dynamic daughter to a son who is a donkey. There was nothing wrong if a man saw a snake and a woman killed it, so long as the snake was dead”. (Grandma’s Sun, 177)

The autobiographer attempts to point out that the men’s world is not after all a perfect one. Using the syntactic parallel structure: “Many would prefer a … daughter … to a son …”, the author attributes and foregrounds certain negative qualities expressed in the qualifier “of turmoil and imprisonment’ and the relative clause “who is a donkey” to post-modify the noun head “son” in contrast to the positive attributes in the post-modifier “of peace and progress” and the attributive adjective “dynamic” to qualify the noun head “daughter”. While holding certain elements constant in the parallel structure (“Many would prefer a … daughter … to a son …”) and varying some words in the antonymous expressions “turmoil and imprisonment” (supposed male attributes) vs. “peace and progress” (hypothetical female attributes) on the one hand, and “dynamic” vs. “who is a donkey”, on the other hand, he attempts to make a case for the female sex. In the process, however, he gets himself involved in the usual mudslinging characteristic of male-female verbal exchange. Nevertheless, he tries to reach a position of compromise when the authorial voice sees nothing wrong with a man seeing a snake and a woman

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killing it. One major lesson that this saying seeks to point out is that unity of purpose between both male and female sexes would produce wonderful results in solving life’s problems. Or in another sense, de-emphasising sexism would go a long a way to engender society development. Therefore, men are not supposed to see themselves as the only beings specially endowed to move the world; women have unique and sometimes complementary roles to play. In fact, going by the challenge depicted in this saying, it is to the woman that the greater responsibility is assigned. Ordinarily, men would have arrogated it to themselves. Seeing a snake is an involuntary action that is assigned to a man but the task of killing it which is indeed voluntary and demands a lot of courage is taken up by the woman. The metaphor embedded in this apparent reversal of roles conveys a great message for patriarchal apologists. We find out here that the autobiographer apart from telling his own story comments on a crucial social issue that is threatening the fabrics of his society. Although the treatment meted out to women here is an intrinsic African cultural practice, Olu Yaro expected “the acclaimed scholarship and world exposure” of his friends to have freed them from their unyielding stance of not expecting their wives to give birth to baby girls at any time in their lives. Being a Diaspora author, the autobiographer’s consciousness is probably informed by his wide exposure and transnational identity. Writing on Diaspora identity, Brah (1996: 196) quoted in Virtanen (2008: 197) says: “Diasporic identities are at once local and global. They are networks of transnational identifications encompassing ‘imagined’ and ‘encountered’ communities”. Given the autobiographer’s posture on the vexed issue of sexism, one could argue that he seems to question why his family so much celebrated his being a male and may be wondering the neglect he would have suffered if he had been a female. He appears to be making a case for the female sex that were he a female he deserved no less prestige and status.

Depiction of the Images of Motherhood in Africa Yaro’s paternity, his grandmother told him, was in dispute, though the suspect was widely known. Therefore, his grandmother and mother played prominent roles in rearing him. Apart from the disciplinarian posture of Yaro’s grandfather, the narrator did not shed much light on his relationship with Yaro. However, we are given a robust account of his relationship with his grandmother, on the one hand, and his mother, on the other. Given this mother-child affinity, we find representations of African mothers elaborately covered in the autobiographical narrative.

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Yaro’s grandmother earnestly wished that Yaro would make it in life in spite of the difficult circumstances of the family. As a result, she had to prophesy into Yaro’s life: “Your name is blessing, my son, not Throw-away… You are a gift – a gift to us and to the world. A special child, a child of destiny and in the future, a man of magnitude. I am sure of it. You will cross rivers and mountains. Your destiny is too hard to crack. No bad persons will be able to cover your sun with their fingers… You will be a nut too hard to crack. This will be so as night follows the sun.” (Grandma’s Sun, 20)

The above supplication reminds one of the speech styles of old grandparents in a typical African village that pray neither in the Christian nor Islamic way but only by invocation in the African traditional way. The linguistic elements and the rhetorical style of the invocation are striking. Note the declarative sentence as the first sentence and the antonymous names “blessing” and “Throw-away”. While the first complement in the sentence “blessing” is favoured by the grandmother as underlined with the use of the affirmative copula verb “is”, the second, “Throw-away” is rejected as underlined with the use of the negative particle “not”. In the second sentence, the subject complement – “a gift” – is further qualified in the parenthetical expression (– a gift to us and to the world). The prepositional complements “us” and “the world” confirm the extension of the beneficiaries of “the gift” from the immediate family members to the larger society. The third sentence which is composed mainly of nominal groups is also significant. In the first nominal group, “A special child”, we have a determiner (“a”) plus an adjective (“special”) plus the noun head (“child”). The next amplifies the import of the first by using a post-modifying element “of destiny” to qualify the noun head “child”. Since the grandmother prayed that the child would grow up to become a man, the use of the conjunction “and” followed by the adjunct element “in the future” underlies the temporal frame that is of paramount interest to her. Interestingly, she did not just wish that Yaro would become a man but one with influence, hence the use of the post-modifier (“of magnitude”) to qualify the noun head in the last nominal group. Beyond the structural analysis we have carried out alongside the pragmatic implications, the supplication is also rich in images. Believing that journeying through life is not without challenges, Yaro’s grandmother used the imagery of “rivers” and “mountains” as metaphors for life’s difficulties. So, Yaro’s figurative act of crossing them is suggestive of his overcoming life’s challenges. Besides, she conceived of Yaro in the image of “a nut too hard to crack”. The evocation of this image is based on the fact that

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traditionally, it is believed that there are enemies that could hurt someone on account of envy, hence the popular prayer for God’s protection against them. The way the kernel is hidden within the hard nut that is usually too hard to break is the way that the grandmother wished that Yaro be shielded from diabolical attacks. Finally, the grandmother expresses her conviction in her wishes coming to pass by using nature imagery: “This will be so as night follows the day”. It is the design of nature that night should follow the day and it does not fail no matter the circumstances. Since this is a constant by the design of nature, the grandmother transfers this inherent quality of constancy to seal her wishes. In view of the religious implications of the invocation, the verbal codes are accompanied by non-verbal cues captured thus: In voicing this invocation, Yaro’s Granny slapped the centre of her head giving the invocation a spiritual fortification. Then she spat into the air, turning each time to each of the four corners of the earth. To conclude this ritual drama she slapped both of her breasts and then moved toward Yaro and gently rubbed her palms on his head as she intoned prayerful petitions to her ancestors (Grandma’s Sun, 20)

The accompanying semiotic force of first of all slapping the centre of her head brings to the fore her belief in the concept of “ori” in African (Yoruba) belief. Although “ori” in Yoruba literally could mean the head as just a part of the human body, there is an inherent God-ordained cause that every being stands to fulfil in life, hence the concept of “determinism” which is tied to an intrinsic head. The “spiritual head”, figuratively speaking, is equivalent to the popular “chi” in Igbo as popularly expressed in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, “when a man says yes, his chi says yes”. So, the action of slapping the centre of her head is to invoke the God-ordained cause she had in life to be blessed. Her spitting into the air is a semiotic force of rejecting the undesirable, for normally when one is in a polluted environment with irresistible stench, one is inclined to spit. Besides, spitting after an invocation in the traditional way is a force of sealing or stamping what has been declared with finality. Just as the spit ejected does not return to its source, so does the declaration stand. Turning to each of the four corners of the earth – north, south, west and east – is a kinesic posture meant to demonstrate the belief that each of these is the pillar that holds the earth and that “whatever is good in life” is blown in the direction of the seeker, as each is seen as a repository of fortune. The semiotic force of slapping both of her breasts conjures up the practice among traditional African women who believe that there are certain inherent protective powers in their wombs with which they carry pregnancy and the breasts that their children suck afterwards. As a result, slapping such parts of

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the body is meant to invoke such metaphysical powers capable of guarding their children from “the forces of darkness”. Further, with tears streaming down her face, which is indicative of her heartfelt and burning desire that her grandchild stay afloat the adversities of life, she evokes: Termites can only burrow, They can never break the rock Even if the river dries Its name will always remain The noise of the market Will never kill a tree. My son, your sun Shall shine without end At home, over the land and over the seas If my blood flows in you Your ancestral deities Shall so agree. (Grandma’s Sun, 20-21)

There are significant structures and images that are worthy of analysis in this invocation. The first image that is striking is that of termites. In spite of their capacity for eating into wood and turning it into shreds, they dare not try the rock because its composition makes it impenetrable. This informs why the first sentence expresses the ability of termites with the use of the modal auxiliary “can” but then limits it to the action of burrowing which cannot be extended to the rock, hence the use of the negative particle “never”. The statement of a positive assertion in the first structure followed by a negative one is typical of the structure of incantations in the Yoruba language. While the positive is permitted to thrive, the negative is forbidden to happen. What the grandmother tries to do here is to see Yaro in the image of an object “the rock” that is immune to destruction by the force of termites. In subsequent lines too, other images that have the capacity to withstand menacing forces of “dryness” and “noise” are “the name of the river” and “a tree” respectively. They are used to emphasise the fact that whatever adverse conditions or threats that might come Yaro’s way in life, he would always come out victorious. Having ruled out those possible destructive influences, she declared: My son, your sun/Shall shine without end/At home, over the land and over the seas”. The play upon words in the use of “son” and “sun” is significant. The use of the possessive adjectives “my” and “your” with the words respectively shows that while the grandmother possesses Yaro (a son), Yaro in turn

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possesses a “sun”, which grandma prophesied “shall shine without end”. The sun that Yaro possesses here is a metaphor for Yaro’s fame in life. For us to understand the essence of grandma’s prophecy, we need to carefully analyse the image of the sun. From the autobiographer’s part of the world, that is tropical Africa, the high intensity of the sun is not in question but within a particular geographical location, can we claim that the sun really shines “without end”? This is because after sunshine/daylight comes darkness/night. But one interesting thing about the sun is that it never ceases shining (as the earth revolves round it) though not all parts of the world experience it at the same time and with the same intensity. The shifting effect of the sun from one geographical location to another must have informed grandma’s choice of spatial deictic elements to underscore the movement and the direction in which Yaro’s “sun” would go. The movement from “home” (the immediate community) to “over the land” (some geographical locations further) and “over the seas” (the utmost parts of the earth from Yaro’s birthplace) is instructive, as the space keeps enlarging further. In this regard, Yaro is no more an ordinary “son” but has transformed to a metaphorical “sun” that will proclaim the name of the family to the whole world, hence the title of the autobiographical narrative – Grandma’s Sun. The play upon the word “sun” in the title of the text is further enhanced by some signifiers at the front cover of the text. The title is written in yellow colour and placed on a sky blue background. We may want to interrogate the choice of these colours. According to Sells and Gonzalez, colours are more than aesthetic decisions, for they have been known to affect and reflect a person’s mood and emotions, cultural beliefs and symbols. Quoting paint company Glidden, they explain the symbolic meaning of yellow thus: “Yellow is truly joyous and virtuous in its purest form. Yellow exudes warmth. Inspiration and vitality, and is the happiest of all colors. Yellow signifies communication, enlightenment, sunlight and spirituality …” (1). Since the choice of yellow has a close affinity to sunlight, Yaro’s attainment of grandma’s wishes would no doubt exude warmth, inspiration and vitality not only for him but also his grandma, the entire family and the world at large. This is because sun is a powerful source of light and energy that benefits not only humans but also plants. Further, the choice of sky blue colour to depict the sky underscores the fact that the sky is Yaro’s limit, for the yellow colour of the title is placed on a sky blue background. Little wonder then that from childhood, Yaro’s grandmother had started protecting him by fighting his cause. For instance, on an occasion when Yaro was engaged in a brawl with another boy in his neighbourhood, his

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grandmother and his auntie had to dash to the boy’s home to report him to his parents so that he could be warned to desist from tormenting Yaro. The narrator describes the grandma and the auntie in this evoking image: The two mother-hens walked heartedly over to Chief Lijofi who lived four blocks away, quite some walk in village calculations with the tropical, afternoon sun burning down. (Grandma’s Sun, 15)

The image of “mother-hens” used here reminds one of how hens do all within their ability to protect their chicks from the claws of hawks. In some cases, they cover the chicks up under their feathers and when the chicks are straying, the hens give them warning signals in the event of sighting any danger in the vicinity such as the presence of a snake or a hawk. To emphasise the protective role that such hens play in the lives of their chicks, they sometimes engage a threatening hawk in a fierce battle. If, however, the hawk succeeds in snatching away one of the chicks, the wailing of the hen in the immediate environment alerts the inhabitants of an unfortunate incident. With this picture, one can now understand the image of “mother-hens” used to capture Yaro’s grandma and his aunt while defying the scorching sun to take side with Yaro. Such a demonstration of unparalleled care for the child is further buttressed in Yaro’s encounter with his mother: Yes, watch your knees. Wait a minute. Don’t go yet. There is some dirt in your ear. Let me clean it off. There, you see? Look at your hair. It needs a cut. It is so bushy an elephant can hide in it. Does granny give you enough soap to clean yourself? You look so unkempt. We must cut your hair tomorrow. You wear a pair of slippers day and night … Don’t let me see you so raggedy again. Go and play and please take a good bath afterwards. When you go to fetch water at the brook late this afternoon, take your sponge and scrub your back, arms and legs thoroughly. (Grandma’s Sun, 35)

The opening statement of caution reminds one of the characteristic display of a caring heart and the concomitant loving and gentle tone with which a mother would address her child. Then, the soft command that follows (“Wait a minute. Don’t go yet”) is that in which there would be an accompanying non-verbal cue (proxemics) which has to do with space management. In this case, one can imagine Yaro’s mother moving closer in his direction to maintain an intimate distance to the point of cleaning off the dirt in his ear. Even the action of cleaning in itself is a mode of non-verbal communication (tactile) whereby her action of touching him could only be from someone so close. These non-verbal cues emphasise the love and bond between mother and child.

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Expectedly, when a mother has her child being reared by a grandmother, there are always moments of fact-finding to ascertain how well the child is being taken care of. In the above excerpt, Yaro’s mother resorted to performing some illocutionary acts to realise her goals. John Searle (1975) attempted to formalise the illocutionary force of utterances under the following categories: Assertives:

These speech acts are assertions about a state of affairs in the world; Directives: These refer to an effort on the part of the speaker to get the hearer to do something; Commissives: These are acts that create an obligation on the speaker; Expressives: These acts express an inner state of the speaker; Declarations: These speech acts bring about some alternation in the status or the condition of the referred to object(s). (cf. Mey 2001: 120-122) In line with the above categories, she used the illocutionary category of an “assertive” when she complained about Yaro’s unhygienic condition by giving a vivid description of Yaro’s bushy hair though with some exaggerative bite by referring to the bushy hair as being capable of harbouring an elephant. She then took up the responsibility of doing what had been left undone by using the illocutionary act of “commisive” to express her obligation to seeing a particular action carried out, “We must cut your hair tomorrow”. Finally, in the last sentence, as a mother who believed in engaging the child in some personal hygiene so that he would not become indulged, she gave a “directive” by instructing Yaro on what to do at the brook while bathing himself. While the picture painted of Yaro’s mother above bears on maternal glee, there is an unpleasant image painted of mothers in the autobiographer’s world when Yaro’s mother lamented: It seems that a woman has come to this world to suffer. I work day and night to make ends meet. If I wake up in the morning by cockcrow, it is to work. When I come home in the afternoon to fetch your lunch, it is work. At night as a mother and wife it is work… (Grandma’s Sun, 34)

The image painted of a woman here in the autobiographer’s world is so emotive that one is moved to pity at the opening existentialist statement (“It seems that a woman has come to this world to suffer”) which is a summation of women’s sorry situation in most African communities. The preponderance

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of the noun “work” is instructive when seen in the light of the temporal deictics: “in the morning”, “in the afternoon”, and “at night”. Even when one engages in some kind of jobs where employees do shift and have to work for eight hours per belt (morning/afternoon/night), no worker combines two belts in an establishment where labour laws are respected not to talk of the three belts. In the Christendom, Jesus Christ even forbade working round the clock and declared in the gospel according to St. John chapter 9 verse 4 in the Holy Bible: “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work”. Yaro’s mother’s regrettable coverage of the three belts shows the extent to which she has been subjected to dehumanising conditions by the hegemonic forces of the patriarchal world she found herself. The recurrence of the activity (work) to underscore her harrowing experience is further highlighted with the use of the expletive “it”. “It is (to) work” is used for each belt of the day to show that she was always working round the clock. The stylistic device used here is that of the cleft mechanism that uses “it + be + Noun Phrase (NP)”: “it + is + (to) work”. According to Verma (1980: 291), “It serves as a deictic category to draw the attention of the hearer to one particular part of the sentence”. In this excerpt, the topicalised constituent is “work”. The woman’s toil here is a common experience of women in traditional African societies, hence she becomes an archetype of numerous toiling African women. Given this condition, her kinesic posture captured thus was inevitable: … his mother… sat on the pavement outside the house, resting her back as she leaned against an earthen wall. She rested her sorry head on her palm, her elbow sat on her tilted knee. (Grandma’s Sun, 35)

This posture suggests the height of frustration and the concomitant resignation of the individual to the pressures of society and life. Such a posture makes one understand better her (possible) mantra each time she pondered on her condition, as she lamented: “It is not that the fish cannot swim. It is death that makes it to coil in a static position” (Grandma’s Sun, 35). The metaphor of fish used here to capture the hapless situation of the African woman is compelling. It is the second nature of fish to swim, for its inclination makes it conducive for it to manifest this innate potential. However, there is either of two major limitations that can deprive the fish of manifesting this wonder: if the river dries up or if the fish is killed. In the excerpt quoted above, Yaro’s mother equated herself with fish with a lot of potential but which became incapacitated by a natural condition – death.

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However, the death that has limited Yaro’s mother was not a natural death but a cultural or environmental death. To compound the problem of the woman not only in a man’s world, she is further ill-treated in her matrimonial home on account of her position as a “junior” wife in a company of “co-wives”. Yaro’s grandma let Yaro know the travails of his mother in such a company: Her belly was a dome, long huge in front of her. She had to bend over to fan the hearth fires that cooked her meals. All the senior co-wives left their daily chores for her to do, especially those chores that pertained to the well-being of the husband they shared. Your mother laboured throughout until the day she gave birth to you. (Grandma’s Sun, 20)

The image of a dome used in the above extract gives a picturesque description of Yaro’s mother’s pregnancy possibly in the last few weeks of the third trimester. Yet, in spite of the location/position of the pregnancy (although natural) depicted with the use of the adjunct element “in front of her”, she had to bend over to cook her meals in the traditional way “to fan the hearth fires”. The front position of the pregnancy and her having to take action in that same direction appear incongruous and impracticable but since she was in a society that showed no consideration for her delicate condition, she had to do the impossible. Using the nominal group “all the senior co-wives" with the quantifier “all” showing unity of purpose and solidarity among the other wives, the autobiographer seeks to show the helpless condition of the victim in the hands of formidable agents. Also, the use of the verb “laboured” suggests servitude. The endless labour is further modified with the adverb “throughout” followed by the adverbial clause “until the day she gave birth to you”. Normally, a pregnant woman is not supposed to labour in performing household chores because the scary labour of childbirth still waits in ambush for her. If the culture-induced labour and the biological labour had to be combined, one could imagine the ordeal of Yaro’s mother. If Yaro’s mother had this terrible experience in the hands of senior cowives, it would be interesting to know how she labelled them: The other women in this house are witches. They want all the good for their children alone. I do not want you to eat from anybody’s plate in this house as you go back and forth between here and my mother’s place. Is that clear?” (Grandma’s Sun, 35)

Characteristic of the rancour endemic in polygamous homes, Yaro’s mother resorted to the propaganda technique that is commonly used in political circles to label opponents. This technique is known as “name-calling”. In the

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present context, Yaro’s mother stigmatised the co-wives as “witches”. It was an attempt to distance her son from them while trying to endear herself as a loving mother. In the African world, witches are humans with supernatural powers that can be used to their own advantage while possibly working against the interest of others, hence the positive and negative connotations to witchcraft. If the other co-wives wanted all the good for their children alone without the intent of harming the children of others, their witchcraft would be said to have only the positive connotation. However, with the note of warning that Yaro’s mother gave him not to eat “from anyone’s plate in the house”, she was suggesting that the other co-wives could have the intent of hurting her child. In this sense, their witchcraft could be said to have the negative connotation. By giving this memory, the autobiographer casts light on the cultural traits of characteristic rivalry and acrimonious lifestyle among wives in a polygamous setting. Generally speaking, the characteristic display of love by Yaro’s grandmother and mother and the account of the struggles of his mother are emotional memories that have universal appeals in the African world. Therefore, the representations of motherhood are in line with the view of Howard (2006: 9): “In contemporary autobiographies, close relationships, especially with family members, are often objectified and magnified into archetypal or universal relationships. Mothers and fathers are commonly seen as national archetypes”.

Conclusion Apart from the humorous stroke added to recounting the memory of nicknaming and the profound reflections on the emotional-cum-spiritual expression of the bond between (grand)mother and child, we find out that the vexed issue of the hegemony of patriarchy in the African world is a major strand that runs through the study. Although Tayo Olafioye tells his own story in the autobiographical fiction, he assumes the posture of the conscience of the society by calling into question such certain cultural issues of contemporary and global relevance. This thematic pre-occupation in an autobiographical fiction underscores the view that remembering the past is necessarily imbued with contemporary understandings, for recalled events carry the stamp of the present.

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References Barry, P. (1995) Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ching, M. K. L., M. C. Haley, R. F. Lunsford. (eds) (1980) “The Theoretical Relation between Linguistic and Literary Studies: An Introduction by Editors.” Linguistic Perspectives on Literature. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1-38. de Vries, B., J. E. Birren, D. E. Deutchman (1990) “Adult Development through Guided Autobiography: The Family Context.” Family Relations 39(1): 3-7. [Web Page] Retrieved 28 Mar 2009 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/584941. Fredman, J. (2007) “Autobiography and the Theme of Otherness in J. M. Coetzee’s Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life.” [Web Page] Retrieved 24 Mar 2009 from www.diva-portal.org/diva/getDocument ?urn_nbn_se_vxu_diva-13592__fulltext.pdf. Futamura, C. W. (2008) “Rewriting Memory, Re-inventing Identity in Les reveries de la feme sauvage.” Power, Memory and Culture and Culture: Cultural Constructions Symposium Proceedings and Other Presentations. [Web Page] Retrieved 22 Mar 2009 from http://langlab.uta.edu/cultural_construction/20705/PDF/futamura.pdf. Geesey, P. (1997) “Introduction: Why African Autobiography.” Research in African Literatures 28(2), 1-4. Holy Bible. King James Version. Iowa Falls: World Bible Publishers. Howard, D. (2006) “Monograph for Ethnic Studies Conference.” Joint National Conference – National Association of African American Studies, National Association of Hispanic and Latino Studies, National Association of Native American Studies, International Association of Asian Studies. [Web Page] Retrieved 23 Mar 2009, http://dianehoward.com/Structuring_Autobiographical_Stories.htm. Leech, G. N., Michael Short (1981) Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. New York: Longman. Lindsay, D. S. (2006) “Autobiographical Memory, Eyewitness Reports, and Public Policy.” Canadian Psychology. 48, 57-66. [Web Page] Retrieved 13 Feb 2009 from http://web.uvic.ca/psyc/lindsay/ publications/LindsayCanPsy2006.pdf. Mey, J. L. (2001) Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Olafioye, P. (2004) Grandma’s Sun. Ibadan: Kraftgriots. Osundare, N. (1995) “Caliban’s Gamble: The Stylistic Repercussions of Writing African Literature in English.” In Owolabi, Kola (ed)

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Language in Nigeria: Essays in Honour of Ayo Bamgbose. Ibadan: Group Publishers. 340-363. Salmon, P. (n.d) Using Multiple Voices in Autobiographical Writing. [Web Page] Retrieved 14 Feb 2009 from http://www2.hud.ac.uk/hhs/nme/ books/2002/Chapter_2_Phil_Salmon.pdf. Sells, P., S. Gonzalez (n.d) “The Language of Advertising.” [Web Page] Retrieved 14 Dec 2008 from http://www.stanford.edu/class/linguist 34/Unit_11/index.htm. Verma, S. K. (1980) “Topicalisation as a Stylistic Mechanism.” In Ching, Marvin K. L., Michael C. Haley, Ronald F. Lunsford. (eds) Linguistic Perspectives on Literature. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 283294. Virtanen, B. L. (2008) “Tayo Olafioye’s Poetry in Diaspora.” In Virtanen, Beth L., Sola Owonibi (eds) The Mines of His Mind: Critical Reflections on the Works of Tayo Olafioye. Trenton: Africa World Press. 195-206. Widdowson, H. G. (1980) “Stylistic Analysis and Literary Interpretation.” In Ching, Marvin K. L., Michael C. Haley, Ronald F. Lunsford. (eds) Linguistic Perspective on Literature. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 235-241.

Shawkat M. Toorawa

Carl de Souza’s La maison qui marchait vers le large and the Multicultural Mauritian city Carl de Souza was born in Rose Hill, Mauritius in 1949. After a peripatetic primary school education, which included a stint on the Mauritian island dependency of Rodrigues, de Souza was admitted to Royal College, Port Louis and later Royal College Curepipe. He read Biology at the University of London, completed a postgraduate certificate in Education and decided to become an educator. In 1995, after twenty-five years of teaching at the Collège St. Esprit, he was in 1995 named Rector of St Mary’s College in Rose Hill, the town of his birth. Carl de Souza also excelled in sports: he was a national badminton player for many years before being named Manager of the national team, President of the Mauritius Badminton Federation, and Secretary-General of the African Badminton Federation. Late into his careers in pedagogy and competitive sports, Carl de Souza decided to become a writer. His first published work, a short story entitled ‘La comète de Halley’ [‘Halley’s comet’] won the Mauritian Prix Pierre Renaud in 1986. In 1993 another short story, ‘Le raccourci’ [‘The shortcut’], was published in Paris. That same year, his first novel, Le sang de l’Anglais [‘Blood of the Englishman’], won the international francophone prize, Prix de l’Agence de Coopération Culturelle et Technique, and received an accompanying publishing contract in France. Heartened by the critical reaction to this novel, de Souza embarked on another, and in 1996 the Parisbased Le Serpent à Plume Editions published La maison qui marchait vers le large [‘The house that was sliding toward the sea’], which went on to win the regional Prix des Mascareignes. 1 The following year the French government knighted de Souza ‘Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts at des Lettres’ and in 1999 ‘Chevalier des Palmes

1

Carl de Souza, La Maison qui marchait vers le large (Paris: Le Serpent à plumes, 1996, repr. 2001). In March/April 2001, a theatrical version of the play was presented in Paris at the Théâtre de la Tempête (à la Cartoucherie), under the identical title, La Maison qui marchait vers le large, and directed by Vincent Colin.

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Académiques’. In 2000, de Souza published Les jours Kaya [‘Kaya days’] and in 2001 Ceux qu'on jette à la mer [‘Those we throw into the sea’]. 2 Le sang de l’Anglais is, as the title implies, preoccupied with filiation, genealogies, and the role of ethnicities, contested or otherwise, in the construction of identity. 3 For its part, La maison qui marchait vers le large is concerned with a house in which people who are negotiating these and other issues must live and, more importantly, live together. The house is a real house which will face a real problem; it is also evidently a metaphor for Mauritius, the island. But it is also a metaphor, or double, of the city and – without meaning to make too much of the word play – of ethni-city. As a metaphor for the city, it thus becomes a space which allows all the characters that inhabit it and inhabit the city to be linked. Indeed, de Souza does not so much build the Mauritian city as he dismantles it, sending its emblem sliding toward the sea where, presumably, it will be transformed. I would like to suggest that La maison qui marchait vers le large is a signal multicultural text – though I am less attached to the term multiculturalism per se than to what it implies. It is true that the Mauritian playwright Dev Virahsawmy (b. 1942) has been calling for and militating 2

3

Carl de Souza’s published works, in chronological order, are: “La Comète de Halley”, published in L'Express (Mauritius), 23 October 1986, 3; “La Raccourci”, in Le Serpent à plumes 21 (Fall 1993), 41-44; Le Sang de l’Anglais (Paris: ACCT/Hatier, 1993); “Tamarin: Take the Wave/Tamarin, prends la vague”, in Barlen yamootoo and Rama Poonoosamy (eds), Maurice (Le tour de l’île en quatre-vingts lieux) (Port-Louis: Immedia, 1994), 75, and reprinted in La Revue Noire 16 (Mar-Apr-May 1995), 8; La Maison qui marchait vers le large (Paris: Le Serpent à plumes, 1996); “La Nouvelle des Camphriers” [‘The new [help] at Camphriers’], in Le Serpent à plumes 30 (Spring 1996), 41-44; La tififi Citronnelle: qui n’entendait que le vent dans les champs de cannes, illustrations by Danièle Hitié (Vanves/Port-Louis: Edicef/Vizavi, 1999); Les Jours Kaya (Paris: Éditions de l’Olivier, 2000); Ceux qu’on jette à la mer (Paris: Éditions de l’Olivier, 2001); Citronella, a story from Mauritius (Achimota, Ghana: Africa Christian Press/Claremont, South Africa: New Africa Books, 2001); L’Oiseau zombie, a translation of Ismith Khan’s The Jumbie Bird [1961] (Paris: Dapper, 2001). In 2000, Belgian CIRTEF Productions produced a film about and featuring Carl de Souza titled ‘50… and One World – Carl de Souza, writer’ (Vijay L. Seedoyal) as part of its ‘50… and One World’ series. This documentary was broadcast on TV5, Radio Canada, and MBC (Mauritius); it is archived in UNESCO’s online media library. My warm thanks to Nancy Skipper and, especially, Carl de Souza himself, for assistance with bibliographic references. On Le sang de l’anglais, see “Ambivalently Abnormal: Métis as Racial Grotesque in Loys Masson’s L’étoile et la clef and Carl de Souza’s Le sang de l’anglais”, chapter 4 in Srilata Lavi, Rainbow Colors: Literary Ethno-Topographies of Mauritius (Plymouth, England: Lexington Books, 2007), 63-84; and Danielle Tranquille, “Inscriptions of dev/fiance: métissage in Mauritian literature”, International Journal of Francophone Studies 8/2 (2005), 199-218.

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multiculturalism for more than four decades through his plays and adaptations in Mauritian Creole, and that Edouard Maunick (b. 1931), whose Muse is a blend of African, European and Indianoceanic, is something of a multicultural Mauritian poet laureate (if one can be that when one has been in self-imposed-exile). But it is in de Souza’s La maison qui marchait vers le large that issues of ‘policy’ and issues of literature may be said to collide, collude, and simultaneously result on the one hand in a novel, and on the other in a projection, a formula, almost a blueprint for citizenry, and therefore for the city and for ethnicity. 4 Perhaps this is to be expected from someone whose educational, intellectual, civic and cultural background is multiple and plural. Curiously, some Mauritian critics expressed disapproval and disapprobation for La maison qui marchait vers le large. Principally, de Souza was accused of stereotyping characters. And, the argument went, if it was not bad enough that he had, like so many others, published overseas –an unfair attack as he lives and works in Mauritius, unlike a number of other Francophone Mauritian writers – he had now produced a novel that tokenized, inasmuch as it attempts to construct an ‘authentic’ Mauritian identity, an ‘ideal’ Mauritian neighborhood in an ‘ideal’ Mauritian city. In short, he was accused of being too multicultural. He did not answer these charges, and he need not: La maison qui marchait vers le large is a finely crafted, finely tuned and attuned novel that does not construct Mauritian identity but, rather, skilfully and subtly deconstructs it. De Souza may be a member of a ‘community’ – a euphemism and misnomer for any number of imputed Mauritian ethno-religious affiliations 5 – yet he writes perceptively and knowledgeably about all the so-called communities. 4

5

Blanchard, reprising Pike, observes that creative writers “not wanting to be left behind, will tend more and more to insert their story plot into an ideological discourse dealing with the social problems of the time”. Marc Eli Blanchard, In Search of the City: Engels, Baudelaire, Rimbaud (Saratoga, Calif.: ANMA Libri, 1985), 7; Burton Pike, The Image of the City in Modern Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). Thinking about cultural difference in Mauritius has often regrettably either gone the road of pseudo-scientific discussion of race and purity, or the road of ethno-religious identity politics. Together, these have been the basis of spurious taxonomies for the entrenchment of a communal, communalized, and communalizing politics, and for discussions that denymixing, métissage, creolisation, créolité, hybridity and cultural contagion. On ‘contagion’, see James Snead, “European Pedigrees/African Contagions: Nationality, Narrative, and Communality in Tutuola, Achebe and Reed”, in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 231-249, esp. 245; cf. ‘contaminations’ in Edward Said, “Figures, Configurations, Transfigurations”, in Anne Rutherford (ed.), From Commonwealth to Post-Colonial (Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1992), 15.

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A word about how these ‘communities’ were constituted is in order. Mauritius was uninhabited when the Dutch landed there in September 1598. They abandoned their garrison after an interrupted century of presence and were succeeded by the French who saw in Mauritius, which they renamed Ile de France, an ideal entrepôt in their designs on the wider Indian Ocean world. They imported slaves from Mozambique, Madagascar and elsewhere, whose connections to their places of origin and empathy were severed; and they encouraged so-called ‘free coloreds’ from India to immigrate as artisans, and whose connections to their places of origin and empathy remained active. With the island’s capitulation to the British in 1810 (with the proviso that French language, ‘religion’ [i.e. Roman Catholicism], and culture be maintained), and with the abolition of slavery, an important new demographic, cultural, and eventually political, event took place: the influx of Indian merchants and Indian indentured labor resulted in Indians outnumbering the white colonist non-white slave populations. Today, a little less than 70 percent of Mauritius is Indo-Mauritian. The Franco-Mauritians weigh in at an economically superpowerful but demographically slight 2 percent, as do the Sino-Mauritians, and the remainder (about 30 percent) – or creol(ized) population – are regarded and treated as just that, the remainder, a fact underscored by the term by which this group is known, ‘la population générale’. 6 This category is a misnomer, or anomer, because it designates no specificity, nothing regional or cultural, indeed, nothing in particular. General population is the polite term for the until very recently pejorative term ‘Créole.’ The death in police custody of Kaya, a popular CreoleRastafarian icon and performer of seggae (a mixture of the local musical and dance form séga and reggae), provoked island-wide riots in February 1999, and focused attention in particular on the plight of the marginalised («les exclus») among the Creole population, while at the same time fueling ethnic and communal rivalries. 7 These events are the subject of de Souza’s Les jours Kaya. That Créole is also the term for the island’s lingua franca, the Creole language (hereafter Kreol), which is a mother tongue for almost everyone in post-independence Mauritius, 8 has merely complicated the clearing of a 6

7

8

For census purposes, Franco-Mauritians fall into the same category. See A. J. Christopher, “Ethnicity, Community and Census in Mauritius, 1830-1990”, The Geographical Journal 158/1 (1992), 55-64. See William Miles, “The Creole Malaise in Mauritius”, African Affairs 98/391 (1991), 211228; and Suzanne Chazan Gillig, “Ethnicity and Free Exchange in Mauritian Society”, Social Anthropology 8/1 (2000), 33-44. The period following independence from Britain (1968) is referred to as post-independence or post-1968, seldom (if ever) as postcolonial.

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space in which the term Creole can be used to refer to a person. The CreoleMauritian is that person whose ancestry is mixed, usually a mixture of European and African. The term Afro-Mauritian was vociferously rejected by many Creoles for making explicit a link and a connection to a continent that many wish(ed) to erase. This explains in part the simultaneous rejection of the Creole language in favor of French by many who would establish a link with the «métropole» rather than recover a filiation with, say, Maputo. 9 *** The premise of La maison qui marchait vers le large is established early. 10 Torrential rains cause a landslide and the houses of La Motte, a fictitious but recognizable mountainside neighborhood of Port Louis, begin to slide inexorably toward the sea, a fact of which everyone in the neighborhood seems to be aware, except Louis-Marie Gaston Daronville. 11 Old man Daronville is an obdurate, wheelchair-bound Creole (mixed white and nonwhite ancestry) who, because of financial hardship, is forced by his daughter Florence to rent the first floor of his splendid, aging colonial house to the Muslim Haffenjee family, and himself to occupy only the second floor. The head of the Haffenjee household, Raouf, is a clerk in a rural district office who moves from a home in the countryside to the capital so that his son, Omar, may attend a prestigious state school. Here is how the novelist has Haffenjee formulate this desire: «Il cherchait une maison En ville la cause mo garçon… you know… li fèque gagne admission Colleze Royal…» (de Souza 1996: 22) [“He was looking for a house here in town 'coz my boy, ya know, 9

10

11

This is changing, as Vijaya Teelock’s “Family History Project” at the African Cultural Centre and Jocely Chan Low’s heeded call for a Centre d’études créole” both testify. Teelock and Chan Low are both historians at the University of Mauritius. See Vijayalakshmi Teelock and Edward A. Alpers, History, Memory and Identity ([Bell Village] Mauritius: Nelson Mandela Centre for African Culture; Réduit: University of Mauritius, 2001). Few analyses of the novel are to be found in the scholarly literature. I am aware of JeanLouis Joubert’s review in Notre librairie 128/2 (1996), 75; Kumari R. Issur, “Le centre et l‘épicentre dans La maison qui marchait vers le large de Carl de Souza”, in Soorya Nirisimloo-Gayan and Danielle Tranquille (eds), Rencontres 98 (Moka, Mauritius: Mahatma Gandhi Institute Press, 1999), 8-16; Jean-Louis Joubert, “Carl de Souza : dire l’errance identitaire”, Notre Librairie 146 (Oct-Dec 2001), 122-124; Cécile Leung, “Le Modèle ambigu de l'interaction sociale au sein du microcosme mauricien dans La Maison qui marchait vers le large de Carl de Souza”, in Kumari R. Issur et Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing (eds), L’Océan Indien dans les littératures francophones (Paris: Karthala/Réduit: Presses Universitaires de Maurice, 2001), 365-71. This summary draws in part on my 1998 review of the novel in World Literature Today 71/2 (Spring 1997), 464.

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he just got in to Royal College…”]. 12 Daronville is contemptuous of all his neighbors, his new tenants in particular. For him, the non-‘Whites’ are ‘taking over,’ ‘taking’ all the plum jobs, ‘stealing’ all the scholarships. At one point, he reflects: «Dire qu’en général les Malabars, les Chinois et les Lascars passaient pour bien malins: pour preuve, ils piquaient toutes les bourses scolaires!…» (22) [“To think that generally all the Hindoos, Chinamen and Moslems passed for smarty-pants: proof is, they nick all the scholarships!…”] To Haffenjee, Daronville is a despicable old man: «il détestait aussi M. Daronville. Non parce qu’il était mulâtre et chrétien, mais tout simplement détestable» (11) [“he detested Mr. Daronville too. Not because he was a mulatto and a Christian, but simply because he was detestable”]. Haffenjee’s problems with Daronville stem from the old man’s personality and character, not from his ethnicity. Haffenjee’s antipathy toward Daronville are thus not racist, or ‘communal’ in Mauritian terms. Indeed, as the novel progresses, the relationship between Daronville and Haffenjee becomes more complicated and subtle. In the same way that Michel St Bart, a Mauritian of French descent, and Howard Hawkins, a Mauritian of English ancestry, have to come to terms with contradictory feelings in Le sang de l’Anglais, so too must Daronville and Haffenjee, the two main characters of La maison qui marchait vers le large. They are constantly, if differently, seeking ways of expressing and accepting their alternating feelings of goodwill and disdain, grudging admiration and disapproval, warmth and cynicism. The residents of their neighborhood include Bibi Feroza, Haffenjee’s ailing, withdrawn wife; Tamby, the Tamil ‘exorcist’; and numerous others who for de Souza evidently constitute a microcosm of Mauritius. One such citizen is Lam Chok Wen, the hard-working Chinese neighbor whose additional floors deprive Daronville of his one joy, an unimpeded view of the cars wending their way to Port Louis and of the ships in harbor: «Il maudit une fois de plus le Chinois d’à côté pour avoir ajouté deux étages à sa boutique: l’énorme chantier le coinçant contre la montagne l’empêchait de voir le flot des voitures se rendant à la capitale» (10) [“He once more cursed the Chinaman next door for having added two floors to his shop: the huge building site squeezing him against the mountain prevented him from seeing the stream of cars making their way to the capital”]. Later he adds: «Pourtant, Haffenjee, les bateaux, je les connais. Les gros, les petits! Dites, Haffenjee, vous les regarderez un peu et vous me tiendrez au courant?» (310) [“And yet,

12

English translations are mine.

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Haffenjee, I know ships. The big ones, the little ones! Say, Haffenjee, you watch them some and keep me posted, alright?”]. Another constituent of de Souza’s microcosm is Germaine, the unindustrious and superstitious Creole maid, who is introduced in the following terms: «Puis s’amena Zermaine. De son vrai nom Germaine Trinité… Elle déambulait, désinvolte, roulant ses formes abondantes et paresseuses moulées dans de minces fourreaux de taffetas…» (39) [“Then Zermaine showed up. Real name Germaine Trinité… She strolled, casually, rolling her ample, langorous frame nestled in thin taffeta wraps…”]. Every ‘community’ is presented and represented and their particularities and misconceptions about one another depicted and described. In spite of the delicate subject, de Souza is not judgmental or condescending, quite the opposite: his keen observations are in a prose that is celebratory of difference. De Souza is not only describing a multicultural, Mauritian city par excellence, he is also prescribing one. It is only in this way, I would argue, that a sentiment such as the following, is properly to be understood and situated: «La mère inonda Anwar d’un regard de fierté et d’amour. Il s’y baigna comme un rasgoullah dans une crème au miel à la pâtisserie Bagdad.» (136) [“The mother drowned Anwar in a look of pride and love. He bathed in it like a rasgulla in honeyed cream from Bagdad Bakery”]. This mandate for a plural citizenry is what makes detractors uneasy. They are uncomfortable with a melting pot, or, as Dev Virashsawmy likes to put it, a masala or spice mix. For them, the boundaries between ethnicities are there, and they are sacred (Davidson 1986: 43). *** Multiculturalism, as many scholars have noted, resonates globally but has very specific local inflections (Gunew 1994: 2). In the United Kingdom, it is applied to Black-White relations, where Black encompasses Africans, Caribbeans, and Asians, all recently oppressed by British or other colonialisms. With the shipwreck of the good ship commonwealth emerged a new Anglophone, multicultural writing, and world literatures in English. 13 In 13

Cf. Chris Tiffin, “The Voyage of the Good Ship Commonwealth” in Kunapipi 14/2 (1992), 12-21 The journal Wasafiri was created to give space and voice to “Caribbean, African, Asian and Asscoiated Literatures in English”. There is a “Special Focus” on Mauritius in Wasafiri 30, 21-41 (Autumn 1999), edited by Nandini Bhautoo-Dewnarain and Shawkat M. Toorawa. See also the newly launched Mauritian English-language magazine, Serendipity, edited by Nandini Bhautoo-Dewnarain; and Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, founded by Shirley Chew at Leeds University.

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the United States, multiculturalism is a term that sought – I use the past tense because the term appears no longer to be used without incurring some sort of a liability 14 – to include all historically marginalized groups. In the United States and the United Kingdom, then, it has become a coded way of addressing issues having to do with race (Gunew 1994: 46). 15 In Canada, multiculturalism “denotes those who are not included in the English-French axis” (Gunew 1994: 2). In New Zealand, multiculturalism has no real purchase because of the importance of biculturalism, a term and notion around which condense Maori claims for sovereignty and equal footing (Pearson 1991: 1994-214). In Australia, the Aborigines distance themselves from the term because of their understanding of it “as being predicated on various cultures of migration”, cultures “in which they do not participate, and with which they see no compelling need to establish connections” (Gunew 1994: 2). Similarly, in effect if not in affect, the socalled, i.e. self-called, Anglo-Celtic populations, do not fall into multiculturalism’s orbit either. 16 The term has come, therefore, to embrace all those other than the original settler-colonizing groups, by and large also European but whose literary production has come to be called ethnicminority writing by Padolsky and others. 17 In this regard, in the Mauritian context, the work and works of Dev Virahsawmy, alluded to above, are paramount, in particular his 1991 Kreol

14

15

16

17

Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Loose Canons (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 174: “What is Multiculturalism, and why are they saying so many terrible things about it? We'e been told it threatens to fragment American culture into a warren of ethnic enclaves, each separate and inviolate. We've been told that it menaces the Western tradition of literature and the arts.” See especially Gates, Loose Canons. For a critique of Gates’ use of terms such as ‘culture wars’, see Lavina Dhingra Shankar, “(Ir)Responsibilities of (Multi-)Cultural Literary Representation”, in John Rieder and Larry E. Smith (eds), Multiculturalism and Representation: Selected Essays (Manoa: College of Language, Linguistics, and Literature, University of Hawai'i and East-West Center, 1996), 118. See Stephen Castles et al., “The Bicentenary and the Failure of Australian Nationalism”, in Race and Class 29/3 (1988), 53-68. Enoch Padolsky, “Cultural Diversity and Canadian Literature: A Pluralist Approach to Majority and Minority Writing in Canada”, in International Journal of Canadian Studies 3 (Spring 1991), 111-128; see also his “Establishing the Two-Way Street: Literary Criticism and Ethnic Studies”, in Canadian Ethnic Studies 22/1 (1992), 22-37.

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reworking of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. 18 Yet, in spite of the inroads made by Virahsawmy, especially with regard to his (initially almost single-handed) consolidation of Kreol as a literary language, it is, I am suggesting, de Souza’s writing which has more starkly displayed the multiculturalism of which the Mauritian city is in need. La maison qui marchait vers le large is testimony to the fact that one can write an enduring work of art and still grapple with pressing issues. Paul Sharrad has (in another context) pertinently and eloquently felt the pulse of this sort of writing, a writing which expresses multicultural experience, charts a shift towards images rather than objects, parameters rather than what they contain, to processes of exchange wherein the text itself functions as a porous surface instead of a solid-state reification (1992: 60). This is evident in de Souza’s linguistic choices. Scarcely a page of La maison qui marchait vers le large goes by without italics signaling the many Mauritianisms and Kreol words, phrases, and exchanges that pervade the text. Yet footnotes are only occasionally provided to explain discrete words, such as Lascarine, glossed as “Muslim woman” (Musulmane, de Souza 21, and passim) or malangue, glossed as “dirty” (sale, de Souza 52). For JeanLouis Joubert, the use of Mauritian language and expressions is a “realistic effect that endows the characters with a tangible physicality” («effet de réel qui dote les personnages d’une épaisseur physique») (1996: 75). That may be, but Joubert, it seems to me, misses the point. La maison qui marchait vers le large is, in fact, one of the few Mauritian novels not to explain all its Kreol. This is in stark contrast to Rue La Poudrière [‘La Poudrière Street’] by Ananda Devi (b. 1957), for example, where the visceral writing is interrupted with explanations and translations of the few usually quite comprehensible Kreol locutions. More importantly – and this goes completely unremarked in Joubert’s review – de Souza also uses Franco-Mauritian French in his dialogue, for example in Daronville’s exclamation: «J’ai archi-appelé chez vous toute la journée! On m’a foutu sec!» (27) [loosely, “I super-called you all day! I didn’t friggin’ get anywhere!”]; or in another of his exclamatory

18

Dev Virahsawmy, Toufann: enn fantezi antrwa ak (Rose-Hill: Boukié Banané, 1991). Toufann is dedicated to Shakespeare and also to Françoise Lionnet, to whose ideas about métissage, multiculturalism in its literary dimensions, and universality Virahsawmy is indebted. On Toufann, see Shawkat M. Toorawa, “‘Translating’ The Tempest: Dev Virahsawmy’s Toufann, Cultural Creolization, and the Rise of Mauritian Kreol”, in African Theatre 3 (2000), 125-138; Danielle Tranquille, “Translator: TransAlter. A Reflection on Dev Virahsawmy’s Toufann”, in Revi Kiltir Kreol 2 (2003), 34-45; and Françoise Lionnet, “Transcolonial Translations: Shakespeare in Mauritius”, in Françoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih (eds), Minor Transnationalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 201-21.

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recriminations: “Bonhomme, j’ai passé une nuit blanche à barrer l’eau qui pissait de partout, et vous en avez profité aussi, sans doute, vous aut’ en bas!” (28) [loosely, “Mister, I spent an entire sleepless night stopping up the water that was pissing from everywhere, while you all, you all were just sittin’ pretty downstairs!”]. Thus, de Souza writes neither in Académie French nor in Kreol, preferring a fluid prose that interweaves French, Mauritian French, and Kreol. By mixing these together, de Souza chips away at the so-called separation of French and Kreol: «Côte ou pé aller coume ça, Haffenjee? Voyez pas que j’ai pas fini de causer avec vous?» (29) [loosely, “Wher're you runnin' off to, Haffenjee? Can't you see I'm not done jawin' with you?”]. *** Mauritian writers are no strangers to the city, Port-Louis in particular. And the most well-known incarnation of it is no doubt that of the émigré Mauritian novelist Ananda Devi in her 1988 Rue La Poudrière, mentioned above. Indeed, de Souza’s quartier, La Motte, can be read as a response to La Butte, the quartier on which Devi focuses: note the similar setting and the resonating name. In the opening pages of Rue La Poudrière, the protagonist Paule explains where she lives in the following terms: J’ai habité le faubourg d’un faubourg, dans la marginalité des plus marginales, a l’extrémité même, aux commissures mêmes de ce que nous appelons ‘la civilisation.’ J’habite sur les lèvres supérieures du vieux Port-Louis, la ligne mauve et noire qui démarque la fin de son temps et la limite de son empire… Heureusement, je vis en marge de la civilisation. I lived in the ghetto to a ghetto, on the margins of the most marginalised, at the very extremity, the outer edges, of that thing we call ‘civilisation’.I live in the upper limits of Old Port-Louis, that black and mauve line that marks out the end of its time and the limits of its imperium… Happily, I live on the margin of civilisation. (Devi 1988: 8)

Later Paule says that: «Port-Louis est comme une épine plantée dans ma chair. J’y ai vécu ma vie d’enfant, ma vie de fille, ma vie de femme.» (Devi 1988: 31) [“Port-Louis is like a thorn stuck in my flesh. I lived my life there, my life as a child, as a girl, as a woman”]. Elsewhere we find the following similar collapsing of body and city: «Et Marie commençait… Sa puissance, et celle de Port-Louis, s’amplifiaient de concert.» (31) [“And Marie began… Her power, and that of Port-Louis, increased in unison.”] The Port-Louis of Ananda Devi – where she remembers «des maisons de Port-Louis de mon adolescence, inébranlables malgré leur infatigable vieillesse» (75-76) [“the Port-Louis houses of my adolescence, unshakable in spite of their untiring antiquity”] – is taken up by other Mauritian writers, Richard Sedley Assonne

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(b. 1961), for instance, in his 1998 Kreol novel Robis [‘Rubbish heap’]. For Assonne too, Port-Louis is ambiguous, melancholic, tragic, and murderous site. As Françoise Lionnet has written (about Ananda Devi): For the first time in the literature of Mauritius, the city and its infernal elements are revealed, brought to light. But this is not the flattering luminosity that transmutes poverty, “les maisons rapiécées tassées par l’âge [its old, patched, huddled shacks] (sic),’ into those shining temples dear to [Robert Edward] Hart; it is rather the dim glow of mourning and melancholy, fueled by a writer’s feelings of grief and bereavement before the wretched spectacle of ruined childhoods. In Devi’s work, the city of Port-Louis loses its romantic aura to become a more troubling, problematic and ambiguously engaging site. (Lionnet 1995: 52)

Lionnet notes that Devi refuses to confine her characters to an externally defined view of what an “authentic Mauritian” identity might be (1995: 48). Here is how Devi herself put it in an interview: My short stories tend toward universality rather than being the descriptive observation of groups that constitute our society… my novels are anchored in Mauritian reality… Rue La Poudrière takes place in a Creole milieu, the poorest and most disadvantaged of PortLouis… but my purpose is to extract from [this description of society] the universal aspects common to the whole of humanity, to explode the geographical confines of the island. (Lionnet 1995: 48-49)

Although de Souza registers the same futilities and is as uneasy with the tyrannies of boundedness decried by Gillian Beer and others, 19 his method is not to explode the city, but rather to subject it to an inexorable glissement. As Lionnet has observed, “Devi’s novel enacts the death of history, the murder of the city, and the poisoning of language in a universe where the subject’s attempts to disentangle herself from the oppressive realms that determine her behavior lead to annihilation” (1995: 68), but for de Souza there is no such murder of the city. For him, if anything, Port-Louis holds promise. His city, his neighborhood, his house are ones populated by people who inhabit spaces where they go about the business of living, where modernity and the postindependence condition, enable rather than fragment, empower rather than fracture. His city thus corresponds to Marc Blanchard’s astute view (1985: 4) that “like every topos, it is also a cliché – a representation whose substance and raison d’être are the myth which it sustains and which bears relations, less to the reality of the objective planner or even to the actuality of economic 19

Gillian Beer, “The Island and the Aeroplane: The Case of Virginia Woolf”, in Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration, 226; John McCrea, “Common Cultural and Literary Topologies of the Insular”, Keynote Address, Festival of Writing from the Commonwealth Islands, University of Mauritius, Réduit, 22 July 1998.

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exchanges being conducted in its midst, than to the fantasies of the individual experiencing contact with thousands of his contemporaries.” *** Daronville and Haffenjee’s almost symbiotic relationship, which is the core of La maison qui marchait vers le large, is underscored late in the story when the two find themselves alone in the maison. Daronville is grappling with his slipping dream – to die in the home his grandfather built – while Haffenjee is grappling with his dream – to own Daronville’s house and thereby somehow make up for the «vies ratées» [“unfulfilled lives”] of a wife dying of filial neglect and of a son disillusioned by a path that leads only «vers le rêve du père» (51) [“toward the father’s dream”]. Just as the house slides inexorably toward the sea, so Daronville and Haffenjee’s lives slide toward a reality that forces them both to transgress and atone in a most extraordinary way. In the end – without giving anything away – it would appear that de Souza argues against the likes of Michel Tremblay and Mordechai Richler, both of whom describe their city, Montreal, as one inhabited by the weak, and where “many horizons are blocked and only the strong and cunning survive.” (Deslauriers 1994: 122) Instead, de Souza uses La maison qui marchait vers le large to ask certain specific questions about Mauritius, questions similat to those Skip Gates asked about African-American literature in Loose Canons: Granted, multiculturalism is no magic panacea for our social ills. We’re worried when Johnny can’t read. We’re worried when Johnny can’t add. But shouldn’t be worried too, when Johnny tramples gravestones in a Jewish cemetery, or scrawls racial epithets on a dormitory wall? [...] The challenge facing America in the next century will be the shaping, at long last, of a truly common public culture... (Gates 1992: 178)

De Souza might put it this way: Granted, multiculturalism is no magic panacea for our social ills. We’re worried when Antoine can’t read, when Antoine can’t add. But shouldn’t be worried too, when Akbar desecrates Hindu property, or when Ashok scrawls racial epithets on a mosque wall? The challenge facing Mauritius this century is the shaping, at long last, of a truly common public culture...

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That there is hope, that de Souza sees better times ahead for the Mauritian city, is manifestly clear from the closing sentence, and sentiment, of La maison qui marchait vers le large: “Vous dites bien, Vadapillay… je souhaitais. Mais, les temps changent, les choses bougent…” (de Souza 330) [“You said it right, Vadapillay… I used to wish. But, times change, things move along…”

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Khan, I. (2001) L’Oiseau zombie. Paris: Dapper. Lavi, S. (2007) “Ambivalently Abnormal: Métis as Racial Grotesque in Loys Masson’s L’étoile et la clef and Carl de Souza’s Le sang de l’anglais.” Rainbow Colors: Literary Ethno-Topographies of Mauritius. Plymouth, England: Lexington Books. 63-84. Leung, C. (2001) “Le Modèle ambigu de l'interaction sociale au sein du microcosme mauricien dans La Maison qui marchait vers le large de Carl de Souza.” In K. R. Issur, Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing (eds) L’Océan Indien dans les littératures francophones. Paris: Karthala & Réduit, Presses Universitaires de Maurice. 365-371. Lionnet, F. (1995) Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ——., (2005) “Transcolonial Translations: Shakespeare in Mauritius.” In F. Lionnet, S. Shih (eds) Minor Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. 201-221. McCrea, J. (1998) “Common Cultural and Literary Topologies of the Insular.” Keynote Address, Festival of Writing from the Commonwealth Islands. University of Mauritius. Miles, W. (1991) “The Creole Malaise in Mauritius.” African Affairs 98(391), 211-228. Padolsky, E. (1991) “Cultural Diversity and Canadian Literature: A Pluralist Approach to Majority and Minority Writing in Canada.” International Journal of Canadian Studies 3, 111-128. ——., (1992). “Establishing the Two-Way Street: Literary Criticism and Ethnic Studies.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 22, 22-37. Pearson, D. (1991) “Biculturalism and Multiculturalism in Comparative Perspective.” In P. Spoonley, D. Pearson, C. Macpherson (eds) Nga Take: Ethnic Relations and Racism in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press. 194-214. Pike, B. (1981) The Image of the City in Modern Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Said, E. (1992) “Figures, Configurations, Transfigurations.” In A. Rutherford (ed) From Commonwealth to Post-Colonial. Sydney: Dangaroo Press. Shankar, D. (1996) “(Ir)Responsibilities of (Multi-)Cultural Literary Representation.” In J. Rieder, L. E. Smith (eds) Multiculturalism and Representation: Selected Essays. Manoa: College of Language, Linguistics, and Literature, University of Hawai'i and East-West Center. 110-121.

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Sharrad, P. (1992) “Temporary Suspensions’: Form and Multi-Cultural Expression.” In A. Rutherford (ed) From Commonwealth to PostColonial. Sydney: Dangaroo Press. 60-73. Snead, J. (1990) “European Pedigrees/African Contagions: Nationality, Narrative, and Communality in Tutuola, Achebe and Reed.” In H. K. Bhabha (ed) Nation and Narration. London / New York: Routledge. 231-249 de Souza, C. (2001) La Maison qui marchait vers le large. Reprint from 1996. Paris: Le Serpent à plumes. ——., (1986, October 23). “La Comète de Halley.” L’Express Mauritius, 23. ——., (1993) “La Raccourci.” Le Serpent à plumes 21, 41-44. ——., (1993) Le Sang de l’Anglais. Paris: ACCT/Hatier. ——., (1994) “Tamarin: Take the Wave/Tamarin, prends la vague.” In B. Pyamootoo, R. Poonoosamy (eds) Maurice (Le tour de l’île en quatrevingts lieux). Port-Louis: Immedia. 75. ——., (1996) “La Nouvelle des Camphriers.” Le Serpent à plumes 30(2), 4144. ——., (1999) La tififi Citronnelle: qui n’entendait que le vent dans les champs de cannes. Vanves/Port-Louis: Edicef/Vizavi. ——., (2001) Citronella, a story from Mauritius. Achimota: Africa Christian Press, Claremont: New Africa Books. ——., (2000) Les Jours Kaya. Paris: Éditions de l’Olivier. ——., (2001) Ceux qu’on jette à la mer. Paris: Éditions de l’Olivier. Teelock, V., Alpers, E. A. (eds) (2001) History, Memory and Identity. Bell Village: Nelson Mandela Centre for African Culture & Réduit, University of Mauritius. Tiffin, C. (1992) “The Voyage of the Good Ship Commonwealth.” Kunapipi 14(2), 12-21. Toorawa, S. M. (1997) “Review of La maison qui marchait vers le large.” World Literature Today 71, 464. ——., (2000) “Translating’ The Tempest: Dev Virahsawmy’s Toufann, Cultural Creolization, and the Rise of Mauritian Kreol.” African Theatre 3, 125-138. Tranquille, D. (2003) “Translator: TransAlter. A Reflection on Dev Virahsawmy’s Toufann.” Revi Kiltir Kreol 2, 34-45. ——., (2005) “Inscriptions of dev/fiance: métissage in Mauritian literature.” International Journal of Francophone Studies 8(2), 199-218. Virahsawmy, D. (1991) Toufann: enn fantezi antrwa ak. Rose-Hill: Boukié Banané.

Adeyemi Daramola

A Stylistic Study of Metaphors in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart Introduction Things Fall Apart (TFA), by Chinua Achebe, is perhaps the most widelycirculated novel from Africa that is read not only throughout Africa but also across the length and breath of the world. It was published in 1959. It is a book that is often used and recommended as a text to many students (in secondary schools and especially Higher School Certificate [HSC] classes and universities) in many schools all over the world. Since it was published fifty years ago (1959-2009), it has been translated into more than forty languages across the Atlantic, Indian and the Pacific countries. It is a book that depicts the socio-cultural, religious, political and some other aspects of the colonial experience in, first of all, the Ibo communal but rural life and, secondly, the African continent (Killam 1969; Pieterse 1969; Edgar 1973; Taiwo 1976, Daramola 2006b, 2007). The title of the novel 1 derives from William Butler Yeat’s poem, ‘The Second Coming’. It concerns the life and time of Okonkwo, an Ogbuefi (Chief), who is a local champion throughout the nine villages of the Ibo ethnic group of Umuofia in Nigeria. He has three wives and several children. His oldest son, Nwoye, and daughter, Ezinma 2, are very central to the themes in the novel, especially concerning the local traditions and beliefs and the influences of British colonialism and Christian missionaries on the traditions and beliefs of the Ibo community in the late and early twentieth centuries. Okonkwo, whose father Unoka is well-known to be a lazy flute-player, has risen to be regarded very highly in the society. He is reputable to have built substantial wealth through his staple-crop farming, especially yam. He lives each day to make sure his family is well-provided for although he keeps

1

2

Some of his other literary works are: No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). See Daramola (2006a).Ezinma, an Ogbanje, is a phenomenal or spirit child that is believed to belong to a spirit world but is sent to be born by an earthly mother. In a cyclic world of the Ogbanje, it dies repeatedly. It is a widespread belief among Africans but is fast disappearing as science, technology and Christian religion make more sense to the people than the traditional religious beliefs and practices.

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a very firm control over each member. Most importantly, Okonkwo lives in fear of failure as his father is, and the fear to be very successful in life may be regarded as one of the sources of his over-ambition consequent upon which he destroys himself. It is the fear of being regarded as a failure that causes him to strike Ikemefuna dead. This is a boy given to Umuofia village by members of another village in exchange for committing a crime to avoid war between them. Although Ikemefuna is originally meant to be sacrificed to the gods, he lives for a number of years with members of his family. During that time, he becomes very close to his son, Nwoye. When the Oracle pronounces that it is time for the child to die, and a group of elders takes him to the forest to sacrifice him to the gods, Okonkwo, for fear of being thought a weak man, hacks him to death. It happens when the boy runs to him for safety when he suspects his imminent death, albeit from other members of the group and obviously not from Okonkwo his apparent father. Also, during a funeral ceremony of one of the great men of the clan, Okonkwo’s gun explodes accidentally, killing a boy. Following the tradition of his people, he and his entire family members are expected to go on exile. He and members of his family spend the exile period of seven years in the village of Mbanta, his mother’s home. During his absence in exile, the white man arrives in the two villages. The Christian missionaries succeeded in winning souls for Christ and Nwoye, Okonkwo’s son holds membership of the new church. Such a move makes him very angry and he beats his son. Nwoye leaves his father’s compound and joins the rest of the converts fulltime. When Okonkwo returns home after his exile, a lot of things have changed. The church has been firmly established and the white man’s government has come to stay. When one of the zealous converts unmasked a masquerade during a religious festival, his people count the action an abomination. They decide to burn down the church – a very visible symbol of white man’s religion. The District Commissioner (DC) arrests the elders, which include Okonkwo, during an apparent peaceful meeting. They are beaten and humiliated and are released only after a sum of money is paid by the clan as fine. During the meeting that follows the humiliation, the elders are to decide traditionally but democratically whether or not to go to war with the DC. The DC’s court messengers arrive to the venue and order that the meeting be suspended. Such interference signifies the end of the vestiges of Umuofia’s independence. In anger, Okonkwo kills one of the messengers while others escape. In an utter grief that his people will not choose war and the humiliation of being hanged under the white man’s law for murder, he

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returns home and hangs himself. To the community, suicide is an abomination and the people must not touch his body. The DC and his other messengers arrive at Umuofia only to be taken to see his body on the rope. The people request that they help them take down his body because their mores forbid clan members to do it. Since TFA is a household narrative to most scholars in Africa and African Studies, a succinct summary of the work, chapter-by-chapter is unnecessary in order to avoid the repetition of parts of the introductory section to the work. Instead, a succinct literary criticism (in next section below) is examined.

A Succinct Literary Criticism of the Text TFA is, no doubt, one of the most widely-known African literary texts. It is often regarded as an archetypal modern African novel in English. In the work, western culture is portrayed as being ethnocentric, especially as the Igbo language is repressed towards its end. When the missionaries begin to affect the Ibo culture, the essence of the Ibo ethnic group life is removed. Some critics 3 have described the novel as a modern Greek tragedy because it has the same plot elements as the tragedy. These elements include hubris (pride) and ate (rashness). These characters lead to peripeteia or reversal of fortune and his ultimate downfall. Okonkwo, though a good man, has the fear of being termed weak which derives him to make decisions consciously and unconsciously as he lives through the work. Throughout the work, there are themes which include fear, change, loneliness, abandonment and the relevance of interpersonal relations. As an example of interpersonal relations, individuals derive strength from the societies they belong to, and societies derive strength from individuals as well. Okonkwo, the tragic character, builds his strength and fortune with the help of the society’s customs. Similarly, his society benefits from his hard work and his determination to succeed and attain greatness. Of thematic significance is the world-view of each culture. Each culture’s world-view is indeed limited and partial. The most essential aspect of this view is that each culture can benefit from the understanding of the world-view of other cultures. A social value as a thematic pre-occupation of the novel may be understood in individual ambition. It is constructive when it is balanced by

3

See Wikipedia, Criticism of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. [Web Page] Retrieved 10 Dec 2009 from http:/66.218.69.11/search.=/cache?ei=UTF-8&p.

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other values. When it is over-emphasised at the expense of others, nevertheless, it becomes destructive. The style of Achebe in the novel, as in other novels of the period, draws on the oral tradition of the Ibo people – his main ethnic group other than on Africa as a whole. He weaves folktales into the fabric of his stories thereby portraying community values in them. An example is the tale about the Earth and Sky in the work which portrays the interdependency of the masculine and the feminine. Another prominent feature of style in the work is Achebe’s use of proverbs which, more often than not, illustrates the values of traditional Ibo society directly and the African societies indirectly. The proverbs are used throughout the work to sprinkle the narratives, repeating points made in conversations. Along with the use of proverbs are the people’s philosophical thoughts and performances in oratory. These become evident during festivals and various ceremonies which serve to unite the people with their gods and one another. Directly and indirectly, his characters demonstrate, therefore, the individual passion for Ibo culture. Culturally and before the arrival of Christianity, Umuofia witnesses a polytheistic religion consisting of many gods though with the recognition of one ultimate God. Various gods control, therefore, natural phenomena such rain, harvest, child-bearing, worship etc. Religion must be seen as consisting of the worship of a combination of ancestors, spirits, and a god, Chukwu. The religion contains aspects of beliefs common to other ancient religions in Mesopotamia. The people consult with Oracles which give them instructions in their day-to-day lives. The religion is very ritualistic and not as concerned with morality as modern religions of today. In Umuofia, morality is seen by the people largely through ethnic traditions and verbal sayings. Although Achebe writes in English, he succeeds in capturing the native Ibo concepts in transliterations and translations (Taiwo 1976; Killam 1969). TFA consist, therefore, of Igbo words, phrases, sayings and proverbs. In the process, Achebe transforms the English language into a distinctly African style by the way he constructs and reconstructs syntax, usage and, most importantly, various kinds of meaning (meaning being the main goal of language use) in TFA.

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Theoretical Framework There are many approaches to the linguistic analysis of metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Ortony 1981). In Lakoff and Johnson, metaphors are seen not merely as being used to express poetical or rhetorical meanings, among others, but form a part of everyday speech. In Ortony, the questions concerning the viability of the traditional distinction between literal and metaphorical are examined, among other inquiries. The conceptual framework for the stylistic analysis of metaphor in the work is drawn, however, largely from Halliday’s (1994) seminal work. Although the publication is the result of decades of pioneering efforts in the study of language in general, the studies of stylistics and discourse analysis form the pivots of his theory widely called the Systemic Functional Theory (SFT). 4 In the work, especially on pages 340-363 of Chapter 10, he has the title, ‘Beyond the clause: metaphorical modes of expression’. For his perspective on the concept of metaphor, I quote: “Among the ‘figures of speech’ recognized in rhetorical theory are a number of related figures having to do with verbal transference of various kinds. The general term for these is METAPHOR (capitals his). The term ‘metaphor’ is also used in a more specific sense to refer to just one kind, in contrast to METONYMY; and sometimes a third term is introduced, namely SYNECDOCHE. All three involve a ‘non-literal’ use of words.’” (340)

My concern in this work and which is appropriate to the analysis is that there are different types of metaphors in TFA. Halliday’s linguistic theory is very apt and may be used to capture the different types of metaphor in the text. These are categorized, for the purposes of this work, as common sayings, idioms and proverbs – all of which are interrelated with the core essence of language in terms of the meaning potential that is ‘packed’ and needs to be ‘unpacked’. More importantly, metaphorical modes of expression are characteristic of all adult discourse. The only examples of discourse without metaphor are young children’s speech (Halliday 1973; Halliday and Hasan 1976; Halliday 1994; Daramola 2008). TFA is very much replete of various expressions of metaphors. According to Halliday, metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche are forms of lexical variation originating in the three general logical-semantic relations of elaborating, extending and enhancing. Metaphor, in its general use, is 4

Halliday has begun to establish this conceptual framework of language with reference to stylistics in his seminal work edited by Donald Freeman, also a stylistician, in Essays in Modern Stylistics in 1981.

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described, therefore, as variation in the use of words, especially with reference to transferred meanings. Its essence is in the lexical selection or lexicogrammatical selection because metaphorical variation is lexicogrammatical rather than simply lexical. Lexicogrammatically, metaphor is a combination of words and grammar in order to realize the desired meaning. Halliday specifies (op.cit.1994) three modes of metaphor which are grammatical, ideational and interpersonal.

Grammatical Metaphor If something is said to be metaphorical, it must be so by reference to something else. To every metaphorical meaning of a word or clause, there corresponds another word or clause that is ‘literal’. It is necessary, therefore, to examine metaphor not ‘from below’, as variation in the meaning of a given expression, but rather ‘from above’ as variation in the expression of a given meaning. The concept of ‘literal’ is therefore not very appropriate; we shall refer to the less metaphorical variant as ‘congruent’. In other words, for any given semantic configuration, there will be some realization in the lexicogrammar – some wordings – that can be considered CONGRUENT. There may also be various others that are in some respect ‘transferred’ or METAPHORICAL. Grammatical metaphor is examined here in terms of linguistic function and classes (see Halliday 1976, 1994, Martin and David 2003 and Martin and David 2008).

Ideational Metaphor A veritable linguistic explanation and interpretation of the clause in its ideational function is its representation as process. Three steps are involved which are one, the selection of process types such as material, mental, relational, verbal, behavioural and existential; two, configuration of transitivity function – Actor, Goal, Senser, Manner, Behaver Existent etc – representing the process, participants and circumstances and three, sequence of paraphrase classes such as verbal group, nominal group, adverbial, prepositional phrase and their sub-classes. For details of these concepts, see Butt 1988; Halliday 1994; Bloor and Bloor 1995 & 2007; and Daramola 2006a. When, however, we wish to get from meaning to the wording, we make the assumption that there are typical ways of saying things. Hence, there is a systematic relationship among steps such that for any selection in

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meaning, there will be a natural sequence of steps leading towards its realization. Knowing the typical ways of saying things forms a part of knowing a language.

Interpersonal Metaphor Metaphors of interpersonal kind are inherent in the expressions of mood and modality based on the semantic relationship of projection. They are concerned with the speakers or writers opinions regarding the probability that his observation is valid. It is not always possible to say exactly what is and what is not in metaphorical representation of a modality. Speakers have, however, indefinitely many ways of expressing their opinions so that they will assert themselves or demonstrate politeness. Modality, as a concept, refers to the kind of meaning expressed between ‘yes’ or ‘no’; – an intermediate ground between positive and negative polarity. Mood is used to express speech function. Along with modality, the lexicogrammatical resources of mood carry considerate semantic load as the expression of interpersonal rhetoric. I define Common Sayings (CS) as well-known statements or sentences owned or shared and used by members of a community for the expression of cultural mores. They are either metaphorical or non-metaphorical but their contents contain some amount of observable expression of distinct meaningrelations about the day-to-day activities of the community. Idioms are special creative phrases or wordplay. They are expressions whose senses are not predictable from the meanings and arrangements of their elements. They are always metaphorical. Moreover, unlike common sayings and proverbs that occur as sentences, idioms occur as wordings and phrases. Proverbs are traditional expressions that are didactic in nature but in which some generalizations are given specific meanings. All of common sayings, idioms and proverbs, are regarded as metaphors in this work because they are said to be packed. The word packed means that the elements are structurally covert in their wordings and, of course, in their meanings. For them to be unpacked, there must be a deliberate attempt to assign to them their specific meanings in their cultural contexts. Even though they are often slotted into speech and writing, they are done very creatively and appropriately. In this work, a theoretical model has been chosen along with the concept of stylistics for their linguistic analysis.

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The Relevance of Stylistics It must be emphasized that Halliday, along with other scholars such as Ullmann (1964), Freeman (1981) Ohmann (1981), extended the boundaries of stylistics. Others such as Leech and Short (1981), Chapman (1982), Birch and O’Toole (1987), Toolan (1989), Hoey (1989), and Birch (1989) have also contributed immensely to the study of Stylistics. I can see the relevance of Hallidayan SFT to stylistics especially by considering Leech and Short (1981: 1-73). The arguments among the Monists, Dualists and Pluralists concerning what is stylistically prominent in a piece of literary work become significant. Halliday’s concept of CONGRUENCY (capitals mine) is particularly relevant to metaphor with regard to the stylistic concept of Dualism. This is in addition to the concepts of deviation and foregrounding which are characteristics of metaphor. Also Hallidayan sub-theoretical concepts of Elaboration, Extention and Enhancement are germane to metaphors in the sense that they are clausally ordered. Very importantly is the concept of lexicogrammar – also relatively new coinage into linguistic vocabulary as the interaction between lexis and grammar. Perhaps more important is the relatively modern or new notion of classifying all ‘packed’ expressions as metaphor. Stylistics assists the analyst, in my case a linguist, in the description of how language is used in a particular literary work. Implicitly or explicitly, an analyst draws some relation between language and artistic function. The concept of stylistics is concerned, therefore, with what a writer or speaker has to say, how it is said and what kinds of meaning may be ascribed to what is said. The next section contains the actual linguistic analysis.

Analysis I apply the concepts of grammatical, ideational and interpersonal metaphors as briefly exemplified above to metaphorical expressions in TFA. These are common sayings, idioms and proverbs. It is common knowledge that critics have observed that the style of Achebe’s fictions of the early period of his writing draw on the oral tradition of his Ibo people 5. I wish to assert that such a stylistic practice is clearly inherent in the common sayings in TFA. Common sayings may also be 5

See Wilkipedia, Chinua Achebe. [Web Page] Retrieved 10 Dec 2009 from http://74.6239.67/search/cache”=?ei= UTF –8&p=Things+ Fall+Apart+by Chinua Achebe.

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regarded as forms of discourse that are stylistically ordered in the way that they are rendered (Daramola, op.cit. 2008). Below are the textual organizations of the common sayings. Numbers 1-10 are metaphorical while 11- 21 are non-metaphorical. The non-metaphorical common sayings have some special meanings attributable to them in the cultural context. They do not have, nevertheless, the covert meanings that metaphorical ones have.

Common Sayings (CS) CS.1. Our elders say that the sun will shine on those who knee under them. (6) CS.2. As the Ibo say: ‘when the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk’. (7) CS.3. Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break. (14) CS.4. As the saying goes, an old man is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.(15) CS.5. Eneke the bird says that since men have learnt to shoot without missing, he has learnt to fly without perching. (17) CS.6. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. (19) CS.7. As the elders said if one finger brought oil, it soiled the other. (89) CS.8. The saying of the elders was not true that if a man said yes his chi also affirmed.(94) CS.9. There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.(133) CS.10. My father used to say to me; ‘whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life”. (145) CS.11. Children were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits. (147) CS.12. The lizard that jumped from the high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no one else did. (16) CS.13. ‘Looking at a king’s mouth’, said an old man,’one would think he never sucked at his mother’s breast.’ (19) CS.14. And every man whose arm was strong as the Ibo people say, was expected to invite large numbers of guests from far and wide. (27) CS.15. The elders said locusts came once in a generation, re-appeared every year for seven years and then disappeared. (38) CS.16. The Oracle of the Hills and the Caves pronounced it. (40)

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CS.17. As our people say ‘when mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth’. (50) CS.18. Marriage should be a play and not a fight; so…You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making children. (52) CS.19. The heathen say you will die if you do this or that, and you are afraid. (114) CS.20. The heathen speak nothing but falsehood. (114) CS.21. They say that Okoli killed the sacred python. (116)

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Textual Organisation of CSs

Function Class

who

our elders

Say

participants Sayer

that

the sun

will shine

on those

process

participant

process

participant

Verbal

Actor

Material

Goal

nominal

verbal

nominal

verbal

prepositional

group

group

group

group

phrase

are

in it

process Relational

participant Goal

verbal group

prepositional phrase

CS. 1 Congruent mode Ideational our elders

Say

the sun

will shine

on those who

Participants

process

that

participants

process

participants

Sayer

Verbal

Actor

Material

Goal

knee

under them

process Material

circumstance Prepositional phrase

Interpersonal our elders

Say

that the sun

will shine

on those who knee under them

Subject

Predicator

Subject

Finite Predicator Present

Residue

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CS. 2 Congruent mode

Function Class

as the Ibo

say

when

the moon

is shining

the cripple

participants

process

circumstance

participant

process

participant

Sayer

Verbal

Time

Actor

Relational

Behaver

nominal

verbal

adverbial

verbal

verbal

nominal

group

group

group

group

group

group

enjoys

a walk

process Behavioural

participant Goal

verbal group

nominal group

Ideational As the Ibo

Say

when

the moon

is shining

the cripple

participants

Verbal

circumstance

participant

process

participants

Time

Actor

Relational

Actor

Sayer becomes

hungry

for a walk

process Relational

attribute

identifier

Attributive

Epithet

Head/Thing

Interpersonal As the Ibo

say

when the

is shinning

the cripple becomes

Finite

Residue

moon Subject

Predicator

Subject

hungry for a walk Predicator Present

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CS. 3 Congruent mode

Function

let

the kite

process

participant

And

Material Class

Verbal

nominal group

group

the eagle

perch

participant

process

Actor

Material

nominal

verbal

group

group

ǹ

Functions Class

the wing

of either one

disagrees

will break

participant

participant

Who

process

process

Benefactor

Actor

Verbal

Material

nominal

prepositional

verbal group

group

phrase

verbal group

Ǻ

Ideational Let

the kite

perch

Let

the eagle

perch

too

process

participant

process

and

process

participant

process

circumstance

Material

Actor

Material

Material

Actor

Material

Manner

ǹ If

One

says

no

to

the

let

his wing

break

other Circumstance

participant

process

participant

process

participant

process

Conditional

Actor

Verbal

Benefactor

Material

Benefactor

Material

Ǻ

Interpersonal let the kite

perch

Subject

Predicator

and

let the eagle

perch

too

Subject

Predicate

Circumstance Adverbial

ǹ if one

Says

no to the other let his wing break

Subject

Predicator

Residue Ǻ

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176

CS. 4 Congruent mode It Function

is said

participant

that

an old man

process

is

participant

process

Relational Class

nominal group

Relational

verbal

nominal group

Verbal

group

group

always

embarrassed

When

dry bones

intensifier

Attribute

Circumstance

participant

Time

Benefactor

adverbial group

Head/Thing

Adverbial

Nominal

Group

group

forms

a part

of a proverb

process

participant

participant

verbal

nominal

prepositional phrase

group

group

Material

Ideational As

the saying

goes

an old man

is

always

uneasy

participant

process

participant

process

intensifier

attribute

Material

Benefactor

Relational

When

dry bones

are

mentioned

circumstance

participant

process

process

Time

Benefactor

Relational

verbal

in

a proverb participant

Interpersonal as the saying

goes

an old man

is

always uneasy

Subject

Finite Present

Subject

Finite Present

Residue

When

dry bones

are mentioned in a proverb

Elaboration

Subject

Residue

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

CS. 5 Congruent mode Eneke

says

that

he

does not

perch process

(the bird) Function Class

participant

process

participant

process

Verbal

actor

Relational

Material

nominal

Verbal

nominal

Verbal

Verbal

group

group

group

group

group

negator

Function Class

because

men

shoot

their targets

correctly

elaboration

participant

process

participants

circumstance

Actor

Material

Goal

manner

adverbial

nominal

verbal

nominal

adverbial

group

group

group

group

group

Ideational Eneke

Says

that

Since

men

have

(the bird)

to shoot

learnt

participant

process

circumstance

participant

process

process

Sayer

Verbal

Time

Actor

Material

Material

(past) without missing

he

has learnt

to fly

without perching

circumstance

participant

process

process

circumstance

Manner

Actor

Material (past)

Material

Manner

Eneke the bird

says

that since

Subject

Predicator

Interpersonal

without missing

men

have learnt to shoot

Subject

Predicator

he

has learnt to fly without perching

Subject

Residue

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CS. 6 Congruent mode A proverb

by Ibo people

Function

participant

participant

process verbal

Class

nominal group

prepositional phrase

verbal group

whatever Function Class

adverbial group

says

that

a man’s destiny

is

is

Participant

process Relational

identifier

nominal group

verbal group

Thing

Ideational But

the Ibo people

have

a proverb

circumstance

participant

process

participant

that

circumstance

when

elaboration

Actor

possession

identified

Time

a man

Says

yes

his chi

says

yes

also

Participant

process

participant

participant

Process

participant

circumstance

Sayer

Verbal

Goal

Sayer

verbal

Goal

Interpersonal But the Ibo people

have

a proverb

Subject

Predicator

Subject

a man

says

yes his chi

says yes

Subject

Predicator

Subject

Predicator

that when

also

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179

CS. 7 Congruent mode Function Class

the elders

say

one finger

participants

process

Participant

Sayer

Verbal

nominal

verbal

nominal

group

group

group

with oil

affects

another

process

participant

Material

Goal

prepositional

verbal

nominal

group

group

group

Ideational As

the elders

said

one finger

bought

oil

it

participant

process

participant

process

participant

participant

Sayer

verbal

Actor

Material

Goal

Actor

soiled

the other

process

participant

Material

Goal

if

Interpersonal As

the elders

said

Subject

Predicator

if

one finger

brought oil it soiled the other

Subject

Predicator

Adeyemi Daramola

180

CS. 8 Congruent mode It Function Class

was not

Participant

as elders

Said

process

participants

process

Relational

Sayers

Verbal

nominal

verbal

group

group

Nominal

Finite Past

groups

Negative

true

Epithet

a man’s chi

affirms

his wish

participant Sayer

process verbal

participant Goal

nominal group

verbal group

nominal group

that

Ideational The saying of the elders

was not

true

participant Sayer

process Relational Negative

Epithet

if

that

a man

said

Yea

his chi

also

affirmed

participant

process

Participant

participant

circumstance

process

Sayer

Verbal

Thing

Sayer

Elaboration

Verbal

Interpersonal the saying of the elders

was not

Subject

Finite (Past) Negative

if a man said yes his chi also affirmed Complement Clause Residue

true that

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CS. 9 Congruent mode

Function Class

Umuofia people

say

participant

process

that

as a man

danced

participant

process

Sayer

verbal

Actor

Material

nominal group

verbal

nominal

Verbal

group

group

group

is

the sound of drum

processRotational

participant Attribute

Verbal group

nominal/prepositional group

so

Ideational There

was

a saying

in Umuofia

participant

process

participant

circumstance

participant

(dummy)

Existential

Existent

place

Goal benefactor

Danced

so

that

as a man

the drums

Were

beaten

for him

process

participant

process

process

participant

Behavioural

Affected

Relational

Material

Goal Benefactor

Interpersonal There

was

a saying in Umuofia that

as a man

Subject

Predicator

Residue

Subject

Danced Predictor

so

the drums

were

beaten

for him

Subject

Finite

Predicator

Predicator

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CS. 10 Congruent mode my father

used to

to me

that

a toad

seen

say Function

Class

participant

process

participant

participant

process

Sayer

Verbal

Goal

Sensor

Material

nominal

Finite

prepositional

nominal

verbal

group

(Past)

phrase

group

group

in daylight

has

a threat

to his life

circumstance

process

participant

participate

Time

Past

Thing

Goal

prepositional phrase

verbal group

nominal group

preposition phrase

Ideational my father

used to

to me

whenever

you

see

a toad

jumping

say participant

process

participant

participant

process

participant

process

(Deictic)

Verbal

Goal

Senser

Mental

Actor

Material

in broad daylight

then

know

that

is

after

Its life

something circumstance

process

participant

Process

circumstance

participant

Time

Mental

Actor

Relational

Time

Goal

Interpersonal my father

used to

say

to me

whenever

you

see

Subject

Finite

Predicator

Subject

Adverbial

Subject

Predicator

Past a toad Subject

jumping Predicator

in a broad

then know

daylight

that

Residue

something

is after his life

Subject

Predicator/Residue

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Idioms These non-clausal expressions are used idiomatically in the text. The significance of their metaphorical essence is provided.

General Idioms Idioms

Metaphorical Essence/Meaning Foregrounding

1. flutes sang 2. agbala (a woman) 3. weakness of the matchete

animation laziness laziness animation

festival interpersonal farming/ rural life fantasy

4. the ant holds his court in splendour animation 5. sands dance for ever 6. swallowed up in sleep 7. the nuts of the water of heaven 8. white men were locusts 9. excrement of the clan 10. mad dog 11. iron horses 12. heavy with child 13. black 14. white 15. sheep 16. goat 17. wheat 18. new wine into old bottle 19. gods are weeping

(3) (10) (13) (25)

animation nature nature evil laziness hate technology nature evil goodness humility stubbornness goodness incompatibility tragedy

fantasy inactivity religion colonization dregs religion rural life pregnancy racism racism religion religion religion religion religion

(25) (86) (94) (100) (100) (100) (104) (109) (132) (132) (132) (132) (132) (132) (145)

Names of People 1. Ezigbo 2. Onwumbiko 3. Onwuma 4. Nneka

(the good one) (death, I implore you) (Death may please himself) (mother is supreme)

culture (55) culture (55) culture (55) culture (55)

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Proverbs 1. Proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten 2. A chick that will grow into a cock can be spotted the very day it hatches 3. A child’s fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into his palm 4. I cannot live on the bank of a river and wash my hands with spittle

discourse

agriculture

(5)

prediction

agriculture

(47)

safety

mother care (48)

nature

plenty

(108)

Discussions The variation in the renditions of the contents of CS.1-21 is stylistically and discoursally significant. Let us examine the following renditions, most which occur initially: Initial of clause Mid of clause End of clause Metaphors CS.1. Our elders say… CS.2. As the Ibo say… CS.3. if one says… CS.4. As the saying goes… CS.5. Eneke the bird says… CS.6. But the Ibo have a proverb… CS.7. As the elders say… CS.8. The saying of the elders… CS.9. There was a saying… CS.10.My father used to say… CS.11.Children were warned… CS.12.The lizard… said… CS.13. …said an old man… CS.14. …as the Ibo people say… CS.15. The elders said… CS.16. pronounced CS.17. As our people say… CS.18. …You might as well say… CS.19.The heathen say…

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CS.20.The heathen speak… CS.21. They say… Graphically, the patterns of these sayings have been depicted in terms of their renditions. Metaphors of these categories are ‘sayings’ of the traditional people. In most cases, such sayings are rendered by elders although in the context of culture of the people particularly in oral societies, birds (Eneke CS.5) and animals (lizard CS.12) are said to communicate with people; perhaps in the spiritual realm. Each of the CS.1-10, as demonstrated in the analyses above in terms of participants, Actors, Sensers, Sayers, Goals, Behaviour and what they have done, said or seen in terms of processes – Verbal, Material, Mental, Relational, Behavioural and Existential are meaningful. These processes have been delimited in circumstances of Time and Place. Attributively, certain attributes have been identified. Of all the CS, CS3 comprises two distinct sentences although there are elements of Elaboration, Extension and the Enhancement of the CSs in complex structures. All of these analyses have demonstrated the linguistic elements of the CS. Metaphoricallly, CS.1. has the meaning of ‘opportunity’, CS.2, ‘joy’, CS.3. ‘freedom’, CS.4. ‘deficiency’, CS.5. ‘safety’, CS.6.’destiny’,CS.7.’unity’, CS.8.’denial of destiny’, CS.9.’opportunity’, and CS.10. ‘safety’. Numbers 11- 21 do not have metaphorical expressions in them; they equate congruent modes (literal) as are seen to begin the analyses of CS. 1-10 in terms of function and class. In the previous section., idioms are analyzed along the stylistic values of their metaphorical essence and foregrounding. The indicators of meanings are germane to the text. Not only are the idioms relevant to the thematic organization of the text – the intervention of the missionaries – but also the vocabularies that developed as result of the interaction between them and the people. The perception of the people of the missionaries also become significant (e.g. [8] white men as locusts). The perception of the people by the missionaries also becomes significant (e.g. [13] the people as black). The perception of the people by themselves is also significant (e.g. [9] the excrement of the clan).The last example refers to those of their members who have adopted the white man’s religion. That almost every name is significant in many parts of Africa is meaningful stylistically and circumstantially (e.g. see the meanings of the people [b] Names of People in section General Idioms above). In the previous section., proverbs are analysed in terms of their meaning and foregrounding. Significantly, the lexical items of palm-oil and hot yam are essentially African as against vegetable oil and potato by the white men.

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Correspondingly, each of the four stories of Mosquito and Ear (54), Snake and Lizard (60), All birds (69) and Tortoise and the Cat (71) is essentially proverbial, hence metaphorical in essence. 6

Conclusion The chapter contains an attempt to analyze the metaphors in TFA, stylistically. Metaphors comprise common sayings, idioms and proverbs in the work. The three levels of distinctions are, first of all, differentiated - each one on its own right – and are, secondly, drawn together again under the linguistic rubric of the concept of metaphor. Stylistics, as a discipline, is therefore, a valid academic exercise especially, if it is used to investigate the language of literature. 7 The common sayings have been analysed with a focus on the grammatical, ideational and interpersonal essence of their metaphors. The common sayings which are not metaphorical have also been presented but valued for their discoursal essence. In this novel, they underscore the intricacies of pre-colonial African culture and civilization. The idioms have been analysed according to their metaphorical essence and foregrounding. Significantly, the analysis has shown that rather than proverbs, common sayings are more prevalent in the text. All of these aspects of investigations demonstrate the fact that Achebe has drawn sustenance from both traditional oral literature and modern fiction as well. The metaphors of TFA invoke Ibo culture thereby forcing us to accept Achebe’s linguistic forms and terms in the portrayal of the rhythms of traditional life.

References Achebe, Chinua (1958) Things Fall Apart. London:William Heinemann. ——., (2006) Things Fall Apart Book Notes Summary. [Web Page] Retrieved 2 Dec 2009 from http://www.bookrags.com/notes/tfa/PART1.html. 6 7

Each of the stories is sufficient a datum for stylistic analysis in TFA. There seems to have developed in the last decade or two arguments concerning the validity or otherwise of the relevance of stylistics as an academic discipline in the face of the development of the discipline of discourse analysis. A school of thought is of the opinion that stylistics should be subsumed in discourse analysis. My position is that stylistics will remain a veritable source of academic discipline as long as its practitioners work within the language of literature. Literature with its genres of drama, prose and poetry is vast enough a mine to be explored continuously by all scholars who are interested in the field.

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Birch, David, O’Toole, Michael (eds)(1987) Functions of Style. London / New York: Pinter Publishers. Birch, David (1989) “Working Effects with words – Whose Words?: Stylistics and Reader Intertextuality.” In R. Carter, P. Simpson (eds) Language Discourse and Literature, An Introductory Reader in Discours Stylistics. London: Unwin Hyman. Bloor, Thomas, Bloor, Meriel (1995) The Functional Analysis of English, A Hallidayan Approach. Arnold. ——., (2007) The Practice of Critical Discourse Analysis. An Introduction. London: Hodder Arnold. Butt, David (1988) “Ideational meaning and the existential fabric of a poem.” In Robin P. Fawcett, David Young (eds) New Developments in Systemic Linguistics. Vol. 2. London / New York: Pinter Publishers. Chapman, Raymond (1982) The Language of English Literature. London: Edward Arnold. Daramola, Adeyemi (2006a) “How Does Wole Soyinka’s ‘Abiku’ Mean?” In T. Akachi Ezeigbo, Karen King-Aribisala (eds) Literature, Language and Consciouness: A Festschrift in Honour of Theo Vincent. Department of English. Lagos: University of Lagos Press. ——., (2006b) “Defining Language and/or Communication.” In S. O. Ayodele et.al. (eds) Aspects of Language and Literature: A Text for Tertiary Institutions. Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijagun, Ijebu-Ode: Olu-Akin Printing Press. ——., (2007) “From Illiteracy to Literacy or Vice-Versa: A Linguistic Analysis of the Construction of Reality in an Essay on Stylistics.” In Toyin O. Bamisaye (ed) UNAD Studies in Language and Literature. Vol 2. No. 2. University of Ado-Ekiti. 38-56. ——., (2008) “A Child of Necessity: An Analysis of Political Discourse in Nigeria.” In Gunter Senft (ed) Pragmatics. Vol.18. No. 3. 355-380. Freeman, C. Donald (ed) (1981) Essays in Modern Stylistics. London / New York: Methuen. Halliday, M. A. K.(1973) Explorations in the Functions of language. London: Edward Arnold. ——., (1976) Halliday: System and Function in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——., (1981) “Language function and literary style: an enquiry into the language of William Golding’s The Inheritors.” In Donald C. Freeman (ed) Essays in Modern Stylistics. London / New York: Methuen ——., (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold. ——., Hasan, Ruqaiya (1976) Cohesion in English. Longman.

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Hoey, Michael (1989) “Discourse-Centred Stylistics: A way Forward.” In R. Carter, P. Simpson (eds) Language, Discourse and Literature, An Introductory Reader in Discourse Stylistics. London: Unwin Hyman. Killam, G. D. (1969) The Writings of Chinua Achebe. Portsmouth: Heinemann Educational Books. Lakoff, George, Johnson, Mark (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leech, N. Geoffrey, Short H. Michael (1981) Style in Fiction, A linguistic introduction to English fictional prose. Longman. Martin, J. R., Rose, David (2003) Working with Discourse, Meaning Beyond the Clause. London: Continuum. ——., (2008) Genre relations, Mapping Culture, Equinox Publishing. New York: Continuum. Ohmann, Richard (1981) “Speech literature and the space between.” In Donald Freeman (ed) Essays in Modern Stylistics. London / New York: Methuen. Ortony, Andrew (ed) (1981) Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pieterse, Cosmos, Munro, Donald (1969) Protest & Conflict in African Literature. London: Heinemann. Taiwo, Oladele (1976) Culture and the Nigerian Novel. London: Macmillan Educational. Toolan, Michael (1989) “Analysing Conversation in Fiction: an Example from Joyce’s Portrait.” In R. Carter, P. Simpson (eds) Language, Discourse and Literature. An Introductory Reader in Discourse Stylistics. London: Unwin Hyman. Ullmann, Stephen (1964) Language and Style. Collected Papers by Stephen Ullmann. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Weber, Jacques Jean (1989) “Dickens’s Social Semiotic: The Modal Analysis of Ideological Structure.” In R. Carter, P. Simpson (eds) Language, Discourse and Literature, An Introductory Reader in Discourse Stylistics. London:Unwin Hyman. Things Fall Apart [Web Page] Retrieved 2 Dec 2009 from http://66.218.69.1 1/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=Criticisms+of+ChinuaAchebe’s Things Fall Apart. Wright, Edgar (1973) The Critical Evaluation of African Literature. Studies in African Literature. London: Heinemann.

Part III Perspectives on Orature and Poetry

Iwu Ikwubuzo

Stylistic Features of Igbo Riddles Introduction The Igbo 1, like other people in the world, have a wealth of literary tradition, both in spoken and written modes; and these two modes inform the classification of Igbo literature into oral or traditional and written or modern. The Igbo repertory of oral literature finds expressions in prose narratives – folktales, myths, legends, anecdotes; oral poetry, both of free-phrase genres and fixed-phrase genres such as proverbs, tongue twisters and riddles; and oral drama. These are traditions that are recorded in the consciousness of generations of the people. Riddling, the focus of this paper, is a pastime engagement. Like other forms of traditional entertainment, it provides an avenue by which the Igbo, in their traditional society, pass their time in excitement and free themselves from depression and boredom occasioned by the day’s toil. The psychological context of the Igbo riddles is that of joy, happiness and excitement as participants, mainly children from the neighbourhood, sometimes converge at a venue to interact in an atmosphere of social solidarity and harmony. As Ikwubuzo (2002: 103) noted, Riddle game is one of the events that feature in the play groups. For example, in the moonlight play, riddling constitutes one of the activities with which the participants thrill themselves. The riddles, because of their rich content, are like the folktales in providing effective instrument for the training of an Igbo child.

Riddle is a game in which adults can also participate, for as Chukwuma (1994: 98) has noted, it is “essentially a test of [human] perception and knowledge of his world and environment.” Riddle contest is usually staged in the evening except in a situation where children do it in the classroom during the day. The term, ‘riddle’ (‘agwugwa’ or ‘gwamgwamgwam’ in Igbo), is defined by Encyclopedia Americana (1994: 518) as:

1

The Igbo of the Southeast Nigeria are one of the three major ethnic nationalities in Nigeria, the other two being the Hausa and the Yoruba.

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a statement or question having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. There are two types of riddles: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language and which require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution; and conundrums, which are questions whose effects are based on punning, in either the question or the answer.

A marked feature of the riddle, which is implicit in the above definition, is that its language is veiled to conceal its meaning; and as a puzzle that requires solution, it is in question and answer form. A question is thrown and the answer expected. The meaning or answer of a riddle is an essential element of the riddle. This is why Chukwuma (1994) sees the riddle as being incomplete unless its meaning has been guessed and the answer given. Riddle has also been described as an enigma or dark saying which was frequently employed in the ancient times, by kings, for instance, to disguise important truth, which was not deemed safe or advisable that anyone should know (Encyclopedia Americana, 1994). Before we explain the term, ‘stylistic features’ as used in this paper, we need to first of all understand what is meant by ‘style’. According to Crystal (1992: 66), ‘style’ is “seen as the (conscious or unconscious) selection of a set of linguistic features from all the possibilities in a language.” He explains further that for a number of stylisticians, “style is any situationally distinctive use of language – a characteristic of groups as well as individuals” (Crystal, 1992: 66). This means that style concerns characteristic choices in a given context, which agrees with Jonathan Swift’s understanding of style as “proper words in proper places” (Crystal 1992: 66). There is an association of ‘stylistics’ (which task is to determine how far and to what extent an artist uses deviant or generally accepted features of language to achieve special effects) with the study of language since literature is concerned more with the way, manner or method in which something is said or written. Language is very fundamental to literature because literature itself is concerned with aesthetic use of language. By ‘stylistic features’ in this study, therefore, we mean the quality of exploitation of both deviant features and original possibilities of Igbo language in Igbo riddles to achieve aesthetic effects. This is mainly discernible by the examination of the use of figures of speech in the riddles under review. It is upon the realization of the fact that not much interest has been shown on the literary investigation of Igbo riddles, one of the sub-genres of Igbo oral literature that this paper undertakes to examine the structure, language and rhythm of the Igbo riddles so that their incidences and uses can be appreciated.

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Existing Works on Various Aspects of Igbo Oral Literature, including Riddles Uzochukwu (2001) who highlights some of the existing works on various aspects of traditional (oral) poetry categorizes them into three: (i) those concerned with collection (ii) those concerned with collection and classification and (iii) those concerned with analysis. He notes that the available data testifies that “Igbo scholars are now turning their attention to this neglected area” [oral poetry] (Uzochukwu 2001: 6). We agree with Uzochukwu that there has been an increasing interest in the study of different types of oral poetry, but of all the analytical studies cited by him, the Igbo riddles have received less attention unlike the proverbs which have been the most analyzed and appreciated type of traditional poetry. Ogbalu (1973), Ugonna (1980) and Emenanjo (1989), for instance, are concerned with mere collections of riddles. The same works by Ӑgbalө and Emenanjo as well as Ikwubuzo (2002) touched on the sociological and educational values of the Igbo riddles especially as it concerns entertainment, the upbringing and intellectual development of children. Ikwubuzo (1992-93) and Nwadike (2003) both suggest a classificatory model for the Igbo riddles. Egudu (1972), Chukwuma (1994) and Emenanjo (2007) did not concentrate on riddles alone as their works included other forms of oral literature but each of them, however, gave the riddles analytical treatment. These scholar’s efforts in analyzing Igbo riddles provides inspiration for the present effort. The point being made here that little critical appraisal has accompanied most of the collections that have been made of Igbo riddles is not to discredit the efforts of such researchers. Collections are relevant because they provide the basis and stimulus for critical analysis. However, this writer feels that time has come for more critical analysis than mere collections, for it is only through such analysis that the true literary values of oral Igbo literature can be fully appreciated.

Theoretical Framework Finnegan (1970: 434) pointed out that “there are various approaches to the analysis of style and form in riddle.” One of these approaches is the ‘structural analysis’, which scholars like Yai (1976-77) and Chukwuma (1994), for instance, have adopted in their studies of Yoruba and Igbo riddles respectively. It has also been pointed out that “various approaches can be

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used in Igbo literary criticism, as in the literary criticism of the works of other peoples (Uzochukwu 2001: 31). For the ‘stylistic features of Igbo riddles’, which is the focus of this study, to the fully appreciated, the contextual and formal features of the riddles need to be explored. The exposition of the contexts in which the Igbo riddles are produced and consumed is relevant as this will enable us to see how such contexts help to shape style. To enable us to justifiably accomplish this, we will base our contentions on Pragmatics and Formalism as our theoretical framework. The development of pragmatics is associated with quite a number of scholars (e.g. Austin 1962, Katz & Fodor 1963, Hymes 1964, Searle 1969, Grice 1975). Crystal (1992: 120) identifies semantics, stylistics, psycholinguistics and discourse analysis as other areas that overlap with pragmatics. According to him, both pragmatics and semantics take into account the notions of the intention of the speaker, the effect an utterance has on listeners and the implication that emanates from an utterance expressed in a certain way. It also includes the notion of the knowledge, belief and presuppositions about the world which provides the backdrop of the speakers’ interaction. Osisanwo (2005) agrees that pragmatics and semantics have something in common. Since the goal of pragmatics, according to him, is to consider how utterances convey meaning, how meaning is decoded in contexts and situations, and how people respond to meaning, pragmatics, therefore taps from the resources of semantics, which itself accounts for meaning. ‘Context’ is a germane concept to pragmatics. Bloor and Bloor (2007) tell us that analysis of context is an important aspect of critical discourse analysis, one of which arms is to investigate how meaning is created in context. Hymes (1964, cited in Osisanwo, 2005) identified a number of features associated with context. These include participants, topic (subject matter), setting (in terms of place and time), channel (speech, writing or sign), code (language used), and message form. Osisanwo (2005) further highlights and discusses some general features of context that seem to reecho aspects of Hymes’ categories. They are physical context, socio-cultural context, psychological context and linguistic context. Physical context incorporates the participants, activities, place (environment or physical setting), and time. Socio-cultural context relates to the idea that a language belongs to speech community and is used for the purpose of communication. Language enjoys the patronage of the cultural background where it is used. And every cultural background has its beliefs, habits, value system, cultural heritage, religion, etc. Socio-culturally based speech acts, therefore, need

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appropriate interpretation. The psychological context has to do with the state of mind or emotion of the interlocutors while the linguistic context concerns the language usage – ordinary or figurative, and the expectation that the environment in which language is used should be taken into consideration in arriving at the interpretation of a message. All these features play vital role in the understanding of the meaning or message of an utterance(s) (in our case, the riddles). A pragmatic critic is concerned with the task of explaining how meaning is conveyed in context by utterances, and how context determines so much what is conveyed in a communication situation. As pragmatics is concerned with language in use, it pays adequate attention to the role context plays in language in use (Osisanwo 2005).

There are some other concepts in pragmatics that need explications as we find them relevant to our discussion of Igbo riddles. One of them is the notion of “mutual contextual belief”, said to have been introduced to pragmatics by Bach and Harnish. What is meant by this is that in a communicative speech act, a speaker has an intention from which the listener makes an inference, which he arrives at through the process of interpreting the speaker’s utterance(s). In this situation, the speaker and the hearer rely on certain facts shared by both of them. Such facts or knowledge, well known to both interlocutors, are vital to the encoding and decoding of message (Osisanwo 2005). Bloor and Bloor (2007) refer to this as “socially shared knowledge”, also known as ‘mutual knowledge’, which they explain as knowledge used by participants in a communicative act. They go further to highlight some of the categories of this mutual knowledge, which, among others, include: 1. Knowledge of certain facts relating to subject matter; 2. Wide cultural knowledge, ranging from an understanding of major celebratory festivals, religious and/or ethical customs to legal system; 3. Knowledge of how people behave with respect to their social roles within social hierarchies; and 4. Knowledge of moral values of the groups to which participants belong. As they explained, “everyone absorbs the established values of their social groupings and follows the practices they have learnt (more or less unconsciously) in matters such as age, authority, gender, race and so on…. The set of established values held by social group make up their ideology” (Bloor & Bloor 2007: 19).

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Related to this is the point made by Osisanwo (2005) that background knowledge has a role to play in the interpretation of language in use. A person’s knowledge or experience of the world is acquired, from birth, through acculturation, observation, personal experience of different sociocultural, socio-political, socio-economic as well as linguistic interaction. The cumulative experience which a person has is brought to bear in discourse situation. The other concept, associated with Grice, is ‘implicature’, which refers to what a speech act can imply, suggest or mean as distinct from what is literally said; it is meaning not explicitly stated. We have ‘conventional implicative’, which has to do with conventional meaning of words, and ‘conventional implicative’, which is a deviation or violation of the conventional implicature in that it conveys an additional meaning to the literal meaning. One other concept is “inference”, which Wales (1989, cited in Osisanwu, 2005) defines as “the deductive process through which something is worked out or made explicit in terms of what is unspoken or unwritten.” Drawing inference enables the hearer to deduce from the literal meaning of what is said or written, the speaker’s intention. Osisanwu (2005) cites Bach and Harnish’s 1979 view that “the process of inferencing begins from the recognition of the intention of the speaker based on mutual understanding between [him] and the hearer.” The notions of ‘implicature’ and ‘inference’ are very relevant to the discourse of riddles, as we shall demonstrate in due course. Another aspect of pragmatics, which is equally important to be mentioned, is the theory of speech acts. This theory is credited to Austin who is said to be the first to draw attention to the many functions performed by an utterance. Igbo riddle game featuring riddle texts (questions and answers) can be regarded as Igbo speech event characterized by locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Riddle asking, for instance, is a locutionary act; the attempt or effort to provide riddle answer by a respondent constitutes the illocutionary act, while the effect the riddle produces on the hearers is the perlocutionary act. Pragmatics has such a wide scope and concepts that we cannot go into all the details here. However, the concepts highlighted above and any one other that is germane to pragmatics will be exploited in our analysis in this study. Formalism, the other theoretical base of this study, equally needs a brief explication. Russian formalism whose proponents were Roman Jakobson, Victor Shklovsky, Boris Eichenbaum, Boris Tomashevsky and Yuri Tynyanove introduced the term ‘formalist’ to literary studies (Rice & Waugh 1992). According to Rice and Waugh (1992: 16), the group’s investigation of

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literature whose study they sought to place on a scientific basis “concentrated on the language and the formal devices of literary work”. The main concern of the movement was not literature per se but “literariness, that which makes a given work a ‘literary’ work.” To this end, “their interest in texts centred on the functioning of literary devices rather than on content;” and “literariness” in their view, “was to do with a special use of language” (Rice & Waugh 1992: 17). Corroborating Rice and Waugh’s explication of the central focus of Russian formalism, Goring, Hawthorn and Mitchell (2009: 143) throw more light: The term “formalist” is now frequently used very loosely to denote a view of literature which (i) excludes or downplays consideration of social, historical and political or ideological issues, and (ii) looks at either the individual literary work or a larger grouping of literary works such as a GENRE, or literature in general, as a closed or relatively closed system. The term also implies a concern with formal technical issues at the expense of matters of meaning or THEME.

Formalistic approach to literary criticism, is therefore, concerned with the work of art itself and it focuses on how a work of art says what it says. The approach is interested in exploring the aesthetic features of the work of art; and, to some extent, overlaps with linguistic-stylistic critical theory, which equally focuses on the literary qualities of the works of art at the phonological, lexical, grammatical and graphological levels (Uzochukwu 1988). Applying pragmatics to the analysis of Igbo riddles enables us to examine how the meaning of Igbo riddle question (utterance) by the riddle questioner (speaker or addresser) is decoded by the respondents/listeners (addressees). Since pragmatics is concerned with the study of language use in particular contexts or situations, how do the contexts in which Igbo riddles are produced (coded) enable the riddle participants to decode the language with a view to unveiling the message or intention of the riddles? How is the riddle addressees’ inference based on what the riddle question says, and also on mutual contextual belief or mutual knowledge of the participants in the riddle speech acts? These and other related questions are issues pragmatics will enable us to handle in this study. It should be pointed out that, to a large extent, pragmatic presuppositions characterize Igbo riddle game. Riddle participants do not observe all that is expected in Grice’s notion of “corporative principle”, which requires, among others, that a speaker should give as much information as is expected by the hearer. Specifically, Grice’s maxim of ‘manner’, which requires being

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perspicuous, that is, avoiding obscurity of expression and ambiguity, is violated. This is because looking at the linguistic/literary dimension, Igbo riddles are by nature disguised, shrouded in ambiguity and obscurity in order to confuse the respondents. Riddles are, therefore, coated in figurative language, which the listeners are expected to decode to unravel the concealed meaning. This makes most of the riddle answers fall under the conversational implicature – a deviation from the literal meaning. Applying the formalistic approach also in this study complements pragmatics as both are interested in language usage. Igbo riddles are looked at as an (oral) work of art. With formalism, we are enabled to explore the formal devices of riddles, their veiled language, which pragmatics is equally interested in, and the rhythmic features, which contribute in heightening the riddles’ aesthetic effects. Pragmatics, in addition, enables us, as we stated above, to examine the contextual circumstances that inform the meaning of the riddles, which is beyond the critical domain or scope of formalism.

The Structure of Igbo Riddles Yai (1976-77) points out that the structure of a riddle contains five elements. Chukwuma (1994) in her analysis of the Igbo riddles also agrees that a riddle frame has five elements, namely, (i) introduction (ii) the signans (iii) the constant premise (iv) the variable premise, and (v) the signatum. For our purpose these can respectively be paraphrased and adopted with some modifications as follows: i. Opening: Before the riddle is posed, the poser gives the opening or introductory formula, which in Igbo riddle, is “Gwa m …” (Tell me …). ii. The Image: Immediately the opening formula is given, the image (i.e. the subject) is presented. It is either named or unnamed. When it is named, it is simply referred to as “ihe” (‘the thing’ or ‘what’) iii. ‘True’ Description: This is a description that is true of both the image and the answer. It should be pointed out, however, that ‘true’ is not used here in its epistemological sense but rather in a pragmatic sense, that is, based on practical considerations of what appears real to the riddle composers. In other words, the truth of some riddle-answers can only be judged in relation to the context in which the riddles were produced and what the participants, within the limit of their knowledge in their own world, considered felicitous based on their socially shared knowledge or mutual contextual belief.

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iv. False Description: This is a misleading or false statement that is made about the image and the answer. v. The Answer: This is the hidden term which the riddle poser is expected to discover.We can also refer to these elements as the component parts of the riddle. What Yai (1976-77) has observed in his analysis of Yoruba riddles, which is also true of Igbo riddles, is also instructive here and will enable us to account for the inequality of the constituent elements we observe in different Igbo riddles. According to him, some Yoruba riddles are metaphor riddles (+ met) and some, non-metaphor riddles (-met.). In metaphor riddles, the relationship between the described subject and the answer is shrouded in imagery while in non-metaphor riddles, the relationship between the described subject and the answer is very plain and obvious. In some Igbo riddles, the five elements enumerated above may all be present, and in some others, it may not be the case; yet they remain well framed riddles that make sense. When an Igbo riddle frame contains metaphor (+met.), the five elements may be present but when it is nonmetaphorical (-met.), the elements may vary between three and four. Some examples of non-metaphor Igbo riddles will suffice at this juncture: (1) Q: Gwa m Ӑdara ӑbө ereghӏ ure A: Nkume (Q: Tell me What falls into a pit and does not rot A: Stone) (2) Q: Gwa m Ihe na-enweghӏ ӑkpa ma ӑ na-agba ӑsӑ A: Agwӑ (Q: Tell me The thing that has no legs but runs A: Snake) In the example (1) the elements present are only three, namely, (i) opening – Gwa m (Tell me), (ii) ‘True’ description of the subject - ͔dara ͕bͭ eregh͓ ure (What falls into a pit and does not rot), and (iii) The answer – Nkume (Stone). The validity of the answer to riddle (1) is, however, debatable as it is fraught with problem of generalization occasioned by ignorance of the possible effects weather can have on some objects. Stones and other solid

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materials are not weatherproof; they can weather, in geographical terms, as a result of the sun, rain, frost or due to the natural process of radioactivity (Asimov 1984). The problem with the so-called answer is, however, understandable if we consider the circumstance of the physical context, in terms of the riddle participants’ level of knowledge, the time and place in which the riddles were set. As part of the people’s oral literature, which has a feature of antiquity, Igbo riddles must have been created by generations of rural folk who lacked the scientific and technological knowledge available to us today. The truth they expressed and believed was defined by their own contextual constraints. Their conclusion might have been based on what practically made sense to them - that the stones they used, unlike some other materials, apparently never decomposed even when they fell into pit. In the light of modern scientific knowledge, some of what our forebears held as truth, as reflected in some of their riddles, no longer hold. In the riddle (3) Q: Gwa m, Ihe mmadө anөghӏ ka e gburu Ma nө ka ӑ dara: A: Ogbe өkwa (Q: Tell me, What a person does not hear when it is cut But hears when it falls A: Whole piece of breadfruit), four elements are present. They are: (i) Opening – Gwa m (Tell me), (ii) The image – unnamed, simply referred to as ‘ihe’ (the thing/what), (iii) ‘True’ description of the subject – “mmadө a‫ޟ‬nөghӏ ka e gburu ma a nө ka ӑ dara” (a person never hears when it is cut but hears its dropping sound), and (iv) The answer – Ogbe өkwa (Whole piece of breadfruit). In the same vein, not all (+met.) Igbo riddles contain the five elements of a riddle frame; though some do. For example, in (4) Gwa m, ihe nӑ n’ihu be nne gӏ na-echere gӏ aka mgba: Apӏtӏ (The thing that stays in the frontage of your mother’s house and challenges you to a wrestling contest: Mud), the five elements are present: i. Opening – “Gwa m” (Tell me), ii. The image (subject) – “Ihe” (The thing), iii. True description of the image – “nӑ n’ihu be nne gӏ” (that stays in the frontage of your mother’s house),

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iv. False description of the image – “na-echere gӏ aka mgba” (challenges you to a wrestling contest) and v. The Answer – Apӏtӏ (Mud). But in riddle (5), Gwa m, ihe kөrө aka baa ӑhӏa: Mkpөrө өkpaka (Tell me, what clapped hands and entered the bush: Oil bean seed), the five elements are not all present. Only the following four are present: (i) Opening – “Gwa m” (Tell me), (ii) The image – “Ihe” (the thing) and (iii) False Description “kөrө aka baa ӑhӏa” (clapped hands and entered the bush) and (iv) Mkpөrө Өkpaka. Our examples (4) and (5) can be represented by diagrams I and II respectively.

i. Opening:

Diagram I Question: ii. Image (Unnamed): Ihe ‘the thing’

v. Answer

Gwa m ‘Tell me’ iii. True description of Subject: nӑ n’ihu be nne gӏ ‘that is in the frontage of your mother’s house’

i. Opening:

iv. False Description of Subject: na-echere gӏ aka mgba ‘challenges you to a wrestling contest’

Diagram II Question: ii. Image (Unnamed): Ihe ‘What’

Apӏtӏ ‘Mud`

v. Answer

Gwa m ‘Tell me’ iii. True description of Subject: Nil

iv. False Description Mkpөrө of Subject: өkpaka Kөrө aka baa ӑhӏa ‘Oil bean seed’

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What we observe from our examples of (+met.) riddles in the above diagram is that in the structure of a given Igbo riddle, the opening, the image (subject) (which is either named or unnamed) and the Answer are always present. Then either the ‘True’ description’ or False description, or both, is/are given. When both the true description and false description are given, the five elements will be present but when only one is given, only three or four elements or component parts constitute the riddle structure. Our contention, therefore, is that since the structure of every Igbo riddle is not the same, a general statement should not be made, as Chukwuma (1994) has done, that the Igbo riddle frame has the five elements mentioned above. Besides, some Igbo riddles have mono-word structure as we find, for instance, in examples (6), (28) and (29). We may designate the structural elements of the riddle we have just discussed by the following symbols: O I Dt Df A

= = = = =

Opening Image ‘True’ Description False Description Answer

Then we may have the following as the formula for structure of the Igbo (+met.) riddles: Q: O + I + (Dt +/Df) = A, where (Dt +/ Df) (option) indicates the presence of both or either the ‘true’ or false description of the image. Applying this to our examples in the diagrams, we have them as follows: (4) Q: Gwa m ihe nӑ n’ihu be nne gӏ na-echere gӏ aka mgba = O I Dt Df

ӫ (5) Q:

Gwa m O ӫ

A: Apӏtӏ Q: O + I + Dt + Df = A ihe I

kөrө aka baa ӑhӏa Df

Q:

O + I + Df

= Mkpөrө өkpaka A = A

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Whichever structural scheme we have, the component parts or elements of the Igbo riddles are interrelated and interdependent in the constitution of the whole. Whatever affects each element makes an impact on the other elements. At the syntactic level, the structure of the Igbo riddles is varied. Monoword riddles, simple-sentence riddles, compound or complex-sentence riddles and segmental-sentence riddles are identifiable under the riddle questions. These varieties of sentence-structures suit the varieties of subjects treated in the riddles. The following are examples: Mono-word riddles: Igbo riddles with this kind of structure are mainly those riddle questions that employ ideophone as in (6) (“Gwa m), Zamzam” and (7) (“Gwa m) Tikot͓k͕t͓͓ko”; other examples are riddles 28, 29, 32, 33 and 35 in this paper. Simple-sentence riddle questions: e.g. (8) (“Gwa m) Ibe ji zuru Igbo ӑnө. Complex-sentence riddle question: e.g. (9) (“Gwa m) Agbӑghӑ a mөrө n’afӑ, o too n’afӑ, nwөӑ n’afӑ” (A damsel born in the year, she grew up in the year, and died in the year). Sequential-sentence riddle e.g. (10) (“Gwa m) Nze a gara ikpe; nze a gara ikpe; nze atӑ ndӏ ӑzӑ agaghӏ (This Nze (title holder) went for adjudication; this nze went for adjudication; the three others did not go). This riddle type consists of two or more sentences juxtaposed with lexical and grammatical references between them. Like that of riddle questions, the structure of the riddle answers is also varied. Those identified include mono-word answers, poly-word answers, and poly-word with explanatory complex sentence answer. The riddle question and the answer are the two main constituents of Igbo riddles. The following Igbo riddles are illustrative: Mono-word answers: Majority of the Igbo riddles have one-word answers. For instance, (11)

Q: Gwa m, Osisi mara mma iji me өtara Mana ӑ dӏghӏ ebe a na-ejide ya aka A: Maamӏrӏ (Q: Tell me,

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A stick good to be used as a cane But there is nowhere to hold it A: Urine (as its flow when someone urinates looks like a stretched piece of cane). Mono-word with Explanatory Complex Sentence Answer: Some Igbo riddles are constructed in such a way that the riddles in addition to giving the answer make further explanatory statements. Complex answers are usually dictated by their complex questions. For instance, (12)

Q: Gwa m Ihe pөtara n’өtөtө were өkwө anӑ na-aga ije; n’ehihie, o were өkwө abөӑ na-aga, ma mgbe o ruru n’abalӏ, o werezie өkwө atӑ na-aga. A: Mmadө - n’ihi na mgbe a mөrө ya ӑhөrө, ӑ na-egbe igbere, were өkwө abөӑ na aka abөӑ; mgbe o topөtara, o were өkwө abөӑ gawa, ma mgbe agadi bӏaziri, o were өkwө abөӑ na mkpӑ wee naaga. (Q: Tell me What walks by four legs in the morning; by two legs in the afternoon and by three legs in the night. A: Man – because when he is a baby, he crawls by two legs and two hands; when he is a youth, he walks by two legs, and at old age, he walks by two legs with the support of a walking stick).

Poly-word Answers: These are riddle answers that have more than a lexical item. They could be phrases or clauses. For instance, (13)

Q: Gwa m Өmөnne abөӑ bi n’өlӑ ma ha anaghӏ ahө onwe ha anya A: Akӏ gbara mkpӏ (Q: Tell me Two siblings that live in a house but never see each other A: Twin kernels in a shell)

There are also some riddles that are in form of short stories with complex structured questions and answers. For instance,

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Q: Gwa m Osisi ӑma m hөrө n’өzӑ; Ӑ dӏghӏ mma m ji egbu ya A: Nwaanyӏ ӑma m hөrө n’өzӑ, Ӑ dӏghӏ ego m ji alө ya. (Q: A beautiful tree I saw on the way I had no knife to cut it A: A beautiful woman I met on the way I had no money to marry her).

Though riddles (13) and (14) are used to illustrate aspects of the structure of Igbo riddles, a quick glance at their contextual features is pertinent for their conversational implicatures to be appreciated. Based on widely shared cultural knowledge in Igbo society that siblings who live together in a house do interact in many ways – for instance, talk to one another, eat together or sleep together, riddle (13) question strikes the hearers as incongruous because it is unimaginable. Bond of kinship relation is very strong among the Igbo. The incongruity in the riddle utterance is quickly resolved by the answer because it is also a mutual knowledge that twin kernels in a shell have a layer dividing them which makes their touching each other impossible. The answer to riddle (14) is also explainable within the context of established Igbo cultural values as it relates to marriage. The Igbo have ethical customs that must be adhered to before marriage is contracted; otherwise such relationship cannot be respected or recognized. Just as the speaker in the riddle cannot cut a desirable beautiful tree he comes across on his way, a bachelor may come across a damsel he considers desirable for marriage but he cannot marry her when he does not have the economic power to do so. It is a cultural requirement that he has to pay a bride-price.

The Language of Igbo Riddles Literature is defined as “all the creative activities of [human] expressed in words. Literature is communication and sharing of deeply felt emotion. The vehicle of this communication is words” (Okot p’Bitek 1973, cited in Njoku & Izuagba 2004: 135). Expatiating on what Okot p’Bitek explains, Njoku and Izuagba state that “language is the material for literature because the poet, the novelist and the playwright use words. The words may be spoken, sung or written” (Njoku & Izuagba 2004: 135). The observation that the words may

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be rendered in spoken, sung, or written mode is right because it recognizes both the oral and written forms of literature. Since literature is a mode of expression, language, as has been pointed out, is the vehicle with which it accomplishes this. It has also been said that “the creative artist expresses his sensations, perceptions, themes, etc., primarily by means of language” (Yankson 1987: 1). Literature cannot be said to exist without language. Literature is by nature expressive. Literature, particularly poetry, is noted for special use of language to give pleasure. Igbo riddles, which we have identified as an aspect of Igbo oral poetry, profoundly use words figuratively, and different meanings are derived from them. The creative artist, in order to achieve certain stylistic effects, can breach the language rule, that is, ignore or violate the accepted standard norm of language. A breach of selectional restrictions rule which entails “conferring animate and human features on a normally inanimate noun” is one of the ways by which the oral artist foregrounds language (Yankson 1987: 2). This is very prominent in the Igbo riddles. For instance, if we put the answer to the riddle, (5) Q: Gwa m Ihe kөrө aka baa ӑhӏa. A: Mkpөrө өkpaka. (Q: Tell me What clapped hands and entered the bush A: Oil bean seed), in its proper place to form a complete sentence with the question, we shall have: Mkpөrө өkpaka kөru aka baa ӑhia (Oil bean seed clapped hands and entered the bush). In Igbo language, the VP ‘kөrө’ (clapped) selects as its subject an NP, a lexical item with the feature /+ human/. Clapping is an action performed by a human being who has hands. But in this riddle, the action of clapping is ascribed to ‘mkpөrө ukpaka’ (oil bean seed), a lexical item with the feature /human/. The selectional restriction rule has been violated in order to achieve a certain stylistic effect – the heightening of thought and humorous feeling. The creative artist can also create aesthetic effect by conforming to the existing possibilities of the language.

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The language of the Igbo riddles is characterized by stylistic devices aimed at creating some aesthetic effect. The riddles as a sub-genre of oral poetry have a lot of poetic qualities as they make much use of figurative language just like other poems. We shall now exemplify how figures of speech are used in the Igbo riddles. It is in the use of these devices that the literary characteristics of the Igbo riddles can be seen and appreciated. Our analysis also extends to the examination of how the contexts in which the riddles are produced enable the participants to decode the figurative language of the riddles, with a view to unveiling their intent or meaning.

Figures of Speech in Igbo Riddles Some scholars, both in Igbo and other cultures, have identified some figurative devices that are employed in riddling. Aristotle is said to have dignified riddles by “analyzing them as metaphorical expressions related to natural phenomena” (Encyclopaedia Americana 1994: 518). Following Aristotle, perhaps, other scholars have emphasized the metaphorical and poetic nature of the riddles. Abraham and Dundes (1972: 130), in their study of English riddles, mention poetic, metaphoric riddles, which they refer to as “enigmatic questions in the form of description whose referent must be guessed.” They explain that these riddles are the most interesting for they employ witty devices in order to confuse. Another scholar in this category is Finnegan (1970: 426) who, in her study of African riddles, observes that “riddles often involve metaphorical and poetic comments.” Lusweti’s (1984) study, which corroborates what Finnegan has said, reveals that Kenyan riddles are plays on imagery and symbolism; and that they involve analogy, whether of meaning, sound, rhythm or tone. She adds that “the riddle is in simple form of a phrase referring to some well-known object in veiled language. Olatunji (1984: 182) points out that Yoruba riddles are like other poetic types of the Yoruba. According to him, “metaphors in the [Yoruba] riddles…in most cases involve personification.” These and such other features as incongruity, inconsistency or contradiction and opposition, which he identifies as also characterizing Yoruba riddles are well exemplified in his work. Egudu (1972) who has also studied Igbo riddles, as we mentioned earlier, highlights the metaphorical nature of riddles; and citing some examples, he points out that Igbo riddles are not only based on metaphor but also on personification.

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From what has been highlighted above, some previous works have acknowledged the poetic nature of riddles and the kind of stratagems employed in presenting the verbal art. These stylistic stratagems, as we have seen, seem to be common to different cultures, including the Igbo. This present study, which is meant to complement the earlier efforts of other Igbo scholars, now proceeds to explore some of the literary features of Igbo riddles and the nature of the context in which they are composed.

Metaphor Metaphor is a comparison, which equates one thing with another. In other words, all the attributes with which one thing is known may be given to another without acknowledging that any comparison is being made as seen, for instance, in riddle (9) Q: Gwa m, Agbӑghӑ a mөrө n’afӑ, O too n’afӑ, Nwөӑ n’afӑ. A: Ӑka. (Q: Tell me A damsel born in a year She grew up in the year And died in the year A: Corn plant) In this example, ‘agbӑghӑ’ (damsel) is the metaphor for ‘ӑka’ (corn). The damsel being born in a year, growing in the year and dying in the year implies the germination, growth and harvest of the corn plant in same year. When a new corn germinates, it is ‘born’; it grows and bears fruit. At harvest, the corn plant is cut bringing an end to its existence. All these three stages – germination, growth and harvest – take place in the same year. The physical context of this riddle, in terms of the participants and physical activity, provides the background for decoding its meaning. The Igbo society being an agrarian one, its people have from their farming experience become familiar with the stages their crops undergo from planting to harvest. These stages therefore provide the creative background on which this riddle is metaphorically encoded.

Stylistic Features of Igbo Riddles

In (15)

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Q: Gwa m Agbӑgho ara anӑ. A: Ikwe. (Q: Tell me A damsel with four breasts A: Mortar),

‘agbӑgho’ (damsel) is the metaphor for ‘ikwe’ (mortar) and ‘ara anӑ’ (four breasts) refers to the four handles which are by the side of a typical Igbo mortar. The image of damsel’s four breasts sets the audience thinking as they try to deduce, from what is literally said, the implicature of the riddle, which is a mortar’s four handles. The incongruity between the words describing riddle question produces a kind of shock-effect because there is a contradiction of known fact: A damsel is known to have only two breasts and not four. But when this is situated within the context of the Igbo world where the mortar is designed to have four short handles that project like tender breasts, the answer of the riddle becomes meaningful. Similarly, in (16)

Q: Gwa m, Otigbu nwata n’ihu nne ya A: Agөө (Q: Tell me What strikes a child in the presence of his/her mother. A: Hunger),

‘Otigbu nwata’ (the striker of a child) is ‘hunger’, which a child may suffer even in the presence of his/her mother. Based on the culturally shared knowledge that parents are protective of their children, there is an apparent contradiction in the riddle utterance. But this contradiction, which engenders shock-effect and wonder in the addressees, is resolved in the implicature when it is realized that hunger can actually make a child cry even in the presence of his or her parent. It is through the process of inference backed by the world knowledge shared by the addressees that they are able to unravel the implicature of this riddle. The stylistic effect is to create humour, imagery and intensify thought in the audience.

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Also, in (17) Q: Gwa m, Ӑrө ele a kwөwara n’ӑhӏa A: Egbeke ukpaka (Q: Tell me A deer’s thigh that hangs in the forest. A: Oil bean shell), ‘ӑrө ele’ (deer’s thigh) refers to the oil bean shell (‘egbeke ukpaka’) hanging on the oil bean tree in the forest. Because of its physical shape, the listener is enabled by inference to establish the necessary link between the image of ‘ӑrө ele’, a deer’s thigh that is hung to dry above the fireplace in the kitchen in the traditional Igbo village, and ‘egbeke өkpaka’, the oil bean shell that hangs on its tree in the forest. The process of inference has helped the listeners to arrive at this implicature. The riddle addresser’s locutionary act leads to illocutionary act, which makes the audience begin to imagine what could be the deer’s thigh that is hanging in the forest. The metaphorical language on which this riddle is constructed again produces a perlocutionary act as it heightens the thought of riddle participants and creates suspense in those that do not know the answer. In riddle, (18) Q: Gwa m, Azӏza dӏ n’elu dӏ n’ala. A: Mkpөrө mmiri. (Q: Tell me A broom that is in heaven and on earth ‘azӏza’ (broom) refers to ‘raindrops’. The idea of broomsticks in a bundle of broom creates in one the imagery of raindrops when it is raining. The implicature of this riddle becomes vivid when considered in the context of the people’s shared background knowledge of their natural environment and phenomena. The people in their use of broom must have taken note of its form. And when they see raindrops stretching from the sky to the earth, the phenomenon seems, in their perception, like broomsticks stretching out from a bundle of broom. This analogy performs the function of making the message vivid. In

Stylistic Features of Igbo Riddles

(19)

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Q: Gwa m, Nwaanyӏ ӑma dere ùrì. A: ӐҒgӏnӏҒ. (Q: Tell me A beautiful woman that adorns herself with ùrì̗ make-up. A: Bush rat),

‘nwaanyӏ ӑma’ (‘beautiful woman’) is the metaphor for ‘ӑҒgӏnӏҒ’ (bush rat) and ùrì (a plant whose juice obtained by grinding the fruit is used for make-up by the Igbo) is the colourful spots on the body of the bush rat. The blackish spot on the body of a woman who adorns herself with ùrì make-up conjures up the image of a bush rat whose body is spotted. This riddle suggests that to the people, concept of beauty also derives from one’s cosmetic make-up, and ùrì is one of the traditional cosmetics with which women adorned themselves in traditional Igbo society in the past. The analogy between ‘nwaanyӏ ӑma dere ùrì’(a beautiful woman adorned with ùrì) and ‘ӑgӏnӏ’(bush rat) indicates the Igbo take note of the fauna of their environment, and use some of their riddles, coated in metaphor, to test their perception and knowledge of their environment. It is by decoding the metaphors used in the Igbo riddles and by inference that the riddle participants appreciate the relationship between the image, that is, the subject, and the answer. The audience is then able to see the reality in what the riddle is suggesting. Metaphor is the main figure of speech employed in the Igbo riddles. The whole idea of the riddles seems to revolve around metaphor. Since the main intent of the riddle is to conceal the answer and make the respondent think and unfold the hidden, it employs more than any other device, metaphorical language to achieve its goal. Other figures of speech employed in the Igbo riddles include personification, hyperbole and euphemism, among others. These also deserve critical examination.

Personification In personification, an idea, place, object or situation is shown to have human attributes. Something that is not a person is spoken about as if it were a person. Igbo riddles are replete with personification. For instance, in the riddle,

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(4) Q: Gwa m, Ihe nӑ n’ihu be nne gi na-echere gӏ aka mgba A: ApӏҒtӏҒ (Q: Tell me What stays in front of your mother’s house and challenges you to a wrestling contest A: Mud), ‘apӏғҒtӏҒ’ (mud) is endowed with human attributes. It is said to challenge one to a wrestling. In talking about the ‘apӏҒtӏҒ’ (mud), the riddle has created the picture of a wrestling exercise where one wrestler is usually brought down by another. This imagery is invented to draw our attention to the physical nature of ‘apӏҒtӏҒ’ (mud). The mutual knowledge of the slippery nature of mud and the fact that it causes anyone that threads upon it to either stagger or fall as a wrestler would bring down his opponent, provides the backdrop for understanding the riddle. An agreement between the riddle question and the answer is established when one realizes that the staggering fall of anyone walking on a slippery muddy surface is akin to the staggering movement of wrestling contestants. We are indirectly told what the mud does. The function of this figurative use of language is to make the message more vivid. The perlocutionary act ignited by the riddle is humour. Also in (20)

Q: Gwa m Ihe gaje ubi gbara ӑt‫ޜ‬ӑ Ma ӑ lӑtawa mara akwà. A: Ӑka (Q: Tell me What goes to the farm naked And comes back clothed. A: Corn),

the referent, ‘ӑka’ (corn), is given human qualities. It is said to carry out an action of going to the farm naked and coming back clothed. This has the effect of creating humour. Again, in

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(21)

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Q: Gwa m Ӑgbaaka jee ubi, Chӏri өmө lӑta. A: Ede. (Q: What went to the farm empty-handed And came back with children. A: Cocoyam),

‘ede’ (cocoyam) is ascribed with human attributes. ‘Ӑgbaaka’ (one who is empty-handed) and ‘chӏrӏ’ (collect) imply that the referent has hands, and ‘jee ubi’ (went to farm) also implies that it has legs. All these human attributes ascribed to the crop have the effect of creating humour. Personification is a kind of metaphor as can be seen from the above examples (4, 20-21). In riddle (20), for instance, ‘gbara ӑtӑ’ (naked) is the metaphor for the corncob whose sheathing is removed before being taken to the farm to be planted, while ‘mara akwà’ (clothed) refers to the sheathed corncob that is brought home after the harvest. In riddle (21), ‘ӑgbaaka’ (one who is empty-handed) metaphorically refers to a single cocoyam that is taken to the farm during the planting season. Every single cocoyam that is planted has the capacity to reproduce more than one piece of cocoyam. So, ‘өmө’ (children) is also the metaphor for the additional numbers of cocoyam reproduced by the single one planted originally. This figurative use of language fulfils some aesthetic function – namely, the intellectual pleasure it gives to the audience. Tracing riddles (21-22) to their contextual background makes one appreciate their subject matter. Like we noted in riddle (9), the agrarian experience of the people underlie these riddles in which crops are personified. The description given these crops is based on the people’s observation that when a grain of corn is taken to the farm bare (‘naked’) and planted, it is later harvested and brought home sheathed (‘clothed’). A similar observation is made in the case of cocoyam seed, which, when taken to the farm singly (‘empty handed’) and planted, is harvested and brought home with other cocoyam (‘children’) it has reproduced. In

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(22)

Q: Gwa m Egbe na-ebu ӑkөkӑ mgbe niile, A naghӏ ahө ya anya. A: Ӑnwө. (Q: Tell me The kite that carries chicken always Yet it is not seen. A: Death),

‘ӑnwө’ (death) is given the attributes of ‘egbe’ (kite). It is said to snatch human beings as a kite snatches chicken. The personification also involves metaphor. While the ‘kite’ is the metaphor for ‘death’, ‘chicken’ is the metaphor for ‘human being’ whom death strikes. A mental picture of a situation where the kite snatches a chicken is first created in the minds of the audience and then they begin to imagine how death strikes a person in the like manner. The purpose of this is to heighten the emotion of fear and sorrow. In spite of the elements of personification and metaphor in this riddle, its question has a feature of ambiguity or incongruity: A kite can be noticed when it descends to carry a chick, but this fact is negated in the riddle utterance. So, the question ignites some psychological reaction of wonder in the hearers, which, however, is reconciled immediately the implicature is deduced. And this reconciliation is predicated on the mutual contextual belief in the Igbo world that death, which occurs regularly, is not a visible phenomenon. And the fact that a chick carried by a kite meets its death makes the analogy between the kite’s action and death appropriate. The device of personification is also observable in the riddle, (23)

Q: Gwa m Ihe enweghӏ aka Ma na-awa ala. A: Ide. (Q: Tell me What has no hand But digs the ground. A: Erosion).

‘Iwa ala’ (digging of the ground) is usually an expression used to describe the action of a person when he is digging the ground. Most often what the erosion does is to wear off the soil surface but in this riddle, the effect of erosion is presented as if it were a human action. The background knowledge

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underpinning the riddle is the people’s experience of the devastating effect of erosion, which, in some cases, leaves gullies in their environment. In the light of today’s technological advancement, this riddle has other possible answers. Today, digging can be done mechanically.

Hyperbole Hyperbole is the giving of an exaggerated description or qualities to things, objects, or situations that are of lesser qualities. This is often found in the Igbo riddles, for instance, in (24)

Q: Gwa m Okoro ji ӑsӑ awӑ aja. A: Imi. (Q: Tell me A young man that jumps over the fence with speed. A: Phlegm),

the dropping of the phlegm when it is evacuated from the nose is exaggerated. It is said to jump over the fence, an action which can be embarked upon by a stronger phenomenon like human. This exaggerated description stimulates perlocutionary act as seen in the reaction of the audience. They get amused at the comic portrayal of the phlegm. Similarly, in (25)

Q: Gwa m Ӑgaranya ukwu aja A: AwӑҒ. (Q: Tell me A wealthy person in the corner of a house A: Toad),

the status given to the toad, a small animal, is exaggerated by being referred to as a wealthy individual. However, the notion of ‘wealth’ in this context is not in the sense of money or property someone possesses but the common tendency of the toad to lurk around the corner of the house, which the people might have for over a long period of time regularly observed in their environment. The riddle answer creates humour.

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Euphemism Euphemism is a figure of speech “which expresses a very harsh experience through a mild expression” (Akindolire 1999: 134). Euphemism is also seen as ‘the device of using a substituted expression to disguise some facts or idea that is distressing, offensive or embarrassing” (Boulton 1986: 156). It is a figure of speech that avoids being blunt when talking about a subject matter that would otherwise appear offensive and embarrassing. This is also noticed in the Igbo riddles. In the examples below, referents can either be offensive or embarrassing to the audience if expressly mentioned, and therefore, to avoid such a situation, more acceptable group of words or expressions are employed: (26)

Q: Gwa m Ite e sichiri өzӑ, Onye pөta ӑ kwanye ӑkө. A: Nsӏ a nyөchiri өzӑ, Onye pөta ӑ gbaa asө. (Q: Tell me A pot [of food] being cooked on the road, Whoever passes by makes the fire. A: Faeces that is deposited on the road, Whoever passes by spits); and

(27)

Q: Gwa m Ihe hubere isi ala gbaa afӑ. A: AmөҒ. (Q: Tell me The thing whose head remains dropped all through the year A: Penis).

The implicatures of riddles (26) and (27) can be appreciated when viewed against the backdrop of their contextual setting. Riddle (26) presents a picture of a filthy environment. Some persons who lack sense of decency have the habit of defecating on the roadside, especially in areas that have no public toilet facilities. This situation not only constitutes a sorry sight to passers-by but also makes them spit as a result of the offensive stench that emits from the faeces. The faeces and the people’s reaction are euphemistically and metaphorically referred to as ‘ite e sichiri өzӑ’ (a pot of [food] being cooked on the road) and ‘onye pөta, ӑ kwanye ӑkө’ (whoever passes by makes the

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fire) respectively instead of bluntly saying ‘nsӏ a nyөchiri өzӑ, onye puta gbaa asө’, (the faeces deposited on the road, which makes passers-by spit), which appears offensive. Most often, too, euphemistic expression is preferred in referring to erotic facts as we find in riddle (27). Because of the socially shared knowledge of moral values of the people, mentioning sexual organs or practices expressly is considered vulgar. It is by inference that the riddle participants arrive at the riddle answer, and again this is borne out of shared observation that the penis, except when erect, remains sagged most of the time.

Sound In this section, we will examine some of the devices that enhance sound effect in Igbo riddles. The importance and functionality of sound in terms of the effect it creates in poetry has been stressed. In poetry, sound is said to be “a tool used to create beauty whose ultimate end is to give pleasure” (Egudu 1977: 62). Emenanjo (2007: 9) has observed that “the language of the riddle may depend wholly on sound effect.” In the Igbo riddles, as in other literary forms, sound is made more prominent by the presence of ideophone, alliteration, assonance, consonance and repetition.

Ideophone According to Emenanjo (2007: 9), “riddles use ideophones as agents of meaningful sounds.” Ideophone comprises (a) onomatopoeic ideophone and (b) phonaesthetic ideophone. Babalola (1974, cited in Uzochukwu, 2001: 107) states that “the term ‘phonaesthetic words’ refers to those words which in many African languages convey their meaning by their sounds” while “onomatopoeic words…merely imitate sounds from real life”. According to Uzochukwu, Babalola explains that “while ideophones include onomatopoeia in that idea-in-sound is always implied, they extend beyond onomatopoeic words and include other words”. Onomatopoeic and phonaesthetic ideophones both feature in the Igbo riddles as exemplified below:

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(i) Onomatopoeic Ideophone The examples of this are the following: (28) Q: Gwa m Kukurukuru. A: Ejula. (Q: Tell me Kukurukuru A: Snail); (29)

Q: Gwa m Patapatapa. A: Mmiri ozuzo. (Q: Tell me Patapatapa A: Rain);

(30)

Q: Gwa m Dum yӑm. A: Ike nkwө na mkpөrө ya. (Q: Tell me Dum y͕m. A: A bunch of palm nuts and the palm nuts); and

(31)

A: Gwa m Tөm tөm gem gem. A: Ӑsӑ mgbada n’ugwu. (Q: Tell me Tͭm tͭm gem gem (what makes the galloping). A: Antelope’s race on the hill).

The italicized words in the above examples are imitation of real life sound, which creates imagery. They produce a mental picture of what has or makes the sound. ‘Patapatapa’ in riddle (29), for instance, gives the idea of the sound of raindrops on a house roof as perceived by the people. The physical context of riddle (30) is the mutually shared perception of what happens when a bunch of palm nuts is harvested. When a ripe bunch of palm nuts is cut, the force with which it drops on the ground, and the scattering of some of the nuts that detach from the bunch produce a sort of ‘dum’ and ‘yӑm’ sounds respectively. Riddle (31) is informed by the people’s observation that

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characteristically the named animal can gallop up the hill. The Igbo are aware of both the flora and fauna of their cultural environment.

(ii) Phonaesthetic Ideophone Some examples are as follows: (6)

Q: Gwa m ZàmҒzàmҒ. A: Anya. (Q: Tell me Zàm̖zàm A: Eye);

(32)

Q: Gwa m WàmҒwàm A: Өkwө. (Q: Tell me Wàm̖wàm A: Leg); and

(33)

Q: Gwa m Mөrӏmөrӏ. A: Agwӑ (Q: Tell me Mͭr͓mͭr͓ A: Snake).

The mention of the italicized words in riddles (6, 32-33) above gives an idea of the nature or situation of the things or actions, which they describe. They are words that convey their meanings by their sounds; and the riddle addressees use the sounds to infer the referents. In riddle (32), for instance, sound is very significant because ‘wamwam’ creates a mental picture of some sort of ‘swift movement’ made by something. The same inference can be made of ‘mөrӏmөrӏ’ (riddle 33), as it engenders some kind of feeling that enables the listeners to guess the nature of the unnamed referent. Onomatopoeic and phenoaesthetic ideophones have some satisfying auditory effect on the audience.

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Alliteration Alliteration is a sound in which the same consonantal sound starts two or more words in the same line of poetry. This is observed in the Igbo riddles as the following examples show: (11)

Q: Gwa m Osisi mara mma iji mee өҒtàrӏҒ mana Ӑ dӏghӏ ebe a na-ejide ya aka. A: Maamӏrӏ (Q: Tell me A stick good to be used as a cane But there is nowhere to hold it. A: Urine).

There is, in the above example, a succession of ‘m’ sound, which creates fine auditory effect while the succession of ‘h’ sound in the riddle below also produces some sonorous effect: (34)

Q: Gwa m Hata hata dӏ ime hata hata ji nwa n’aka. A: Ose. (Q: Tell me Hata hata that is pregnant, hata hata that is nursing a baby. A: Pepper).

There is apparent incongruity and contradiction between the riddle (11) question and its answer, which evokes an emotion of wonder as to how one cannot find where to hold a cane adjudged good enough to be used in flogging. This seeming contradiction is however resolved when one considers the contextual basis of the riddle. It is informed by the background knowledge or observation that when one urinates while standing up, the urine stretches out in a cane-like shape and yet it cannot actually be held as someone would a real cane.

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Consonance While alliteration is a repetition of the same consonantal sound at the initial position of words in a line of poetry, consonance is a sound in which the same consonantal sound is repeated not at the beginning but in the middle or at the end of words in a line of poetry. Consonance is prominent in the Igbo mono-word riddles. For example, in the riddle, (27)

Q: Gwa m Tӏkӑtӏkӑtӏӏkӑ A: Dabakwa n’igbe ozu/Dachikwa өzӑ, nwөӑ (Q: Tell me T͓k͕t͓k͕t͓͓k͕. A: (You) fall into the coffin/Drop dead),

the recurrence of ‘t’ and ‘k’ sounds produces consonance, which creates some pleasant sound to the ear. Also in (35)

Q: Gwa m Kelenkelenke‫ޟ‬ A: O birila ӑkө‫ޟ‬ (Q: Tell me Kelenkelenke. A: It has started in earnest),

there is the repetition of ‘l’ and ‘k’ sounds, which gives some auditory satisfaction. Similarly, in (36)

Q: Gwa m ӐҒrӑnҒkӑҒ nkӑҒ ӑҒ rӑnkӑ tӑnk‫ޜ‬ӑ A: ÒmenҒkà egbè, ӑҒ gbagbuli dand‫ޜ‬a. (Q: Tell me ͔̖r͕n̖k͕̖ nk͕̖ ͕̖ r͕nk͕ t͕nk͕‫ޜ‬ A: The renowned gunman, can he kill an ant?),

there is succession of ‘n’, ‘k’ and ‘r’ sounds which are titillating. What makes sound significant in this riddle is the play on sounds between the words in the riddle utterance and those in its meaning (answer), based on their tonal quality. This will be explained further under rhythm.

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Assonance Assonance is the repetition of the same vowel sounds in lines of poetry. This, unlike alliteration and consonance, is not restricted to a line of poetry. The Igbo riddles are also characterized by assonance as the following example indicates: (37)

Q: Gwa m A gawa agawa ӑ nӑ n’azө, A lawa alawa ӑ nӑ n’azө. A: Ikere өkwө. (Q: Tell me When going, it comes behind, When returning, it comes behind. A: Heel).

The succession of ‘a’ sound in the above lines of symmetrical structure produces some titillating sound and rhythm effects. Also in riddle (9)

Q: Gwa m Agbӑghӑ a mөrө n’afӑ, O too n’afӑ. Nwөӑ n’afӑ,

there is recurrence of ‘a’ and ‘ӑ’ sounds, which produce sound and rhythm effects.

Loan Words Aesthetic effect can also be achieved in poetry by the use of loan words. Because the Igbo have embraced western education and culture, and because they do interact with people from other cultures, they have learnt a number of things that are alien to their culture. One of these is their knowledge of foreign language(s), which is reflected sometimes in their composition of the riddle questions. The italicized lexical items in the following riddles are illustrative:

Stylistic Features of Igbo Riddles

(38)

Q: Gwa m Poliisi ӑhӏa. A: Mғkpórókwú (ikwөbe) (Q: Tell me A forest policeman A: Anthill);

(39)

Q: Gwa m Tebulu otu ukwu 2 A: Ero (Q: Tell me One-legged table. A: Mushroom); and

(40)

Q: Gwa m Ihe na-achӏrӏ gӏ waka na mbөbӑ nne gӏ. A: Mbөba akpө. (Q: Tell me What says waka to you in your mother’s farm A: Cassava leaves).

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In the above examples, the words poliisi, tebulu and waka, which are pointers to the physical shape of the referents, are all borrowed words. Poliisi and tebulu, which are ‘police’ and ‘table’ respectively, are borrowed from English language, while waka (a sort of a curse) is borrowed from the Hausa language. The occurrence of these words suggests that the time of composition of Igbo riddles may not completely be associated with the remote past. Loan words are normally used where there are no appropriate words in the local language to put the message across to the people. It is also employed to make for variety especially when certain expressions become monotonous. Now that we have examined some of the figures of speech that feature in Igbo riddles, let us look at the kind of rhythm we have in this verbal art.

2

This riddle question has other variants, namely: Anө otu өkwө (One-legged meat) and Agbӑghӑ ӑma kpu okpu n’ӑhӏa (A beautiful damsel who wears a cap in the bush), but the answer remains the same – ‘Ero’.

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Rhythm in Igbo Riddles Abercrombie (1967: 96) notes that “all human speeches possess rhythm” which “arises out of the periodic recurrence of some sort of movement, producing an expectation that the regularity of succession will continue”. Comparing rhythm with ‘beat or pause’, Egudu (1977: 34) says that it “implies the presence of movement in which there is the recurrence of identical points,” and that “it is (this) repetition or recurrence that makes rhythm a vital factor in the organization of the musical beauty of poetry”. He sees repetition as a prominent feature of rhythm even though rhythm does have other features that make for variety. For him, rhythm is an inevitable element in poetry. There is no consensus yet among Igbo scholars as to what constitutes rhythm in Igbo, particularly in poetry. Ugonna (1984: 165) claims that Igbo rhythm is based on metre – the pattern in which stressed and unstressed syllables are combined in a line of poetry – like English poems. According to him, In Igbo metre this succession of recurrent movements is achieved by the ordered arrangement of strong and weak elements corresponding perhaps to the raising of the foot from the ground and its being put down in the course of measured movement or dance…

What he says, in other words, is that rhythm in Igbo can be measured by dance-step (Ìgìdì) or foot. The Igbo metre, he says, “may be said to have its basis in the dance.” Apart from dance-step, another factor, which he says, determines rhythm is tone, which is “objective and easily predictable.” He concluded that “it is… the regular alternation of high, downstep and low tones that produces rhythm in Igbo verse” (Ugonna 1984: 168). Uzochukwu (2001: 75) in his own critical analysis of Igbo poetry does not fully endorse Ugonna’s claim that Igbo rhythm is metrical, arguing that: In Igbo poetry, there is nothing comparable to the situation where patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables recur at regular intervals as is the case in English poetry. Our reason for saying that Igbo poetic rhythm is non-metrical is based on the fact that we cannot establish the foot, the basis of metre, in Igbo verse. This is because as Igbo is a tone language, it is syllable-timed unlike English, which is stress-timed.

He further argues that in many types of Igbo oral poetry, the question of raising of the foot from the ground and its being put down in the course of measured movement or dance to derive a foot does not therefore apply to all forms of oral poetry though it may apply to a dance song.

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In talking about forms of oral poetry that are not meant to be danced to, we believe that Uzochukwu (2001) might have taken cognizance of such subgenre as the Igbo riddle among others. We agree with him. In reacting to the ‘tone’ factor which is the second determiner of Igbo rhythm according to Ugonna (1984), Uzochukwu says that even though Igbo makes use of stress which is related to high tone, the fact that a high tone can be equated with a stressed syllable does not mean that Igbo verse can readily be measured in foot as the English verse. In conclusion, he says that since metre is only a relatively small part of what constitutes rhythm, other factors which constitute Igbo poetic rhythm, apart from metre, have to be sought. Those he identifies include: (i) Regular recurrence of equal time duration in consecutive utterances; (ii) Regular recurrence of breath pause, and (iii) Regular recurrence of sense balance. He also identifies two features, which, he says, are very effective in enhancing the Igbo poetic rhythm - repetition and parallelism. The controversy as highlighted above, notwithstanding, one basic fact is that there is rhythm in Igbo. The Igbo riddles, as we have always pointed out in this study, have much poetic qualities which they show not only in their language but also in their rhythm. To this we shall now turn adopting those factors suggested by Uzochukwu as our basis of analysis. Two of the three factors that constitute Igbo poetic rhythm are more prominent in Igbo riddles. Uzochukwu has effectively applied these factors in the evaluation of the rhythmic features of Igbo traditional funeral poetry and birth poetry.

Regular Recurrence of Equal Time Duration in Consecutive Utterances In Igbo poetry, consecutive utterances or lines could have equal syllables and equal beats and therefore the same rhythm. Igbo is a syllable-timed language where an utterance could be split into segments, which are in some sense of equal time duration. Writing on this rhythm factor, Uzochukwu (2001: 40) explains that “the consecutive utterances having equal time duration may or may not be in identical tone. But still the rhythm is maintained as long as there is equal number of beats, which is indicative of equal time duration”. He further explains that occasionally, some consecutive lines may not have

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exactly equal syllables but through the employment of such devices as ellipsis, overlapping, syllable lengthening, etc., the same beat can still be realized, causing the same rhythm. This means that what is more material in affecting rhythm is the beat. Syllable lengthening, which features prominently in songs, is not noticeable in the riddles since most of them are not sung. However, examples of lines with equal syllables and equal beats abound in the Igbo riddles. The following are illustrative:

(14)

No. of Sylls. Q: Gwa m Osisi ӑma m hөrө n’өzӑ 10 Ӑ dӏghӏ mmà m ji egbu ya 10 A: Nwaanyӏ ӑma m hөrө n’өzӑ 10 Ӑ dӏghӏ ego m ji alө ya 10 (Q: Tell me A beautiful tree I saw on the way, I had no knife to cut it. A: A beautiful woman I met on the way, I had no money to marry her.)

No. of Beats 10 10 10 10

Apart from the first line, “Gwa m”, each of the other lines in the above riddle has 10 syllables which mean that the four lines have equal beats and the same rhythm. The rhythm is, therefore, based on equal time duration. In

(10)

No. of Sylls. No. of Beats Q: Gwa m Nze a gara ikpe 7 7 Nze a gara ikpe 7 7 Nze atӑ ndӏ ӑzӑ agaghӏ 12 12 A: Osisi niile na-agbө mbөbƗ 12 12 Nkwө, Akөoyibo na ngwӑ adӏghӏ agbө mbөbƗ 18 18 (Q: Tell me This Nze (title holder) went for adjudication. This Nze went for adjudication. The three others did not go A: Every tree sheds leaves; Palm tree, coconut tree and raffia palm do not.),

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there is equal time duration in the two lines that follow ‘Gwa m’, the opening formula. Because of the equality of the syllables (7) and beats (7), which also reflect the equality of time duration, there is the same rhythm in the lines. The rhythm is enhanced by repetition - an absolute duplication of an utterance. The repetition is immediate because there is no intervening utterance between the repeated structures, Nze a gara ikpe, (This Nze went for adjudication). Also in (37)

No. of Sylls. Q: Gwa m A gawa agawa, ӑ nӑ n’azө 10 A lӑwa alӑwa, ӑ nӑ n’azө 10 A: Ikere өkwө. (Q: Tell me When going, it comes behind; When returning, it comes behind. A: Heel.),

No. of Beats 10 10

part of the riddle question is based on equal time duration. Each of the two lines after the introductory formula, ‘Gwa m’, has 10 syllables, which means that they have equal beats and therefore the same rhythm. What enhances the rhythm is parallelism, which is syntactic. The utterance, A gawa agawa, ӑ nӑ n’azө (When going, it comes behind) is partially repeated, A l͕wa al͕wa, ӑ nӑ n’azө (When returning, it comes behind). In riddle (41), Q: Gwa m Ihe onye na-ere na-ewe iwe Onye na-azөrө na-ewe iwe A: Igbeozu. Q: Tell me What is being sold, the seller is unhappy, And the buyer is unhappy A: Coffin.),

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the consecutive lines do not have exactly the same number of syllables. While the second line, after ‘Gwa m’ has 12 syllables, the third has 11; yet the same rhythm is maintained because the riddle poser is a little fast in uttering the third line after the second line. Due to this fastness, the two lines are made to have equal beats, which is indicative of equal time duration. Rhythm is also enhanced by syntactic parallelism as the following example shows:

(42)

No. of Sylls. Q: Gwa m I na-ele m, 5 I na-ele m 5 Ӑ bө m gburu gӏ? 6 A: Eluөlӑ gwara ozu e nyibere n’ime ya 15 (Q: Do you look at me, Do you look at me, Did I kill you? A: The roof told the corpse that is lying inside room.)

No. of Beats 5 5 6 15

In the above riddle, the rhythm of the two lines, after ‘Gwa m’, is based on equal time duration. Each of the two lines has 5 syllables, meaning that they have equal beats and the same rhythm. This is enhanced by immediate repetition because “I na-ele m” (“Do you look at me”) is repeated without any intervening line.

Tonal Riddles Tonal riddles derive their strength not from meaning but from tonal similarity in the question and the answer. For instance, No. of Sylls. Q: Gwa m ӐҒrӑnҒkӑҒ nkӑҒ ӑҒ rӑnkӑ tӑnkӑ‫ޜ‬ҕ 13 A: ӐҒmenҒkà egbè ӑҒ gbagbuli dandƗ 13 (Q: Tell me ͕r͕n̖k͕̖ nk͕̖ ͕̖ r͕nk͕ t͕nk͕‫ޜ‬ A: The renowned gunman, can he kill an ant.)

No. of Beats

(36)

13 13

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In the above riddle, lines 2 and 3 have 13 syllables each. The equality of the syllables amounts to equality of beats and time duration, and therefore the same rhythm. There is equality of tone in the two lines. There is also tonal rhyme at the end of the lines ‘… tӑnkӑ‫ ޜ‬and … dandƗ. Here, the final vowels have down step tone.

Regular Recurrence of Sense Balance This is a kind of rhythm where one utterance or line balances the other in logical sequence thereby producing some sort of rhythm that is tied not to the structure but to the sense. This type of rhythm also features in Igbo riddles. For instance, (43)

Q: Gwa m Ite e siwere n’akөkө өzӑ, Onye pөta ӑ fөnye ӑkө. A: Nsӏ a nyөrө n’akөkө өzӑ, Onye pөta ӑ bөnye asө? (Q: Tell me A pot that is being cooked by the roadside, Whoever passes by makes the fire. A: Faeces deposited by the roadside, Whoever passes by spits).

In the above riddle, the sense in line two: ‘Ite e siwere n’akөkө өzӑ,’ (‘A pot that is being cooked by the roadside’) is balanced by the sense in line three: ‘Onye pөta ӑ fөnye ӑnө’. (‘whoever passes by makes the fire’), and similarly, the sense in line four: ‘Nsӏ a nyөrө n’akөkө өzӑ’ (‘Faeces deposited by the roadside’) is balanced by the sense in line five: ‘Onye pөta ӑ bunye asө’ (‘Whoever passes by he spits’)

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Here we have semantic parallelism in the sense that one part of the utterances balances the other; though some parts of the utterances have identical syntactic structure. The rhythm emphasized in sense balance is therefore not tied to the structure but to the sense. The same sense balance is observable in riddle, (14)

Q: Gwa m 'Osisi ӑma m hөrө n’өzӑ, Ӑ dӏghӏ mmà m ji egbu ya. A: Nwaanyӏ ӑma m hөrө n’өzӑ, Ӑ dӏghӏ ego m ji alө ya. (Q: Tell me A beautiful tree I saw on the way, I had no knife to cut it. A: A beautiful woman I met on the way, I had no money to marry her.)

Here, the sense in line two: ‘Osisi ӑma m hөrө n’өzӑ,’ (‘A beautiful tree I saw on the way’) is balanced by the sense in line three: ‘Ӑ dӏghӏ mmà m ji egbu ya’ (‘I had no knife to cut it’), and the sense in line four: ‘Nwaanyӏ ӑma m hөrө n’өzӑ,’ (‘A beautiful woman I met on the way), is balanced by the sense in line five: ‘Ӑ dӏghӏ ego m ji alө ya.’ (‘I had no money to marry her’) From the above examination of the formal organisation, language and rhythm of the Igbo riddles, it is clear that they truly have poetic qualities.

Conclusion The observation that other aspects of Igbo oral poetry have received more attention than the riddles in terms of analytical studies enkindled our interest in this paper to make an exposé of the stylistic elements of Igbo riddles and the nature of the contexts in which the riddles are produced and consumed.

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This study has shown how contexts not only help to shape creativity in Igbo riddles but also contribute to the decoding of their meanings. Our analysis has revealed and established the fact that the Igbo riddles have such recognized features of oral poetry as subject matter, poetic language and rhythm. Not until the Igbo riddles are fully recognized and given due academic treatment like other forms of oral poetry should the study of our oral poetry be considered complete. Igbo riddles should not merely be included or mentioned in passing in Igbo literary studies but made to be in the mainstream of the study of Igbo oral poetry, for it is through this that they will be more popular and greatly appreciated by the people. This study has provided additional materials for this. It is therefore advocated that more collections of Igbo riddles should be made and reduced to print as we have in the other aspects of oral poetry. This will make their study at different levels of our school systems possible; and in studying them, relevant critical approaches adopted in the analysis of other forms of oral poetry should be applied. This study has demonstrated that Igbo riddles can be examined from formalistic and pragmatic standpoint. Other alternative critical approaches can equally be exploited in future analysis of Igbo riddles to broaden our knowledge. With more efforts, like the one we have made in this paper, we hope that the gap that exists between mere collections of Igbo riddles and the analysis of their literary characteristics can be bridged, and then the Igbo riddles will no longer be relegated to the background in the study of Igbo oral literature. Neglecting any aspect of Igbo literary genres is a threat to the future wellbeing of our literary tradition. Because of their entertainment and educational values, we also advocate the formalization of Igbo riddles as part of our nursery and primary school curricula. What Yai (1976-77: 456) has asserted in his study of the Yoruba riddles applies equally to the Igbo riddles: One advantage of formalizing … riddles apart from portraying the genre with minimum ambiguity is that it provides a useful basis for comparative analysis thereby making possible an advance towards a tentative theory of riddle universals.

As we expect that this paper will stimulate further studies on Igbo riddles, it is encouraged that comparative study of say, Igbo and Yoruba riddles or that of any other ethnic nationality in Nigeria can be undertaken to highlight the similarity of the peoples’ literary tradition.

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References Abercrombie, D. (1967) Elements of general phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Abraham, R., Dundes, A. (1972) “Riddles.” In R. M. Dorson (ed) Folklore and folklife: An introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 130. Akindolire, N. (1999) Introduction to literary appreciation. Lagos: Bisnel Publishing. Asimov, I. (1984) Asimov’s new guide to science. London: Penguin Group. Austin, J. L. (1962) How to do things with words. London: Oxford University Press. Babalola, S. A. (1974) Not vernaculars, but Languages. Inaugural Lecture. Lagos: University of Lagos Press. Bach, K., Harnish, R. M. (1979) Linguistic communication and speech acts. Cambridge: M. I. T. Press. Bloor, M., Bloor, T. (2007) The practice of critical discourse analysis. London: Holder Education. Boulton, M. (1986) The anatomy of prose. New Delhi-Ludhiana: Kalyani Publishers. Chukwuma, H. (1994) Igbo oral literature, theory and tradition. Abak: Belpot (Nig). Crystal, D. (1992). The Cambridge encyclopedia of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Egudu, R. (1972) “Proverbs and riddles in Igbo traditional verse.” Ikenga 1(1), 101-108. ——., (1977) The study of poetry. Ibadan: Oxford University press. Emenanjo, N. E. (1989) Atͭmatͭ agͭmagͭ na atͭmatͭ okwu. Ikeja: Longman Nigeria. ——., (2007) “Two minor genres of Igbo oral literature: Tongue twisters and riddles.” Journal of Igbo Studies 2, 6-13. Encyclopedia Americana. Vol. 23. Danbury: Grolier. Finnegan, R. (1970) Oral literature in Africa. Nairobi: Oxford University Press. Goring, P., Hawsthorn, J., Mitchell, D. (2009) Studying literature. UK: Hodder Education. Grice, H. P. (1975) “Logic and conversation.” In P. Cole, J. Morgan (eds) Syntax and semantics 3. New York: Academic Press. 41-58.

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Hymes, D. (1964) “Towards ethnographies of communication events.” In P. P Giglioli (ed) Language and social context. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 21-44. Ikwubuzo, I. (1992-93) “Towards a classification of Igbo riddles.” Ihafa, A Journal of African Studies 1(1), 52-61. ——., (2002) “Igbo riddles and the education of the Igbo child.” African Journal of Curriculum and Instruction 1(1), 102-112. Katz, J. J., Fodor, J.A. (1963) “The structure of a semantic theory.” Language 39, 170-210. Lusweti, B. M. (1984) The hyena and the rock: A handbook of oral literature for schools. London: Macmillan Publishers. Njoku, T., Izuagba, A.C. (2004) New approaches to English language and literature. 2nd ed. Owerrӏ: Versatile Publishers. Nwadike, I. U. (2003) Agumagu odinala Igbo. Onitsha: Africana First Publishers. Ogbalu, F. C. (1973) Okwu Ntͭhi: A book of Igbo riddles (gwa m gwa m). Onitsha: University Publishing. Olatunji, O. O. (1984) Features of Yoruba oral poetry. Ibadan: University Press. Osisanwo, W. (2005) Introduction to discourse analysis and pragmatics. Lagos: Femolus-Fetop Pulishers. Rice, P., Waugh, P. (1992) Modern literary theory. 2nd ed. London: Edward Arnold. Searle, J. R. (1969) Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ugonna, N. (1980) Abͭ na egwuregwu od͓nala Igbo. Ikeja: Longman Nigeria. ——., (1984) Mm͕nwͭ: A dramatic tradition of the Igbo. Lagos: University of Lagos Press. Uzochukwu, S. (1982) “Features of Igbo oral poetry.” Igbo, Journal of SPILC 1, 36-50. ——., (1988) “Critical approaches to Igbo literature: A preliminary study.” Nka, a journal of the arts 2, 31-42. ——., (2001) Traditional funeral poetry of the Igbo. Lagos: University of Lagos Press. Yai, O. (1976-77) “Some structural aspects of Yoruba aló apamo (riddles).” University of Ife. Seminar Series 1(II), 427-456. Yankson, K. (1987) An Introduction to literary stylistics. Uruowolu-Obosi: Pacific Publishers.

Mikhail Gromov

On Stylistic Trends in Modern Swahili Poetry Poetic tradition in Swahili goes with its roots to the beginning of the last millennium, to the times of existence on East African coast of the Swahili civilization, whose very foundation was the mixture of indigenous African, Arabic, Persian, Indian, Portuguese and some other cultural substrates. Over a period of roughly eight hundred years, the two main genres of this poetry came to shape - tendi (or sometimes tenzi, epic poems; singular form utendi) and mashairi (lyrical poetry, singular form - shairi). 1 Like any other genres of medieval poetry, tendi and mashairi were characterized by strict thematic and stylistic canon, violation of which could lead to the exclusion of the deviant author from the ranks of poets. Since the stylistic imperatives of traditional poetry will be substantial for this study, below I will make a more detailed presentation of these stylistic features. Tendi are usually considered by the researchers of Swahili poetry as the works of higher style, which in fact was stipulated with their thematic range – the topics of tendi usually were the events of early history of Islam (as an example we could refer to Utenzi wa Herkali – The epic of Heraklios, written presumably in the first half of the eighteenth century, but narrating the events of campaign waged by Arabs against Byzantines in Syria in the seventh century AD), deeds of the Prophet, norms of Islamic morale and philosophy; later historical tendi started to deal with more recent events happening in Eastern Africa – e.g., colonial conquest (Utenzi wa Wadachi kutamalaki Mrima – Epic of the German siege of Mrima by Hemed Abdallah al-Buhriy, written circa 1895). This thematic range, as we will see, has been preserved until the very recent times (although some topics were adjusted corresponding to the demands of the new era). The main structural unit of an utendi is a strophe (ubeti, plural beti, derived from Arabic beit), that has four lines (mistari, singular mstari; the term mishororo is also used). Each line consists of eight syllables – mizani (although examples of twelve-syllable lines are also known). The first three

1

Being restricted by the format of the article, I deliberately do not dwell even generally upon the historical and other aspects of traditional Swahili poetry, since the works dedicated to this subject are in plenty. For a fruitful start, works of Jan Knappert, Wilfred Whiteley, Lyndon Harries, J.W.T. Allen and Mohamed Abdulaziz could be recommended.

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lines end with identical rhyming syllable, the last syllable of the fourth line – kikomo – is different from the first three: Si shairi, si malenga (I am) not a poet, not a singer-malenga, Sijui sana kutunga Do not know much about composition, But the ruler of Yunga, Ila fumo wa Yunga The owner of the country, told me 2 Mwenye nchi kunambia (Utenzi wa Herkali, verse 1002)

Mashairi, which many scholars of traditional Swahili rime term as lyrical poetry (see Abdulaziz 1979), could be ascribed to the “lower” poetic forms. Unlike tendi, which mostly were created by professional poets (frequently members of the sultanic courts of the states of Swahili coast), mashairi were created by ordinary people – the waungwana, middle class of Swahili cities, the leading figure among those poets being Muyaka bin Haji al Ghassaniy (1776-c.1840). Correspondingly, the thematic circle of mashairi was different – they were dealing mainly with themes from everyday life, such as human relations, trade, etc.; a prominent theme, however, was the everturbulent political situation on East African coast (suffice it to recall some of Muyaka’s poems). Structurally a shairi (lyrical poem) could roughly be called a “doublelength utendi”; its line really looks like a line from an utendi doubled in length. The line contains 16 syllables, in the first three lines two syllables are rhyming – the middle one (the 8th) and the ending (the 16th). Four lines form a strophe (ubeti); the last syllable in the fourth line differs from the ending rhyming syllables in the first three: Usinambie pa pale mama na baba waliko come from Na watu wajee tele hajua shauri lako Leo ni pweke tukele na washauri hawako yours, Hili langu ndio lako au una jinginele anything else?

Don’t tell me about the where your parents Here today we are alone, there are no advisers, People are in plenty there, but you do not know This is mine, this is yours, or do you have

The reason I dwell more or less in detail on structural and stylistic features of two traditional genres of Swahili poetry is that these two genres managed to survive almost completely unaltered until the modern times, both in Kenya and Tanzania. The thematic range of tendi in modern times once again was changed following the imperatives of post-colonial era – but even the basic 2

All the translations from Swahili not noted otherwise are mine.

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themes remained the same. Historical tendi were now telling about the foundation of ruling Revolutionary party in Tanzania (Utenzi wa Chama cha Mapinduzi – Epic of the Revolutionary party by Evaristo Mahimbi, 1981), about the struggle of independence in Kenya (Utenzi wa uhuru wa Kenya – Epic of Kenya’s freedom by Salim Kibao 1972), war for independence in former Portuguese colonies (Utenzi wa vita vya uhuru wa Msumbiji - Epic of war for independence in Mozambique by Jumanne Manyoka 1978) or condemning the political regimes in some newly independent states (Utenzi wa vita vya Kagera na anguko la Idi Amin Dada – Epic of war for Kagera and the fall of Idi Amin Dada by Henry Muhanika 1981). Religious tendi were retelling the stories of biblical heroes, both in Christian and Islamic interpretation (Utenzi wa maisha ya Adamu na Hawa – Epic of the life of Adam and Eve by Abdilatif Abdalla 1974, Utenzi wa nabii Issa – Epic of prophet Jesus by Musa Mzenga 1977); didactic tendi were prescribing the norms of good social behaviour (Nia njema tabibu, nia mbaya huharibu – Good aim heals, bad aim kills by Leila Nassor Seif 1977) and advising on good marriage (Utenzi wa huba – Epic of love by Felix Semghanga 1969). Mashairi, because of their lyrical nature, have even initially been dealing with wider range of topics; in post-colonial period, a topic which has attained growing prominence (however being present in mashairi from the beginning) was politics. Tanzanian poets Saadani Kandoro, Mathias Mnyampala, Andanenga and Akilimali Snow-White were writing poems about revolutionary reforms in the country and the wisdom of Julius Nyerere; Kenyan Faraji Dumila edited in 1979 collections of mashairi devoted to the president Daniel arap Moi and his nyayo philosophy – the theory of “Kenyan socialism”. Certainly, the thematic range of mashairi of post-colonial times was not confined to politics. In many works we find brilliant examples of philosophical, social, moral and even amorous lyrics. What is notable is that stylistically this poetry has remained firmly founded on age old principles of Swahili rime. If we look at the poetic collections of quite a few Tanzanian and Kenyan poets of post-colonial era, we will see that they meticulously and immaculately preserve these principles in their works. The modern adepts of tenzi, such as Tanzanians Mohamed Khatib, Mohamed Saleh, Saidi Nurru, Ramadani Mwaruka, Kenyans Hassani Mbega, Saleh Muhammad do not go beyond 8-syllable lines and end-rhymes. Likewise, collections of mashairi by such poets as Tanzanians Cuthbert Omari, David Massamba, Theobald Mvungi, Zacharia Mochiwa, Ellie Uvetie, Kenyans Abdilatif Abdalla, Kineene wa Mutiso, Benjamin Magawa show the authors’ devotion to the 16syllable 4-line structure of a strophe. In fact, the deviation from the sanctified

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stylistic demands was fraught with harsh criticism and even ostracism from the ranks of the poets. The reasons for such an endurance of traditional Swahili poetic forms could be several. One of the most important factors that, in my opinion, allowed the traditional Swahili poetry, medieval by nature, to survive and get adjusted to the demands of the new era was the fact that this poetry was in real sense people’s poetry. In the late colonial and especially post-colonial era the development of newspaper publication encouraged many people to make their own attempts and contributions in the poetic field, to be published in newspapers for public contemplation; this wave of “free-lance” poetry was immensely enhanced after independence with the development of education (especially the mass campaign of literacy courses for adults). It especially applied to mashairi, which was already born as “people’s poetry”, the poetry of Swahili middle class – unlike tenzi, which were historically written mostly by professional poets (in could also be one of the reasons that of the two genres of traditional Swahili poetry tenzi enjoy less popularity in modern times). As Mulokozi and Sengo put it, “the collected poetry is only the top of the iceberg… The bulk of the poems remain “buried” in newspapers, magazines, editing rooms of the periodicals and radio stations… and even the greater bulk remained in handwriting in school rooms, party offices, student hostels and private houses” (Mulokozi 2000: 58). Another reason is that in the minds of very many people these traditional poetic forms were associated with the very notion of poetry through religious tradition (not only Islamic, but later also Christian – Christian missionaries were actively using traditional poetic forms for propagating Christianity, for example, through such newspapers as Mambo Leo), which associated traditional poetry with “pious” literature based on the religious canon. Moreover, up to the first decades of independence Swahili poets merely did not have other literary guidelines – very few of these poets were able to read the modern poetry in its languages of origin (mostly European), and the translations of modern African and non-African poets into Swahili were (and largely are still) not available. Therefore, such “state of tranquility” (or, in other words, the age of traditional poetic forms) lasted in modern Swahili poetry until the middle of 1970s, when for the first time some poets of younger generation revealed their inclination towards poetic experiments, or, in other words, adaptation of the stylistic principles of modern Western poetry to Swahili verse. That happened due to the fact that these poets already belonged to the new generation of East African authors, whose educational background lay not in the traditional education (especially religious – either Islamic or Christian),

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but in the modern Western-type university education adopted in new independent states of East Africa – namely, the founders of modernist Swahili poetry were the students of the University of Dar es Salaam (this is one of the reasons why, in fact, modernist Swahili poetry is often referred to as “university poetry”). 3 These young poets apparently felt that the traditional forms of Swahili poetry were ossified, that they were not giving the poets creative freedom needed in the independence era. Therefore, they introduced into Swahili poetry free verse, new forms (for example, “graphic” poetry of Guillome Apollinaire manner), free stanza division, unusual metaphors and other previously unheard-of poetic devices. Thematically, although these poems were not very much different from the range of themes treated by “traditionalists” (from this time on we will be using this term, already used by such scholars as Farouk Topan, in regard to modern adepts of traditional poetic forms), they treated many of the established themes in a different way – were cautious about praising the new ujamaa order in Tanzania, doubtful about the role of a human in modern world; generally, many of their poems were marked with pronouncedly pessimistic attitude to life, uncharacteristic for traditionalists. The two books which announced the birth of new poetry in Swahili were published almost simultaneously by Dar es Salaam University Press in 1974. Those were Kunga za Ushairi na Diwani Yetu (Secrets of poetry and our poetic collection) by Mugyabuso Mulokozi and Kulikoyelo Kahigi and Kichomi (The burn) by Euphrase Kezilahabi. 4 To show how different was the modernist Swahili poetry from that of the traditionalists, I will give below some examples from these books. This is how Kahigi and Mulokozi outlined their vision of the place of a human being in modern dehumanized world in the poem Mimi ni nani? (Who am I?):

3

4

I introduce the term “modernist poetry” out of necessity to distinguish between modern Swahili poetry in general – the poetry created in post colonial times, to which the traditional poetic forms also belong, and modernist Swahili poetry – the one using free verse and other innovations. It should be noted that the first poetic collection by Mulokozi and Kahigi with even more symptomatic title Mashairi ya kisasa (lit. Modern poems) was published even a year earlier, in 1973; however, it did not have such a profound impact as their second collection.

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Mimi ni nani? Niko wapi? Nimetoka wapi? Ninakwenda wapi? Wengi watajibu: Mimi ni mtu Niko duniani Nimetoka ardhini Bali mimi nasema: Mimi ni kitu Niko ardhini Nimetoka ardhini Nitarudi ardhini Hakuna Mungu Hakuna mbingu Hakuna shetani Hakuna malaika Hakuna mtawa Hakuna mwovu Roho yako Ndiyo Mungu yako Mazingira yako Ndiyo shetani yako Kaburi lako Ndiyo mbingu yako Mateso yako duniani Ndiyo jahanamu yako Nimesema!

Who am I? Where am I? Where did I come from? And where do I go? Many will answer: I am human I am in this world And come from the soil But I say: I am [just] a thing I am in the soil I came from the soil And will return to the soil There is no God There is no sky There is no devil There is no angel There is no hermit There is no sinner Your soul Is exactly your God Your ambience Is exactly your devil Your grave Is exactly your sky Your tortures in this world Is exactly your hell I’ve said!

Here the poets seem to argue with the ancient Swahili saying “mtu siye kitu, mtu ni utu” – “a human is not a thing, but a receptacle of humanness”, a philosophical postulate common for traditional Swahili worldview and traditional poetry. They state that the world they live in turns a human into a “thing” with no one to confide to or to be helped with but his soul. Euphrase Kezilahabu seems to follow this point of view; in his poem Nifungulie mlango (Open me the door) he develops the same theme from a different angle, speaking about the lonely and torturous state of an artist:

Modern Swahili Poetry

Hewa kunikosa Na jasho kunitoka ndani ya chumba Kwa upweke Ninajiona nimefungiwa. Sioni madirisha lakini Ninaugonga kwa mikono Kichwa na mabega Mlango unatoa mlio kilio, Lakini mwanadamu hatanifungulia. Damu Damu puani, damu mdomoni, Damu kichwani itumikayo kama wino…

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I am short of air And sweat flows on me inside the room I am alone I feel as if I am self-detained I do not see the windows but I bang [the door] with hands Head and shoulders The door squeaks and cries But no one will open for me Blood Blood in the nose, blood on the lips Blood from the head used as ink…

As it could be seen, in their works the young poets rejected all the stylistic norms which formed the foundation of traditional Swahili poetry – the fixed stanza division, the internal and end rhymes, kikomo’s. In the introduction to their work, Mulokozi and Kahigi were trying to provide theoretical grounding for their poetic preferences. According to them, the emergence of tenzi and mashairi was to a very large extent stipulated by Arabic influence, whereas unrhymed poetry was intrinsic to local oral tradition of the Bantu peoples long before any foreign influences started to show; as an example, the authors analysed the phonic structure of the Bahaya hunting song (Mulokozi 1974: 12-13). Therefore, they declared, new Swahili poetry was as firmly based on the local oral tradition as it was on the adaptation of the innovations from modern Western poetry. In the end, they stated, the phonic system of this new poetry is more consonant with African mentality, then the old Swahili poetic forms, which in fact were “imported” from Arabian peninsula (to confirm this the authors analysed the phonic structure of traditional Arabic qasida, stating it to be practically identical to traditional Swahili metre). Furthermore, they found unrhymed verses among the works of Shaaban Robert and Amri Abedi, two outstanding Swahili poets of the twentieth century. No matter how unconvincing could some of their observations sound, the contribution of these authors to the development of Swahili poetry could hardly be underestimated – not only to its theory and practical development (the second part of the book contained the authors’ diwani – collected poetic works, which, in spite of traditional Arabic-rooted name, were all in modernist form), but even to modern poetic terminology – the authors themselves have provided the Swahili translations of many terms, such as ridhimu – tempo, takriri – repetition, takriri-konsonansi – alliteration, and others.

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The experiments of young Tanzanian poets were immediately met with harsh criticism by the adepts of traditional verse forms. The most modest comments were saying that “the so-called modern Swahili poetry is just an imitation of Western poetic patters”, as it was put by well-known literary critic and paragon of traditional Swahili culture Tigiti Sengo (quoted from Mulokozi 1974: 18); poet and scholar David Massamba stated that “we, the adepts of old forms, will be writing the way we are used to, and the university poets may continue in their own way – provided that this way is not lost by them” (Massamba 1976: v). Others were more direct: Shihabuddin Chiraghdin, for instance, stated that “if these compositions are accepted as poems, then the status of Swahili poetry will have been reduced miserably to a nonentity” (quoted from Topan 1974: 176). Older advocates of “good old” poetry were making even harsher remarks – moreover, frequently in poetic form, as it was demanded by Swahili poetic tradition. That is how Akilimali Snow-White responded in a poem to the emergence of new poetic forms: Tangu wafe maamiri – na kutuonya hatuna, Tumebaki mafakiri, na hii kubwa hazina, Lugha imesafiri, kwenda kusojulikana, Kufa kwa watu adili – utunzi umepotea (Akilimali 1976: c.79) Since the leaders died – we don’t have anyone to warn us, We are left with jesters, and it is not a big treasure, The language disappeared, going to the unknown, With the death of the worthy, poetry is lost

In another poem, Ushairi ni Waadhi (Poetry is a vocation) he makes even more caustic comment: Wamekwisha wasanifu, wajuzi wakutongowa Baki ushairi gofu, heshimae kupopoa, Watu kulana sinofu, kwa uhasidi na ngoa Ushairi ni waadhi, kwa mtu mwenye kujua Siku hizi kazi yake ni matusi kutumiwa, Mtu mwenye tusi lake, shairini hulitiwa Hii ni aibu peke, washairi twazomewa, Ushairi ni waadhi, kwa mtu mwenye kujua The purists are finished, the knowledgeable [who] spoke out, Only ruins of poems remained, with its respect stoned down, People who gnaw each other, with envy and lust, Poetry is a vocation, for those who have the knowledge

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And these days the poetry is even made to swear, A person who knows the curses, puts them into his poem, It is a pure shame, we poets groan in derision, Poetry is a vocation, for those who have the knowledge

Speaking about “swearings”, Akilimali apparently meant the attempts of the younger poets to reform even the very language of poetry, replacing the lofty, sedate, slow-flowing language of traditional poetry, abundant with Arabisms, archaic words and reduced word forms, with nearly colloquial, daily Swahili, which could be heard even in the street (although one could hardly reproach the young poets with real use of swearings – the four-letter word language of modern Western poetry is even now not very much adopted in modern Swahili verse). The younger “swearers” were fast to repay, moreover fighting the “old warriors” with their own weapons of traditional poetry. In order to prove to the elders, that traditional poetic style is also manageable for them, Mulokozi and Kahigi made a vitriolic attack on the “elders” in the poem Wimbo wa leo (The song of today). The poem, written in perfect shairi form, nevertheless was mocking the “elders”, calling them to “sing the song of today”: Waliliao wa kale, wakumbuka leo siyo Nyimbo za ngoma za kale, uipishe mbiyo mbiyo Mizimu ya babu wale, haina uwezo hiyo, Leo siyo jana ile, leo siku nyingineyo Those who regret about ancient times, do not remember today, Let the songs of the old dances quickly give way Spirits of the ancestors do not have might today, Today is not yesterday, today is another day

Thus, against all odds, modernist poetry in Swahili came to life, and its emergence announced new period in the development of the entire poetic tradition in Swahili. In 1980s and 1990s modernist trend became established in Kenya, with such poets as Alamin Mazrui, the elder son of the worldfamous Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui, and especially Kithaka wa Mberia – the linguist, professor of the University of Nairobi, whose poetic works have already brought him to the topmost ranks of modern Swahili poetry. What, in the light of the above, was the landscape in Swahili poetry of Kenya and Tanzania in the last quarter of the twentieth century? What were the main trends and directions along which this poetry was developing? We are putting this question in order to highlight the topic of this article – to outline the main features of style in modern Swahili poetry, for in this case

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the notion of “style”, as we tried to show above, is hardly separable with the word “trend”. Farouk Topan in his seminal 1974 article “Modern Swahili poetry” – the article which, in my view, had established the criticism of modern poetry in Swahili – distinguishes four basic types of modern Swahili verse. In the first position he lists mashairi, 16-line genre of traditional poetry, which continues to be actively employed by modern authors; as the second and the third type he names songs – traditional, nyimbo za kienyeji, “that are sung in various contexts sanctioned by the traditions and customs” (Topan 1974: 175) and popular songs, “whose content is distinctly social and political in nature” (Topan 1974: 176); as it becomes clear from the footnote on the same page, the scholar is speaking about taarab song tradition. Finally, as the fourth type, Topan names modern poetry in Swahili, composed “by university students writing in blank and free verse”. Taking the picture drawn by the esteemed and distinguished Tanzanian scholar and writer in his article as a foundation, I will try to outline the state (and thus the stylistic trends) that, in my opinion, has been existing in modern Swahili poetry since the late 1970s, i.e., immediately after Topan’s article came out of print. One important remark should be made: this study is concentrated on written, or, as Mulokozi put it, “collected” poetry; hence, neither of the two songs types mentioned by Topan fall into the scope of this study. Thus, it would appear that the Swahili poetic scene in the last thirtyfive years has been divided between two main trends – traditionalist poetry (to which, apart from mashairi, I would still attribute the tendi), and modernist poetry, and the “old strife” is still going on. Or is it? For, in my opinion, since even the time when Farouk Topan’s article was published, there have been first humble, then more intense attempts to reconcile the two “belligerent” strata of modern Swahili rime, to find a certain “golden mean” between the two. In his article, Topan analyses a poem by Tanzanian author Crispin Hauli, titled Maisha haya (This life); in this poem Hauli describes the current of human life. Topan calls this poem “a fantasy in free verse” (Topan 1974: 84). Leaving aside the poem’s subject matter, let us concentrate on its stylistic features. Why does Topan call this poem a free verse one? Commonly it is known, that free verse has neither regularity of the lines length nor that of the rhyme. Does this poem suit these criteria? Below I quote an excerpt from the poem – in fact, its seven opening lines:

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1. Maisha yangu ni haya 2. Naeleza bila haya 3. Ni ukweli siyo kwaya 4. Binadamu amezawa 5. Nami nimejitokeza 6. Jasho jingi na kuhema 7. Najiona nina homa (Topan 1974: 182)

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This is my life I relate without shame It is the truth, not lies. A human birth And I appear Sweating and panting I feel feverish

As it could be seen, irregularity of lines is out of question here – each line has 8 syllables, i.e. it follows the utendi metre. The rhymes in the lines 4-7 are to an extent irregular (although the last vowel is the same), but three first lines have similar rhyme – ya; in fact, the first three line really look like an incomplete quatrain from an utendi, only the last line with kikomo is lacking! Yes, I think that in real sense the poet’s aim in this poem – in terms of style – was not to introduce free verse or any other “non-Swahili” innovations, but in fact to renovate the classic utendi form by furnishing it with new, previously unused stylistic features, like uneven rhyming and free stanza structure, thus bridging traditionalist and modernist poetry. I would not be that concerned with this single (maybe the very first) attempt to bring the two strata together, but for the fact that in the subsequent years these attempts became more elaborate and numerous – so numerous that it allows to speak about the third, “intermediate” trend in modern Swahili poetry, whose followers tend to combine creatively stylistic principles of both classical and modern Swahili verse. One of the most consistent efforts of bridging traditionalist and modernist poetry could be found in poetic works of outstanding Tanzanian writer Said Ahmed Mohamed. In is poetic collections (so far he has published three books of poetry) he demonstrates amazing skills of handling both traditional forms of tendi and mashairi and modernistic free verse. In my opinion, however, the most notable are his attempts to enrich classical poetry with modernistic innovations. As an example I would quote two poems from S.A.Mohamed’s first collection ‘Sikate tamaa (Do not give up, 1980). One of the most pronounced stylistic devices in Mohamed’s poetry is one- or two-word lines – the poet accentuates the importance of meaning of a word or word combination by putting them into a separate line. Here is the example from the poem Rangi hii (This colour):

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Hata iwe nywele zao katu hawajichunuwi Si mno Pia yawe macho yao katu hawajipofuwi Si mno Mno ni rangi ya mwili Even if your hair

has not yet fallen off Doesn’t matter Also if your eyes have not yet blinded themselves Doesn’t matter [It is] colour of the body that matters Ah, sasa n’metambua

tatizo sio la rangi ni mno

Tatizo ya hayo kuwa

yalopita miaka mingi ni mno Mno si rangi ya mwili.

Ah, now I’ve acknowledged

problem is not the colour

that matters Problem is that

many years have passed that matters Colour of the body does not matter

Here one can see how the poet sets the necessary accents through purely graphic means – by “breaking” the line into two halves. The first half bears an unfinished statement, which, followed by a graphic caesura, creates a feeling of suspense, unanswered question – and the answer after caesura, contained in the second half of the line, “tumbles” upon the reader, to be followed by a short, as a whiplash, line (two words), “striking” the main message - “si mno” and “ni mno” (doesn’t matter – that matters). By separating these words into a single line, the poet emphasizes the main emotional accent of a stanza. Such graphic accentuation of words, lines and their parts is the essential device in many poems by S.A.Mohamed, and, of course, such graphic innovations are hardly compatible with traditional poetry… Hardly? For in the second example, an excerpt from the poem Pavumapo palilie (You reap where you weed) such graphic accentuation is made on the traditional shairi: Uchipukapo mmea Utiliwapo mbolea Ujapo kunyong’onyea

‘kanawiri maridadi na maji ya makasudi usipate kujirudi Jua,

Pavumapo palilie

si kazi kudamirika!

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When a plant is springing up and looks healthy and beautiful When you put fertilizers and plenty of water When it becomes weak do not lose heart, Know, You reap where you weed it is not a futile job!

Here we see how the poet again breaks the line in order to produce the “suspense effect” (tedious waiting for the answer is achieved by inserting graphic caesura), and after the third line he “whiplashes” the reader’s perception with single-word line containing a command – “Jua” (Know). Otherwise the poem is a traditional 16-syllable 4-line shairi with internal and ending rhyme and a kikomo. In his other collections (Kina cha maisha – Depth of life, 1984, and Jicho la ndani – Inner eye, 2004) the poet demonstrates even more elaborate techniques of mixing the stylistic features of traditional and modern poetry in order to attain a new artistic entity. Generally it can be assumed, that this trend in modern Swahili verse will retain its already established position, for the inclination to such “renovating” of traditional forms is also evident in the works of such authors as Charles Mloka, Sistus Mallya, and some others.

Conclusion In the light of the argument adduced above, it seems now possible to state that currently modern Swahili poetry (I would again make this reservation – we are speaking about “written”, or “collected” poetry, excluding the verses from newspapers and radio broadcasts, as well as recently emerged cultural phenomena such as Tanzanian bongo flava or sheng poetry in Kenya) comprises three main trends. The first one is traditionalistic poetry, i.e. poets giving consistent preference to old poetic forms of tenzi and mashairi; as representatives, we can quote the names of Haji Gora Haji, Theobald Mvungi, Zacharia Mochiwa and some others. The second one – modernist poetry, which adapts to Swahili verse stylistic innovations generated by nonAfrican as well as African poetry of the last century, represented by such authors as Euphrase Kezilahabi, Mugyabuso Mulokozi, Alamin Mazrui, Kithaka wa Mberia. Finally, the third trend unites the poets who try to “bridge the gap” between the first two by combining in their works stylistic features of both traditionalist and modernist poetry, - such authors as Said Ahmed Mohamed, Charles Mloka, and others. It also seems that the “strife” or “crisis” between traditionalist and modernist poetry has at last substantially subdued, and currently the modernists are paying their

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reverence to the adepts of traditional forms (in an unpublished interview Kithaka wa Mberia told the author of this study that the old strife “is no more”), whereas traditionalists are benevolently giving the modernist poetry “license to live” (Kitula Kingei, one of the most staunch opponents of traditionalist poetry, in his recent collection Miale ya uzalendo – Rays of patriotism, 2004, surprised his readers with a poem in strikingly modernist style). However, the question – in my opinion, the inevitable one – comes: do these trends occupy relatively equal position in modern Swahili poetry, or is there an obvious domination of one of them? Here one must admit that the palm should be given, obviously, to traditionalist poetry. Mashairi, being born several centuries ago, still comprise the highest percent of modern poetic activity in Swahili-speaking East Africa, still remain the “people’s poetry”, through which the populace reacts to urgent issues of present-day social reality, using all the possible channels – from newspapers and radio broadcasts to open-air gatherings. Tendi are still composed by not only professional poets, but also by army officers, civil servants, school teachers. Moreover, even the prominent members of modernist guild are paying their respect to traditional poetic forms not only by words, but even by practically incorporating the stylistic features of these forms in their works. Here I would quote a few lines from a poem titled Giza mbele (Darkness ahead) from Kithaka wa Mberia’s second collection Bara jingine (Other continent, 2003): Vitabu mkononi Kutojua akilini Umaskini nyumbani Angojewa kwa hamu Kama windo, anafika Katika mtego wa hayawani (Mberia 2003: 26) Books in hand Ignorance in mind Poverty in the house He is patiently awaited Like a booty, and he falls Into a trap of the beast

Here one can see that Kithaka wa Mberia, currently the most prominent figure in Swahili free verse, the founder of “graphic” poetry in Swahili actually starts the stanza with an unfinished utendi quatrain, in very much the

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same manner as in the above quoted poem by Crispin Hauli – with fixed endrhymes (-ni) and eight-syllable lines (only in the first line the length is reduced to six syllables – after all, it is not an utendi!). 5 Such incorporation of traditional stylistic features into modern verse is not a rarity in recent Swahili poetry – examples could be drawn from Euphrase Kezilahabi’s latest collection Dhifa (Feast, 2008). Even in the very first stanza of the opening poem of the collection, Kwa walimu wote (To all teachers), we again find an inserted “unfinished stanza” from a traditional poem – this time, a shairi: Sikilizeni wimbo huu: Nilipokuwa mtoto niliitwa Chacha Kwa matamshi yangu ya sasa Nilipokuwa kijana niliitwa Chaupele Nilipokuwa mtu mzima niliitwa Manywele Nilipokuwa mwalimu nikaitwa Bure (Kezilahabi 2008: 1) Listen to this song: When I was a child I was called “Sourness”, In my pronunciation of today, When I became a youngster I was called “Scabies”, When I became an adult I was called “Dreadlocks”, When I became a teacher I was called “Useless”

Although the poet is not using the precise rhymes, the reminiscence is clear: 16-sylable lines, rhyming 8th and 16th syllables. And apparently these “insertions” of traditional stylistic elements into the structure of their otherwise “modernistic” poems is done by modern poets like Kezilahabi or Kithaka wa Mberia not out of “mockery”, the way it was done in 1970s by Mulokozi and Kahigi, to show the “older ones” that traditional forms are equally manageable for modernists. On the contrary, nowadays even modernistic poets incorporate elements of traditional forms into their works as living tissue, as stylistic devices which are successfully become part of even modernistic poetic environment. And, bearing in mind that the bulk of modern Swahili poetry is still done in traditional poetic forms, I dare state that these traditional forms still remain the foundation, the fertile soil that feeds and will feed other forms of poetry in Swahili language. This assertion may also allow us to say that in a current condition modernist poetry is no longer trying to “overthrow” the ages-old principles of Swahili verse, but is 5

For more detailed analysis of stylistic features in the works of Kithaka wa Mberia see Gromov, Mikhail. “The question of Kiswahili style again? The poetry of Kithaka wa Mberia”. Kiswahili 69, 2006:109-126

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trying in its own way to develop it, to render the traditional poetry new forms of existence. And moreover – did the modernists really ever try to do away with the old poetic tradition? For already Farouk Topan in his article, which marked the very birth of modernistic poetry in Swahili foresaw this complementary relationship between its two strata, as he wrote: “I believe that the acceptance of this modern form will enhance the status of Swahili poetry, enrich the genre, and widen the scope of its composition” (Topan 1974: 176). And further: “… I am convinced that as more of such poems get published, we shall be able to gain an even deeper insight into the sincere and positive concern which they feel for different aspects of human life in East Africa and in the world. We shall also be able to assess their commitment to the old and new values of their communities, societies, and nations. In the meantime, the very concept and role of Swahili poetry seem to be changing… and whatever else these poets may do in literature, they have added a new dimension to Swahili literature and enriched the genre with a lively source of literary craftsmanship “(Topan 1974: 187). It seems that current poetic practice convincingly proves not only the possibility, but the necessity for all the strata of modern Swahili poetry to co-exist and complement one another; not forgetting, that all the new flowers have grown on the rich soil of traditional poetic forms.

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References Abdulaziz, M. (1979) Muyaka: 19th century Swahili popular poetry. Nairobi: Longman. Massamba, D. (1976) Divani ya Massamba. Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press. Kezilahabi, E. (1974) Kichomi. Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press. ——., (2008) Dhifa. Nairobi: Vide Muwa Publishers. Mberia, K (2003) Bara jingine. Nairobi: Marimba Publication. Mohamed, S. A. (1980) ‘Sikate tamaa. Nairobi: Longman. Mulokozi, M., Sengo, T. (2000) History of Kiswahili poetry (A.D. 10002000). Dar es Salaam: Institute of Swahili Research. Mulokozi, M., Kahigi, K. (1974) Kunga za ushairi na diwani yetu. Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press. Topan, F. (1974) “Modern Swahili poetry.” Bulletin of SOAS. Vol. XXXVII. Part 1. 175-187.

Michael Wainaina

New Wine in Old Wineskins: Stylistic Provisions of Orature’s Call and Response for Contemporary Discourses in Gikuyu Popular Music Introduction Orature forms carry with them certain characteristics that endow them with dynamism. These include “ways of mediating reality based on keen observation of phenomena” (Mugo 1994). Changing historical and social realities gives rise to characteristic forms of verbal expression which seek to reflect and interpret the new socio-historical phenomena. It is this new phenomena created by the rupture within the African indigenous history and way of life through the colonial experience that gave rise to the popular song. The most distinguishing feature of contemporary popular song is its close relationship with the electronic media. It has also been acknowledged as the “most significant event in twentieth Century… [Verbal art]” (Manuel 1988). Although popular music as a socio-cultural phenomenon in Kenya embodies and expresses the social issues and identities which emerge as products of urbanization and modernization, it must be seen against the backdrop of orature, the African oral literary heritage for which it is a contemporary corollary. This paper seeks to explore how the rhetoric and stylistic provisions of orature’s call and response form have been reappropriated and syncretised into contemporary popular song. In doing so, I have discussed the form as a stylistic provision for different categories of discourse in contemporary song namely: didactic discourse, contextualized discourse, extended discourse, problematic discourse, subversive discourse and dramatic discourse . The paper demonstrates that while operating in and committed to contemporary situations and imperatives, popular music is stylistically tethered to a recognizable body of artistic resources from traditional orature which serves as its inspiration and guide.

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Orature to Popular and the Dialogics of Call and Response The contemporary popular song in Kenya does not operate in an artistic vacuum. It operates against the backdrop of a rich oral literary heritage and the ways in which this heritage influences and impacts on the contemporary popular song is not always acknowledged or appreciated by contemporary critics of folklore. Conversely, within oral literature research in Kenya over the last two decades for instance, some writers have promulgated the idea that oral traditions are either dying or on the decline. For instance, Kieti (1989) writes in relation to Kamba Oral Poetry: as other oral literature in Ukambani, Mwali is fast disappearing. Myali (sic) can only be sung and explained to researchers today by people above the age of forty. Unless research is done soon, the knowledge of Myali will disappear in a few decades (10).

In his study of the Gikuyu folktale, Wa-Gachanja (1987) also notes: The traditional story telling sessions have certainly been affected by the socio-economic changes and by the modern communication systems. Whereas story-telling in the traditional society was a major form of entertainment, the radio, the television, the movies and books now provide other sources of entertainment and they are replacing the traditional forms of entertainment, especially in cities, (18-19).

Kemoli (1989) and Kabaji (1991) echo similar sentiments. These sentiments fail to appreciate the dynamic nature of folklore. While it’s true that certain socio-economic and technological changes which have a direct impact on folklore as noted by Wa-Gachanja above have taken place, it is imperative that scholars identify areas of confluence and continuity between the new and the old, as opposed to making a demarcation between the two, writing a premature obituary for the latter. In this paper I proceed from the premise that rather than being viewed as a dead or a dying art, traditional folklore is the precursor of the contemporary popular song and that the latter draws stylistic resources from the former in representations of discourses of a contemporary nature. Thus, I proceed from the position that the analytical demarcation between the “traditional” and the “contemporary” is not only superficial but also unsustainable because it is not only contrary to fact but it is also possibly a manifestation of the historical prejudices associated with orature through cultural imperialism, (See WelshAsante 1994, Bukenya and Nandwa 1984, Chinwueizu et al). The rise of the popular song as an important artistic contemporary verbal form has been acknowledged by various writers, (Wanjala 1973, Manuel

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1988, Njogu & Maupeu 2008). Further and more significant for the present chapter, is the acknowledgement of the interface between oral literature and the contemporary popular song. This interface has been variously recognized and discussed by researchers in Kenya (Mokitimi 1982, Gakuo 1994, Mahugu 1990 & Roberts 1972) While there are many recognized areas of interface between the two in terms of content, form and style, I am exclusively interested in stylistic confluences and provisions of the call and response form. In discussing this, I will be guided by the understanding of this communicational style as dialogic activity. Call and response is pervasive in all genres of orature from oral poetry to oral narrative and the short forms like the riddle. Typically, it involves a succession of two or more distinct voices from different speakers where the second and subsequent voices are heard as a direct commentary on or some sort of response to the first. Re-appropriated, the form imbues contemporary popular music with a dialogic quality which according to Bakhtin (1990) is the essence of speech communication. Concurring with Bakhtin, Spivak, (1988) argues: As a translator of positions and a mediator of interests, dialogue speaks and listens from the multiple positions of "essentialized" others. Like translation, dialogue negotiates multiple meanings, which are always already contested and negotiable, and, like negotiation, dialogue traffics in will(ingness); in this sense, the medium of dialogue is the will to listen and speak across lived differences (Emphasis mine), (Quoted in Hawes 1999 : 231)

Dialogical analysis thus involves examining the ways in which participants in speech communication “articulate, at least temporarily and partially, the competing positions and interests of contestatory discourses such that those discourses continue to address each other”, (Hawes 1999: 230). Consequently, I proceed from the hypothesis that the stylistic provisions of the call and response form engenders dialogue within the contemporary popular song. Since dialogue is concerned with the communicative practices that make it possible for other positions and interests to emerge and address one another in complementing and contesting discourses, I seek to explore the various discourses that emerge when the GƭkNJyNJ popular musicians employ call and response to re-present, re-organize and discursively frame the socio-cultural, economic and moral forces of the people’s daily lives. I will use the AgƭkNJyNJ community as an illustrative case. They are a Bantu speaking community whose ancestral home is the central Kenyan highlands on the slopes of Mount Kenya, currently the peri-urban districts to the north of Nairobi the capital city of Kenya. GƭkNJyNJ, the name that refers to the people and the culture is variously written as, Gikuyu, Kikuyu, Gekoyo,

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e.t.c. The people who belong to this community and culture are called AgƭkNJyNJ, variously written as Agikuyu, Akikuyu, and Agekoyo e.t.c. I have consistently used the word GƭkNJyNJ to refer to this community unless when quoting other writers who have used its variations.

What do you know? Provisions for didactic Discourse The simplest application of the call and response form is the question and answer format. Someone throws a challenge which could be a question or a dilemma and another responds by providing an answer or a solution. In the popular song, the style is re-appropriated for didactic purposes, one of the most basic functions of orature. Application of the question and answer format for didactic purpose can be illustrated by the series, CiNJria cia NdNJrNJ – (NdNJrNJ’s Questions) and Mƭtugo ya AgƭkNJyNJ – (The AgƭkNJyNJ customs). The first song is performed by NdNJrNJ wa Gathoni who is also the speaker in the song, and contains a series of questions directed to another artist KamarNJ wa WanjirNJ. Song No: 1 challenges KamarNJ’s knowledge of the AgƭkNJyNJ culture: RNJgwƭti son-of-Njeri allow me to ask this man a question. KamarNJ son-of-WanjirNJ who claims to be a know-it-all KamarNJ son-of WanjirNJ, brace yourself So that you can receive my questions and give answers About the customs of the AgƭkNJyNJ, Because you claim to be very knowledgeable.

The speaker demands from KamarNJ answers to different questions varying from types of religious sacrifices performed by the AgƭkNJyNJ, to knowledge of GƭkNJyNJ foods and cuisine, social structure, dressing, political organization and cultural artifacts. The questions and tasks are extensive. They include: In the GƭkNJyNJ custom, how was a contaminated person purified? How many types of herbs were used? Tell us the name of each. Prepare a goat for sacrifice, Share it accordingly And tell us who ate different parts. How many rooms does the GƭkNJyNJ house have? Give us the names and tell us where In’gNJrƭkƭro is. And then tell me the name of a beehive’s lid. There are nine clans among the Agikuyu if you really know. Tell us the famous ones that are well known.

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Which is the clan in which the rainmakers belonged? … Name (the weapons used by the AgƭkNJyNJ) and tell us the use of each because you claim to know. What was the purpose of the women’s dance? What were its rites, and what was its duration?

In song No. 2, KamarNJ the artist who is also the speaker tells NdNJrNJ, the speaker of the first song that his questions are easy for a person of his standing. He proceeds to respond to all the questions cataloguing all aspects of Gikuyu culture, as asked in the first song. When he finishes he summarizes by saying that he is the master chronicler of AgƭkNJyNJ customs, and if ever there was need to teach it even to Europeans, he would be a consultant. The dialogue, emanating from the call and response/question answer format is didactic in that it educates the listener on a vast array of GƭkNJyNJ customs.

What are we doing here? Provisions for contextualized discourse From questions and answers, we move to the issue of context and performance. Performance is the heart of orature. Njogu (2004) argues that it is generally recognized that oral poetry is performed. Within performance, metacommunicative devices are utilized to signal that the presentation is a performance of a contextualized text before an audience. It is also a response between the performances, the text, and the audience. In other words, performers and their audiences are active participants in the interpretive act of the performance. Stressing this point Finnegan (1970) notes that There is not mystery about the first and most basic, characteristic of oral literature even through it is constantly overlooked in collections and analysis. This, she points out, is the significance of performance in oral literature where it can make important contribution to the impact of the particular literary form being exhibited. Because the electronic media makes it possible for the popular musician to perform without a “face to face confrontation with his audience”, there has been skepticism about the value of recorded popular music as a performative art form. For example, Attali (1985) suggests that: …in the present era of the electronic media each spectator [listener] has a solitary relation with the material object, the consumption of music is individualized…the network is no longer a form of sociality, an opportunity for spectators to communicate, (35).

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Contrary to such claims, the call and response style allows for depiction of a performance setting, identifying the place, the action and the participants. A good illustration of this provision is the exchange quoted above CiNJria cia NdNJrNJ (NdNJrNJ’s Questions) and the reply Mƭtugo ya AgƭkNJyNJ (the Customs of the AgƭkNJyNJ). In the first song the artist opens by asking one of his fellow artists, RNJgwƭti, to allow him to ask questions to KamarNJ, another artist. In the reply KamarNJ seeks to establish a performative context by calling a specialized audience around him: RNJgwƭti son-of-Njeeri, come, And don’t come alone, I want nine wise elders, As I answer NdNJrNJ’s questions, Plus nine women, Who are past child bearing age Representing the nine clans Kabete and Metumi in full. You may also come, NdNJrNJ son of Gathoni (The one who asked the original questions) But come like an elder And you will realize You have tested an immature (maize) cob

KamarNJ requires a specialized audience to respond to the questions. He asks for men and women of the elder level. He is trying to set a context where an expert audience would listen to his responses and probably affirm the correctness of his answers. Further, one recalls that some of the questions posed by NdNJrNJ were in the form of challenges to “perform” certain tasks. A good illustration is when NdNJrNJ asks him to “Prepare a goat for sacrifice; Share it out accordingly, and then tell us who ate different parts”. In the response, KamarNJ is at pains to “perform” the act and in his response he attempts to capture action for the audience, as assembled, by manipulating language to portray action when he says: There are so many sacrifices. And each special sacrifice has its own goat, Which goat shall I offer for sacrifice? As sacrificing this one is so easy I wouldn’t even take snuff (hesitate) Before I am through (Which one do you want me to perform?)

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Is it for installing a home? Or is it a birth sacrifice? Or is it for reincarnation or appeasement? (Whatever) Place the sacrificial animal here and watch me perform the sacrifice.

The artist seeks to capture the performative aspects through manipulation of language, establishment of an occasion and direct address of the “present audience”, all aspects of a performative context. We are therefore able to conceptualize an audience, certain ritual actions that are taking place, and an arena, all part of a performative text. Although, as stated above, this series uses the simplest form of call and response which is question and answer, its success is in its attempt to incorporate the performative aspects of occasion, event and audience, to portray a sense of “doing” as opposed to simply “saying”.

Yes, that and More… Provisions for Extended Discourse Beyond questions and answers and opportunities to portray context, call and response allows artists to extend discourse across various speakers and between artists and the audience. Njeeri GaitNJ (Njeeri our young sister) is a series that presents us with a situation of extended discourse. The series has Song 1 and 2, the latter extending the discourse initiated in the former in several fashions. The speaker of Song 1 addresses an unnamed man, the antagonist, and accuses him of “spoiling the life of my sister”. The said antagonist is apparently an older man who got into an illicit relationship with the speaker’s young sister. The song is entirely addressed to the antagonist and includes a detailed description of his devious ways that ruin the lives of young girls. It further issues a warning to the antagonist that he is headed for disaster with his own daughters, as divine retribution for his unconscionable behavior. Apparently, the antagonist lured the speaker’s young sister with lies knowing fully well that he was not interested in a serious relationship and also that the girl was too young to know better. The speaker reprimands the antagonist reminding him that such a behavior is not to be expected of a man of his caliber and that he should exhibit more mature behavior and moral judgment. Hardly any other participant is mentioned in the song. The whole song is an address by the speaker to the antagonist to whom his rancor is directed. Little effort is made to contextualize the matter being discussed or to refer to any other actors or participants or to bring in any other viewpoint

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apart from the speaker’s dislike of the antagonist and the admonitions against him. Song 2 in the series Njeeri gaitNJ is the voice of the girl, the victim of the “sugar daddy”, the antagonist of Song 1. It is an extension of the discourse in Song 1 in terms of the participants, subject, context and the moral implications. The song brings a good background to the subject and indeed some of the details in Song 1 are corroborated by the speaker of Song 2 who experienced the reported misdeeds first hand. It is however the first person voice that gives the extended discourse some immediacy. The song opens with introspection on the part of the speaker who was the victim of the devious protagonist of Song 1. I messed up and “bit more than I could chew”, And I was being warned but refused to listen, I had become a know-it-all…

She seems to take responsibility for her actions by analyzing the situation and summarizing it as reckless and self-inflicted. This is in contrast with the brother, the speaker of Song 1 who seems to blame everything on the “sugar daddy”. The beginning of Song 2 is in contrast with that of Song 1 which unapologetically identifies the “sugar daddy” as the culprit without reference to the complicity of the sister. The sister in Song 2 observes very frankly that she had been warned against the “sugar daddy” (probably by the brother – the speaker of Song 1) but she had become intransigent and would not listen. In extending the discourse of Song 1, the speaker of Song 2 analyses her own predicament from a personal perspective, describing her life as hopeless and irredeemable: Whom will I cry to? My whole life has been wasted, I was a beautiful young girl under 18, And now I am a used mother of three. Whom will I cry to? And my whole life has been wasted.

She is learning her lessons with the wisdom of hindsight and feels that her experiences can help other young girls to avoid the pitfalls that have left her life wasted. She however concurs with her brother that the reckless actions of the sugar daddy will not go unpunished. They both take a religious stance in pronouncing retribution for the antagonist.

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The speaker of Song 2 in extending the discourse of the series looks beyond her predicament and the role of the antagonist, issues that the brother seems fixated on, to include a word of advice for other young girls thus: (Young girls) beware, beware of men, Men can be dangerous, Young girls, be careful, As you go through life, Realize that it’s not a rehearsal, Beware, Beware of men, Men can be dangerous.

Song 2 clearly extends the discourse of the series, by presenting a more personal experience, by giving much more intimate details from the first person perspective. Although it concurs with and extends the discourse of Song 1, it is a more balanced version of events, giving a wider perspective of the activities and repercussions reported in the earlier version, moderating the accusatory and one sided view of the latter. Because the speaker of Song 2 is interested in using her experience to teach her peers and other young girls as opposed to simply chastising the culprit, she extends the discourse to more didactic ends than the first speaker ever attempts to. Extended discourse through the call and response form is also evident in the series GNJtirƭ Rƭaraga na Rƭtiotwo (We Must Bask in Every Sun, However Hot) 1 & 2. Song 1 in the series is sung by the late John NdichNJ who laments the hard economic times but declares that people have no choice but to ride the hard times. He uses the GƭkNJyNJ saying that gives the title to the song GNJtirƭ Rƭaraga na Rƭtiotwo”meaning that people have no choice but to bask in every sun, however hot. The metaphor of the hot sun seems to be a reference to the economic disenfranchisement of the youth who supposedly cannot get jobs even with formal qualifications: This is something that has shocked people, That graduates are working as ‘turnboys’ This is something that has shocked people That a ‘Cambridge’ child is picking coffee

“Turnboys” is a term used to refer to young men who are bus conductors. It is considered a low level job previously associated with uneducated people. The situation where University graduates are forced to become “turnboys” is to the speaker a reflection of the hard times that the youth are forced to ride – “the hot sun”. The same case applies to young men who have done “Cambridge’ a reference to the Cambridge International Exams which were

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examinable at ‘O” level in Kenya. In the past it used to be that those who have done “O” level, could at least expect to get blue color jobs. The speaker laments that nowadays they are “picking coffee” a manual job probably lower in scale than even a “turnboy”. Picking coffee was in earlier times left to those who have no education at all. With population growth and exponential expansion of and access to education at all levels, and a noncommensurate economic growth, competition for the few available jobs has seen youth with only “O” level qualifications unable to compete and those with bachelor’s degree settling for less than was previously expected of a graduate. The metaphor of the sun is contrasted with that of the rain and the speaker wonders when it will ever rain in the “dry lands’. He goes on to describe the result of the disenfranchisement of the youth to families: Now listen to the strife in many homes, Of sons asking their fathers for land, Yet their fathers got none, Its better to be punished physically, Than to be tortured psychologically.

Traditionally a male child was entitled to ancestral or family land through inheritance. However, with the aforementioned population growth, the ancestral and family lands have shrunk and there is nothing for the males to claim as inheritance. Without education or with too little of it to beat increased competition and without land to inherit, youth result to strife and violence and the speaker sees no end to it. The second song in the series is a response by Makibi James, to the first song that extends the discourse of the latter. The speaker in Song 2 starts by identifying with the sociological concerns of the speaker of the first song thus: Wagakunga (Artist of the first song), Said that we are basking in the hot sun, As he said that people have no choice, but to bask in every sun, however hot. I emphatically concur with him, And admonish that if you don’t heed this, Wait for the hyenas that will eat you.

He proclaims that he concurs with the first speaker and issues a warning that if the listeners do not heed their call, they are destined to doom. “Wait for the hyenas” in GƭkNJyNJ is an expression used to warn people of impending death. He goes on to extend the discourse started by the first speaker on the disenfranchisement of the youth. This time he links the discourse with the

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current affairs by making reference to the outlawed MNJngƭkƭ sect a highly controversial pseudo-religious group of economically disenfranchised GƭkNJyNJ youth that has interests in the transport industry and thrives on gangland extortion and criminal intimidation. Because of their modus operandi and their illegal nature, members of this group are spoken of in negative terms although their insidious, cloak and dagger operation makes it difficult to identify its membership. The speaker seems to take the position that the ostracism of the sect is an ill-informed reaction since the alleged criminal activities of its members are a direct result of the economic disenfranchisement of the youth – “the hot sun” referred to in Song 1..He takes the position that the society has failed to nurture the young people, has denied them opportunities for “legitimate” economic participation, and labeling them pariahs is further victimizing them for a situation that the whole society is responsible for. He uses a proverb to illustrate his argument saying that “There can be no future for a herd that has no calves”. This is to emphasize the point that society needs the youth in order to perpetuate itself By disenfranchising the youth and then ostracizing them, society has failed in this duty and therefore the justification of the warning issued earlier, that society risks extinction. Song 1 identifies a disenfranchised, angry and violent youth and Song 2 extends the discourse to include current affairs and the actual sociological repercussions of disenfranchised youth to contemporary society. In extending the use of “the herd” metaphor, the speaker says that if a herd lacks calves, it means that there is a leopard or a hyena that is eating the calves. This is an indirect warning to the community that something is “eating” its youth. To hazard an answer as to what may be “eating” the young generation the speaker introduces in the discourse the girl child. He says: The girl child is the mother of the nation… In order to raise stable families, Yet, nowadays not many of them are getting married, I blame the mothers for this national disaster.

He contends that not many young girls in the community are getting married and raising stable families which he contends is a prerequisite of stability in society. He further attributes this to the failure of mothers in the community whom he feels have failed to provide guidance to their girls. He proceeds to accuse women of sidelining men in the running of family affairs leading to the apparent lack of direction within families. He makes reference to a commonly used saying to demonstrate the supposed wisdom and foresight of men, that “When a male elder is seated, he sees further than a young boy

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perched on top of a tree”. He is making the point that men need to be given an opportunity to provide guidance in families, warning that without this the youth will continue on the wayward path. He finishes with reference back to the sun metaphor saying that when it “gets dry” it’s the youth who suffer most living in fear, suspicion and insecurity. The call and response form in the series enables the artists to extend the discourse on youth disenfranchisement and its effect on society. While the first artist is pretty general in his description of the situation, he nevertheless sets the topic and the tone of discussion in the series, which the second artist picks up on and extends. The second artist is more specific in contextualizing the issue of youth disenfranchisement to the MNJngƭkƭ, a salient topical issue in Kenya’s current affairs. In providing a genesis of the problem, he equally gives a solution by identifying the family unit and man’s role and leadership in the stability of the girl-child. Deeper insight and elaboration are also the provisions of the call and response form in the series ljhiki wƭ MNJrƭo 1 & 2 sang by Mureithi J Walker. In Song 1, the speaker praises love and marriage saying these are desirable and enjoyable aspects of human experience. He paints a rosy picture of love and marriage by making reference to what he considers admirable relationships between his grandmother and grandfather and between his parents. The composer applies Biblical allusion of Adam and Eve and emphasizes the divine nature of the complementary and supposedly blissful relationship between men and women by saying: God created Adam, but realized he was very bored, So he created for him Eve and he (Adam) was very happy, I commend God for creating for us women, So that we don’t get bored with life.

This blissful relationship is presented from a predominantly male perspective where the male speaker is happy for being pampered and “taken care of”: When you come from work, and you are very tired, As soon as you get home, she removes your coat and shoes, You get a kiss and stress levels goes down, You are cooked for and you eat to your fill, And you get warm water for your bath

This perspective takes for granted the legitimacy of existing gender roles as the speaker takes it for granted that it’s the job of the woman to take care of the man in the manner described and that marriage is blissful so long as these roles are fulfilled according to the dictates of patriarchal society. The speaker

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proceeds to heap praise on romantic relationships proclaiming them sweet, emotionally satisfying and an end in themselves. His description of love and marriage is utopian if not downright hedonistic. Song 2 in the series has a female speaker, extending the discourse of Song 1 and begins by concurring with the blissful description of marriage given by the speaker in the first song but adds, “but people have spoilt it (marriage) because they never get contented”. While concurring with the previous speaker, she is aware that the condition of bliss does not always prevail in marriage relationships. It is thus necessary to account for the fact that a supposedly blissful union or situation is not always so and the listeners know that. So she agrees that “marriage is bliss”’ but cautions that its not always so since many people are not contended, meaning that, people fail to meet the minimum requirements for bliss and thus are actually in “unhappy marriages”. She in fact reemphasizes the divine origins and design of marriage and bliss but proceeds to advice that although marriage is designed to be blissful and it initially is, there are conditions that must be fulfilled to keep it that way. One of the conditions she gives is that of continuous nurturing. Those who start taking things for granted after marriage will not experience its blissful nature since lack of continuous emotional nourishment will cause the grief not bliss: Do not grumble saying that marriage is not bliss, Why did you get into it if it’s not? If you plant a tree and fail to water it, It will dry up; even a marriage needs nurturing, If you understand that, You will not fail to experience Marriage as bliss.

The discourse in this series is extended with concurrence by the second speaker but it also includes elaborations and clarifications contextualizing a situation presented rather simplistically by the first speaker. The all-bliss situation of marriage painted by the first speaker is qualified in Song 2 by giving conditionality and circumstances of optimizing the provisions of marriage. It seems to be a response to any doubts to the initial affirmation of marriage as all-blissful that there are exceptions and that the exceptions can be explained and perhaps ameliorated. It is not always that call and response form extends discourse from two or more artists. The form has in it the provisions for extending discourse by the same artist. A good illustration of discoursal extension by the same artist is the series done by Albert GacherNJ, Thƭna ljrƭ oo Ngoro (Experience of hardships is personal) Song 1, and Mwana Mwƭhoki (The Hopeful Child)

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Song 2.In Song 1, Thƭna ljrƭ Oo Ngoro, the speaker starts by affirming the personal nature of hardships: Oh my friends, it’s really true What was said, that it is the clothes we wear That makes us seem equal… If we meet while I am walking in the streets, And you see me walking confidently, You would be very surprised to realize, That I am so helpless, For experience of hardships is private.

The speaker who is also the artist is making public his life of hardship. He feels victimized and makes an appeal to the listeners to help explain to him the source of his wretchedness. He reckons that he has lived a straight life and is well educated and yet he is a poor struggler who cannot meet his basic needs and yet he has dependants. He laments: Comrades, I am in serious trouble, Can a clever person tell me whether I am cursed? Yet I was born like all the others, And I have had good manners all along, I never talk ill of anybody, And I have good education, But I am always in trouble, I wonder; did I break a taboo? Yet my parents are relying on me.

As the song ends, the speaker declares that he is going back to his rural home. His greatest concern is that he is not yet married and going to his parents without a wife will cause them grief. Because of his wretched condition he cannot get a girl in Nairobi who will agree to get married to him. He therefore sends an SOS “to all friends of goodwill” to help him get a rural girl whom he can take home as a wife. Song 2, Mwana Mwƭhoki (The Hopeful Child), is a sequel to Song 1 done by the same artist who is the speaker. It extends the discourse started in the first song. Song 2 does not have the sombre and hopeless tone of Song 1. The speaker starts by identifying with Song 1 but declares that he now has a changed attitude: It is me the son-of-WairimNJ, I am back! To give my profuse gratitude, To all those who took pity on me… When they heard me singing,

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Thƭna ljrƭ oo Ngoro (Song 1) (That experience of hardship is personal) …I have decided to inform you that I am still alive Because an industrious child will never feed on excrement. The one thing I have increased in since then is hope, And I also changed my name I am now called “The-hopeful-child”

It will be remembered that the speaker threw some challenges to his listeners in Song 1. In Song 2 the discourse extends to the responses that he received from the listeners and he is first thanking them for responding to his call. The discourse here is between an artist and his audience and the sequel records the latter’s responses to his initial call in Song 1. Beyond that he himself has a changed attitude which is in sharp contrast with the hopeless victimized mentality of the first song. In Song 2, after giving a general vote of thanks to his listeners he proceeds to describe the details of the responses he received from his listeners: I give a-big-thanks like the evening star To Kanyoro son-of-WanjikNJ Who got me a girl – (Requested for in Song 1) Who unfortunately did not have the front teeth! When my mother saw her, she became furious; And her point of contention was; Who will get teeth replacement first - her or the girl? So we took her back to her home, And I am still a bachelor, But A-hopeful-child

One of the appeals he had made in Song 1 was to all friends of goodwill to get him a girl to take home as a wife. One Kanyoro obliged but things didn’t work out as expected but he is still hopeful. As for other appeals that he had made in Song 1 many people responded as he says: I have received letters from many friends asking; “Son-of-WairimNJ what is your problem? You don’t even have a wife, Or even kids that you are providing for So why are you crying of hardships and wretchedness?”

In Song 2, he again responds to such enquiries that seem to question the gravity of his situation. The listeners do not expect an unmarried man who does not have a family to be complaining of hardships. He explains to the listeners that he may not have his own children but he is the one who takes

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care of his parents and his siblings. He explains that it is easier to bring up your own family than to raise someone else’s. He feels that the burden is too heavy on him and thus the complaints of the first song. He further explains that his situation is complicated by social demands and expectations. Beyond raising his parents’ family, there are too many demands on him from all quarters some of them being of an exploitative nature: When it comes to earning nowadays, Some work hard to make the money, While others just sit by and watch, While some like the son-of-WairimNJ, Seem to be earning for others, When I earn some money and think of saving, People approach me with problems, Asking me to help them, With donations, contributions and loans, It seems that I spend my money on others, And finally I am left with nothing but hope.

He goes on to warn his listeners that they need to beware of such exploitation. In issuing the warning against exploiters, he seems aware that some people might hear him and imagine that he is referring to them: There are those who will hear this song, And get angry saying; “Son of Wairimu is indirectly attacking us”

For people who would have this kind of response to his admonitions he tells them, “It’s up to you to evaluate yourself and know where you belong”. The provisions of the call and response form extend from artist to artist discourse and as demonstrated above spread to artist-audience discourse. The artist in the series Thƭna ljrƭ oo Ngoro and Mwana Mwƭhoki is able to initiate a discourse with the audience by issuing the call of the first song. The audience reacts in all sorts of manner from availing help as requested to chiding the gravity of his situation, forcing him to further expound on it in Song 2, giving details not availed in Song 1.

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So where do you stand? Provisions for Problematic Discourse Discourse of concurrence is possible in topics upon which artists can find a common ground. There are situations when there is no common ground for agreement because the subject matter poses problems of understanding and interpretation. Two areas in contemporary African society pose such problems. These are the tenuous relationship between tradition and modernity and the issue of urbanization and the restless African city. Tradition and modernity has concerned artists and commentators of African cultural development since colonial incursion. Grandsaigne (1985: 5) summarizes the tenuous relationship between the two when he says “…the old and the new order of things never come to terms with each other; instead they are locked in a perpetual conflict of which the outcome is always negative”. This situation leads to what I am calling problematic discourse where the dialogical process involves unresolvable complications arising from this tenuous relationship. A good illustration of this is the Song ljthoni wa Kanyenyainƭ (The Wedding Negotiations at Kanyenyainƭ). This song does not use the mode of different songs along the call and response structure, but uses the antiphonal mode where issues are raised by one side of the dialogue and responded to by the other in the same song. The song is a dialogue between a delegation that had gone to accompany MNJsaimo, one of the speakers and the artist, to his marriage negotiations at Kanyenyainƭ. The delegation feels let down by MNJsaimo whom they had gone to represent in the negotiations as it seems to them that he (MNJsaimo) had backed off and thus embarrassed them. MNJsaimo on his part cites several reasons why he was not comfortable with the whole issue of marrying the girl, he explains that he got disillusioned by the kind of demands the father of the bride-to-be was making on him. This explanations center around the said tension between tradition and modernity. Negotiators: MNJsaimo let us ask you, Why did you embarrass us, When you sent us to Kanyenyainƭ, To get a bride for you MNJsaimo: No I did not mean to embarrass you, It’s just that I realized I could not afford, All the things that the diminutive girl’s father was demanding from me.

He proceeds to list the kind of things that he was asked for which included traditional beer which he says is impossible to get. He claims that the ingredients that are used to make the beer are not available and in any case he

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would prefer to just take the father to a local bar and buy him two bottles of modern beer. The party responds that there are even more demands for traditional items and processes from the mother of the girl and he would better reconsider his position if he hopes to marry the girl. MNJsaimo responds by decrying the cumbersome procedures of traditional society and says he prefers the modern wedding arrangements which are not complicated. The party responds defiantly: This one will be wedded the traditional way, She is not the modern ones, Whom you pick up haphazardly.

The dialogue that ensues between the speaker and the party is an effort to mediate the said tenuous relationship between tradition and modernity. The party is trying to convince MNJsaimo that the girl is worth the trouble of the traditional demands by the parents and he is trying to say the modern way is easier and better. In the end there is no consensus on the problematic issue of tradition and modernity but there is a mutual understanding that there is little choice on the part of MNJsaimo and if he want to marry the girl, then it has to be the parents way, the traditional way. In explaining the tradition versus modernity dilemma, Grandsaigne (7) comments: …neither the old nor the new order of things constitute a satisfactory solution to the heroes dilemma. On the contrary, tradition and modernity act as two negative poles between which the hero is continually thrown back and forth.

The attempt by the speaker to seek refuge in the “modern” way of doing things brings us to the next problematic area. Grandsaigne further elaborates that the hero, in order to escape the unbearable situation of the irreconcilable traditional and modern demands put on them: ….seeks refuge in a new world – that of the town – which to him appears to be a kind of nomans-land, an in-between place between traditional and modern life. Unfortunately, what he finds in the town is not a haven but a world plagued with the ills and contradictions from which he was trying to escape in the first place, (ibid).

The restless city thus provides us with the other site of contestatory dialogue, the application of call and response to problematic dialogue. According to Low (1996) theorizing the city is a necessary part of understanding the changing postindustrial, advanced capitalist, postmodern moment in which we live:

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The city as a site of everyday practice provides valuable insights into the linkages of macroprocesses with the texture and fabric of human experience. The city is not the only place where these linkages can be studied, but the intensification of these processes – as well as their human outcomes – occurs and can be understood best in cities. Thus, the “city” is not a reification but the focus of cultural and sociopolitical manifestations of urban lives and everyday practices. (387).

Low calls the discourse in and about cities “an often elusive and discursively complex subject”. The complexity of the subject is well illustrated by the call and response form in GƭkNJyNJ popular music when artists have decided to “understand” the city. The most impressive application of this call and response structure is in the series of five songs that deal with problems of urbanization. In the Song 1 Kaba KNJinNJka (It’s Better to Go Home) by C.D.M Kiratu, the speaker calls upon all his friends – other popular musicians - to a farewell party in his house. He intends to leave the city of Nairobi for his rural home. He explains that he has been in Nairobi for ten years, and yet he has not made any progress economically or socially. After looking at all his options he has decided that it’s better for him to go back to his rural home: He laments: Ten years have elapsed since I came to Nairobi I have been thinking that I am working Yet I cannot tell you what I have achieved… That is why I have decided It’s better to go back to my rural home… Men’s efforts are wasted in many ways I have left town in the same condition I came in

In Song 2, Kaba Gicagi (It’s Better to be in the Village) the speaker of the Song 1 has arrived home and is addressing his mother about the woes of the city. He also takes the opportunity to warn his friends whom he was addressing in Song 1 against city life and suggest that they should look for alternatives in the villages. Then D.K, one of the artists that the speaker in Song 1 and 2 has been addressing himself to, responds, and rejects the call to seek an alternative to town life. He responds in Song 3 titled Kaba Nairobi – (It’s Better To Remain In Nairobi). In his response he questions the rationale of the first speaker for leaving Nairobi for the rural home, and gives personal and social-economic reasons. He explains that he cannot leave the city for the village not least because of the expectations of the villagers on him. He reckons that it will be a serious let down to his parents and relatives for him to return for the village with no investments like the first speaker. He says he will therefore stay in the city until he becomes wealthy and then he can

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triumphantly return to the village. He concludes by saying that the call by the first speaker that people should leave the city for the village is neither wise nor sincere and warns the listeners against the call. In Song 4, another artist, the late RNJgwƭti wa Njeeri responds to the exchange by the first two artists. He starts by contextualizing the matter: You KƭratNJ and D.K., You have got me really confused, Because both of you are my friends And I respect both of you. Kƭratu is saying that the village is the best, And D.K claims Nairobi is the best, Myself, RNJgwƭti, I will remain steady in prayers, For God’s case has no appeal.

RNJgwƭti then goes on to argue that neither of the choice can be said to be right or wrong and that such choices depend on ones preference and position. He is of the opinion that any activity that can earn one a living is worth pursuing, and therefore people should stick to whichever place suits them economically, city or the village. Again, all these positions and calls persuading listeners to different positions elicits yet another response from a different artist, KamarNJ, who responds with Song 5 entitled MNJraikio Riiko Nƭ D.K.– (D.K Is Misleading You). In this song, he declares himself the arbiter of the different positions taken by the different artists regarding the village/city dichotomy saying: When KƭratNJ resolved village is best D.K. said Nairobi is best, RNJgwƭti declared he will pray It is me KamarNJ passing judgment

He goes on to not only support the village crusaders, but also questions the sincerity of D.K.s assertion that city life is better. He claims to have met D.K. coming from the village with fresh merchandize of sweet potatoes and eggs, which he was going to sell in the city. He also says that despite the fact that KƭratNJ has gone back to the village he will still need a market for his milk and therefore cannot entirely do away with the city. He reckons that the ruralurban circuit is intertwined and once engaged there is no escaping from it or better still one better find ways of reconciling and benefiting from both. He claims that there are advantages to both and that one will need both to survive. The contested viewpoints in this series foreground the problems of the African city well put by Grandsainge (1985):

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Either as a distant threat or a dreaded next door rival, the town is always present in the villager’s life and mind…it is indeed in the town that man comes to grip with his destiny in a bitter struggle, where cultures clash in violent conflict (7-8)

I beg to differ - Provisions for Subversive Discourse The problematic discourse presented above presents a situation of mutable positions clouded by uncertainty and ambivalence. There are however situations when definite opposing positions are taken leading to subversive discourses. In this category, the artists are not dealing with inconclusiveness and unpredictability but are involved in out- rightly dissenting and antagonistic positions emerging from competing and vitiative representation and interpretation of mutually experienced circumstances, Kiandutu 1 & 2 fit into this subversive mode. In Song 1, the speaker starts by denouncing the things that he saw in a recent visit to a place called Kƭandutu. In this visit he apparently encountered a strange dance that he could only describe and characterize as pandemonium. It is not like any dance he had seen before and he thinks it is strange and backward. He uses the reference to jiggers and lice, human parasites associated with “ruralness” and “backwardness”, to characterize the dance and the dancers that he encountered at Kƭandutu (the name of the place literally translates to “The Place of Jiggers”..The main thrust of the song is to describe the place and the experiences of the singer and the main theme of the descriptions is callousness and strangeness. The song closes with an even stranger assertion that it is impossible to trap moles in Kƭandutu because they destroy the traps in defiance and get away. Beyond its emphasis on the strangeness of Kƭandutu the song sounds innocent enough - until you listen to Song 2. Song 2 has a female speaker and one who has a personal interest in the first song. The song starts by registering disappointment over the theme of the first song and directly addresses the speaker: I am shocked, When you sing about Kƭandutu, And expose me to the whole of Kenya, Had I known, I would not have invited you, To come to Kƭandutu, To greet my parents and friends…

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Apparently the speaker of the first song had come to Kƭandutu on the invitation of the speaker of the second song and for the specific purpose of discussing bride-price with the parents of the second speaker. According to the second speaker, things went awry when the speaker of the first song was given the terms of the bride price: When you were given the terms of the bride-price, That’s when you said there are jiggers and lice… You forgot the proverbs that say “Speaking well is better than conceding to the request” and “Every marketplace has its bargains”

Apparently, on being asked for bride-price, the first speaker lost all decorum and offended the relatives of the second speaker by making statements that are totally unacceptable in bride-price negotiations to justify himself. Among the AgƭkNJyNJ, bride-price is axiomatic and it cannot be argued away. Unfortunately, the first speaker started to argue and rationalize why he won’t pay bride-price or worse still why it should not be demanded to the chagrin and indignation of the second speaker and her relatives: Though you don’t realize it, You really offended me, By claiming that love should be sufficient And request for bride-price unnecessary, And even my parents were upset,

The first speaker reveals that it is the self-inflicted debacle surrounding his inability to pay bride-price that made the first speaker have a negative attitude towards her home and people. She reminds him that it was his responsibility to address the issues that were raised by her parents regarding bride-price and he should not turn around his inabilities and pass a blanket negative judgment on Kƭandutu village and its people. She differs with him sharply explaining that what he describes as pandemonium was a dance they were doing with her friends that he was not familiar with and he ignorantly decided to label as chaotic. The second speaker reverses the “mole” metaphor used by the first speaker. He had claimed in his song that moles from Kƭandutu are un-trappable because they destroy the traps and get away. The second speaker differs and uses the same metaphor to remind him of his own failures and inadequacies: And as for trapping of moles (in Kƭandutu) It is not that difficult, It is you who was unable to set your traps properly

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Listening to the response of Song 2, it is evident that Song 1 is a highly edited and self-serving account of the speakers visit to Kƭandutu. It is a deliberately misleading description of Kƭandutu, and far from being a representation of the happenings in Kiandutu, it is a defensive if not preemptive attempt by the first speaker to cover up his inabilities to meet his obligations. This would not have been revealed without the response of Song 2 and its direct challenge of the events presented in Song 1. In providing the listener with the context and the actual details of the events at Kƭandutu, the second speaker subverts the first narrative and its self-sanitizing intentions by focusing on the first speaker and his inadequacies. She shows that the first speaker is out of tune with reality and worse still lacks requisite social skills to negotiate delicate matters like bride-price. This is well reflected in her use of the saying “Kanua keega gakƭrƭte kNJNJhe” translated above as, “Speaking well is better than conceding to the request”. The AgƭkNJyNJ have very high regard for rhetorics (Cagnolo 1933) and this proverb means that if one does not have the means to fulfill a request they can use polite and persuasive language to make the other party feel affirmed and appreciated, even when their request has not been met. The lesson here to the first speaker is that the fact that he could not meet the demands of the first speaker’s parents regarding the bride-price did not have to lead to acrimony. He should have had more tact in handling the situation. The point is that he is not only out of tune with reality, he also has poor interpersonal relations and that his attempt to turn the situation around and blame others is at best dishonest. Subverted discourse also dominates the exchange in another series, NdNJrƭ Kwaheri (You Have No Goodbye) and Judge wa Mapenzi (Judge of Love) NdNJrƭ Kwaheri has a male speaker who chastises a female character whom he accuses of leaving him without even the courtesy of goodbye, betraying him and all the promises she had made to him. The song opens with arraignments of betrayal: Couldn’t you even say “Kwaheri” (Swahili word for goodbye) Couldn’t you say “goodbye” And wish me well, And let me know you are going to get married. Or were you too guilty For betraying the vows we had taken… We had talked and agreed between us, That we will never leave one another.

The speaker goes on to accuse the female addressee of breaking this vow and embarrassing him by dumping him insolently and getting married to another

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man. He further accuses her of holding him at ransom, preventing him from exploring other options by detaining him in what he calls the “jail of love”. He goes ahead to disparage her wedding claiming that its not such a big deal and that in any case even the person whom she is now married to deserves “something better”, insinuating that the addressee is unworthy of the new relationship because she is not reliable nor faithful: I will forever live in wonder, Over your unreliable love, Your love is like the wind, That blows in all directions… There are some people who are untrustworthy And they should never be trusted, I thought you were mine, And yet it was a useless hope.

The speaker goes on a bitter diatribe befitting a scorned lover. He accusses the addressee of being ungrateful, unworthy, conniving and unconscionable. He reclaims all his property and mementos calling the addressee “Mhaini ljyNJ wa Mapenzi” loosely translated to mean, (A Terrorist of Love). The tone of the song is rancorous. The speaker plays the role of victim perfectly and listening to the song one cannot help but be disturbed by the addressee’s unconscionable behavior and her shameless action of getting married behind the speaker’s back after taking him on a wild goose chase…until one listen to the response! The response is titled Judge wa Mapenzi (Judge of Love) and the female speaker of the song is the addressee of the first song. The reply is as furious as the initial song and spellbinding in its subversion of the victim status that the speaker of the first song assumes. It starts defiantly: Why would you expect me to tell you goodbye, What virtue makes you think you deserve one? Didn’t you want me to say goodbye, So that you can take that chance, To take me back to your “remand prison”, I had been with you for five years, Imprisoned by the handcuffs of love, You had appointed yourself a “Judge of love” So that I will never get another partner.

The response of the second speaker turns the argument of the first speaker on its head. While he was playing victim in the first song, the response in the second song immediately identifies him as the culprit. The respondent

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immediately seizes on the first speaker’s metaphor of “Jail” and expands it to show that she was the victim of the jail and not the other way round. The first speaker had “handcuffed her” and “put her in remand” as he saw himself as a self-styled “judge of love” with the intention that the second speaker will never get a partner. In the first song, the speaker concentrates on the “untrustworthy” character of the female addressee and we get little in terms of the context of the discourse. The second speaker goes into details of the context and also the character of the first speaker to totally subvert the representations of the first speaker and portray the first song as a perfidious account of events. The second speaker, a female reminds the first speaker that he (not her) had severally postponed their wedding claiming that his relatives do not want her because she is educated. She explains that the first speaker was abusive and had even told her that her personality was incompatible with that of his parents. She explains that she had been agreeable all along and it’s him who did not want to commit to their relationship and even when asked to, he never wanted to go and see her parents to discuss marriage.She further adds that his allegations are duplicitous: Do not waste your time lying to the public, You are well known in the village, You have appointed yourself the “judge of love” Imprisoning people without giving them options

She claims that his version of events is a dishonest public relations exercise for seeking sympathies but she is not fooled. She reminds him that she has taken options with another man, even though he is not wealthy. It is apparent that the first speaker considered himself of a higher caliber than the second speaker and had expected her to cling on to him even under the impossible circumstances of lack of commitment from him that she describes. The indignation of the first speaker also seems to arise from the fact that the second speaker had elected to get married to “a poor man”, one that the first speaker would consider to be beneath him in status and thus cannot understand how she can leave him for a poor man. The second speaker is keenly aware of this and therefore emphasizes that her interests are better served by the genuine poor man than by uncommitted wealthy speaker. As for the broken promises that the first speaker harps at, she takes exception with his expectation that despite lack of concrete commitment from him, he “expected the promises between us to be binding”. She defiantly proclaims that she made a conscious decision that she was not going to live under the controlling specter of a hopeless relationship and an uncommitted man on

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account of what she considers useless promises. She goes on to declare that his love was useless and invites him to come and see her and her new partner in the next church service. The posturing of the speaker of the first song is totally subverted by the response of the second song. While he plays victim in the first song, the response in the second song exposes him as the culprit. The female speaker does not contest the subject of the first song, which the speaker was decrying the fact that after a long relationship with him and several promises, he had dumped him and gotten married to another man. It is the context and the motivations of that action that she clarifies in her response, not only making a strong justification of her action but exposing the complicity of the first speaker. Call and response also allows artists to subvert not just representation of events and actions, but also the social conventions of morality and acceptable behavior. A good illustration of this is the series TNJnyanya (Tomatoes), 1 & 2 by J.J Muoni. In Song 1, a male speaker is chiding a female addressee who is crying after a particularly nasty encounter where she has been gravely assaulted by the wife of a man she was having an affair with: Don’t look at me with remorse What do you want me to do? Young girl, I asked you to marry me and you refused, And you said you don’t like young men; That you prefer sugar daddies… Now see how you have been defaced By the sugar daddy’s wife.

The speaker goes on a long moral tirade showing the “young girl” the immorality of running around with sugar daddies and the dangers the habit poses, the least of which is not physical violence as has happened in this case. After the moralistic tirade he offers some advice to the girl: A good and moral life, young girl, Is for you to look for your own husband, Even if he is poor, Be patient and look for wealth, Do not go for other peoples’ husbands, You will be killed, Life is not that easy, Do not play around, If you take other peoples husbands, You will die for no good reason.

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It is fair to say that the speaker is taking a popular moral position and is speaking for the larger society in both castigating the young girl and her behavior and in giving advice that the correct approach is to stick to the “straight and narrow” moral path, as expected by society. For the girl, the message could not be clearer. Already she has been in a scuffle that has left her seriously injured by the sugar daddy’s wife. The message should easily sink because the painful repercussions of the immoral behavior are real for her. It makes sense to change course, shun immorality and live straight. She honestly should learn her lesson, heed good advice; maybe it’s time to learn her lesson but not just yet!! TNJnyanya 2 is a response by the “young girl” the addressee of the first song, that overturns the moral expectations of the first speaker but more importantly subverts the whole socially defined moral fabric of acceptable behavior. She starts by acknowledging the fact that there was an offer from the first speaker to marry her. She however reckons that young men like him take young girls for granted and therefore she decided to take her options with a sugar daddy because “they are always willing to provide for “ones” needs and they are good people”. She acknowledges though that her preference for sugar daddies has it downside especially when one is caught by the wife. She citess her experience as an example of what happens in the event one is caught: When one is caught, By the sugar daddy’s wife, She is dealt with mercilessly, Like it recently happened to me…

She however sees this as an “occupational hazard” as opposed to the big deal of a lesson that the speaker of the first song seems to think it is. Contrary to the position taken by the speaker of the first song, being beaten by the wife of a sugar daddy is no big deal, it is to be expected and reckoned with. She claims that in any case, the benefits of a sugar daddy relationship outweigh the risk of a beating from an angry wife. He berates young men as immature, very violent and unreasonable. She therefore prefers sugar daddies because they “are mature and sensitive and once you have one you will be well taken care off albeit clandestinely”. She goes on to extol the virtues of sugar daddies, their generosity, their maturity and then catalogues the immense material benefits of sugar daddy relationships and concludes “a sugar daddy is a serious person who should not be let down (despite the occupational hazards)”. As for the advice that the first speaker gives, she has a counteradvice of her own to all young girls: “

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Young girl, be wise, Don’t shoot yourself on the foot, Another’s husband is not your own, When you are “eating” with him, Always look over your shoulder, But do not get too afraid, If you do, You will go hungry And yet men have money in their pockets.

In her parting shot, the speaker says there is nothing wrong in girls who have relationships with sugar daddies because “they never go to forcefully remove the men from their houses”.

What’s in it for me? Provisions for Dramatic Discourse I further discuss how the stylistic provisions of the call and response form allow GƭkNJyNJ popular musicians to infuse their creations with dramatic discourse. The principle aim of popular music is entertainment and in this function popular music comes with its fare share of drama. Commenting on dramatic expression, Ommanney and Schanker (1972) note that “action is the lifeblood of drama. Events must not only be talked about, but they must occur on stage” (42). They further explain that drama depends upon dialogue condensed into swiftly culminating action which means the story is presented by both dialogue and action. “A speaker in drama performs his utterance so that besides issuing the sound he also performs the action (Downes 1988). Words in drama, according to Styan (1960) and Sartre (1976), must produce meaning that will advance the action since they are the actions that largely carry the meaning of drama performances. An important aspect of dramatic expression for entertainment purposes is spectacle. Through song, popular music emerges dramatic and combines dialogue, action and spectacle. This is the case in the Series NdagNJtNJmƭra Aini (I Am Sending You Singers) 1, 2 & 3. The drama in the series starts with Queen Jane the singer and speaker of Song 1 who is complaining of a stalker who has been making unwanted advances towards her: Gentleman, you have been sending letters to me, Yet I don’t know you and I have never seen you, And you have even sent me your photograph, Telling me you want my love.

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The song is therefore a notice to the stalker that the speaker is sending a group of emissaries comprising well-known popular musicians to warn him to stop his advances: I am sending to you, D.K wa (Son of) Wanja, Makibi James and Timona MbNJrNJ, John Ndemethiu and Jimmy wa Yunƭ Sammy MNJraya and Kƭnyua wa Thingira, They write to you and warn you to refrain.

After identifying the emissaries, the speaker recalls that one of them, Kƭnyua wa Thingira had shared with her that the stalker had approached him with an offer. He had requested him to set up a date with Queen Jane and he would be rewarded with “a goat and a crate of beer”. At this juncture the speaker does not seem to have any more details about this offer between Kƭnyua and the stalker and the overtures from the stalker to Kƭnyua seem innocent enough. In the rest of the song the speaker describes the stalkers advances as exaggerated assertions, where the stalker declares undying love for the speaker showing uncanny obsessions with her. She concludes the song with an emphatic message to the emissaries that the stalker should know that she is not an easy pick, easily lured with money and she is absolutely not interested in him. After the emissaries are sent, the plot gets complicated in Song 2. One of the emissaries, Jimmy wa Yunƭ, decides to make this a lone ranger mission. He decides to execute the mission alone, saying that he is well known for his hasty behavior. The song is his account of the trip to the stalker and the message that he delivered. The song opens with the first person singular and the speaker is addressing himself to the stalker saying, “Gentleman, I am very impatient with information/ and they call me “the impatient one” for being hasty”. He however concedes that they were sent as a group: We were sent with D.K wa Wanja, Makibi James and Timona MbNJrNJ, And we were advised not to leave Ndemethiu behind, Sammy Muraya and Kƭnyua wa Thingira, We look for you and warn you.

He goes on to explain why he had come alone leaving behind the rest of the musicians. In his explanation of why the rest did not accompany him he starts with Kƭnyua wa Thingira, the fellow who had told Jane, the first speaker, that the stalker in question had approached him with an offer:

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When I requested Kƭnyua wa Thingira to accompany me, He trivialized the whole matter, Saying there is nothing to this issue Besides Jane’s baseless grudges But I have realized he is your accomplice

This adds a detail to the drama and it seems that Kƭnyua did not volunteer all information in his discussions with Jane as described in Song 1 and deliberately downplayed his involvement in the whole saga and his relationship with the stalker. It does indeed seem that Kƭnyua has deep selfinterests, a fact that Jane didn’t seem to know. As for the other musicians Jimmy wa Yunƭ, the speaker and singer of Song 2 say they all gave what he considers “excuses”. Now that the whole team that had been sent with him seems to have refused to accompany him, which he interpreted as refusal to take the message, he reveals whom he had come with to deliver Jane’s message: That is why (the “refusal” of other musicians) I have come with GƭthNJi wa Mƭthamo, Because he is a fan of Queen Jane, And I have come with MNJtahi the newspaper reporter, So that he can report our discussions in the Monday Newspaper.

The two, GƭthNJi wa Mƭthamo and MNJtahi, were not in the original party sent by Jane. The selection of MNJtahi the newspaper reporter is particularly curious. Jimmy wants him to “report on all the proceedings of the visit in Monday’s newspaper”. After giving these background details, he delivers the message telling the stalker that Jane is not interested in his advances and that she is already in another relationship. He goes on to deliver a tough message that borders on insults: That beer and meat you were promising Kƭnyua, Jane said you give to your own people they eat to their fill, And that she is not wooed with burnt offerings, Or set for simple traps like a bird

The message delivered by Jimmy wa Yunƭ is tough and uncompromising, and given that he had been in haste to deliver the message without the rest of the party originally sent, a listener would wonder what his intentions are. These become clear when he takes with him a newspaper reporter so that he “can report the proceedings in Monday’s paper”. It is clear that the haste and bravado accompanying his actions are a means to create a good story for

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cheap publicity. In doing so he joins the likes of Kƭnyua wa Thingira who have undisclosed vested interests in this matter. He turns a well constituted caucus into a lone ranger mission, an unwelcome complication to the situation of Jane, the first speaker. The self-serving designs of Jimmy wa Yunƭ the speaker of Song 2 are revealed in the third response to the series. Song 3 is done by Makibi James one of the other singers sent by Jane and he presents the version of the other musicians whom Jimmy Wa Yunƭ had dismissed in Song 2 as being disinterested in the delivery of Queen Jane’s message. The song is an account of the experiences of the group when they went to deliver the message and it is addressed directly to Jane, the speaker of the first song. The speaker and the singer of Song 3 starts by making direct reference to Song 1 and reminds the listener that this is the reply they have been expecting: This is the response of the party of emissaries, Sent by Jane, To warn a gentleman, Who has been bothering her, With many letters of mischief

From the onset the speaker of Song 3 identifies Jimmy wa Yunƭ the actor in the lone ranger mission, speaker and singer of Song 2, and Kƭnyua wa Thingira the fellow identified by the lone ranger as having vested interests in the matter as cunning saboteurs; “icio nƭ thweri nƭ ndƭƭra thƭ ta huko”. Loosely translated, it means “those are untrustworthy schemers, who destroy from within/underneath like moles”. The speaker narrates the events of their mission from the time they received the terms of reference from Jane. The speaker starts by giving the modus operandi employed by the remaining members of the group; himself, Makibi James, Timona MbNJrNJ, D.K wa Wanja, John Ndemethiu and Sammy MNJraya, to deliver Jane’s message. The first task was to get together and make a positive identification of the stalker. Apparently they did that with the help of Kƭnyua, the self-serving saboteur, who on seeing the photograph was able to confirm that he knows the stalker. Addressing Jane, the speaker says: After receiving your instructions, we met, Myself, Makibi, Sammy MNJraya, Timona and DK, So that we organize ourselves to deliver your message… After receiving the photo, We were fortunate to make a positive Identification of the stalker, Kƭnyua wa Thingira said he knows him very well, He hails from TimaNJ and he’s a wheat farmer

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After identifying the stalker and going to TimaNJ to deliver the message, they are surprisingly well received at the stalker’s home: When the gentleman saw us, he was very excited, Especially to meet MNJraya, Ndemethiu , DK and Timona, He said he’s glad to meet Kenya’s top musicians… We held discussions; he wined and dined us, He gave us a tour of his wheat farms, And his vast real estate concerns, Covering almost the whole of TimaNJ town.

The scenario presented of the reception of the party at the stalkers house is very different from the confrontational stance taken by the lone ranger, Jimmy wa Yunƭ, who had gone with a newspaper reporter. We are able for the first time to hear the voice of the stalker who apparently is not only very wealthy but also likeable, civil and genuine. The emissaries are impressed by his substantial real estate investments in TimaNJ town and his large wheat farms. They are however uncomfortable with the details of his wealth and their reception and knowing that they could be misunderstood or associated with vested interests like the saboteurs, they caution Jane that “we are not exaggerating and we have not sold out”. The emissaries report that the stalker was genuine in his interests in Jane and was categorical in his commitment to that course: The gentleman confirmed to us, That he has been praying, For God to intervene and if we could ask Queen Jane, That a day will once come, For both of you to talk and dine together.

They were unable to answer whether Jane was in another relationship, a fact that the lone ranger speaker of Song No: 2 confirms affirmatively in his selfstyled version. Dramatically the emissaries bring back a more emphatic and undeterred position from the stalker. He reiterated his commitment to Queen Jane and added that the day he wins her, they will have their “first picnic on the moon”. This series is full of twists and turns and an array of characters who display varied intentions and motivations. Like all good drama, it employs the technique of counteract predictability to very good effect. This is evident when the character that the audience expects to be the culprit turns out to be innocent and genuine while the actors that the audience would expect to be genuine turn out to be the villains. Yet in classical soap opera fashion the

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original problem is not solved. Though Jane’s message is delivered the response heightens the tension and suspense creating appetite for more drama, and as for the denouement, the jury is still out.

No Conclusions yet – A Conclusion As aptly demonstrated in this paper, call and response provides for a speech across, between and through several voices in the GƭkNJyNJ popular song. By reappropriating the style, the popular artists are able to engage in reciprocal interaction, what Njogu (1999) calls, “a passing through and a going apart…characterized by tension, by simultaneity of presence and absence”. Recalling Hawes quoted above, I have demonstrated how the form as dialogic activity enables the popular artists to “articulate, at least temporarily and partially, the competing positions and interests of contestatory discourses such that those discourses continue to address each other”. For so long as through call and response artists exercise “the will to listen and speak across lived difference”, the possibilities of the popular song are endless, inconclusive at best. In conclusion, it is clear from the analyses of this paper that the possibilities for syncretism between orature and the contemporary popular song, point to the fact that any talk of the demise of the former is at best premature. As demonstrated, areas of confluence mean that aspects of orature are to be found in the contemporary verbal expressions and specifically the popular song. In this paper I have only dealt with the provisions of the call and response form, meaning that there are immense possibilities for investigating other areas of interface in terms of content and form. This is but an initial attempt and further investigations would give rise to opportunities to understand trends and patterns of influence and thus make a much more global characterization of the relationship.

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References Attali, J (1985) Noise: The political economy of music. Minneapolis. Bakhtin, M. M. (1986) Speech genres & other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bukenya A, Nandwa, J. (1984) African Oral Literature for schools. Nairobi: Longman Kenya. Cangolo, C. (1933) The Akikuyu: Their Customs, Traditions and Folklore. Nyeri: Mission Printing School. Chinweizu.O. J., Madubukie, I. (1980) Towards the decolonization of African literature. London: K.P.I. Downes, W. (1988) “Discourse and drama.” In Wille Van Peer (ed) The Taming of the text: Explorations in Literature Language and Culture. London / New York: Routledge. Finnegan, R. (1970) Oral literature in Africa. Nairobi: Oxford University Press. Grandsaigne, J. (ed) (1985) African short stories: An Anthology. Nairobi: Macmillan Kenya. Hawes, L. C. (1999) “The Dialogics of Conversation: Power, Control, Vulnerability.” Communication Theory. Vol 9. Issue 3. Kabaji, E. (1991) “The Maragoli folktale: Its meaning and aesthetics.” M. A. thesis. Kenyatta University, Nairobi. Welsh-Asante, K. (ed) (1994) The African aesthetic: Keeper of the Traditions. Westpoint: Praeger. Kemoli, A (1980) “Ethnomusicology – A factor in the preservation of cultural heritage.” Unpublished paper presented in the Sixth Carbice Conference, Nairobi. Kieti, M. (1989) “Myali Songs: Social Critique among the Kamba.” M. A. thesis. Kenyatta University, Nairobi. Low, S. M. (ed) (1999) Theorizing the city: The new urban anthropology reader. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Manuel, P. (1988) Popular musics of the non-Western worlds. New York: Oxford University Press. Mokitimi. M. (1982) “A literary Analysis of lifela tsa litsamaea naha poetry.” Diss. University of Kenyatta, Nairobi. Mumby, D. K. (1997) “Modernism, postmodernism, and communication studies: A rereading of an ongoing debate.” Communication Theory 7,1-28. Njogu, K. (2004) Reading poetry as dialogue. Nairobi: Jomo Kenyatta Foundation.

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Ommanney K. A., Schanker, H. H. (1972) The stage and the school. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Sartre, J. (1976) “On Dramatic Style.” In Michaell Contat et.al.(eds) Sartre on theatre. London: Quartet Books. Styan J. L. (1960) The elements of drama. London: Cambridge. Wa-Gachanja, M. (1987) “The Gikuyu folktale; Its structure and aesthetics.” PhD thesis, Emory University. Wainaina, M. (1998) “Aspects of Orature in selected Gikuyu pop-songs.” Unpublished thesis, Kenyatta University. Wanjala, C. (Ed), (1973). Standpoints in African literature. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau. Njogu, K., Maupeu, H. (eds) (2007) Songs and politics in Africa. Dar-essalaam: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers.

James Odhiambo Ogone and Ogone John Obiero

Acitivistic Undertones in the Music of Women: A Psychonalytic and Stylistic Reading of Agnes Mbuta’s Dhiang’ Othuwowa gi Chuo Introduction Music appears to be at the centre of the oral tradition in many African societies. The Luo community in Kenya is not an exception. Like other communities in Kenya, the Luo have a myriad of traditional song genres classified mainly according to the functional roles they serve in the society. Dudu or Dodo musical genre, into which the song Dhiang’ Othuwowa Gi Chuo [literally, “the cow has caused conflict between men and us”; and literarily,“bride price as source of ‘gender’ conflict”] may be classified, is performed by women. Given this fact, the genre accordingly entails a variety of discourses of immediate concern to women within their African context. This is informed by the knowledge that music meaning resonates with and is inseparable from the socially and culturally functional context in which it originates (Cross & Tolbert 2008).

Set in a typically patriarchal African society in which women are often displaced from the public sphere and confined to relatively private spheres (Appiah and Gates 1999), Dudu sometimes serves as a medium through which the women-folk express their trials and tribulations. Despite spirited efforts to eliminate discrimination against women around the world, female subordination is still fairly commonplace in many African societies. In some contexts (perhaps owing to religious or other traditional beliefs) the women have been obliged to accept this disadvantaged situation; in others however, signs of rebellion have been simmering. The rebellion might itself take many forms, ranging from confrontational to less confrontational. Those in favour of the latter means are probably cautious with the delicate balance of harmony between the sexes within their societies. Through music, and as Brentar, Neuendorf & Armstrong (1994) note, the ‘affirmative message’ is easily conveyed due to the potential of music to provide the necessary exposure in attracting attention of the public for a particular movement’s cause. With reference to Dudu music, as we illustrate later in this paper, the rendering of the text is deliberately cagey, especially when delving into topics still largely regarded with suspicion such as the advocacy for gender equity. To that end, this paper looks at Agnes Mbuta’s Dhian’g Othuwowa Gi Chuo with a view to revealing the subtle activism expressed by its

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performers. Both psychoanalytic and stylistic strategies are adopted in this paper in an attempt to unpack such subterranean motifs. But of note at this early stage is the special place of bride price in the Luo society, and in this paper as a central idea. As a ritual, bride price formalizes marriage in most African societies. Among the Luo, bride price is paid by the groom to the bride’s family usually in kind, for instance, in the form of cattle. Acceptable too are small animals such as goats as well as cash but none of these suffices in the absence of live cattle, preferably cows. The cow is thus situated at the core of the marriage institution. This is why Agnes Mbuta’s song that essentially addresses the male-female matrimonial relationship is superficially made to revolve around bride price.

Agnes Mbuta and Dudu Musical Genre Agnes Otoyi, also known as Agnes Mbuta, was until her death in the year 2007 one of the most prolific Dudu artists among the Luo community of Nyanza province in Kenya. She earned herself the nickname ‘Mbuta’ (Nile perch) due to her burly body size. Unlike many Dudu artists who merely perform for pleasure at merry making functions, Agnes Mbuta injected professionalism into the genre by venturing into recording her music. Her band - Kiswaro Traditional Dancers - is credited with several popular songs among which is the album Gowi Lilo (“Purely on Credit”) which contains the song that forms the basis of this paper. Agnes Mbuta’s powerful musical influence is evident in the person of her son, Osito Kale of Orchestra Nabi Kings, who is a very successful Benga artist in Nyanza province today. Dudu musical tradition among the Luo is a typical female genre. It is characterized by a moderate tempo, choral singing in unison with lead soloists and vocal ornamentations in the form of occasional ululations (sigalagala) and chants. The graceful dance steps of Dudu are often described as nyono (implying ‘stepping with an attitude’). Nyono involves the timely movement of one leg at a time with an elegant rhythmic swing of the waist. It is also characterized by a swagger in step with the syncopated musical beats and the simultaneous vigorous shaking of the shoulders. The accompaniments in a Dudu performance are commonly light percussions of shakers such as peke (tambourine like contraptions made from flattened soda or beer bottle tops) and gara (jingles tied around the legs). Drums too have been recognized as later additions to this musical genre. Musical instruments are gender specific to an extent among the Luo community hence wind and string instruments are seldom used during a Dudu performance in particular

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and in the female musical genres in general. The costumes worn during the Dudu performance are usually owalo (sisal skirts). The performers often apply facial make-up using ochre. The occasions during which the genre is performed are beer parties and any other such merry making gatherings because the tone is normally one of gaiety.

Psychological Perspectives on Music The argument that music has some psychological significance has been advanced by scholars over time. According to Josephson and Carpenter (1994), music can be viewed as the outward expression of more fundamental phenomena occurring at deep levels of the mind or consciousness. This line of thought acknowledges the fact that music reveals the mental state of the singers and composers. This contention is further supported by Feder (2004) in his felicitous notion of “music as simulacrum” which he advances to portray the picture of music as an analogue of totality of the mental life of individuals. Falola and Jennings (2002) posit that music has the advantage of being carried below the consciousness and is particularly resistant to change. However, as much as music is a stable element of culture, it is also dynamic in tandem with culture which by nature is always in a state of flux. These scholarly views enable us to conclusively observe that music externalizes the otherwise inexplicable and condensed ideas in the mind of the individuals. A procedural analysis of musical items such as songs would therefore yield an informed insight into the mental processes of an individual or group. The interpretation of the latent meanings encoded in the mental life and its derivatives as portrayed by music lie at the centre of psychoanalysis. Through the ages, music has been composed because of its power to communicate among a myriad of other purposes. Scholarly attention has been drawn to the fact that music is intensely linked with human emotions. McGehee and Nelson (1963) observe that music can express people’s thoughts and emotions such as joy, sorrow, love and fear. Noy (1993) explores the interrelation between music and emotional experience observing that music is isomorphically concordant with the listener’s emotions. This in essence implies that music sounds the way emotion feels. The sentimental nature of music effectively confirms the fact that it is an expression of certain latent and complex intrapsychic processes. Through the aesthetic rapture of music, the oceanic conscious and unconscious contents of individual’s minds therefore find effective expression. Thomas (1995) admits that music has been regarded among western cultures as encompassing signs of people’s

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affection and sentiments. Panksepp and Bernatzky (2002) similarly concede that many people think that true meanings in music are about affects and emotions. Juslin and Sloboda (2001) attempt to explain this phenomenon by proposing that the communication of emotion in music is rooted in humanly universal mechanisms for vocal expression and recognition of the expression of emotion by the voice, mediated by the specific cultural contexts. This implies that the emotional meaning of music is governed by the particular contextual matrix. Consequently, much of the emotional meaning is dependent on the context in which the affect processing takes place (Scherer & Zenter 2001). Some research has documented the tendency for music to express both individual and collective mental experiences. This psychological biography potential of music is illustrated by Gustav Mahler’s confession in Mooney (1968: 67) that “My whole life is contained in my two symphonies …To anyone who knows how to listen; my whole life will become clear.” This statement reveals to us the possibility of gaining vital psychological information about individuals through an analysis of their music. Storr (1992) extends this line of thought to include collective musical expression in his observation that group singing among people provides a shared form of emotion and is the source of feelings of solidarity and good will. Falola and Jennings (2002) too argue that music is a representation of a peoples’ collective memory at all stages. These assertions show the extent of resonance music has with collective experiences that contribute to the makeup of a community’s conscious and unconscious being. Music helps in the resolution of a plethora of internal conflicts within individuals. Storr (1992) pursues this trend of argument in his observation that human beings use rhythm and melody in resolving emotional conflicts. This implies that the synchronization and coordination of vocal expressions that constitute music can adequately fulfil the need for psychic relief among individuals and groups. The resolution of the internal conflicts that plague an individual or group’s mind often results in the thawing of the hitherto tense emotional states resulting in a feeling of relaxation and pleasure. Scholars have delved even deeper in an attempt to explain the manner in which music helps individuals to achieve this kind of catharsis. According to Storr (1992), this relief brought about by musical experience is attributable to music’s ability to enable individuals escape the pains of their existence by temporarily entering a realm of peace. As McGehee and Nelson (1963: 5) had earlier explained, “music has the power to take us out of our everyday selves into a world of the spirit, of pure thought, of happiness, of sympathy, of fun, of aspiration; and then bring us back again refreshed and better able to

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our work in the world.” Music therefore emerges as triggering a string of psychological responses in individuals that are tantamount to coping strategies that are adapted consciously or unconsciously to enable survival in difficult situations. An effective psychoanalytic perception of music should thus pay due attention to the intricate interplay between the covert and the overt elements of music. Lomax (1959) holds the view that the colour of music symbolizes a fundamental socio-psychological pattern common to a given culture. Fischer and Swartz (1960) similarly regard songs as a socio-psychological index. They further argue that songs, being expressive cultural materials, would most likely yield reliable information on the psychological traits of a given society. They therefore admit that songs are material which, to a large extent, is representative of the psychological states of the members of a given society. The study of a musical genre should therefore embrace the total human situation which produced the music including its psychological and emotional content as expressed in the song texts. Such a complex array of thoughts as that underlying Dudu music can only be best accessed through an analytic approach such as psychoanalysis.

Identity Reconstruction Protest themes abound in Agnes Mbuta’s song. However, such discourses are of necessity consciously and unconsciously camouflaged in terse symbolism to evade the strict censure of a male dominated society. As Appiah and Gates (1999) aptly observe, despite being assertive, African women are still largely restrained by the norms of their own societies which have frequently shaped their roles. Like elsewhere, the issue of identity is at the core of womanhood in Africa. As it emerges in the song, years of subjugation have resulted in a corrupted sense of identity among the women. This could be evident in the artist’s tendency to invoke the names of her male relatives and ancestors. For instance, she repeatedly describes herself as nyar Odel Agola, nyar Okech Ataye, nyargi Ogola and nyar Jotuju; where the prefix nyar means ‘daughter of”. Not even once in the song does the artist mention the names of her female relations with similar fondness. This reveals the Luo society’s patriarchal naming system where people usually carry the surnames of their male parents; a tendency that the artist consciously protests. Unconsciously however, this could also be viewed as an attempt by the persona to resituate herself within the matrix of the male dominated genealogy of the society; an

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indication of the possibility that many women within the Luo society still lack an independent identity as they are perceived as mere appendages to their male counterparts. This strategy not only draws attention to this discriminatory tendency but also succeeds in advancing the agenda for the objective and independent recognition and evaluation of women as distinct members of the society as opposed to pegging their worth to their masculine lineage. Due to the numerous restraints imposed on the women’s sense of identity by the society, the persona unconsciously resorts to inventing her novel sense of identity as evident below: Yawne uru okadho, re mbuta Ero obiro rech marang’ongo, re mbuta dwa mwonyo ngege Yawne uru okadho, rech marang’ongo ni mbuta kadho Re mbuta dwa mwonyo ngege Rech marahuma, re mbuta Rech mang’ongo dereva kadho Re mbuta dwa mwonyo ngege Give way, the giant fish Nile perch is passing Here comes the giant fish, Nile perch wants to swallow tilapia Give way, the giant fish Nile Perch is passing The Nile perch wants to swallow tilapia The famous fish, Nile perch The giant fish, the driver is passing Nile perch wants to swallow tilapia

In the excerpt above, the persona assumes the make believe identity of Mbuta fish (Nile perch) and momentarily enjoys the imaginary privileges that come with her new identity and status. By adopting this new name, the persona takes a new identity thereby countering the injustices of the patriarchal naming system in the society. The mbuta fish reigns supreme in the food chain pyramid in the Lake. Its cannibalistic tendencies against the other species of fish such as ngege (tilapia) therefore make it an apt unconscious symbol of immense power and authority. The persona is therefore able to exercise illusionary potentials of power which would not otherwise be afforded her in the ordinary context of the society. Mbuta thus appears as the artist’s alter ego endowing the individual with the necessary transformative potentials necessary for withstanding the hardships of the conservative society in which she lives.

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The artist also uses pronouns aesthetically in the construction of women’s identity as members of the society. Personal pronouns are here especially employed in the song to reveal to us the state of the persona’s self esteem. The first and second person pronouns have been used to achieve a variety of psychological objectives as illustrated below: Edhiang’ emathuwa nya Ngero yo Dhiang’ othuwowa Auma dhiang’ thuwa nyar Komolo Dhiang’ okoso na malich omiyo chuo ochayowa kama The cow agitates me the daughter of Ngero The cow has agitated us Auma the cow agitates me the daughter of Komolo The cow has offended me by making men disregard us Like this

In the above extract, the first person objective pronoun ‘me’ has been used to underscore the persona’s desire for an individual identity in the context of the conservative patriarchal society. It foregrounds the women’s radical and proactive wish to appropriate for themselves the identity they have in order to be recognized as individuals with a meaningful role to play in the society. The first person objective plural pronoun ‘us’ on the other hand, emphasizes the persona’s appeal for a communal identity especially among the women folk. By using the pronoun ‘us’, the artist manages to achieve notions of inclusivity and rapport. Consequently, she succeeds in making a rallying call to all the women in the society to unite if only to survive the onslaught of the oppressive male dominated society. The persona’s choice of the term ‘okosona’ to mean ‘has offended me’ is also indicative of her unconscious desire for a new identity. The word is a corrupted form of the Kiswahili lexical item ‘kosa’ meaning ‘offence’. The novelty displayed in selecting the neologism ‘okosona’, displays the persona’s attempts to reinvent herself by reconciling the old and the new thus ending up with a novel identity. This feat would not have been achieved if the persona had opted for the usual choice of the Dholuo word ‘ochwanya’ in a similar context.

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Institutional Critique The lyrics of Agnes Mbuta’s song display a severe criticism of the structures and systems in partriarchal African societies. In fact, to an extent, her views on the Luo social structures sound almost iconoclastic. The artist censures the institution of patriarchy which customarily bestows undisputed authority on the men at the expense of the women. The men are presented in the song as overzealous, abusing their privileged status in such a manner that curtails the freedom of the women folk. Men emerge as irresponsible having shirked most of their duties, consequently overburdening the women. The lyrics of the song outrightly challenge the traditional role of the man as the provider in African societies. This is evident in the line ‘Yet he does not even provide those things’. By questioning the very foundation of the institution of patriarchy, this statement successfully sheds light on the emerging trends in the contemporary African society which lend credence to the assertion that women too play a crucial role in the society. The irresponsibility of men is further illustrated in the fact that they merely idle around and spend their time drinking at the expense of carrying out their domestic chores. The persona observes ‘I do not know if he had come to steal my maize to barter for beer’. The use of the possessive adjective ‘my’ demonstrates the fact that the maize belongs to the woman hence emphasizing her contribution to the economy of the society. The persona is consciously aware of all the trials and tribulations the women face in the society. She therefore expresses a blatant rejection of patriarchy as evident below: Ee! Aneno ka wang’ni opimo ot kanyo nogero Wang’ni no mwon mana gi jo amali An wang’ni ok amwon Aol gi mwono kiny ka kiny! To ot ok um, to koth goyi, ichalo jarit rao Aol gi thagruok Wang’ni ok amwon ot makata ang’o! Kata PC ema ochung’ kata ang’o! Ok abi mwono!

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Yes! I see he plans to construct a new house This time round he will hire labourers to smear it This time round, I will not smear I am tired of smearing every other day Yet the house is never thatched, it leaks and drenches You look like the hippo-watcher I am tired of suffering This time round I will not smear under any circumstance! Even if the PC (Provincial Commisioner) is present, whatever happens! I will not smear!

This extract displays a tone of defiance by the women. The persona questions the gender roles as outlined by the oppressive society. The ‘leaking house’ is used to symbolically reveal the inadequacies of the man as demonstrated by their inability to effectively maintain the provision of the basic need of shelter for his family. The persona uses the simile ‘…Like the hippopotamus watcher’ to emphasize the state of disrepair the house is in. The fact that the men never bother to consult their wives over important family issues is evident in the line “I see he plans to construct a new house”. This shows that the woman is not briefed by her husband over such plans. The persona thus feels ignored and expresses her frustration through blatant defiance to patriarchal authority as underscored by the use of the authoritative symbol of the PC. Her symbolic willingness to disobey such an influential authority is indicative of the extent of her resolve to be rid of patriarchy as a social system. The institution of patriarchy is effectively buttressed by other institutions such as the African customary practice of bride price payment. Bride price involves the offering of an agreed amount of wealth, mostly in the form of livestock, to the members of the bride’s family as a way of formalizing a marriage. Agnes Mbuta delivers a damning audit of this customary practice especially regarding the immense powers it heaps on the men within the marriage institution. The artist argues that the women folk are unfairly bound into bad marriages by the cultural practice of bride price payment: Nyiri masani maok nyuom gi Kojok to owuok kaka nobiro To in to otweyi nikech Nonywomi wuoru nochamo These modern ladies whose bride price is never paid They can leave at will, the way they came But you, you are bound because Your father ‘ate’ your bride price

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The persona laments the fact that bride price deprives women of a say in the institution of marriage. The juxtaposition between the contemporary liberated women, whose marriages are devoid of the everlasting commitment occasioned by the payment of bride price, and the persona’s traditional marriage is a clear indication of her desire for change. Bride price emerges as making marriage a permanent bond to the advantage of the men at both ends of the transaction: as payers and receivers. The women thus emerge as being treated as chattel property that can be conveniently disposed of or acquired at the men’s convenience. Awake to this reality, the artist demonstrates her protest against the system in her implied desire for physical escape from the yoke of marriage. As is the case with many African socities, the traditional Luo society viewed marriage as a permanent institution. The payment of bride price was meant to commit the couple to each other even in death. This is contrary to the practice in Christian as well as other modern societies where the marriage contract only remains valid while both the parties are still alive and accordingly stands dissolved upon the demise of either of them. The extract below illustrates the power of marriage to bind the woman eternally in Luo traditional matrimony: To gima dimoni, ni kiwuok idhi dalau Sama tin isetho kuro iiki kuno Omiyo wach dhiang’ koro otweya dalani anasikie But what may prevent you is that if you return to your home of birth Shortly you die and get buried there Therefore, the issue of the cow now binds me to this home forever

Here, the persona insinuates that the commitment brought about by the payment of bride price follows the woman to the grave. It is evident that the persona is concerned about where she would be buried upon her death. She would not prefer her remains to be interred at her home of birth since the patriarchal system has socialized her to believe that this is a taboo. For fear of posthumously defying custom and bringing shame to her family, the woman opts to stay in her marriage even if it is oppressive. Agnes Mbuta’s song also entails a condemnation of the deeply entrenched African practice of domestic violence. The physical abuse of the women by the men is still rampant as indicated below:

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Eh! Chieng’ manogoya! Pile igoyaga to ber berie Nyocha ogoya monyona gi tielo Mirima noinga machako wuoth adhi aweyo nyaka nyathi matin Eh! The day I was beaten! I am usually beaten but less severely I was recently beaten and even stepped on with the feet I was so annoyed that I left, even abandoning my small baby

This extract embodies disapproval at the inhuman practice of wife battering. The line ‘I am usually beaten but less severely’ proves that this is a frequent occurrence in this patriarchal society. However, the particular incident that causes the persona to rebel is extreme as insinuated in the lines ‘I was recently beaten and even stepped on/I was so annoyed that I left, abandoning my small baby’. The artist therefore exposes us to the brutality that characterizes this practice with the objective of portraying it as an unjust and outdated barbaric practice. The artist portrays the society as permissive due to its tolerant attitude towards the practice of wife beating. This indifferent attitude is evident in the casual manner in which cases of wife battery are handled. When the persona is beaten up by the husband and seeks refuge in her maternal home, her mother responds to the situation thus: Mama oling’ aling’a Owachona ni, “Nyathina, wanbe wadak adaka gi wuoru Dogi adoga…” Mother just kept quiet She told me, “My child, your father and I also live that way Just return…”

In the extract above, it is symbolically significant to note that the persona goes to complain to her mother and not father. This is a clear indication of her lack of confidence in the father who she regards as a microcosm of the wider societal patriarchal institution. The apathy displayed by the persona’s mother is demonstrated by the fact that she merely pities the daughter but does not take the initiative to discourage the vice. Her silence is symbolic of the permissiveness of the wider society that gives room for the subjugation of the womenfolk. The persona’s mother seems to have accepted their tribulations as women as the result of fate about which they could do nothing to change. She even uses her own marriage as an illustration and encourages

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her daughter to equally persevere as she has done over the years. The persona’s mother clearly expresses feelings of resignation: “…Akwayi ni dogi adoga nyargi Ogola Kata tek Nyasae emaloso” Mama omiya gweno to omiya ring’o Achako wuoth adhi edala “…I implore you to return, sister of Ogola However difficult, God will prevail” Mother gave me chicken and beef I returned home

The persona’s mother appeals for divine intervention in the line ‘However difficult, God will prevail”. This reflects her helplessness in the matter of domestic violence and eventual resignation to fate. It is notable that the persona’s mother refers to her as “sister of Ogola”. This demonstrates the mother’s recognition of the superiority of the persona’s patriarchal lineage. Ironically, the persona is given chicken and beef by her mother as an appeasement for her husband upon her return to her matrimonial home. As a cultural practice, this action is counterproductive as it is tantamount to penalizing the victim and rewarding the culprit in the process. The society’s moral system therefore seems to tolerate the vice, consequently aggravating the situation rather than alleviate it.

Playing the Victim The artist unconsciously succeeds in portraying the women as the victims in the patriarchal society hence drawing attention to their plight. This strategy goes a long way in helping the women gain public sympathy as seen below: Losie wach dhiang’ owada! Wach dhiang’ tek nikech onywomi Konywomi tidak adaka kata ithagri Wuoru nosechamo dang’ itim ang’o? Address the issue of the cow please! The issue of the cow is complicated, because your bride price was paid If your bride price was paid, you have to stay even when suffering Your father had ‘eaten’, what can you do?

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The persona above displays helplessness in the face of the age old African practice of bride price payment. She adopts the posture of one trapped in an arrangement she has very little say over. This is because the bride price paid for her makes the marriage unconditionally permanent and she has absolutely no choice but to stay put irrespective of the prevailing circumstances. This fact is emphasized by the use of the rhetorical question ‘Your father had ‘eaten’, what can you do?’ The desperation and helplessness evident here is characteristic of regression since the persona seems to fall back to behaviour typical of childhood for purposes of psychological security. The persona’s tone is forlorn as she feels forsaken by the community in which she belongs and this significantly reveals the indifferent and apathetic attitude of the society to the plight of the women. The apparent resignation to fate by the persona unconsciously represents the eroded self esteem of the women courtesy of the long years of subordination. The intimations of inferiority apparent in this case make the women to refrain from taking any decisive actions about their situation but rather take the easier option of merely evoking pity. The unconscious strategy of playing the victim has the psychological benefit of enabling the persona to achieve catharsis and consequently withstand her tribulations in the societal context. .

Blaming the Messenger Agnes Mbuta’s song gives prominence to the cow to the extent that our attention is drawn to its symbolic significance. The artist uses the cow as a synecdoche: a microcosmic representation of the wider institution of marriage. She symbolically heaps all the blame for the domestic problems women experience on the hapless animal. This is an unconscious act of displacement; a defense mechanism which involves individuals diverting their impulse-driven behaviour from primary targets to secondary ones that are likely to arouse less anxiety (Crooks and Stein 1991). The artist identifies dhiang’ (the cow) as responsible for all her problems in the society: E dhiang’ emathuwa nyar Ngero yo Dhiang’ othuwowa Auma dhiang’ thuwa nyar Komolo Dhiang’ okosona malich omiyo chuo ochayowa kama

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Yes, the cow agitates me the daughter of Ngero The cow has instigated conflict between us Auma the cow agitates me the daughter of Komolo The cow has gravely offended me, making men disregard us this much

The cow is evidently being made to take responsibility for the marital problems the women have in the society. However, the real objects of the women’s anger in this case is the men but because of the immense power and influence they wield in the society, the persona unconsciously redirects her anger to a softer and more convenient substitute target which is the cow. This amounts to displacement since in reality, the cow is not responsible for the conflict between the men and the women in any other way than the symbolic level. The cow is therefore merely a collateral casualty caught in the cross fire in this intense battle of the sexes. The symbolic use of the cow thus amounts to displaced aggression courtesy of the reality principle which accordingly affords the persona the opportunity to express her unconscious pent up emotions in a manner that is not offensive to the status quo in the society. The artist’s use of displaced aggression is also evident in her tendency to shift blame to kong’o (beer) and jachien (the devil): Yawa kong’o njawa gi wendona, kong’o njawoya To kong’o njawa gi oche, kong’o njawoya To kong’o njawa kaochena, kong’o njawa Adhiambo kong’o duwa gi wendona, kong’o duwa marach A dichol kayande ikadhaa oseke tinyoro amako ng’ut oseke Jachien ochieno ng’ut oseke, omiyo kong’o omera Alas! Beer embarrasses me in my visitor’s presence, beer embarrasses me Indeed beer embarrasses me in my in-laws’ presence, beer embarrasses me Indeed beer embarrasses me at my in-laws’, beer embarrasses me Adhiambo, beer embarrasses me in my visitor’s presence, beer embarrasses me The dark one, they used to deny me the straw but, yesterday I held it by the neck The devil cursed its neck so beer made me drunk

In this instance, the persona declines to take responsibility for her utterances but rather attributes them to the effects of the beer she has just taken. The persona unconsciously realizes that she has made some very fundamental but potentially controversial observations which might put her into trouble with

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the powers that be: the men. She therefore unconsciously opts to disown the stinging criticism she has delivered on the society and shift the blame to beer. This psychological strategy of displacement appropriately reduces the prospects of conflict in the society and fosters harmony. The artist goes even further to blame the devil by extension for her own actions. This transference of blame illustrates the extent to which the persona is willing to go if only to maintain a ‘cordial’ relationship with the male dominated society.

Fulfilment of Taboo Wishes The artist also demonstrates that due to the numerous restrictions that are imposed on the women in the African society, their conscious minds are conditioned to engaging in plenty of repression and censorship to avoid conflict with the patriarchal status quo. The women therefore find themselves engaging in unconscious wish fulfilment. This is characterized by the running amok of irrational unconscious desires as evident in the use of latent symbolism. The artist, for instance, repeatedly uses the term chuo, (Dholuo term for ‘men’). The word Chuo literally means ‘to pierce’. Its connotations therefore underscore its unconscious use as a phallic symbol in the song due to its apparent reference to the male genitalia. This satirical reduction of the men to their mere sexual appendage is symbolically indicative of the women’s defiance to male authority. At a further unconscious symbolic level, elements of penis envy are also evident in the use of the term chuo. By so describing the men, the persona gives undue prominence to the men’s sexuality hence seeming to express feelings of jealousy of the male by insinuating that their privileged status in the society is basically due to their sexual orientation. The tone of the persona in fact clearly suggests that she wishes she were in the shoes of the men to similarly be able to enjoy such privileges in the society as the men do. The words oseke (straw) and agwata (gourd) are also used as unconscious sexual symbols in the song. Although these are ordinary items in the traditional African set up, they seem to acquire new meaning in their contexts of usage in the song to the extent that they give us an insight into the goings on in the mind of the artist:

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A dichol kayande ikadhaa oseke tinyoro amako ng’ut oseke Jachien ochieno ng’ut oseke, omiyo kong’o omera Auma kong’o mera kawendo, kong’o omeroya Yawa kanyocha itamaa agwata, kawuono amulo ng’ut agwata Jachien ochieno ng’ut agwata, omiyo kong’o omera The dark one, they used to deny me the straw but I held it by the neck yesterday The devil cursed its neck so the beer made me drunk Auma I am drunk at the visitor’s, beer has made me drunk They used to deny me the gourd; today I held it by the neck The devil cursed its neck so the beer made me drunk

In this extract, the oseke (straw) has been used as a phallic symbol representing the male dominated society in which the persona lives and its repressive tendencies. In the traditional Luo society as well as many other African communities in general, men would often drink communally from a common pot using straws. The women, on the contrary would only be occasionally allowed to have the drink from the much smaller capacity containers such as gourds and even then, from a safe distance away. Due to its pointed nature and the imposing manner of its application, the oseke (straw) therefore represents the male sexual organ hence further representing the patriarchal society. The fact that the persona is denied its use effectively symbolizes the discrimination of the women folk. However, oseke could also be further viewed to represent the women’s unconscious grievances regarding the institution of sex in their marriages. The women seem to complain that they have little say on matters concerning sexual intercourse as the men tend to be in charge in this significant arena too leaving them playing the secondary role of mere objects of sexual satisfaction. The persona therefore unconsciously yields to the whims of the pleasure principle by addressing this taboo topic and successfully registers her protests regarding the injustices they face in the society. She thus expresses her desire for a more symbiotically fulfilling sexual experience. The gourd, on the other hand, serves as a yonic symbol due to its shape and accordingly represents femininity. The shape of the container symbolizes the receptive nature of the women hence further crystallizing the women’s subservience and simultaneously exposing the artists’ concerns about the extremities of patriarchy. The taboo topic of death is also addressed in Agnes Mbuta’s song. The artist displays the primal death instinct (Thanatos) in her unconscious. Freud (1959) describes the death instinct as manifesting itself through destructive forces or aggressive impulses. Such aggressive tendencies fundamentally stem from the running amok of denied impulses from the id. In her make believe identity as mbuta, the artist perceives herself as swallowing other fish

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species such as ngege, seu and mamba. This aggressive tendency of cannibalism displays elements of death wish. The picture becomes even graver when we perceive this as a serious threat to the delicate ecology of the lake and the environment at large. However, the persona’s unconscious death wish emerges clearly in the line ‘Restrain it, it may swallow human beings’. The persona’s id seems to overwhelm the censorship mechanisms of the persona’s mind in this case. Violence is insinuated here in the persona’s unconscious and symbolic wish to destroy humanity. This grievous imaginary aggression perhaps demonstrates the gravity of the artist’s disappointment at the indifference of the society to the plight of women. She therefore unconsciously wishes that the entire mankind were wiped out of existence if only to desperately right the wrongs committed against the women.

Conclusion From the foregoing, we cannot fail to notice the activistic undertones that pervade Agnes Mbuta’s Dudu music. The artist largely makes a case for the fair treatment of the women in the African, and in particular, Luo society. Perhaps due to the harrowing experiences of male domination, she subtly advocates the extreme idea of reverse sexism. This paper however, demonstrates the shortcoming of a social system that institutionalizes the oppression of a section of the society. It has emerged that Agnes Mbuta’s song Dhiang Othuwowa Gi Chuo falls within the genre of protest music which is renowned for its tendency to condemn and propose solutions to social injustices (Berger 2000). The lyrics of the song address a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to the status of the women in the context of the patriarchal Luo society. The song adopts the strategies of activism and protest to accordingly challenge the status quo with the objective of bringing change in the conservative society. It is apparent that the artist employs both conscious and unconscious maneuvers to convey her protest message. To this extent therefore, the song’s content is both manifest and latent. It has emerged that the stylistic strategy of choice for the artist is symbolism owing to its aesthetic masking effect which conveniently fosters the maintenance of harmony in the society. The subtlety of the text of the song therefore enables the members of the male dominated society to tolerate the controversial positions being canvassed by the artist and in turn avoid any antagonism.

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References Appiah, K. A., Gates, H. L. (eds) (1999) Africana: The encyclopedia of African and African American experience. New York: Basic. Berger, L. (2000) “The emotional and intellectual aspects of protest music: Implications for unity organizing education.” Journal of Teaching and Social Work 20 (1/2), 57-76. Brentar, J. E., Neuendorf, K. A., Armstrong, G. B. (1994) “Exposure effects and affective responses to music.” Communication Monographs 61, 161-181. Crooks, R. L., Stein, J. (1991) Psychology, science, behaviour and life. 2nd ed. Fort Worth: Winston Inc. Cross, I., Tolbert, E. (2008) “Music and meaning.” In H. Susan, I. Cross, M. Thaut. (eds) The Oxford handbook of music psychology. Oxford: Oxford University press. Falola, T., Jennings, C. (2002) Africanizing knowledge: African studies across the disciplines. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Feder, S. M. (2004) “Music as simalcrum of mental life.” Paper presented to the American Psychoanalytic association, New York. Fischer. J. L., Swartz M. J. (1960) “Socio-Psychological aspects of some Truskese Ponapean love songs.” The Journal of American Folklore 73 (289), 218-224. Freud, S. (1959) “The Libido theory.” Collected papers. Vol. 5. New York: Basic Books. Josephson, B. D., Carpenter, T. (1994) “Music and mind: A Theory of aesthetic dynamics.” In Mishra, Mass, Zwierlen (eds) Proceedings of the Conference Self Organization as a Paradigm in Science. 28-30. Juslin, P., Sloboda (eds) (2001) Music and Emotion - Theory and Research. New York: Oxford University Press. Lomax, J. A. (1959) “Folk song style.” American Anthropologist, New Series 61(6), 927-954. McGehee, T. C., Nelson, A. D. (1963) People and Music. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Mooney, W. E. (1968) “Gustav Mahler: A note on life and death in music.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 37(88). Noy, P. (1993) “How music conveys emotion.” In S. Feder, R. Karmel, G. Pollock (eds) Psychoanalytic explorations in music. 2nd series. Madison: International Universities Press.

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Panksepp, J., Bernatzky, G. (2002) “Emotional sounds and the brain: The neuro-affective foundations of musical appreciation.” Behavioural Processes 60(2), 133-155. Scherer, K., Zenter, M. (2001) “Emotional effects of music: Production rules.” In P. Juslin, Sloboda (eds) Music and Emotion - Theory and Research. New York: Oxford University Press. Storr, A. (1992) Music and the mind. London: Harper Collins. Thomas, D. A. (1995) Music and the origins of language: Theories from the French enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Anette Hoffmann

Chronotopes of the (Post-) Colonial Condition in Otjiherero Praise Poetry “She sang the president, today she still sings Senghor”. (Yande Condou’s son about his mother, the famous Griotte of Leopold Sedar Senghor)

A rather puzzling question was posed from the audience after the screening of “Yande Condou, the Griot of Senghor” in Berlin (during the Afrikamera Festival in December 2009). The movie is an amazing documentary film about the 90-year-old Griotte, directed by Angele Diabang (Senegal and France 2008). The question was “apart from being granted certain privileges what did Yande Condou gain from being a Griotte?” The question is unsettling – what does a historian gain, apart from being paid? What is the gain for novelists, poets, or journalists? Orality in Africa is far from simply being a marker for the absence of literacy; it provides means by which societies regulated themselves, organized their present and their pasts, made formal spaces for philosophical reflections, pronounced on power, and in some cases contested power, and generally paid homage to ‘the word’, language, as means by which humanity was made and constantly refashioned. (Liz Gunner 2007: 67) Orality, as it exists all over the continent, manifests in an almost incredible variety of forms that fit the societal needs and cultural preferences of various societies. At the same time, the performer, or Griot(te), often impersonates more than one of the professions that are recognizable in the West. He or she may be a historian, poet, cultural critic, singer, dancer, teacher, and a living archive at the same time. Instead of offering a wholesale answer to the grand question above, this essay focuses on the space of theorizing and historiology that inhabits, and is created by Otjiherero praise poetry. Otjiherero orature names its genres. If someone would tell you a story, and would then refer to it as omuserekarere it would be clear (at least on the side of the speaker), that what is told is based on a story that is regarded as true, but has been modified considerably. Referring to a story as omuserekarere would thus ask the listener to understand the story in a particular way, that is, through a genre that directs interpretative activity.

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Both praise poetry (omitandu, singular: omutandu) 1 and narrated oral history in Otjiherero have often been deemed inaccurate by historians, since they allow for the synchronous appearance of historical figures who could not, according to historical time, have actually met. Working with a notion of theorizing within and by means of a specific genre, my paper looks at the chronotopes within Otjiherero praise poetry as the organizing structure of a mode of composition, but also as a mode of “thinking place” and its significance. Otjiherero praise poetry is a specific genre of orature; it belongs to, as Bakhtin has put it, a sphere of speech that develops relatively stable types of utterances (1986: 60) 2. In the case of omitandu, this generic classification refers at once to a mode of composition that is non-narrative and that alludes to stories rather than actually telling them. Further, the recognition of genre affects frameworks of expectation on the side of the audience (Seitel 2003: 277); in this case triggering an exegetic activity that belongs to the intrinsically interactive, as well as highly codified character of this genre. Attuning the audience’s imagination, omitandu create an intense atmosphere of attentive listening and interpretative activity. One of the prominent characteristics of the genre is its heightened intertextuality. Consisting of an assemblage of textual elements, omitandu “pile up” units of texts that are constantly re-created, re-arranged in various ways, depending on the theme both of the performative setting and the person, place, or event the poems refer to. Thus, there is, in most cases, no identifiable authorship. Individual authorship in general is not an issue. Composing praise poems is not a narcissistic self-expression. Instead, the whole point of composing personal praise poems is to characterize others, put their histories together, in the sense of re-presenting the deceased after the event of their death: a great deal of the praise poems are created during the mourning period that follows the death of

1

2

I refer to omitandu here as praise poetry, and not praise songs, because I am focusing on the textual aspect of the performance that actually includes the sound of voice and clapping, gestures, dance and a whole mood of inspired performance that is lost in the truncated version as “text”. “Relative stability” of the genre must mean, to be sure, that genres can and do change. What may be classified and recognized as an omutandu is therefore not necessarily of the same compositional strategies, elements and themes as, say, fifty years ago. Still, there have to be recognizable features, so as to allow the audience to identify and thus respond to the genre. Paul Gilroy’s notion of the “changing same”, which embraces the changeabitlity-in-stability of genres, may be productive here (See Gilroy 1993, Bakhtin 1982, Seitel 2003).

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a member of the community. 3 The complexity of the poems is augmented by the non-narrative character of omitandu and its intertextuality. Omitandu create mosaics of references to other stories, poems, events and performances that have to be known by the informed audience so as to make sense of the condensed allusions that are brought up in the performance. An exhaustive analysis of the interplay of performativity, stylistic features and function of praise poetry is beyond the scope of this article (see for instance Barber 1991, Brown 1998, Coplan 1994, Gunner 2007, Okpewho 2007, Opland 1997). Instead, this essay presents a tentative reading of Otjiherereo praise poetry as a space of and for theorizing, as a “formal space for philosophical reflections” (Gunner 2007: 67). Genres may not only inhabit certain spheres of speaking but also create these spheres. One of the effects of omitandu’s performative capacities is to create frames of expectation for both audience and performer, but also a sphere that allows for, and demands the activity of theorizing. In other words, the genre that prompts ingeniously profound characterizations of persons, clans, landscapes, but also conditions and situations, simultaneously creates a sphere of exegesis and intense cogitation. Thinking through genre means that I do not merely seek to understand praise poetry as a genre, but rather to explore how the genre shapes ways of accumulating knowledge and enables specific ways of processing experience (Hayden White, referring to Seitel, 2003: 369) as well as making sense of the world. For a preliminary reading of how this works, I will look at the chronotopes created in omitandu. The chronotope, according to Bakhtin, is the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically represented in literature (84). Speaking about the novel, he sees chronotopes as a center for concretizing representation, as a force giving body to the entire novel. All the novel’s abstract elements - philosophical and social generalizations, ideas, analyses of cause and effect - gravitate towards the chronotope and through it take on flesh and blood, permitting the imaging power of art to do its work (250). Omitandu have been described as fusing time and space in the topology (not topography) of a ‘spoken’ landscape (Henrichsen 1999: 3). Bakthin’s notion of the chronotope goes beyond the description of time-spaces; it speaks to the specificity of the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are expressed in literature (1996: 84). Different from a 3

Different from for example the sefela genre of Basotho people (Coplan 1994), self-praises are the exception within Herero orature. Omitandu are composed for others, which means that the social work of signifying personal specificity (or the specificity of a certain family) must be done by other members of the community and can therefore not be controlled by the praised person him- or herself.

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being simply a time-space, the chronotope is a cultural construction, an interpretation of the interrelation of time and space that has sculpted aspects of a genre – praise poetry in this case – and thus became a collective articulation of inter-subjective experience. As a socio-cultural practice of time-space construction chronotopic articulations are generative components of ways of belonging to a defined space and community, but also means to process and theorize historical experience. Since there is no (or almost no) narrative flow, let alone a linear sequence of events, but rather an accumulation of “floating attributes” (Barber 1991: 249), omitandu produce chronotopes that are considerably different from, say, the chronotopes in most novels. There is no development of a character (of a place or a person), in terms of something that builds up or is revealed during a sequence of events, but rather a complex juxtaposition of sometimes conflicting aspects. The accumulation of floating attributes, together with the possibility to interchange units of the poems – that is, transgressing every notion of beginning or end, plot, story, and historical sequence – allows for what I will call synchronic associations. This is to say that it is not chronology that organizes the poem’s structure, and the exegetic activity it triggers, but spatiality.4 In order to make sense of experience, a character or of a place, it seems not necessary to know exactly when something has happened, but to specify where. This does not mean that the chronology of the events (that praise poetry constructs and circulates) is irrelevant for the performers and the audience, but rather that the notion of chronology is secondary.

Kaleidoscopic Characterizations: Okahandja, Maherero and the Stone that Sounds Through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones (William Carlos Williams) In the first instance, omitandu characterize people, places, cattle, other animals, and in some cases events or devices (there is, for instance an omutandu that characterizes the radio). This characterization is accomplished 4

This does not mean that there is no sense of chronology within omitandu. Since genealogies feature prominently in many omitandu, there is clearly a notion of time and succession. My argument is therefore not, that time is ignored (otherwise one could not speak of chronotopes), but that time and chronology are not the genres main aspect of theorizing. In fact, genealogies might speak as much about belonging, intersubjectivity and connectedness as they speak of chronology.

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by means of a kaleidoscopic juxtaposition, of either (often) antithetical aspects, of one place or within one person, or of the simultaneous appearance of characters from different times. Both poetic devices convey a notion of ambiguity, or the incongruous aspects of a multifaceted entity that the poem seeks to evoke. Both poetic devices appear in the poem for Okahandja, of which innumerable versions are known. Let me start with the poetic representation of a story that characterizes Maharero, who was one of the eminent chiefs of the Ovaherero in the 19th century. Maharero, who died in Okahandja in 1890, is one of the historical figures who give social significance to the place. The meaning of Maharero for Okahandja is conveyed in different allusions to his character, which appear as the “hinterland- stories” referred to in the versions of the omutandu of the place. These stories, which form the vast background of the condensed and highly opaque phrases that actually appear in omitandu, have to be known by the audience. Rather than guesswork, this is an exegetic activity that belongs to the realm of theorizing – the making of connections, linking stories, but also making sense of the appearance of allusions in the performative setting. Since each performance is unique, and framed by a specific event – a burial, a wedding, a commemorative event, and the like – each of them allows for the critical re-consideration of the allusions in the song, and with them the stories that they lead to. One of those stories revolving around Maharero appears as encapsulated in the reference to the spike thorn trees (kotjimbuku) of Mujemua’s sheep, a trope, which appears in almost all of the versions of the song I know. Here is one, presented by Adelheid Mbwondjou in 1954 5: Kotjimbuku weku Kotjimbuku tjonzondu za Mujemua OkOkahandja ngo. Mba yanda mbo. There are our spike-thorn trees. There are the spike-thorn trees of Mujemua’s sheep. There is Okahandja, there. With this I end.

5

For this essay I use the omitandu which were presented to Ernst Dammann. In his article “Einiges über Omitandu”, three different versions were recited for him by Adelheid Mbwaondjou, Victorine Kaura and Joshua Gotthard Kamberipe (1996: 271-294). The phrase that refers to the stone of Karukua also appears in Jackson Kaujewa’s song “My Country”, which was written in exile, and in the omutandu for Bishop Gotthard (quoted in Ohly 1990: 35-37).

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The spike-thorn trees, writes Jekura Kavari, refer to the place were Maharero, as the omuhona of this area, acted as a judge. The story that is condensed in the allusion goes as follows: after the death of a rich sheep owner named Mujemua, two of his nephews, who both claimed to be his rightful heir, brought the conflict to Chief Maharero to be heard. Instead of deciding right away, Maharero kept postponing the decision and slaughtered one of their sheep every evening. After a couple of days the nephews realized that their wealth was dwindling and decided to settle the case among themselves (Kavari 2002: 90). In the omutandu performed by Joshua Kamberipe (Dammann 1996: 282-84), but also similarly in various others that I heard in 2002-5, this portrayal of Maharero as a wise and witty judge is juxtaposed with the following phrase: Oomu ewe ra Karukua ndi posa ayo nomundu moukoto There is the stone of Karukua, which sounds as if it has a person inside

The stone with a hole, a hillock in the vicinity of the town, is known as Okawe kOndovi and appears to be a palimpsestic site of historical inscriptions. Various versions allude to the stone as making sounds when the wind blows. This uncanny site “brings whispers to the lips of the Ovaherero,” as Katuutire Kaura says, “holding secrets in its bosom” (quoted in Ohly 2000: 103). According to Kaura the stone is the bearer of the cruel side of Maharero’s character, “which we would like to forget” (163). But these secrets, too, are precipitated on the rock that is presented as a mnemonic instance and that keeps sounding “as if it has a person inside.” The reason for the uncanny feelings the sound evokes is transmitted in the following story: This innocent looking piece of rock has a cave inside which is described as the black bottomless pit. Maharero, the supreme court judge, the executioner, found it very convenient as a pre-fabricated grave. Intransigent slaves were summarily executed and dumped into the bottomless pit (163).

But not only slaves, who were mostly prisoners of war, were dumped into the pit; another story that accounts for the nasty side of the powerful man adds to the complexity of his poetic personae. According to Kaura, Maharero, in a fit of jealousy, broke the neck of a young man whom he caught with one of his many wives. The body of the young man, who belonged to the same clan as Maharero himself, was thrown into the hole “together with the bones of slaves and thieves.” After sacrificing a calf in order to cleanse himself from the deed, according to Kaura, Maharero said: “I was given my name by my father, Tjamuaha and the name is Maharero. My mother is the sister of the

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bull-eaters, namely Kaureka and Kangombe. It is me, even yesterday, when I took care of the son of the family” (164). Both allusions, and the stories behind them, create a portrait of the omuhona in which his personal qualities are juxtaposed so as to transmit the irreducibly complex characterization of a wise, powerful, and dangerous man, one who demands honor and respect but also fear – and glee (he, too, could be betrayed by his wives). From the ambiguities of character – to which one often refers as the simultaneity of two sides in one character, although these might not actually appear at the same time - I move to the complex characteristics of places. Like people, places are represented as embodying social characteristics in Otjiherero praise poetry. These peculiarities often seem incommensurably divergent; yet they are contained by a spatial unit. The juxtapositions brought up in omitandu, which account for the complexity of places, transgress the sequentiality of historical time. Here, the kaleidoscopic portrait turns into the synchronic association I spoke of in the beginning of this essay. Speaking of simultaneity in this case is rather a rhetoric metaphor, as in the incongruous picture that is enclosed in the notion of “a character” – as in (Kaura’s poetic narration of) Maharero’s statement “it is me, even yesterday”. What appears to be a plane of simultaneity is a specific chronotope: one that frames relations of contiguity that are the result of people’s being in that place (during their lives and thereafter) 6, which inscribed specific meaning to that place. In the omitandu chronotope, therefore, the emphasis lies on spatial relationships, to which notions of chronology are subordinate. This is one of the intrinsic generic qualities of this art form, that it creates a portrait of a historical place, without chronological reference, or the sequentiality of historiograpy. Instead, the historical figures meet in the place that is signified by them in the moment of praise poetry. Like a painting that arranges historical figures of different times in one room, this allows for their synchronic re-appearance. Bringing up figures, and with them events, affords for a synchronic contemplation of a character, or condition of a place that does not follow the logic of chronology. There are several allusions that lead to stories of different times that converge within the poetic picture of Okahandja; yet there is still another one for the rock that howls, which

6

There is a notion of conjuring the ancestors by means of calling them in the moment of the performance. Rather than the veneration of the ancestors – which it can, but need not be – this often is a re-present-ing of those who where at a certain place. The past is thus never really past, concluded or completed, but continuously revisited as long as the songs circulate.

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accounts for the thickness of the phrase related to it. 7 Here, narrated events of different times have sedimented into a poetic landscape that is created and articulated by omitandu. The hillock was declared a national monument in 1972. A small sign at the place says that “on 23 August 1850 a sanguinary battle took place at this koppie” (Afrikaans for hillock), in which a number of followers of Herero chief Kahitjene were murdered in a skirmish with the followers of Jonker Afrikaner (2002: 93). 8 Taking all these stories together, the rock figures as a dramatic site, with a cave inside that has swallowed, yet still contains and seems to leak, the voices of the victims of very different historical times and events. Oove na Muhoko Kahitjene (1790-1852) was a contemporary of Tjirue Tjamuaha (1790-1861), who was Maharero’s father. Tjamuaha is referred to again in the phrase Ooku ku ri kOkahandja kekwamo raKapehuri 9 It is here, where Okahandja is, at the belt of Kapehuri

This is brought up in almost all versions of the poem I know. It refers to an especially well-crafted belt made by a man named Kapehuri, who refused to give this belt to Tjamuaha, even though he had requested it. In Victorine Kaura’s version of the omutandu for Okahandja, she moves from this phrase directly to Kohopatwa yaKarovi, ozombanda ainazo There was not buttoned [the dress] of Karovi, for it didn’t have buttons.

Karovi was an English trader (Charles Lewis), who sold this gown to Samuel Maharero (1856-1923). This phrase, I was told, is a mocking allusion to the dresses that Samuel Maharero bought and wore, not knowing that they were

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Often it is this thickness of the language of praise poetry that is recognized, even if people cannot always recall all of the stories alluded to within an omutandu. The multi-layeredness of the allusions that the phrase or even the reference to the stone entails is certainly the reason for its appearance in almost all versions of the song for Okahandja. Rhyn Tjituka (an Otjiherero-speaking friend of mine) told me that his generation often does not know the allusions (he is in his 30s), but can “taste” the beauty of the words, especially those heavy ones that have been heard innumerable times. The story is much more complicated than it appears in my reference to it. Tjamuaha and Kahitjene were allies or tributaries of Jonker Afrikaaner during the time of conflict between Nama and Herero groups in Namibia. In the 1850s, as Ovaherero orature (or, a version of it) has it, Kahitjene felt betrayed and in turn wished to break free from their contract, which led to the battle (See for instance Heywood et al. 1992: 76). Here this phrase is taken from the omutandu presented by Victorine Kaura.

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actually meant for women. 10 Ridiculing his vanity, but also his uncritical use of European goods (of which alcohol was one) – which is one of the less flattering things told about Samuel Maharero – conveys a codified critique of the omuhona’s role during the time of German colonial rule and before. 11 At the same time, this phrase refers to trade relations of the elite in Okahandja with European traders, which in this case are not conveyed in a positive sense either. The convergence of historical epochs does not produce a chronology in the sense of historical time, since different units of the poems are arranged interchangeably in different performances, or may be left out altogether. Instead, events and characteristics appear to be gathered at or by a place, and in turn signify it. Like the character of a person, who might be represented as friendly and generous, but also jealous and stingy, without these peculiarities having or following a sense of sequence, places appear to contain events that make for their specificity. This specificity is not transmitted in terms of historical chronology. Neither does one episode that is brought up in these opaque allusions lead to the next. This does not mean that the audience, or the performer, do not know, or even confuse epochs. Everybody knows that Maharero is the son of Tjamuaha, and the father of Samuel Maharero. Chronology is simply of no importance in this case. Although there is much space for the creativity of the performer, the generic rules of composition, which allow not only for the recognition of the place that is spoken about, but for the genre, have to be retained. My reading of the generic features of omitandu benefits from Gilroy’s notion of “the changing same” (1993: 11).The changing same, in this case, is not culture as a whole system of signification, but, similar to Gilroy’s interpretation of black music, a term that seeks to define the stability-in-changeability of a genre. Omitandu, created in a specific language and form, do not stay the same. But while adding delicate changes, every performance has to bend to and will be formed by the conventional frame the genre demands. Alteration or additional inscription can only be accomplished within the existing frame 10

11

This information was provided to me in an interview with Alexander Kaputu in 2003 (See also Kavari 2002: 92-93). Samuel Maherero, who was the paramount chief during the disastrous war against the German Schutztruppe (1904-07), is criticized almost as much as he is praised – in some poems he appears as a “blind man“, in others he is the one “who sells the land – as if there were buckets full of it”. This line refers to a story in which his father, Maherero, gives buckets of sand to German traders, who want to buy land – and thereby conveys the message that his land cannot be bought (ehi means both, soil and land). Samuel Maherero is thus portrayed as betraying his father’s foresight, and actually selling off what was seen as ehi rOvaherero the land of the Ovaherero.

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of poetic conventions and by making use of the elements of its creative repertoire. The precondition for an omutandu to evoke what I have called the space of theorizing is recognition, that is, the recognizable iteration of the features of performative presentation and composition of the genre. In the initial stage of the performance, which seeks to accomplish recognition, the presentation has to draw on the signifying repertoire. By iterating the elements that locally signify Okahandja, such as the spike-thorn tree or the stone with a hole, the poems draw upon the known elements of existing versions and thereby reinforce them. The same, in terms of relatively fixed types of utterance, has to be called upon in order to achieve a different interpretation. Praise poetry, as has been said in the beginning of this essay, is a highly intertextual genre. Not only does it incorporate various oral and written sources, it also appears in other texts, for instance political speeches and pop songs. In his song “My Country”, which was written in exile in the 1980s, Jackson Kaujeua cites omitandu alongside his imagined journey through his country. Kaujeua draws upon the poetic signifiers of places, while re-framing them within the predicament of the present. In this song, Okahandja, Windhoek and other places in Namibia become synecdotic markers of the land that has to be freed from the grip of foreign occupation and apartheid. Imaginatively traveling through his home country from exile, the song takes the listener on a musical journey through Namibia. The language of the praise poem, appearing as framed in a popular song, opens up to a wider, albeit Otjiherero-speaking audience. Starting with a poignant depiction of the miserable situation of forced exile and loss with the lines Our country and our lives We are staying on your behalf In the desert (exile) While struggling for you While dying for you (...)

Kaujeua strongly claims the country. After several repetitions of “our own” and “that country is our own”, Kaujeua switches the code and intersects phrases he borrowed from omitandu: (...) After that you will come to Otjomuise In Haurondanga of the wife of Komauua At the horse and the rider It’s at the tall tree for rest

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After that you will come to Okahandja At the stone of Karukua which sounds As if it has somebody inside At the abandoned homestead of the father of Keja At the bean coloured cow of Tjambi Oowee oowee Our own mother Our own Our own Our own (translated and quoted in Kavari 2002: 41-43, emphasis added)

Prominent elements of the omutandu (for Okahandja and Windhoek, in italics) act as locative signifiers: the stone with a hole, the belt of Kapehuri. The technique of montage leaves out aspects and accomplishes a personal interpretation of Okahandja; the desire of the songwriter in exile seems to be not so much directed to a heroic landscape. The Chiefs are not praised in this poem and neither the spike-thorn tree nor the graves of the ovahona appear. 12 Instead, it seems, there is an emphasis on suffering and loss (the stone of Karukua, again), but also on ownership of cattle (the bean-colored cow of Tjambi), and skills of common people (the belt of Kapehuri). Depicting Okahandja in this way, Kaujeua seems to opt for the inscription that emphasizes the lives of common people, not so much that of heroes or chiefs. There is a notion of recalcitrance in the story of Kapehuri, who did not give in to the wishes of Tjamuaha, and this seems to cohere with Kaujeua’s reluctance to deliver a portrait of Okahandja as a place owned by Ovaherero chiefs. However, all the poetic characterizations of Okahandja add up to a range of qualities, some of which are emphasized and others neglected in the different performances. If we combine the aspects that appear in the poems I have quoted, we get the complex and vivid picture of the town. Okahandja is depicted as a place in a pastoralist area, a court yard, it is a location that speaks of the wise, cruel and heroic side of Herero chiefs, and holds their graves, but it is also a place to find craftsmanship, resistant commoners, trade and power relations and past wars. All of this is presented as a condition, rather than a sequence of epochs, which produces a notion of what made this

12

In my reading I have left out the most well-known aspect of Okahandja: the graves of the Herero chiefs, which are revisited in a flamboyant ceremony every year. These graves appear in most (not all) of the versions of the omutandu for Okahandja. The Otjiherero term for the tree is the same in all poems, Otjimbuku, but the translations vary between spike thorn tree, (which I think is correct), Mimosas, and sheep bushes.

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place as it is in the moment of its poetic reconsideration. It is this notion of a condition that I will speak to in the following. “Poetry is a Machine to Think With” 13

The omitandu I read in the following was composed for the burial of 14 people who were shot during the protests against the forced removal from the Old Location in Windhoek in 1959. 14 This is Renathe Tjikundi’s translation of the poem that was presented to us by Alexander Kaputu 15 in 2003: At the etundu of Rukungurirangombe Kapahona of Ngarangua. The big one of Mutiro with a white cloth without lice. It is here, where the orphans are not crying and the widower does not feel lonely. At the etundu of Tjiooko of Naori of the ovikerenge stones where the cattle’s hoofs do not spark light. At the tree of Hauzeu, the family in law of the Omutaki clan of the sheep of Muaheke. Tjonga of Kasimbona, her mother, Kanauanga’s sister. The chief who has been told not to button down his hat, because if he would, they will lose the war. He crosses the front of Pirata’s house with the cloth of Hekera at his back, when he went to the tree of Hauzeu, where [at this tree] he died [Hauzeu]. He is the son of Kukuri, he is Kamaituara of the cattle of Adjii Kuzema. At Ngurumina of Tjipanga at Omanyengerere, the one who was born with very small eyes. The one of our gained cattle with omirumbira (whitish) tails, like a boy who was going to another place to check it out, like the bull of Rukuma of Kahuiko, the big one, with a mark on his stomach like a watermelon. Our etundu where we used to live near to each other, all of us. With the children of Kambunduava from the city and the children of Perekere’s city of the guineafowl of Mukumango. And the children of Nunuhe. The place where we all have been together. With the children of Korota of Kauhinga, with the blunt assegai that cannot tear a cloth. And the children of Kakuuoko Kamukorouye hiya orumuna of Kandondu’s cattle. The children of Nangolo and the children of Ndemufayo, all of them, where they gathered together. At our contaminated etundu where the a trocities took place. Where we were hated. Where we said: “build us a place here, we are not going to move”. Our very big etundu.

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I borrow this subtitle from Sandy Baldwin’s article (2003), which refers to William Carlos William’s “a poem is a small (or large) machine made of words”. The forced removals of Africans from the centre of town were legally induced by the Group Areas Act (Act No. 41), issued in South Africa in 1950. The Group Areas Act assigned “racial” groups to separate residential areas. For the African population of the Old Location this meant being forced to move to the newly built township Katutura, 8 kilometers from the city (for those who were classified as “coloured”, it entailed a move to Khomasdal). The protest against this forced removal culminated in the shooting of 14 unarmed protesters and the wounding of many more (See Pendleton 1974 and 1994, and Jafta et al. 1995). Alexander Jarimbovandu Kaputu is an eminent specialist on praise poetry, and orature more generally, in Namibia. He works for the NBC, where he produces daily broadcasts in Otjiherero. He knows this omitandu from his mother, who was one of the women who performed the death lament at the burial.

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Composed by the women who performed the death lament at the burial, and containing multiple references to and quotes from other poems, this omutandu is an example of the composite, antiphonic 16 voice of praise poetry. Again, rather than narrating a story or providing a chronology of events, the poem for the Old Location consists of an assemblage of allusions that are seen as characterizing the place. Seemingly without a coherent structure, the praise poem coalesces around its central motif, accumulating a mosaic of references, hints, and traces, which are almost “befreite Wörter” (untied words) 17, but not quite, since the context of the performative setting does not allow for unlimited interpretation. Instead, the situation of the performance and the central motif direct the exegetic activity into particular directions. Both the setting – mourning for the victims of the shooting – and the first phrase establish the central motif: the notion of the location as an etundu. The term etundu designates an abandoned homestead that has been left to decay. 18 Referring to the Old Location as an etundu describes the Location as the residence of a small community in the imagery of the extended family, but already left behind. Yet, in this case, the place is lost rather than left, since the community was forced to leave the place, thus losing the kind of community that is nostalgically referred to as the place where orphans were cared for and the widower did not feel lonely. Clearly this is not an omutandu for a person, but for a place that is inevitably lost, mourned for, but also claimed as a space of social significance for its community. 19 Much like Yande Condou could sing the president, places (and people) are “made” by omitandu and in turn give meaning to the lives of people they poetically locate. The Old Location is constructed and presented as crowded by important people from Namibian history. 20 Let me focus on some of the names mentioned: Hauzeu (also Zacharias Kukuri and Kamaituara), Kakuuoko, Korota, and Tjiraua Kamaisa (also Kukuri Kamaisa). Hazeu certainly inhabits the most prominent position in the poem: The first allusion I can 16 17 18

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Antiphony in music describes the responsive alternation of voices between singers. Sonja Neef speaks of “befreite Wörter” in her work on calligraphy (See Neef 2000). It seems to have been a common practice among pastoralist Ovaherero to leave the homestead to decay after its owner had died and was buried there. I say this because omitandu that are composed and performed for the death lament are usually the basis for a personal praise that can later be extended. In this case, unusually, but apt to the cruel event, the poem seems to lament the loss of a communal space. The notion of a community that transgresses ethnic boundaries is very prominent in this poem: the people who are mentioned seem to synecdotically refer to diverse communities. This stands in absolute contrast to the intention of the apartheid regime to move people to separate areas designated for different “racial” groups.

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identify brings up the “tree of Hauzeu”, which is presented as a distinct locality, a specifically known place in the vicinity of the centre of Windhoek. 21 It is in this way that Hauzeu is introduced in the poem as a chief who is not named at his first appearance and whose identity is revealed when the praise mentions the tree for the second time, as the tree “where he went to die”. Hauzeu means “the heavy one” in Otjiherero and is a name for Zacharias Kukuri, given to him with the personal praise composed after his death. This name refers to the circumstances of his execution during the colonial war of 1904-07 (it is said that the branch of the tree broke off in the moment he was hanged). According to Herero historiology, Zacharias Kukuri, or Kamaituara, was one of several Herero men captured by German soldiers during the war and brought to Windhoek to be hanged. Both the event and the context of Zacharias’ death must be known and linked to the allusions in the poem, so as to create meaning from these sentences. Windhoek, as this poem reminds the audience, thus already had been signified by the event of a violent death. Another prominent inhabitant of the poem is Kakuuoko, Jonker Afrikaner. Jonker Afrikaner, an important Oorlam leader of his time, was born in 1785 at Rode Zand in South Africa, and established the first settlement in Windhoek, known as /Ai//Gams, (or Otjomuise in Otjiherero). Mentioning him in the poem at once evokes a notion of a foundation, or social origin of the place, which in Otjiherero praise poetry usually is transmitted as an entitlement to land use rights. 22 At the same time, this seems to refer to a longue durée of African settlements in the area of Windhoek, which are represented as having preceded colonial appropriation. Korota 23 is an Otjiherero name for Hendrik Witbooi, who is probably the most prominent Nama leader of the 19th century in Namibia. He is known (and celebrated) to have resisted the German military since the 1890s and lost his life in the colonial war at the age of 75 (in 1905). His written reply to the 21

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The tree of Hauzeu is also an element in different versions of the omitandu for Windhoek that were created before 1959 (See Dammann 1996: 274). Usually a place was “marked” and claimed by the death of the first Omuherero who had used it. This pattern has changed with the seizure of the land after the war. However, in terms of a social relevance of places, the first death in a place still names the place in praise poetry and places are known by this act of naming (See Henrichsen 1999). Korota, or Otjikorota, is a pejorative name for Hendrik Witbooi. Otjikorota seems to mean “the short thing, or something short, from otji – thing, or something in Otjiherero and korota as stemming from the Afrikaans term kort, for short. The phrase “Korota of Kauhinga, with the blunt assegai that cannot tear a cloth” probably refers to his initial unwillingness to join forces with Samuel Maherero and fight against the German Schutztruppe, as well as to his warning against the strength of the German army.

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German military Curt von Francois’ request to surrender still is seen as one of the earliest statements of anti-colonial resistance: Africa belongs to us! Both through the hue of our skin and in our way of life do we belong together, and this Africa is in its entirety our own country. The fact that we possess a variety of chieftainships and diverse territories does not imply any secondary division of Africa and does not sever our solidarity ... the emperor of Germany has no business in Africa whatsoever. 24

Looking at the people who seem to inhabit the poem, it certainly emphasizes a notion of relatedness – not always in the sense of friendly relations, but rather in the sense of the characterization of people or groups along the lines of their imbricated histories. This is emphasized in the story of Tjiraua Kamaisa, Zacharias Kukuri’s father, and his encounters with Jonker Afrikaner. Kukuri is the nickname given to Zacharias Kukuri’s father Kamaisa, of whom Otjiherero historiology says that he was a war captive of Jonker Afrikaner in Windhoek in the 1840s. The nickname Kukuri (meaning rooster, deriving from kukurib in Khoekhoegowap) refers to a story in which Kamaisa helped his fellow prisoners to escape from Windhoek, warning them by means of imitating the call of the rooster. 25 His praise name Kamaisa refers to his social qualities: the one who will not abandon. The significant stories of the prominent people who are connected to the Old Location in this poem are thus poetically represented as intrinsically intertwined in a complicated network of social relations. As in the case of the omutandu for Okahandja, no time frames or even dates are given. Instead, the characters of the poems seem to belong to a “pool” of figures that have to be considered so as to understand the significance of the place. Conjuring different epochs and thereby transgressing (or ignoring) the chronological order of the stories, these are held together by the central motif of the poem, the etundu, which stresses the notion of a family. Moreover, the floating attributes, which make sense to the listeners even if taken entirely out of the

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This statement of Hendrik Witbooi is widely known – like the contents of his letters to Samuel Maherero, in which he warns against the selling of the land to the German settlers. The intertextuality of praise poetry goes beyond the incorporation of other orally transmitted texts and often includes written texts, for instance the Old Testament. Bringing up his words here cannot be more than a suggestion of one of the associative links that are possible. Letter quoted from: http://www.klausdierks.com/Biographies/Biographies_W.htm. Kukuri and his son Zacharias Kukuri are also referred to by bringing up the genealogy they share, which is indicated by mentioning the cattle of Rukuma, which is taken from the praise of Tjiraua, Kukuri’s father.

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syntax, allow for more associations and relational connections than I can trace here. In the literally artistic chronotope, says Bakhtin, “spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. This is what makes time, for instance in the novel, thicken, take on flesh, and become visible (84). If we are to think of omitandu as creating a concrete artistic chronotope – as a machine to think with – we have to grant space the role of becoming tangible, prominent and thickening, whereas time is of secondary relevance. Referring to Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope, Esther Peeren writes that meaning itself is always already chronotopic, since “all signs in order to signify need to be – audibly, visibly or haptically – inscribed in (to) space and time” (2008: 33). Praise poetry as a way to construct meaning and make sense of experience is governed by a specific chronotopic arrangement that does not ignore time, but grants correlations in space the role of producing meaning and understanding of experience. In this way, neither sequentiality nor simultaneity trigger the exegesis of a condition, or the understanding of presence and past (that do not appear as defined as presence and past). And, quite different from novels or historiography, it is not the notion of the causality of a sequence or series of events that substantiates the meaning of this condition. What happened in 1959 is not presented as caused by, or as a result of what happened, for instance in 1905 (when Hendrik Witbooi died in the colonial war). Jordan 26 proposes to compare poetry with the arrangements of scenes in movies, that is, that of parallel actions, where different scenes take place at the same time, but in different places. With this, he argues, conflicting actions work towards a single effect: understanding a plot, a character, or situation. In this way, incongruous events are framed through time as a constant factor. To understand how omitandu frame the different events or stories they refer to, this has to be reversed: place is the constant factor and builds the centre of gravity that organizes the stories that have occurred at different times. The connection of the events that are brought up is understood through the chronotope of omitandu, which emphasizes place as that which contains all these events and thus helps to witness and theorize a (present) condition - which is, certainly in this case, the condition of the forced removal from the Old Location. Thus, it is from within a specific place that is not a symptomatic moment but the spatial bearer of the symptoms of colonial rule and its atrocities, that a condition is identified that 26

A.Van Jordan 2007 “The Synchronicity of Scenes. A Consideration of Poetry from the Perspective of Cinematography”. The Cortland Review, Winter 2007, no page numbers.

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has neither begun that day, nor has ended yet. If one looks at the connections to other places that this omutandu accomplishes – to Okahandja, for instance (Perekete’s city of the guinea fowl), or even to the north of Namibia (Mandume ya Ndemufayo) – it becomes clear that omitandu do not stay in place; instead they form networks of centers of gravity, or places to think with, thereby theorizing the conditions that lie at the centre of the particular performance.

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References Bakhtin, M. M. (1996) “Forms of Time and the Chronotope of the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays edited by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson. Austin: The University of Texas Press. 84-258 Baldwin, S. (2003). “A Poem is a Machine to Think with. Digital Poetry and the Paradox of Innovation. Review.” Postmodern Culture 13(2). Barber, K. (1991) I could Speak until Tommorrow. Edinburgh: The Edinburgh University Press. Brown, D. (1998) Voicing the Text: South African Oral Poetry and Performance. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Coplan, D. (1994) In the Time of the Cannibals. The Word Music of South Africa’s Basotho Migrants. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Dammann, E. (1987) “Was die Herero erzählten und sangen.” Afrika und Übersee. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. ——., (1996) “Einiges über Omitandu.” Afrika und Übersee. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. 271-294. Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness. London / New York: Verso. Gunner, L. (2007) “Africa and Orality.” In A. Quayson, T. Olaniyan (eds) African Literature. An Anthology Criticism and Theory. Oxford / Carlton: Blackwell Publishers. 67-73. Henrichsen, D. (1999) “Claiming space and Power in Pre-Colonial Namibia: The Relevance of Herero Praise songs.” BAB Working Paper No. 1. Basel: Basler Africa Bibliographien. ——., (1997) “Herrschaft und Identifikation im Vorkolonialen Zentralnamibia: Das Herero- und Damaraland im 19. Jahrhundert.” PhD Thesis,University of Hamburg. Heywood, Annemarie et.al. (1992) Warriors Leaders Sages and Outcasts in the Namibian Past. Narratives Collected from Herero Sources by the MSORP Project 1985. Windhoek: MSORP. Jafta, M. et.al. (1995) An Investigation of the Shooting at the Old Location on December 10, 1959. Windhoek: Discourse/MSORP Publication. Jordan, A. Van (2007) “The Synchronicity of Scenes. A Consideration of Poetryfrom the Perspective of Cinematograph.” The Cortland Review. Kaujeua, J. (1994) Tears Over the Desert. Windhoek: New Namibia Books. Kavari, J. (2002) The Form and Meaning of Otjiherero Praises. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Neef, Sonja (2000) Kalligramme. Zur Medialität einer Schrift. Amsterdam: ASCA Press.

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Ohly, R. (2000) Herero Ecology: The Literary Impact. Warszawa: Dialog. ——., (1990) The Poetics of Herero Song. Windhoek: University of Namibia. Okpewho, I. (2007) “Oral Literature and Modern African Literature.” In A. Quayson, T. Olaniyan (eds) African Literature. An Anthology Criticism and Theory. Oxford / Carlton: Blackwell Publishers. 82-95 Opland, D. (1997) “The Cimurenga Songs of the Zimbabwean War of Liberation.” In Barber, K. (ed) Reading in African Popular Culture. Oxford: James Currey. 63-72. Peeren, E. (2008) Intersubjectivities in Popular Culture. Bakhtin and Beyond. Stanford: The Stanford University Press. Pendleton, W. (1974) Katutura: A Place Where We Do Not Stay. San Diego: San Diego State University Press. ——., (1994) Katutura. A Place Where We Stay. Life in a Post- Apartheid Township in Namibia: Katutura Before and Now.Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan Seitel, P. (2003) “Theorizing Genre – Interpreting Words.”New Literary History 34(2), 275 -297. White, H. (2003) “Commentary: Good of their Kind”. New Literary History 34(2), 367-376.

Bright Molande

Metapoesis and ‘the Art of Chameleons’ in Steve Chimombo’s Poetry The post-colonial powers of Africa that make writing an enemy of the state succeed in valorising literature and making it a subject matter of its own narrative. The public execution of Nigeria’s Ken Saro Wiwa and the detention of Malawi’s Jack Mapanje only pushed writing high on the agenda and in the consciousness of international human rights bodies, universities and powerful governments. Repressing writers also makes them become more sensitive to boundaries of subversion, their place and role in society. Writing becomes more conscious of itself and highly sensitive. Writing becomes highly reflective of its own process of creation. Thus, politics partakes in crafting the rhetoric and poetics called metapoesis. It is metapoesis that one finds in the “art of chameleons” of Steve Chimombo – the only major Malawian writer who survived repression and avoided going into exile during a thirty-year dictatorship. I use “metapoesis” as a critical term that describes writing about writing. The prefix “meta-” comes from Greek and means “after,” “along with,” “beyond,” or “behind”. From the Greek word “poiƝsis”, we get “poesis” via the Latin word “poesis” which is related to “poesy” or “the art or composition of poetry”. 1 The Greek term “poesis” carries the notions of “making” and “creation” associated with creative writing in general. I particularly use “metapoesis” to denote creative writing of the second order intended as a (critical) commentary of other literary works. It means poetry about poetry. It can generically be poetry about one’s own or others’ writing. Thus, there is a different literary work that comes “along with” or is “beyond”; “behind” a particular poem for instance. By implication, metapoetic writing can be self-referential. The “meta-” prefix indeed qualifies that which is “self-referential; referring to itself or its characteristics” without necessarily being a self parody.2 1

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Compare “Poesy”, Oxford Dictionary of English, Second Edition (Revised), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 1358; and also “poesis”, “meta.” Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House. [Web Page] Retrieved 29 Nov 2009 from http://dictionary.reference.com/ browse/ meta. See “meta.” Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon. [Web Page] Retrieved 29 Nov 2009 from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/meta.

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Despite initially conceiving the term separately as I reflected on “metalanguage”, my idea of metapoesis comes close to that of Micheal Finke in his Metapoesis: the Russian Tradition from Pushkin to Chekhov (1995). Finke conceives metapoesis as an author’s commentary on his own poetics but included within his fictional work. As such, authors comment on their works and the fiction works portray the commentary. Finke argues that the metapoetic novel or poem is not simply “the linguistic code that allows one to communicate” but one that engages in “actually speaking about the code.” He thus reserves “the concept of metapoesis for texts that do not just do what we have described, but depict it as well, and we are interested in those that do so at some length, as an integral feature of the work” (10). Whereas Finke confines metapoesis to the Russian writers’ commentary on their own works, metapoesis in Chimombo means how his poetry speaks about itself and plays the literary critic of other poets. My metapoesis involves a poetics that transcends self-commentary or self-reflective writing. If Finke’s metapoesis designates “a mirror in the text”, his recognition of the preface as a metapoetic space would be questioned by those who define the preface as a “paratext” rather than “the text proper” (Schmitz 2007: 81). Therefore, scope of metapoesis and fidelity to the text of fiction mark two points of departure from Finke. According to Patricia Waugh (1984), the prefix “meta-” is also bound up with cultural context. Her analysis of “metafiction” concludes that the “meta” of fiction is “required in order to explore the world of the fiction and the world outside the fiction.” Broadly, ...terms like ‘metapolitics’, ‘metarhetoric’ and ‘metatheatre’ are a reminder of what has been, since the 1960s, a more general cultural interest in the problem of how human beings reflect, construct and mediate their experience of the world....The present increased awareness of ‘meta’ levels of discourse and experience is partly a consequence of an increased social and cultural self-consciousness (3).

Thus, the “meta-” or “metapoesis” takes us to an analysis of Chimombo’s poetry and its world. It also focuses on how the poetry speaks of itself (its own internal world) and the world outside inhabited by other poetries. The latter world constitutes a culture of a heightened self- consciousness caused by political repression and its aftermath. It examines how a case of Malawian poetry seeks to reflect, re-construct and mediate its own experience. I however begin by demonstrating that Chimombo’s writing about writing in metapoesis does not mean he is a self-consumed poet who shuns the role of a social critic in his reflections on writing itself.

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“The Art of Saying Nothing” Anthony Nazombe has described Chimombo’s poetry written under repression as “notoriously obscure”. The critic concludes that the writer is devoid of commitment as he lacks any social vision for socio-political change since he is a poet self-exempted “from any social duties whatsoever” (1990, 1983: 77). This critical view describes Chimombo’s major output of Napolo Poems (1987) and its seemingly low profile stance during Malawi’s political repression that lasted from 1964 to 1994. It is however worthy noting that the literary criticism of the same period was highly compromised since it was dangerous for academics to publish political interpretations of works. Explicit and lengthy political reading of Malawian poets begins with Adrian Roscoe and Maplive-Hangson Msiska in The Quiet Chameleon (1992). Chimombo is a poet who used “the art of not speaking” or what I later call “unspeaking” as a narrative strategy for subversion. The Chimombo who wrote during dictatorship is a satirist through and through, often depicting his society as a collection of zombies vitiated under a destructive and invincible political force. The political deluge is analogically portrayed as Napolo – a mythical multi-headed subterranean serpent believed to be the cause of cyclones, rainstorms, earthquakes, landslides and floods. He often depicts the psychological and physical effects of this destruction and attacks the political system. The poet espouses a pessimistic vision of the world because Napolo Poems largely envisions a humanity that is perpetually caught in the orbit of Napolo and his cycles of destruction. 3 One poem in which Napolo symbolises the repressive and destructive force of dictatorship is “The Message”. The characters in the poem are victims of Napolo. They languorously whisper in fear but (on the surface) saying nothing meaningful. Life is itself deprived of all meaning and they watch the world with hopeless eyes. They meet to Review what is left unsaid, And, after we have parted, we will know what it is we wanted to say before you noticed the dullness in my eyes and I, the emptiness of your mouth, before the art of saying nothing in a mountain of words interrupted our conversation (5). 3

Steve Chimombo, Napolo and the Python, London: Heinemann, 1994. All page references to Napolo Poems are to this edition.

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The paradox of “saying nothing / in a mountain of words” indicates that the people have frustrations and pain to express. They desire to protest against their condition but the political system has gagged them with paralysing fear. As a result, they have learnt “the art of saying nothing” as a survival tactic. This is self-reflective silence because it deliberately draws attention to the “nothing” being said. One has to decipher the meaning of “saying nothing” and we are called upon to think why they are saying “nothing”. The cause for “saying nothing” is the fear of reprisals. Thus, drawing attention to the silence is equal to announcing that something is wrong. The people relegate any critical agenda and relapse into frivolous issues. They digress to concentrating on the dullness in one’s eyes and the emptiness in the other’s mouth. The digression and frivolity resemble the experience of T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock whose petty society concentrates on the thinness of his hair and arms. Chimombo’s “The Message” echoes Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” as they all explore the problem of human paralysis. If Hamlet is obsessed with “words, words, words” and no action, Chimombo’s characters are preoccupied with thinking about the unsaid words that have accumulated. Their problem is not suffering from the paralysis of analysis of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Prufrock. But they experience a paralysis of language at the hands of repressive power. That is, the people’s language is rendered powerless in that it cannot articulate any form of action or intentions. Language is placed under close surveillance as the people’s thoughts and intentions are being policed in the poet’s society. The reality of Malawi did parallel the situation in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four where thinking is a crime and policing language manipulates people’s thought and action. A typical example of “thought crime” in Malawi was the execution of Albert Muwalo Nqumayo for treason in 1977. One of the charges against him was possession of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and some written material on the assassination of Tshaka Zulu (De Baets 2002: 37). This was sufficient evidence in the court that Muwalo had been thinking of assassinating President Kamuzu Banda. Given that language is policed, thought manipulated and action paralysed, interior reflection instead intensifies in “The Message”. The poem uses dramatic monologue that manifests interior exploration since speaking out is dangerous. It opens with: “Was it a decade after Napolo / I met you, friend?” The “I” and “you” make the “we” thereby indicating that the persona and his interlocutor represent society. The paralysis of thought is evident in the second stanza (quoted above) which reads is like one long sentence whose flow is interrupted by verse demarcations and close commas. There is no

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hurry and it reflects sluggish and waffling progression of thought that befits a paralytic psyche. This progression is evident in “Review what is left unsaid, / and, after we have parted, / we will know / what is it we wanted to say.” Here is a turn-taking of characters as they think they have all the time for minute observations: “you noticed the dullness in my eyes / and I, the emptiness in your mouth.” The sluggish stream of consciousness evokes Prufrock’s timetaking and repeated thinking that “There will be time, there will be time.” In fact, the process of reviewing “what is left unsaid” and the slow turn-taking echoes Prufrock’s “Time for you and time for me, / And time yet for a hundred indecisions” which must also be eternally revised (Eliot 1963). In reality, the flow of thought is not progressing to anything because the persona is actually thinking backwards. The stream of consciousness moves from the present, “Review...after we have parted” to a momentary future when they “will know” what should have been said in the past. The stream of consciousness then regresses farther into a remote past “before” digressing into minute observations which happened “before the art of saying nothing / [...] / interrupted our conversation.” The use of the time marker “before” soon after another completes the regression in the flow of thought. As Waugh (1984) defines the prefix above, this poem therefore typifies the “meta-” as the poet depicts how the people reflect on and mediate (or fail to mediate) their experience when language is policed. A similar state of paralysis and self-reflection of consciousness appears in “Derailment: A Delirium”. This poem dramatises the paralysis, languor and lethargy of the society under repression. The persona finds himself in a world of zombies as he undertakes a search for life-giving waters after an infection of hepatitis. The persona’s sluggish stream of consciousness owing to a paralytic mind is reflected by physical experience as he: Started and stopped, being careful not to disturb migrant viruses and zombies. Read a book, smoked, stared around to count how many zombies had gone before me, how many were coming, starting and stopping, behind me, praying I’d get there before the sacred waters dried up. Started and stopped (1994: 21-22).

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The persona is in a society of zombies, viruses and amoebas, and everything around him is infectious. His fellow suppliants become infectious zombies “swirling around me like amoebas and viruses”. When Napolo plays the devious providence by giving him the supposedly water of life, he only gets more infection and “hordes of them, / layer upon layer, / amoebas and viruses / debating what to do/ with your liver” (1994: 24-25). The poem typifies Chimombo’s trenchant attack on repressive politics of the day. The poet compares the “fortuitous derailment of the bile” that has caused the hepatitis to the fuel and political “blockage playing havoc with the arteries / that feed the nation.” He sarcastically calls the politicians “an influx of amoebas and viruses” and “parasites” while satirising and sneering: something to be laughed away at cocktail parties; a parliament of amoebas and viruses assembling in the hostels of our being, sorting out our livers, rifling our bile, to see how far we can survive amoeba rights to live in our liver (1994: 28).

Chimombo uses a delirious character full of hallucinations, fragmented and incoherent speech. This hallucinatory is meant to be dismissed as “saying nothing” meaningful while the poet gets away with a scathing derision of a dysfunctional state. The poem however avoids mentioning Kamuzu or sketching any figure whose description evokes the despot. Such is the case throughout Chimombo’s poetry written during repression. Instead, Chimombo “unspeaks” Kamuzu Banda and his minions. Steve Poole (2007: 238) argues that unspeaking “represents an attempt to say something without saying it, without getting into an argument and so having to justify itself”. That is, the speaker escapes being cornered to justify what he says.. It involves “smuggling a political opinion” into the listener or reader in a much unnoticed way. Its aim is “to bypass critical thinking and implant a foreign body of opinion directly in the soft tissues of the brain”. Chimombo wrote to by-pass the critical eye of the censors. But unspeaking is not exactly a case of irony in its saying “one thing while meaning another. It says one thing while really meaning that thing, in a more intensely loaded and revealing way than a casual glance might acknowledge.” While Chimombo’s irony may exist on one surface, the poet often uses paradox to say one thing “while really meaning that thing” but at deeper levels of meaning. That is why he deploys “intensely loaded” images to create ambiguity, which generally characterises his writing. Reading the earlier Chimombo must be a process of moving from text to subtext.

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Text as Myth, Subtext as Political Subversion The relationship between text and subtext in Napolo Poems is portrayed by the archetypal descent into the subterranean mythological world of Napolo, which represents a descent from the conscious into the subconscious. “Chingwe’s Hole Revisited” portrays a psycho-paralytic intellectual suffering from what he calls “the lethargy of apathy”. He shares the problem with his society. Chimombo describes this poem as “my personal statement on what I found” at home after years of studying abroad (2001: 4). The diction and imagery of probing “crevices of the mind” shows how the outer reality (his society) invades his inner world: Chingwe’s Hole assaulted me out of the lethargy of apathy; paralyzed me with probes in the crevices of the mind... (1994: 42).

Chingwe’s Hole is an abyss on Zomba Mountain on the slopes of which is the poet’s home. The locals of pre-colonial times used the hole variously as a prison, dumping place for lepers, general burial place and for offering sacrifices in times of drought (Chaputula 1982: 53-55). Malawian poets have used Chingwe’s Hole to symbolise oppression and the country as a prison under dictatorship. The image of the hole has several layers of meaning including being the poet-persona’s own psyche: The truth lay in the abyss of the hole, plummeted over the precipice, bounced against the outgrowths, reverberating in the jagged psyche (42).

The stanza begins with a double play of meaning before slipping into the third one. It first refers to the hole as a prison in which truth is locked up. The inaccessibility of the truth is augmented by the legend that the abyss is bottomless. The hole is also physical as “the outgrowths” at its mouth are a fact of Chingwe’s Hole on Zomba Mountain. The idea of the physical hole is deepened by the imagery of descent suggested by the slanting arrangement of verses. However, the hole in which the dropped truth bounces and re-echoes ultimately turns out to be “in the jagged psyche” of the poet-persona.

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The persona’s journey progresses from outer reality to the subconscious and back to reality. The fourth section particularly demonstrates the cyclic movement from outer reality, down into the subconscious and back. The first stanza establishes the pattern of the movement of thought: History covered Chingwe’s Hole with fungal inspiration delivered in packages labelled: psychoses ready-made, traumas made-to-measure; paid for an intellectual piece of ritual protection against the perception of reality (41).

The opening image of the hole points to the physical mountaintop where the Chingwe’s Hole has become a legendary source of poetic inspiration. The image of the fungi covering the hole evokes the physical appearance of the hole which is literally covered by thick trees growing out from the edge and walls of the hole. The poet transposes the image of the vegetation canopy into that of fungi thriving on the dead thrown down the hole. The hole becomes an analogy of the country as a grave for its people. The poet celebrates that his national history offers much inspiration but the history is ironically “fungal” as it thrives on the moral and spiritual decay of the dying nation. The legendary physical hole inspires in a manner that also causes trauma and psychosis. The psychotic condition galvanises one “against the perception of reality”. Both “Derailment: A Delirium” and “Chingwe’s Hole Revisited” depict a defective contact with reality that goes with psychosis and its symptoms of delusions, hallucinations as well as disorganized speech and behaviour. This loss of contact with reality marks the beginning of the descent from the physical into the psychic world of the subconscious. “Chingwe’s Hole Revisited” then moves on into “the jagged psyche” to explore a turbulent subconscious. The imagery given is that of a troubled journey on which the persona is thrown forward by an overwhelming force: “I tossed in the chaosis of the whirlwind, / sped on, whirling” and he is being “pursued by zombies”. He gets “concussion at the crossroads” and has his mind dissected for examination. After what appears to be a long turbulent journey of falling, the end shows that there is no physical movement because the persona is still at the physical plane where he prays to a rock for support: “(Rock, please, let me hold your knee. / I don’t want to die, yet.)” This rock

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is the same elusive anchorage that the persona addresses at the opening of the whole poem as follows: Move your feet a little, dear rock, as I squat in your shade. Let me touch your petrified roots in the aftermath of Napolo and gaze at the chaosis in Chingwe’s hole. I reach out and the rock shrinks back, quaking mimosa-like, only to unfurl itself again when I’m my shadow’s length away (39).

This poem has a convoluted structure that makes a cyclic journey from physical reality, down into the subconscious and subterranean world of Napolo, back to out reality where each section begins its experience. The second section opens with “I sat by the edge of Chingwe’s Hole” before the pilgrimage to the cradle of mankind and the fall with Napolo’s catastrophic descent that follows. The fourth section begins with observing how “History covered Chingwe’s Hole” while the last one opens with “I was lured to the shade of the rock”. The convolution structure follows the journey and experience with Napolo round his orbit. The quest or pilgrimage takes its cyclical pattern after Napolo’s circular route. Myth presents Napolo’s spoor as a circular passage between his subterranean lair in the mountains and a submarine one in the lakes below. Napolo’s always descends on a journey to sea from the mountains with creative-cum-destructive landslides or floods. It is this descent from a physical and its destruction that causes the knock-down mental effects. The descent is also a slipping into the subconscious and every return to the physical world represents a momentary awakening to the full consciousness of the world around the persona. The poem aptly compares with “Derailment: A Delirium” which fully explores the subconscious as the persona who undertakes a pilgrimage to the mountaintop while in a delirious state as the title suggests. The poet announces his manifesto through a character who is in a state of confusion and stupor as though he speaks from the subconscious in “Of Promises and Prophecy”. The persona is experiencing somnolence and inertia in his drunken state, “lacerated with reggae sounds” as he gropes in the darkness “between / the tavern, bar, and the rest house”. His journey is marked by a kaleidoscopic images of “puddles / of vomit, sweat, beer, and wine, / the whore’s smile” and an attacking thug. All this experience is given in a stream of consciousness while the poem explores the subconscious. The

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plan begins with the resolve: “No, they shall not have the truth / for facts are explosives / ... / blowing reality into oblivion.” He instead resolves to speak through silence, a prescription to which he invites other artists: Let us recede into the citadels of silence and feed the people with more lines and lies. And under the shroud of silence let introspection unroll the map, trace the tracks of introspection to pinpoint where the derailment and mass burial of truth took place (34).

The imagery of death in “the shroud of silence” with which the persona is covered suggests that silence is a form of death in which the persona and his colleagues must undertake a soul searching. The soul searching involves reflecting on the political derailment of the nation where there is now “mass burial of truth”. The irony is that the poet encourages others to resort to silence which he is aware to be a form of death. This irony plunges the poet into self-sarcasm because his avowed strategy of silence is also what he loathes. The poem manifests a double voice and uses a doubling persona under the pretext of his stupor and confusion. One voice is that of the poet in which he announces his artistic strategy. The second voice belongs to the authoritarian custodians who also plan to feed lies to the masses and “irrigate their drought-stricken spirits with” among other things “malaise, / anomy, and emotional dehydration”. A single unit of thought brings out both voices by starting with one before slipping into the other in a typical stream of consciousness of a confused person: No, don’t jog their memory anymore, let it coil as harmless as a puffadder until it is stepped upon, only add more fuel to the amnesia, programmed inertia and somnolence (34).

The poet promises to avoid awakening the disturbing and dangerous memories of the nation in the first three lines. The last two lines posit transition in persona’s stream of consciousness as it slips into the voice of authorities who declare worsening the people’s condition of amnesia, inertia and somnolence which they have programmed. The poet veils his mockery of

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the authorities’ worsening of the national amnesia and programming “inertia and somnolence” by pretending that it is the poet himself laying down his plans. It is also a double-voicing (equivocating) technique to announce a recession into “citadels of silence” while feeding the society with “more lines and lies”. The addition of “and lies” at the end of the “lines” turns the stanza into an equivocation that makes his silence a lie or pretence. At the same time, the persona quips with an innuendo that the political authorities are feeding the people with lies. The straying of the delirious mind into assuming the authorities’ voice is also parodying at its best. This equivocal doublevoicing is a strategy of subversion that relies on the use of creation of ambiguity, parody, paradox and irony. Another parodic assumption of the repressors’ voice is found in the ambiguous character of Chameleon in “Four Ways of Dying”. Chameleon pretends to ally with the oppressor while deftly defying and invading the system at its core. He says “Until I have exhausted my wardrobe, / lost my dye to a transparent nothingness, / I will match my colours with yours” (18). This persona promises the impossible because there will never a time when Chameleon would exhaust his colours. While waiting for the impossible, he resolves and threatens to torpedo the system in his camouflage. Chameleon relies on camouflaging himself in colours that match the system while frustrating hopes of the political elite and worsening their fears. By making Chameleon a parody who pretends to be part of the system, the persona has been subversive while pretending to be saying nothing politically harmful. Chimombo’s “art of saying nothing” creates a subtext where the poet censures authoritarian politics and its effects on the people. Rather than the reader constructing his own text, the poet deliberately draws the reader’s attention to what he does not say, hence creating the subtext. A subtext relates to what is not said or not done (and how it is not said or done),what may be implied, suggested or hinted, what is ambiguous, marginal, ambivalent, evasive, emphasised or not emphasised.... [The] reader exercises insight into the ‘unconscious’ elements in the work itself and thus elicits additional meanings (Cuddon 1998: 877). What the poetry says is that the society is suffering under the devastating impact of the mythical Napolo. The text of Napolo Poems presents a persona who often undertakes a quest or pilgrimage to experience or explain Napolo. He ends up caught in Napolo’s own experience in a recurring or cyclic journey. The convoluted poems depict Napolo’s cyclical journey between the terrestrial and his subterranean world, the mountaintop and the lake, the characters’ slipping into the subconscious comes along with the descent into

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the underworld. By taking the reader on this mythical quest journey, the poet renders the reader “insights into the ‘unconscious’ world of characters that are in drowse, trance or confusion from which political statements are made. The subconscious is itself the subtext. This is how Chimombo does not speak authoritarian politics.

“The Art of Chameleons” Chimombo’s mythopoeia has been the framework for articulating the psychological state of his country during the years of repression. It is Napolo that identifies the poet during this period. But after political liberalisation in Malawi, the poet has increasingly shifted towards a new metaphorical paradigm of the chameleon as the centre of consciousness and reflection. This shift is well pronounced in Epic of the Forest Creatures (2005). Adrian Roscoe and Mpalive-Hangson Msiska have noted that the chameleon is “one of the most important and complex figures in Central African mythology” (1992: 21). Its complexity lies in its ambiguity as a signifier of death and life at the same time; a sacrificial figure that saves society while yet conceived as a traitor without a principled stand. The two critics have metaphorised key Malawian poets writing during the 1964-1992 autocracy as “quiet chameleons”. The term describes the writers’ low profile stance that served as a camouflaged strategy for undermining tyranny. Chimombo (1988) has examined Mapanje’s self-description and concluded that Mapanje is like a chameleon on account of being illusive and trickster-like. Chimombo divides “chameleon-like techniques” into verbal and non-verbal. He argues the verbal techniques constitute the use of the chameleon mythology as content although he stops short of discussing Mapanje’s camouflage of metaphors as a verbal “chameleon-like” technique. Chimombo mentions that non-verbal techniques relate to “the poet’s situation in place and time” and how one responds to it. Chimombo criticises Mapanje as a chameleon “poet [who] fails to reveal his true colours” and that selfcamouflaging undermines or covers up the real quality of his works. Chimombo’s desire for the “true colours” of a chameleon poet is a paradoxical quest because the chameleon has no true colours. In his imagination, he imposes some assumed stable essentials on the chameleon since the poet envisions a stable role of the animal that befits “true colours” beyond its fickleness. It is from the logic of essentialising the chameleon and envisioning a stably trustworthy role beyond mutability that Chimombo criticises Mapanje

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as a fine poet who fails to show “a central unifying consciousness”. Again, he seeks a “unifying consciousness” within the capriciousness of the chameleon. He argues that “the chameleon-like stance [...] produces episodic, fragmentary fleeting, topical pieces which cannot sustain analysis beyond the immediate event” (Chimombo 1988: 114). While leaving unexplained how the chameleon-like stance produces such an artistic effect, Chimombo’s own criticism also suffers the failure “to reveal his true colours”. He could not obviously draw out the political significance of Mapanje’s writing because he was writing his critique at the height of autocracy when such a political reading was dangerous. For instance, when Chimombo says “there is nothing to make [Mapanje’s ‘Song of Chickens’] lasting” he glosses over the enduring political theme of the liberator turned into oppressor. This theme of the messiah turned into destroyer of his people widely applies to mythological and political narratives. It is true of the Yoruba god Ogun who leads his people to victory in war only to dramatically turn round to butcher them all – drinking their blood mistaken with wine (Soyinka 1976). The theme also characterised Kamuzu Banda’s relationship with his subjects. It continues to characterise other oppressors who rise to power in the name of liberating their people with Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. Having criticised Mapanje as a chameleon poet who fails to show his true colours, Chimombo assumes the chameleon role and commends the “chameleon-like” tendency as the safe way of writing under repression. I now turn to Chimombo’s use of the chameleon as a rhetorical principle of metapoesis. In précis, the chameleon and its assumed essences constitute the voice or viewpoint, style of narration and subject matter in Chimombo’s metapoesis. Epic of the Forest Creatures (2005) is the work that celebrates Malawi’s political transition and the poet has this to declare: “I do not apologize for making Kalilombe [chameleon] the narrator of this poem” (viii). This refusal to apologise signals the writer’s awareness that he has assumed a rhetorical stance bound to be interrogated. After all, Chimombo is aware of the political associations, controversy and ambiguity that come with the chameleon figure in Malawian mythology and society. That is why Chimombo refuses to accept Chameleon as his personal symbol “for fear of contamination” with its negative associations. 4 Yet the poet seems to refer to himself as “the real” chameleon when it comes to his evasive and ambiguous style of writing. The

4

Steve Chimombo, “Interview with Bright Molande”, 31 March 2010. In the interview, the poet confesses assuming Kalilombe (a larger species of the chameleon) as the voice and narrator but arguably contends that this is not necessarily his personal voice.

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poet appears to draw an analogy between “the singing chameleon” and himself with reflection on his “impenetrable verbal thickets” of poetry during the repression: The Kalilombe’s tongue used to sing In impenetrable verbal thickets At the height of universal woe or doom; At the brink of disaster or edge of catastrophe; Or the advent of another Napolo. But now, tongue circumcised, sings Wearing webs of moonlight [...] The Kalilombe who, lately, was A chameleon in his own right; Who, lately, was busy changing colours For camouflage if not survival In the emasculation of the one-party politics. Who did not abandon ship or abdicate To search for greener pastures to hide in... (2005: 3).

The narrator’s avowed transition from being a cryptic voice under the unnerving dictatorship to a more transparent one corresponds with Chimombo’s own change from highly “impenetrable” to a more transparent poetry. The narrator’s argument is that the chameleon-poet sang in “impenetrable verbal thickets” because he had to outwit censors and survive the repression. As he “was busy changing colours / For camouflage if not survival”, Chimombo finds the chameleon (as style) to be both an aesthetic framework and stronghold for his personal survival. The narrator can also be likened to Chimombo because he is the only major Malawian poet who never went into exile. He stayed in and survived Malawi’s thirty-year despotism together with its paralysing censorship. The narrator suggests patriotism as the raison d’être for staying on with the repression. Like the poet, the singing chameleon “did not abandon ship or abdicate / To search for greener pastures to hide in.” The same argument for patriotism is advanced in his short story called “Another Writer” (1996). The story is a fictionalisation of the situation around Jack Mapanje’s arrest in 1997 when Chimombo was a family. A rumour goes around in the story that the protagonist has fled into exile because there is a rampant crackdown on intellectuals. The protagonist counters:

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Believe you me, if I had wanted to go into exile, I would have done so years ago when I was away studying in the U.K. and U.S.A. The thought had occurred to me then, but after toying with it, I realized I’m deep down an ancestral worshipper. I also discovered that I cannot write genuine stuff when I’m on foreign soil. I decided to brave my own country, and here I still am (Chimombo 1996: 33).

The protagonist, who is a writer, represents Chimombo himself who studied in the United Kingdom and the United States during Malawi’s most repressive times when many intellectuals were detained, died mysteriously or fled into exile. What John Dubbey (1994: 118) describes as the “purge” of intellectuals took its toll in 1974 and lasted to early 1980s. 5 The purge of intellectuals therefore covered much of the period Chimombo was already abroad where he could have stayed as an exile. The persona, who is partly synonymous to the poet, argues that he “was / a chameleon in his own right” and that he was “changing colors / For camouflage” during dictatorship. The use of “in his own right” emphasises being “a chameleon” in terms of his literary style as his explanation why he stayed from exile. In his metapoetic stance and commentary of other writers, Chimombo’s view is that going into exile during autocracy was often a matter of choice. The poet sees himself as the higher species of the chameleon called Kalilombe. This is “The Kalilombe who stayed home; / Who did not abandon ship or abdicate / To search for greener pastures to hide in.” He insists that not all exiles had genuine reasons for escape as some exiles were either “pretended” or “self-imposed” (Chimombo 1994: 156). Chimombo then portrays the lower species chameleon as the people’s betrayer who goes into exile in “A Death Song”. In this poem, the Chameleon is among the exiles that are said to have abdicated their duty in a self-seeking spirit in contrasr with Kalilombe. Chimombo’s indictment is categorical: “The Chameleon was wrong. / ... [He] did not hear Kalilombe’s / survival song as she burst open / to give birth to laughter, song and dance” (155). Thus, Kalilombe is given as a model who survives death to celebrate the end of tyranny. The narrator however acknowledges that the voices of writers and other people who remained in Malawi were seriously vitiated but it would be wrong to think like it was a country in which nobody could make a living. The Chameleon was wrong. The homestead was no not really empty. Some zombies were left, in spite of their deafness. 5

See also Francis Moto, The Language and Context of Jack Mapanje’s Poetry, Cape Town: CASAS, 2008, 17-19.

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The ndondochas [zombies] wailed at night despite their tongues being cut off. They were not completely dead. Yes, carloads of souls met their sticky ends at the end of the line. However, the survivors were permitted to attend the funerals and burials under careful supervision (1994: 156).

The images of the deaf zombies with tongues cut out yet wailing at night illustrates that people still lived and voiced themselves despite the repression. People died en masse but there are many that survived. Chimombo therefore attacks the tendency to think as though the country was not worth living as one’s justification for going to or staying on in exile. Whatever injustices, pain and death suffered, the poem asserts that “The answer was not to abandon the village / as rats do a sinking ship / or fleas a dying hedgehog.” Chimombo maintains that the writers’ going into exile was not the solution to the problem at hand: Exile, pretended, genuine, or self-imposed, is not the answer to the holocaust or the apocalypse (156).

The writers’ dilemma is quite clear here. The repression he deems to be of a “holocaust” magnitude had to be survived. The instinct for survival being the primary human instinct could easily blind the writers from the right solution. Besides, not every writer could play the chameleon in his style because “the art of chameleons” is a sophisticated craft. It involves a poetics of ambiguity with ability to package and coordinate loaded meanings at various depths; articulation of irony; play with paradox in order to “say what one means while really saying it” without easy detection (unspeaking); and camouflaging subversive meaning against a seemingly innocent background that is more visible than the subversion itself. These have been the hallmarks of the poetics of Chimombo wrought out of repression. “Writers’ Workshop Revisited” is another metapoetic poem in which the poet analyses and evaluates the art of various writers. The Writers’ Workshop is a weekly forum where writers at the University of Malawi discuss their works. It is organised by the English Department and has been running since 1972. It is a passage de rite that has shaped all major Malawian writers, except Edison Mpina, practising in the 1970s and 1980s. Chimombo’s choice of the Writers’ Workshop as the setting establishes a dialogical arena of

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many writers who convene to reflect on their craft and that of others. The workshop is a moment of reflection in which verse is being re-crafted in response to the critical dialogue around. The idea of revisiting this workshop expresses Chimombo’s desire to reflect on the very moment of literary reflection. The poem is a case of writing about writing. The first writer to be analysed was once imprisoned and had become deranged by the time he was released: Shall I say, there sat Nkhumbutera, a pocketful of poetry in his pouch? He wrote and left, but came back and sat between the sheets of a double bind. They had convinced him totally There was no sustenance anywhere else, even in his own homestead of old. Now he lives on the split lines of reality (158).

The given poet is schizophrenic. Both living in “a double bind” and “on the split lines of reality” indicate a schizophrenic state of mind as the poet has lost any coherent perception of reality. The implied subject of the stanza could be a Malawian academic and poet called Blaise Machila who was a colleague of both Steve Chimombo and Jack Mapanje in the English Department. Machila was imprisoned for three years, often kept in solitary confinement, naked and in leg-irons despite his prior mental problem. The fledging poet deteriorated and walked out of prison a complete madman and vagrant. Chimombo also laments the fate of another promising poet who fails to get fully established. The narrator approves the poet for being untouchable because he veils his criticism against repression. He is commended “for the guardian flies he bred. / He trapped them in his verses, too, / after luring them on with a brilliant image, / and a melodious line and promises of publication.” Instead of getting published, his guardian flies “buzzed too close and he escorted them / to their doom in a covered car or wagon” (Chimombo 1994: 158). The guardian flies under commendation stand for the poet’s skilled use of metaphors. This stanza refers to Anthony Nazombe who authored a poem called “Guardian Fly”. Nazombe died without publishing his manuscript, No Dreams Here. His career has become an “unfinished phrase” as the poet himself once wrote of a life untimely ended in “Umbilical cord / Prematurely broken, / Young shoot so soon chocked, / Unfinished phrase” (Nazombe 1990: 92-93).

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Nazombe was also a subtle but firm critic of the despot and he once wrote: Yes, I have feared the moment When hearing of linen washed abroad Aging lions sharpen their claws, Rehearse more rumbling roars And manes bristling, crouch in wait For the ill-mannered prodigal Who must return to his mother’s breasts (Nazombe 1990: 92-93).

Nazombe mourns a singer who dies abroad and subtly accuses Kamuzu Banda of killing him using “the feelers of the state / Extending beyond the boundaries of the country”. One of Kamuzu Banda’s official titles was “the Lion of Malawi”. The poem mentions him by innuendo in the “aging lions” that ambush “the ill-mannered prodigal”. The innuendo evokes President Kamuzu Banda as a cannibal devouring his own subjects. The despot kills his critic for forthrightly criticising the system. Chimombo however deems transparent poetry in times of repression as an act of folly. The narrator in “Writers’ Workshop Revisited” snubs the tendency of poets who behave like moths, daring danger and flying too close to the flames of power. The subject of the stanza is a moth, also called Kadzioche, which literally means “go and burn yourself”. Kadzioche posed as the priest of poetry, daring images, allusions and innuendos. He fluttered forth on stormy nights, between the frying pan and the fire. He flew too near the flames one time and sustained multiple burns of his own choice. He curled round his own stinking corpse, singed wings and seared hair (1994: 159).

The unwarranted courage displayed here is an act of bravado. The demise of the poet who openly dares the system is judged as a calamity “of his own choice”. A similar failure to play the chameleon is the case with Kafadala, which literally means “one who dies deliberately” or “one who fakes death”. Kafadala, the late bloomer, should not have gone, really. Him and his transparent verses. Everyone knew what he was talking about. He had not the art of chameleons (159).

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What the poet calls “the art of chameleons” signifies vigilance or being “chameleon-eyed”; going forth with precaution; and camouflaging. The trait of camouflaging goes with its attendant aspects of being ambivalent or ambiguity and taking a low profile. Such an art of writing avoids transparency, public stridency, and direct attacks on the political system. This “art of chameleons” amounts to the poetics of counter-repression which Adrian Roscoe (1977) says is the major characteristic of Malawian poetry from early 1970s to 1992. He finds the poetry to be “subtle and circumspect” while being “rich in irony and ambiguity” as the poet preferred “a quieter tone and a less public posture” than the housetops stridency of his East African contemporaries (139). Indeed, “Like the chameleon it often features,” the poets’ “verse proceeds with circumspection and explores understatement”, as Roscoe and Msiska later add (1992: 7). Chimombo’s apparent self-evaluation in “Writers’ Workshop Revisited” concludes that he is the epitome of “the art of chameleons”. The narrator describes “the real Kalilombe” as a poet who is self-censored in his vigilance and cautious: The real Kalilombe enfolded us fondly; a pincer leg pinioning a blooming image; one eye swivelling at a wayward word, the other pointing to a promising metaphor; a tongue snaking out at tortuous lines, a tail curled round prizewinning verse, and each session, before our eyes, she hatched a new kind of chameleon (1994: 159).

This stanza dramatises the chameleon’s slow cautious way of doing things as the manner of composing a poem. It thus reflects on the very moment and process of writing. The poem epitomises a writing of heightened selfconsciousness and self-censorship. The narrator celebrates self-censorship and the illusiveness of hatching “a new kind of chameleon” every time to confuse the authorities. In this stanza, Kalilombe (the larger chameleon) is the poet who hatches (the lower-species) chameleons that in turn symbolise his ambiguous works. Kalilombe’s self-censorship resonates with Chimombo’s explanation on how he survived censorship. Chimombo (cited in Larson 2001: 125) says that “The all-pervading presence of censorship meant that I ceased to create as a free agent since, right from the privacy of my room or office I had to battle with self-censorship.” The response to this censorship has meant a style of

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writing that did not only ensure communicating meaning and the beauty of the word but also the very survival of the writer and his work. Writing had to sense and listen to the presence and voice of brutal power. It camouflaged itself. It spoke back to power while hiding in public spaces. This dialogical process gave way to a poetics of metapoesis in which writing listen to itself and speaks to or about its ambient writing. It is a poetics that characterises a self-reflective writing that also aspires to be a critical discourse.

References Chaputula, E. (1982) “Chingwe's Hole.” Society of Malawi Journal. Vol. 35/2, 53-55. Chimombo, Steve. (1994) Napolo and the Python. London: Heinemann. ——., (1996) “Another Writer.” WASI Vol. 7 No. 3. ——., (2001) “Interview on Malawian Literature with Fiona JohnsonChalamanda.” WASI Vol.13 No.1. ——., (2005) Epic of the Forest Creatures. Zomba: WASI Publications. Cuddon, J. A. (1998) Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. 4th ed. London: Penguin. De Baets, A. (2002) Censorship of Historical Thought: A World Guide 19452000. London: Greenwood Press. Dictionary.com [Web Page] Retrieved 29 Nov 2009 from http://dictionary. reference.com/browse/meta. Dubbey, J. (1994) Warm Hearts, White Hopes. Gaborone: John Dubbey. Eliot, T. S. (1963) Collected Poems 1909 – 1962. London: Faber and Faber. Englund, H. (ed) (2002) A Democracy of Chameleons: Politics and Culture in the New Malawi. Blantyre: CLAIM. Finke, M. (1995) Metapoesis: The Russian Tradition from Pushkin to Chekhov. Durham: Duke University Press. Larson, C. (2001) The Ordeal of the African Writer. London: Zed Books. Mapanje, Jack (1981) Of Chameleons and Gods. London: Heinemann. Moto, Francis (2008) The Language and Context of Jack Mapanje’s Poetry. Cape Town: CASAS. Nazombe, A. (1983) Malawian Poetry in English from 1970 to the Present Day: a Study of Myth and Socio-Political Change in the Work of Steve Chimombo, Jack Mapanje, Frank Chipasula and Felix Mnthali. PhD Thesis, Sheffield University.

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——., (1986). “The Role of Myth in the Poetry of Steve Chimombo.” In E. Ngara (ed) New Writing from Southern Africa. London: James Currey. ——., (ed) (1990) The Haunting Wind: New Poetry from Malawi. Blantyre: Dzuka. Oxford Dictionary of English. (2005) 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poole, S. (2007) Unspeak: Words are Weapons. London: Abacus. Roscoe, A. (1977) Uhuru’s Fire. London: Cambridge University Press. Roscoe, A., Msiska, M. (1992) The Quiet Chameleon: Modern Poetry from Central Africa. London: Hans Zell. Schmitz, T. (2007) Modern Literary Theory and Ancient Texts: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Soyinka, Wole. (1976) Myth, Literature and the African World. London: Cambridge University Press. Waugh, P. (1984) Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-conscious Fiction. London: Routledge.

Part IV Perspectives on Drama and Theatre

Naomi Nkealah

Female Sexuality under the Male Gaze: Reading Style and Ideology in Bole Butake’s The Rape of Michelle Introduction A stylistic criticism of literature necessarily demands the critic’s engagement with the use of language in the text, particularly in terms of how language conveys the writer’s ideology and underscores the world-view of the society under scrutiny. Emmanuel Ngara, one of the foremost proponents of stylistic criticism, has shown in both Stylistic Criticism and the African Novel (1982) and Art and Ideology in the African Novel (1985) that stylistic criticism evaluates a work of art in terms of not only its linguistic features but also its content value and aesthetic qualities. To put it differently, an analysis of form – language, structure, symbols – should not be pursued independently of an evaluation of content, since both are equally instrumental in conveying meaning and highlighting the aesthetic value of a work of art. It therefore follows that the writer’s style determines to some extent how the work would be received by the reader. Style, in effect, transmits ideology. In this context, I make particular reference to the manner in which women’s bodies are inscribed on to literary texts. As Etoke (2006) has noted, ways of writing women’s bodies are also ways of creating, performing and transmitting ideologies. This is particularly significant within feminist critical discourse in which an intrinsic link between language and sexism has been noted. Renowned feminist critic Deborah Cameron has made significant contributions to the debate on language as a feminist concern. In her introduction to The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader, she states the following: It is very important to note that one does not have to be in the least determinist to accept that language is in many ways sexist. Language could be seen as a reflection of sexist culture; or (in my view a more satisfactory position) it could be seen as a carrier of ideas and assumptions which become, through their constant re-enactment in discourse, so familiar and conventional we miss their significance. Potentially, the ideas embedded in our usage could be challenged; actually, it is rare for this to happen. Thus sexism is not merely reflected but acted out and thus reinforced in a thousand banal encounters (Cameron 1990: 14).

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Cameron’s lucid evaluation of language and its potential to reinforce sexist ideologies remains relevant in present-day critical discourses on the scripting of women’s bodies and their desires. The term language as used in this context is not limited to the phonological, morphological and lexical components of a work of art but goes beyond these to encompass the syntactical and semantic constructions, as well as the sociolinguistic variables on the basis of which meanings are established. It has been argued that regardless of the metaphoricality of a particular literary text, the standard treatment of that text usually tallies with the equally standard model of language as a fixed bi-planar system mapping forms on to meanings (Toolan 1990). This theory posits that language description involves two levels, namely, the surface linguistic forms (phonological/morphological) and the underlying semantic contents. A general principle connecting the two is that “surface forms are systematically and predictably relatable to underlying abstract semantic contents” (Toolan 1990: 7). One then deduces from this theory that meaning in a work of art resides not only in concrete words and phrases but also in those abstractions that could easily be missed when couched within familiar terms. The linguistic packaging of a text therefore demands a keen eye as critics engage in the process of deconstructing meaning. When Cameron speaks of language and sexism, we infer from it that sexism refers to the use of language in ways that are offensive and degrading to women. Cameron, however, does not refer to sexist language as if it were some homogenous entity or describe it simply as the naming of the world from a masculinist perspective. Rather, as she states, sexist language is “better conceptualized as a multifaceted phenomenon occurring in a number of quite complex systems of representation, all with their places in historical traditions” (Cameron 1990: 14). Because sexist cultures dominate verbal speech in many societies, they also tend to infiltrate written literature. When one reflects on the thematic content of much of pre-1990 Anglophone Cameroon writing, for instance, one finds that the manner in which verbal language names women’s experiences has a direct impact on the ways in which women’s bodies are metaphorically (re)presented in literary texts. In early literary constructions of the Cameroonian society, women are made to conform to patriarchal notions of female subordination to male authority; they are defined mainly by their sexuality; and their role is centred on the preservation of tradition and custom. In the genre of prose, for example, several novels exist in which women’s roles are confined to those of subservient housewives, prostitutes, and victims of tradition. In Ngongwikuo’s Taboo Love (1980), the major female character, Iyafi, is

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portrayed as a victim of tradition. In Dipoko’s Because of Women (1968), Ewudu is an incarnation of the prostitute woman depicted in Cyprian Ekwensi’s Jagua Nana (1961), and because she lacks the supposed heroism of Ngugi’s whore in Petals of Blood (see Evans 1983) she surfaces as an embodiment of the notion that defines active female sexuality as a danger to the social order. 1 In the field of drama, Bole Butake has emerged as one of the foremost playwrights who, unlike the popular playwright Victor Elame Musinga, has not only directed the theatre production of his plays but also recorded success in the publishing and wide distribution of his plays. Butake has been hailed by many literary critics such as Lyonga (1993), Ngwang (2004), Ambe (2007) and Odhiambo (2007) as a playwright whose literary enactment of female empowerment counters hegemonic constructions of masculine power. These critics have based their analysis mainly on Butake’s three most famous plays, Lake God (1986), The Survivors (1989) and And Palm Wine Will Flow (1990), all of which capture significant moments in Cameroon’s historical experience. Besides his literary writing, Butake has also been acclaimed for his theatre for development projects launched in recent years in many parts of Cameroon to educate women on issues such as literacy, HIV/AIDS, family planning and community development (see Ngufor 2005, Nkealah 2008). A significant portion of the criticism on Butake has, however, neglected his early writing. 2 While there is no doubt that his work in both dramatic literature and theatre for development makes a significant contribution to the development and sustenance of a vibrant Anglophone Cameroon literary culture, it is important to give some attention to the works that mark the start of his writing career, so as to better evaluate the progression of his vision. A stylistic appraisal of one of the early plays, The Rape of Michelle (1984), from a feminist point of view such as posited by Cameron, will reveal a perspective on his imagining of women that has not been previously addressed by any of the critics listed above. Using Cameron’s theoretical framing of language as fundamental to the conflicts and power struggles that shape relations between men and women (Cameron 2006), this article aims to critique Butake’s style in The Rape of Michelle in terms of looking at how his deployment of imagery and 1

2

This notion is fully explored by Florence Stratton in Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender (1994) and by Fatima Mernissi in Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society (1987). Nonetheless, a recent article by Christopher Odhiambo (2009) interrogating Butake’s romanticized vision in his first play, Betrothal without Libation, suggests that scholars are beginning to take an interest in Butake’s early work.

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symbolism underpins conventional notions of femininity and masculinity. It looks at how the writer employs language to build up portraits of his female and male characters. Significant stylistic elements that would be discussed include the image of woman as a child, the analogy of mother-cow and her calf, the symbolic representation of chicken, the metaphor of the courtroom, and the metaphor of woman as a nation. The stereotyping of men and women as socially conditioned to act or behave in particular ways that are in tune with their ‘intrinsic nature’ will be explored against the backdrop of a male literary tradition that creates female characters to conform to idealistic constructions of femininity. Other significant aspects of style such as setting, plot, characterization, narrative tone, contrast, structure and naming will be examined in an effort to unmask an underlying sexism that renders the play unsympathetic to feminist concerns. As a point of noting, the play will be read as dramatic literature rather than theatre. The first part of the analysis will highlight the notion of female sexuality as a threat to social stability and show how this relates to Butake’s choice of the city, and specifically the chicken parlour, as the setting for his play. The second part will focus on Butake’s construction of plot and character in The Rape of Michelle, showing a profound influence by the gender biases of Christian theology. Part three interrogates the play’s narrative tone as well as its use of language – diction, analogy, metaphor – and shows how these stylistic aspects reflect the gendered representation of women in the play. Part four analyses the play’s use of contrast in the light of the good woman/whore dichotomy discussed by Stratton (1994). Part five focuses specifically on chicken as a significant symbol in the play. Part seven interrogates the play’s structure and looks at the gender implications of it. Part eight highlights naming as a tool of alienation. Part nine provides an overall appraisal of the play, showing how woman is used as a metaphor for a declining nation. The concluding section points out the wider implications of subjecting female sexuality to the scrutiny of the male gaze.

Setting: Women, Sexuality and the Urban Space In his book The Painted Witch: Female Body, Male Art, Edwin Mullins (1985) describes the many ways in which Western artists have captured the sexuality of women, and it is interesting to note from his study that a good portion of medieval and renaissance paintings portraying the so-called fall of man made it a point to showcase Eve as the undisputable cause of this fall. Mullins highlights the point that, because the first sin has been interpreted as

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a sexual sin, Eve is inevitably held responsible for causing humankind’s disgraceful fall into eternal damnation. The following quotation is particularly relevant: Man’s retaliation to woman as a man-eater is to damn her as a sinner. Her sexual appetites threaten his manhood, his supremacy over her, even his life: therefore in self-preservation he must cast her out like a devil. She is bad. A sexual woman is a bad woman…. The weapon enabling man to rise again from impotence to power is the unchallengeable authority of the Bible. The finger points at Eve – the first woman, pilot of man’s downfall and disgrace. That original transgression permits any fault or flaw of character to be placed to woman’s account; and the charge is unanswerable. A woman is … whatever man chooses to label her: she cannot deny it because there, first in her line of ancestry, stands Eve – guilty, naked, and ashamed. (Edwin Mullins 1985: 57)

The centrality of the biblical character Eve to any discussion on female sexuality cannot be denied since over the years various cultures have attributed the blame for various misfortunes to Eve and the rest of her descendants – the ‘daughters of Eve’. As Mullins states, Eve cannot escape the accusing fingers pointing firmly at her: “The accusation of lust is laid firmly at her door. She is the temptress, Adam the innocent dupe who trusts her and is led astray” (Mullins 1985: 58). While Western art emerged as a major conduit of the perceived destructive capacity of female sexuality, African cultures have in their own ways created and transmitted these same ideologies. Schipper (1987) has cited examples of myths from different parts of Africa which illustrate the degree to which woman was blamed for what went wrong in Eden. Thus, throughout history, woman’s sexuality has been seen as dangerous and treated with distrust, suspicion, and sometimes disdain. Fictional writing on its part tends to legitimize these dominant discourses on women’s sexuality and its perceived disruptive effect on social stability. In Butake’s The Rape of Michelle, two kinds of women are portrayed: the one kind that emerges as champions of manipulation (Rufina and Michelle) and the other kind that features as the very epitome of docility (Akwen). Butake’s portrayal of these three female characters reveals not only patriarchal sentiments but also strong tendencies towards what Cameron (1990) sees as policing the boundaries of acceptable female sexual behaviour. A central question that arises is how stylistic features enhance the writer’s portrayal of Michelle and Rufina as ‘daughters of Eve’ and of Akwen as the ‘model wife’. The answer lies in an exploration of a number of images and symbols that emerge in the text. The play presents a young girl, Michelle, who helps her mother, Rufina, run a chicken parlour. Rufina’s customers are mainly men, a factor which

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seems to cause tensions between herself and Michelle as they both vie for the men’s attention. Rufina’s anxieties about her age also tend to incite petty jealousies directed towards Michelle whom Mikindong’s friends find sexually attractive. Mikindong is the schoolteacher accused of raping Michelle, and who in denial of the accusation turns around and accuses Michelle of sexually harassing him. The case goes to court and through bribery of the magistrate Mikindong is released on bail, awaiting the magistrate’s final decision. The play ends without a pronouncement of the court’s ruling, but the celebration of Mikindong’s appointment as principal of his school in the final scene of the play, coupled with the magistrate’s participation in the celebrations, symbolically marks Mikindong’s victory over Michelle and her ‘scheming’ mother. Unlike Butake’s later plays, such as Lake God (1986) and Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon (1994), this play does not follow the folkloric tradition in which a narrator appears at the beginning and sets the stage for the events to follow. Moreover, the use of proverbs, idioms, and expressions steeped in mythology characteristic of Shey Bo-Nyo and Shey Ngong in Lake God and And Palm Wine Will Flow, respectively, is absent in this play. The characters are city dwellers, concerned not with the unstable vicissitudes of the gods but with concrete problems relating to sexual indecencies and state corruption. In the play, there is a subtle synchronicity between the two in that the perceived moral relapse of the female characters is conveyed as reflective of the corrupt practices characteristic of government institutions. The play is set in Yaounde, the capital of the Republic of Cameroon. The opening scene in particular is set in Rufina’s chicken parlour where Mikindong and his friends, Ngenge and Eno, can be seen eating chicken and drinking beer. The language of conversation between the three men and their host is Cameroonian Standard English. This is the language maintained throughout the play, except in the court scene when Michelle resorts to using grammatically incorrect expressions. The use of Pidgin English to mark class boundaries evident in Lake God is dispensed with in this play, perhaps because the events take place in an urban space where it is not so much class as economic survival that matters for individuals. It must be stated that the play was inspired by an incident Butake had witnessed in a public place in Yaounde, an incident which in his mind reflected the moral degeneration of the youth of the 1980s. In an interview, Butake admits that the play was his critical reaction to this incident which involved a young woman attempting to court an older man.

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Odhiambo: I’d make a very quick comment with regard to what motivated you to write The Rape of Michelle, given your vision about women. In The Rape of Michelle, the two women seem to be quite manipulative, the daughter and mother. What was the motivation behind that kind of writing? Butake: Actually, it was a real experience. At the time when I wrote the play we had a lot of chicken parlours in Yaounde. Lots and lots of chicken parlours. Yes, I went to one of these … In fact, it was not a chicken parlour. I went to some place, some kind of supermarket. I think you could also drink in the place. So I was sitting there. I was having a beer and this beautiful girl… First, some gentleman came in, quite a mature man, but in my opinion the girl was too small, and the way this girl was behaving towards this gentleman I could see that there was something wrong, not with the gentleman but with the girl, ’cause she was actually trying to, to to … she was courting the man, right? And that’s where I got the idea to write The Rape of Michelle. It is not something that happened to me personally. (Nkealah & Odhiambo 2008: 6-7)

The incident had such a great impact on Butake’s perception of women that he eventually captured it with all the negative traits usually attributed to the female sex – lustful, seductive, promiscuous and loose. The play itself extends the horizons of the experience by bringing in the young girl’s mother through the character of Rufina, herself portrayed as a lustful and predatory woman in the role of a chicken parlour madam. The young girl’s supposed shortcomings are exaggerated in the play through the addition of a false rape charge. This seems to be Butake’s way of conveying the moral squalor associated with the lives of women in the city. The setting of the play is far removed from a small traditional village where cultural patriarchy is usually a norm, and yet the sexism belying not only the metaphors and symbols but also the choice of setting hits the feminist reader with a forcefulness that provokes an instant reaction. In Cameroon, chicken parlours are mainly operated in urban centres, such as towns and cities. In the play, the presence of a police station, a magistrate’s court and a hospital from which a medical certificate is procured in support of Michelle’s case all create visual images of an urban setting. But why the city and how does Butake’s choice of setting help formulate the gender ideologies evident in the play? The image of the city captured in this play is no different from that in Ekwensi’s Jagua Nana. It is an image of a deteriorating society peopled by the good and bad, the powerful and powerless, the victimizers and the vulnerable, the morally upright and the corrupt. The general atmosphere is that of squalor, putrefaction and social disintegration. At the heart of this ‘messy’ environment stands the chicken parlour as a symbol of the morally corrosive dimension of women’s quest for economic independence in post-colonial Cameroon.

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The business of chicken parlours is one of the ways by which Cameroonian women sought to become economically self-reliant, thereby breaking the hold that traditional patriarchy had on them through male control of financial resources. 3 Considering the increasing cost of living in urban centres, the persistent salary cuts of civil servants and the resultant severe economic hardship, women had to assume greater responsibility for providing the material needs of their households and this entailed engaging in some form of business or trade, such as the sale of second-hand clothes commonly known as okrika, the operation of kiosks or small market stalls and the running of restaurants, through which extra money could be made to augment poor salaries from formal-sector jobs (Niger-Thomas 2008: 42-44). As with the Ugandan situation highlighted by Wallman (1996), the upsurge of rural-urban migrants in the 1970s and 1980s plunged cities into a crisis in the sense that not only were there acute problems of providing and maintaining urban services but also that ‘individual and family problems [could] be met only by recourse to complex sets of survival strategies’ (Wallman 1996: 9-10). For women in Cameroon, engaging in informal trade and other forms of service provision, such as compiling documents for people seeking entrance into the country’s institutions of professional training, was a way out of the stagnating economic situation. Sadly, chicken parlours, which constituted a part of informal sector activities signalling female entrepreneurship in urban regions, came to be seen as centres for other socially unacceptable practices that went on behind the scenes. They had a power of their own to pull people towards them – for the pleasure of the company and the delicacy of the food – but paradoxically this made them subject to what Foucault calls surveillance in Discipline and Punish (1977).

3

For a detailed discussion on the challenges women in rural and urban Cameroon face with regard to controlling money, see the article “Conceptualising Women’s Empowerment in Societies in Cameroon: How does Money Fit in?” by Joyce Endeley (2001) in Gender and Development, 9 (1), 34-41.

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In other words, they became a site of public censure as they were perceived mainly as brothels camouflaging as restaurants. 4 In The Rape of Michelle, Rufina is cast in the role of a city woman who through her daily activities contributes to the filth of the city. Reflecting on her portrayal, one notes a correlation in identity construction between chicken parlour madams in Cameroon and women singers and actresses in Zimbabwe, both of whom are perceived as ‘loose’ women mainly because they operate in an urban space which “for historic reasons relating both to colonial and indigenous patriarchy has been officially defined as the territory of men” (Chitauro, Dube & Gunner 1994: 111). In line with this view, Butake’s play depicts the urban space in Cameroon not only as one dominated by men but also as one from which women’s ‘corrupting’ influence needs to be evicted. In addition, by depicting the city as a wasteland, a place devoid of a moral order, Butake seeks to reinstate a value system that seems to be threatened by urbanisation.

Plot and Characterization: Butake’s Women as Incarnations of Biblical Characters The title of Butake’s play is quite ironic, because the play itself argues that Michelle is not raped but that she attempts to force herself on Mikindong. In fact, The Rape of Michelle is not a play about Michelle; it is about Mikindong’s near demise at the hands of Michelle and her co-manipulator, Rufina. The most striking stylistic aspect of the play is the parallel that exists between Mikindong’s encounter with Michelle and the encounter between the biblical Joseph and Portiphar’s wife (as recorded in Genesis 39: 4-20). The biblical account reports that Joseph had found favour in his master’s eyes to the extent that Portiphar had appointed him as overseer of his household.

4

In her book Journey of Song: Public Life and Morality in Cameroon, Clare Ignatowski cites studies by social scientists that show that “culture is fundamentally public and that moral orders are constructed through the enactment and manipulation of symbols” (2006: 3). She notes that among the Tupuri of Northern Cameroon, song in the context of dance is a site of public censure and a space through which competing moral orders are dynamically reworked and renegotiated. It is understood from her study that morality and values are designed as systems of control by which society ensures that people adhere to what is considered right and acceptable. Thus, symbols can be manipulated to achieve that effect. In The Rape of Michelle, the chicken parlour is symbolic of what Ignatowski calls the “public control of morality” (2006: 8), particularly because of the negative attributes society associates to its owners.

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He was second in command to Portiphar himself. But a disjuncture in the relationship between Portiphar and Joseph was soon created by Portiphar’s wife (whose name we never get to know) when apparently she tried to get Joseph to have sex with her but failed because Joseph fled her room, leaving behind his garment. The garment was used as proof later when she claimed that Joseph had tried to rape her instead. The result was that Joseph was thrown into prison where he suffered deprivation and endured severe hardship. This biblical narrative portrays Joseph as a god-fearing, hard-working young man victimized by a lustful woman – a true daughter of the first temptress, Eve. Readers’ sympathies lie entirely with Joseph. On the other hand, Portiphar’s wife is cursed for causing his fall from grace, in much the same way that Eve has been condemned for causing Adam’s. Often, there are no questions asked as to whether the narration of this incident from a male perspective (the book of Genesis being attributed to Moses) may have distorted or silenced certain aspects of the encounter between Joseph and Portiphar’s wife which may move professed Christians to begin to see relations between the sexes in ancient times as one that was frequently gender-biased. It is often taken as a given that Joseph was the innocent victim of a conniving, evil woman. Without necessarily subjecting the bible to a feminist study, it is important to mention that its depiction of women often conforms to certain binaries, such as moral/immoral, virgin/prostitute, innocent/guilty, forgiving/vengeful, that are designed to give clear prescriptions on qualities that make a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ woman. A good example is found in Proverbs 7: 1-27. The entire chapter is a strong warning to men to guard against the prostitute woman whose mission is to entice and destroy. Woman is described in these verses as boisterous, sly, deceptive, murderous, seductive, unfaithful to her husband, disgraceful to her sex, and definitely treacherous to the general male population. She represents everything undesirable in ‘woman’ as a patriarchal sign. In contrast to the ‘bad’ woman, Proverbs 31: 10-31 describes the ‘good’ woman as one who performs her wifely duties with diligence: cooks, cleans and works hard in the fields; learns a trade to generate income for her household; shuns the talkative and lazy lifestyle of other women; and pursues godliness in place of vanity. Her attributes are outlined exclusively in relation to her usefulness within the domestic space. No meaning is attached to her life beyond the fulfillment of her culturally prescribed roles of wife, mother or sister. As a religiously recognized authority, the bible promotes models of femininity that tend to subjugate women’s diverse expressions of individuality and self-emancipation.

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The image of Portiphar’s wife emblematizes the notion of female sexuality as dangerous, destructive and destabilising; a sexuality that initiates man’s crashing descent from the heights of power and eminence. The significance of the construction of Michelle after this biblical character (Portiphar’s wife) is that the play then endorses the notion of female sexuality as a threat to the social order. The plot of Butake’s play is constructed in ways that point towards an overpowering influence by this notion of woman as a seductress, a destroyer of homes and a vindictive manipulator when things do not go her way. Michelle embodies these trends as she not only attempts to seduce Mikindong into having sexual relations with her but also lays claims of rape when her attempts are unsuccessful. With the help of her equally ‘immoral’ mother she manages to secure a fake medical certificate in attestation of her supposed sexual violation. What we see in the play is a conflict situation in which the forces of morality (Mikindong and his wife, Akwen) are in danger of being overpowered by the forces of evil (Michelle and Rufina), and through this the writer enacts a series of assumptions about women that effectively reinforces their conformation to patriarchal norms.

Narrative Tone and Language: Gendering Women’s Sexuality The play amplifies numerous biases against women, the foremost of which is their perceived vindictiveness as a coping mechanism for defeat. The whole play is seen in the eyes of a male narrator; his is the dominant voice through which the events are relayed to the reader. The constant intrusion of the authorial voice also creates a sense of male conspiracy against women and male domination of the public space. Such intrusion is evident in generic statements such as “a girl is a woman and a woman is a girl” (177), “money can turn the scale” (183) and “nobody eats truth” (183). 5 As Toolan notes, “generic sentences are usually the preserve of intrusive narrators and are a means of inserting general evaluative templates or standards of worldly wisdom against which the behaviour of characters within a novel can be set” (Toolan 1990: 268). The generic statement “a girl is a woman and a woman is a girl” amplifies a dominant discourse in the play, because it is pertinent in its elucidation of sexist views about women. A linguistic appraisal of this particular statement will read as follows:

5

All textual quotations and page references are from The Rape of Michelle as it appears in Lake God and Other Plays (1999).

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Girl = Woman She is fit for sexual consumption at any time, Woman = Girl … but not capable of any intellectual engagement with men. The image of a child used in reference to women is a deliberate trivialization of their make-up as rational beings. The association of women with children is a reflection of society’s placing of women at the lowest level of mental development, with traits of irrationality, impulsiveness and irresponsibility tied closely to children’s, and thus women’s, actions. By this, Butake seems to endorse a chauvinist view of women prevalent in eighteenth-century England, as deduced from the letters of Lord Chesterfield. 6 The following quotation, albeit outdated in certain respects, nonetheless highlights some of the ways in which women have been perceived and, therefore, portrayed in both European and African fiction: Women, then, are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid reasoning, good sense, I never once knew in my life one that had it, or who reasoned or acted consequentially for four and twenty hours together. Some little passion or humour always breaks in upon their best resolutions…. A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly, forward child; but he neither consults them nor trusts them with serious matters; though he often makes them believe that he does both; which is the thing in the world that they are proud of. (Chesterfield in Strachey 1901: 261-262)

Lord Chesterfield clearly had a distorted view of women, for he felt that even though they grew to physical and physiological maturity, their intellectual maturity remained that of children. To frame it differently, they had the bodies of women but the brains of children. Reflecting on this slighting of women’s capacity to think as rational beings and reading The Rape of Michelle, one cannot help but ask why Mikindong keeps frequenting Rufina’s chicken parlour since he knows that he is the sexual target not only of Michelle but also of Rufina. Could his frequent visits not be an outward manifestation of his desire for the ‘entertainment’ he hopes to get from Michelle? At Rufina’s chicken parlour, he puts up a coy front and pretends not be interested in the discussion but in fact he fuels it with little innuendos and plays Rufina and Michelle against 6

The letters of Chesterfield were edited by Charles Strachey and published by Methuen as acollection of two volumes in 1901 under the title The Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to his Son. The particular letter referred to in this context is Letter CLXI, dated September 1748.

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each other. He “trifles” with Michelle, “plays”, “humours” and “flatters” her in subtle ways – using both words and gestures – that suggest that he sees her as no more than a toy designed for his entertainment. He and his friends seem to find it exciting to compliment Michelle on her beauty just to get Rufina jealous. To them, this is a pleasurable experience: it is a sport, a hobby, a pastime. That the play places female sexuality under the intense scrutiny of the male gaze is indicated by the fact that while Mikindong and his friends go unprosecuted, figuratively speaking, for their seemingly inconsequential sexual passes at Michelle, Michelle does not. Because Michelle fails to keep her sexual desires in check, as society would expect her to, she is made to wear the cloak of a child prostitute. This is evident in the kind of language that is used to describe her at different points in the narrative. She is called the “daughter of a bitch” by Mikindong and she admits to possessing a “devil” inside of her (192). Her English expression is poor, as evident in the court scene, and her articulation of love expressions is clichéd. In the seduction scene, Butake uses highly evocative language to denote the disgust he associates with female sexual advances on the male sex. When Michelle walks over to Mikindong and whispers, ‘Honey, love me! Honey, love me!’ (192), Mikindong calls her words “rubbish” and describes them as “dirty”. Eventually, when she takes up her dress to reveal her tender breasts and lies down on the settee in readiness for him, we are told that he walks over to her and without warning gives her a “sound slap” on the face. This act, which indicates the intensity of his repulsion, is accompanied by the harsh words: “Get up and take your filthy body out of my house! Daughter of a bitch!” (192). At this stage, the reader gets the impression that the writer’s use of offensive and shocking words is deliberate. It is intended to heighten the moral/immoral dichotomy that runs throughout the play. The reader is inclined to accept Mikindong’s use of physical violence and swear language as being warranted, as his immediately available defence mechanism against Michelle’s encroachment into his moral space. Michelle is projected as the ‘evil force’ that seeks to destroy the good in the world. Her words, gestures and temperament all contribute to the negativity of her portraiture. In other parts of the play, she is referred to by different characters as a “child”, a “girl”, a “little sister”, and a “little girl”. In these instances, her woman-ness is obliterated, defaced, shadowed and made redundant. But it is that same woman-ness that is resurrected in the courtroom when it is deemed useful for male purposes, for Zende acknowledges Michelle’s physical development

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when it suits his purpose to do so – to show the court that Michelle is as much a ‘prostitute’ as her mother is. In her discussion of style as ideology in the book Verbal Hygiene (1995), Cameron charts the debates around the question of transparency in writing, what has come to be known as ‘plain language’. Although her discussion focuses on the metalinguistic practices of language, what can be uplifted from it as relevant to the current discussion is the link she establishes between style and the moral perspective of a writer. Butake’s moralistic view of his female characters is evident not only in the choice of words used in reference to Michelle, as noted above, but also in the manner in which the characters are frequently gendered. Like Portiphar’s wife, Michelle and Rufina are depicted as the ‘conniving bitches’ who forge a medical certificate attesting rape in order to destroy Mikindong’s supposedly good reputation. Both Michelle and Rufina are portrayed in the play as ‘loose’ women because they refuse to subject themselves to a patriarchal order which sees women only as the objects of sexual desire and never the subjects. Michelle’s venturing into the sexual space is seen as a transgression of social norms, first because she is considered too young to indulge in sexual activities and second because she demands sex from Mikindong, as opposed to him luring her into it. The portrayal of Michelle directs one’s mind towards Foucault’s repressive hypothesis clearly outlined in The History of Sexuality (Vol. I). As Foucault claims, European history moved from a period of relative openness about the human body and speech to an ever-increasing repression and hypocrisy (Foucault 1979, Dreyfus & Rabinow 1982). It is as a result of such repression that sexuality emerged in the nineteenth century as a taboo subject. What was perceived as the “precocious sexuality of children” was especially in need of control and state intervention because there was a widely accepted “assumption that this sexuality existed, that it was precocious, active, and ever-present” (Foucault 1979: 27-28). In Butake’s play, we note that the social system imposes what Foucault calls a “ponderous silence” on the sexuality of children and adolescents (Foucault 1979: 29). Michelle embodies the transgressive capacity of a budding sexuality, one that needs to be kept in check lest it oversteps its cultural limits. The narrative tone of the play is explicitly condemnatory of Michelle’s sexual inclinations, for it entrenches certain dichotomies of morals and values: good/ bad, innocent/ guilty, honest/ corrupt, saintly/ evil, forgiving/vengeful etc. We therefore ask: is the play a propagation of sexual ethics? The underlying references to codes of sexual morality that should be respected by women point to this conclusion. But what about moral codes for

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men? The male characters do not seem to receive any moral indictment for their flirtatious attitudes and they tend to enjoy a greater privilege of sexual freedom than the female characters do. The playwright’s stigmatization of female sexual freedom thus points to an elevation of heterosexuality that is prejudiced in its ethical intention: sexual desire, or rather the acting on one’s sexual desires, should be patterned after acceptable norms that define specific functions for each gender. Like Michelle, Rufina’s portrayal is gendered, for she surfaces as another daughter of Eve. In fact, Michelle’s ‘waywardness’ is blamed on her own perceived lack of a moral sense. In defence of Mikindong, Zende argues in court that Michelle’s attempt to seduce Mikindong is a direct influence of her mother’s sexual escapades with men. Note his words in the following quote: Zende: Your Worship, Sir, I am satisfied. This little girl is not as little as my learned colleague has made this court to believe. I am inviting this court to look at her carefully: her dress, her gait, her manners. I am also inviting this court to look at her mother. Michelle’s birth certificate says her mother was seventeen when she had her. Michelle herself is fourteen this year. Rufina has brought up her daughter in her own footsteps. We have a saying that when mother-cow is chewing grass, its young ones watch its mouth closely. (195)

Zende’s words echo the writer’s thoughts on acceptable models of female behaviour. A woman’s dressing and grooming is expected to conform to society’s expectations. Marriage is elevated in these lines as the only approved milieu for the conception of children. Because Rufina bore a child in her teenage years, she becomes a ‘transgressor’ of society’s values. The play does not outrightly call her a prostitute but implies that she is one because she fails to meet up to society’s expectations of a ‘good’ woman. She is projected as a negative model for her daughter. Zende uses her anti-model status to superimpose his own sense of decency on the court. As Ignatowski argues, public evaluations of morality and values are legitimizing discourses through which local actors attempt to solidify their social positions (Ignatowski 2006: 3). Zende certainly seeks self-glorification by making Rufina a bad role model for Michelle. In the quotation above, Zende uses the analogy of a calf that learns from its mother how to eat grass in order to project Michelle’s assumed moral relapse as a direct consequence of her own mother’s moral bankruptcy. The image of the mother-cow is emblematic of the sexual maturity of Rufina, while that of the calf signifies the amateurish state of Michelle’s sexual advancement. The analogy therefore suggests that Michelle’s precocious sexuality is the result of her careful observation of her mother’s sexual escapades. The imagery invoked in the analogy translates into a ‘like-mother-

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like-daughter’ scenario, one which implicitly defines woman as immoral, disgusting and repulsive and thus anything closely affiliated to her is inevitably tainted with filth. The analogy also suggests that the mother is the only reference of morality for her child and once that morality is absent the child is inevitably plunged into moral darkness, because the model herself is faulty. It thus cleverly exonerates the absentee/unknown father from any responsibility relating to the child’s moral development. Interestingly also, the play uses the expression “mother-cow” as a metaphor for Rufina. In her analysis of terms which have undergone pejoration and acquired sexual overtones over time, Schulz (1990) cites the term “cow” as an example. A “cow”, she notes, was used to refer to a “clumsy, obese, coarse, or otherwise unpleasant person”; later, it became specialized to refer chiefly to women; then it acquired the additional sense of “a degraded woman”; and eventually it came to refer to “a prostitute” (Schulz 1990: 139). It is not hard then to see the underlying connection between the reference to “mother-cow” and Rufina’s portrayal as a prostitute. The metaphor of a cow effectively intensifies the moral debasement with which she has come to be identified as a result of her ‘profession’ as a chicken parlour madam. Butake’s representation of women in The Rape of Michelle illustrates the way in which pre-1990 Anglophone men’s writing failed to perceive woman’s identity beyond the confines of her sexual/social identity as a prostitute. The female characters in this play fit their gender stereotype in many ways. For example, the stigma of social irresponsibility is attached to the unmarried woman unrepentantly. The only ‘responsible’ woman in the play is Akwen because she is married. It does not matter whether she is married to a man of questionable character. Rufina is armed with all the paraphernalia that accompanies her portrayal as a she-devil: she is an unmarried woman; she has an illegitimate daughter conceived at the age of seventeen; and she runs a chicken parlour, which is perceived by the public as a semi-brothel. These three factors put together make her the perfect antimodel. Group conversation is another domain in which the performance of gender is most visible in this play. What Cameron calls the “sexual micropolitics of everyday interaction” (Cameron 2006: 4) can be deduced in Scene One where we meet Mikindong, Eno and Ngenge carrying on an ordinary, yet sexually connotative, conversation in Rufina’s chicken parlour. The following quotation illustrates how the different characters are cast in their distinct roles as either feminine or masculine:

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Rufina: I am asking if old women are ever beautiful. (She sits on the arm of Mikindong’s chair). Especially when there are young girls around. Mikindong: What do you mean? I come here for two things: the taste of your chicken and the fact that we are neighbours. Rufina: You think I haven’t noticed? The way you flirt with Michelle is just disgraceful. Mikindong: Oh, come on! Michelle is just a little girl. Rufina: And me? I am just an old woman, not so? Eno: If he doesn’t like you, I can always take his place. Ngenge: And I don’t mind having Michelle either. I prefer mine very succulent. Mikindong: Michelle, my friend wants you. Michelle: Have you looked at me well? I think I know what I want. Rufina: Didn’t I say it? It’s you she wants. Go and tidy up the kitchen. (177-178)

This extract demonstrates that Mikindong conforms to ideals of masculine behaviour in the face of an overpowering female sexuality. He feigns disinterest in Michelle. When confronted with his flirtatious attitude towards her, he resorts to using language that belittles her physical and sexual development. Pushed to the wall, he sidesteps a confession of his feelings by trading Michelle off to his friend. This action is a classic performance of masculinity, for it reveals a conscious desire by the male to stay in control of the sexual space. Rufina, on the other hand, as the extract reveals, is ascribed certain attitudes conceived to be synonymous to femaleness: she is concerned about her looks; she is anxious about getting older; and she is jealous of Michelle who seems to be receiving all the male attention. Mikindong’s attempt to ‘pass’ Michelle over to his friend and Michelle’s rejection of the offer only confirms Rufina’s suspicion that Mikindong is the object of Michelle’s desire, a confirmation that immediately provokes a harsh reaction from her as she commands Michelle to retreat into the kitchen – the space symbolic of invisibility, subjection and insignificance. The desire to maintain youthfulness and attractive physical looks becomes an obsession for Rufina. There is a direct correlation between Butake’s play and Ekwensi’s novel, Jagua Nana, because both writers tend to endow the prostitute with a duality of character in that on the one hand she is a tough, assertive woman who gets her way but on the other hand she is volatile and in constant need of assurance from men. Just as Jagua needs Freddie to reassure her that she is not old after all (Senkoro 1982), so does Rufina need Mikindong to relieve her of the agony of an assumed old age. Hers is an assumed old age because she is only thirty one years old, if we add up her seventeen years at which she fell pregnant for Michelle and Michelle’s fourteen years. Thus, the play’s foregrounding of feminine anxieties about physical attractiveness and sexual appeal are intended to depict women as being forever concerned with the

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mundane, a perception that ties in well with their portrayal as “children of a larger growth” (Chesterfield in Strachey 1901: 261) highlighted earlier in this section. Because the text under consideration is a play, as opposed to a novel, dialogue is an intrinsic part of the narrative; the entire play relies on dialogue between characters for the transmission of ideologies. A stereotype of women’s talk is seen when Rufina confronts Michelle about her flirtatious attitude towards Mikindong. Rufina: Every time my customers come here you want to show them that you are young and more beautiful. But I am telling you that if I ever hear that you and teacher have done anything … that day you will go. Michelle: But it’s you who say he likes me! Rufina: I don’t care. But I am telling you now that I like him. If he doesn’t like me and prefers you, we will see. (178)

What is apparent here is a rhetoric enforcing the “transgressive power of female passion” (Wolfson 1994: 34). Rufina’s determination to fight Michelle over Mikindong is no doubt a re-inscription of the playwright’s association of femininity with irrationality. Contrasting this portrayal of Rufina and Michelle in a socially discursive relationship with the ‘sporting’ behaviour of Mikindong and his friends, it can be said that female passion creates roadblocks to meaningful female bonding. The subsequent events of the play, however, reveal an irony that is situational. We find a situation of expectation versus outcome when Rufina forges a medical certificate to convict Mikindong of the rape of her daughter when it becomes public that Mikindong prefers neither her nor Michelle. One would expect her to feel triumphant at Mikindong’s resistance of Michelle’s charms, but instead she makes it her mission to punish Mikindong for this. From this perspective, her reaction to the situation is projected as retaliation against Mikindong for rejecting her daughter – a rejection of whom is a rejection of herself. The notion the play seems to propagate is that vindictiveness and revenge are intrinsic to women’s nature and that women react in calculative, manipulative ways when their sexual desires are unreciprocated. In this context, therefore, they become incarnations of Portiphar’s wife – a metaphor which, to borrow Stratton’s words, “encodes women as agents of moral corruption, as sources of moral contamination in society” (Stratton 1994: 53). The implication of a male playwright writing about women is that too often the image of her socially interactive self, as projected on to stage, is painted with dubiousness, inferiority and low selfesteem.

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Contrast: The Good Woman/Whore Dichotomy Another major stylistic feature of this play is the use of contrast to good effect. As noted earlier, the female characters in the play tend to be constructed after biblical portraits of women. While Michelle and Rufina circumscribe to the ‘bad’ woman category represented by Portiphar’s wife, Akwen emerges as a concrete representation of the ‘capable wife’ described in Proverbs 31: 10-31. She is the dutiful housekeeper, the supportive wife, the diligent cleaner, the perfect cook, and the cheerful entertainer. Her first appearance in the play is when she visits her husband in a cell at the police station. The stage direction introducing her appearance reveals some noteworthy aspects of her role both within her marital environment and within the play itself: Policeman goes out and soon returns with Akwen, a strikingly beautiful woman in her twenties. She is carrying a basket. She is angry, but when she sees the state in which Mikindong is her features soften and she becomes anxious for his sake. (179-180)

The impression one gets of Akwen from these lines is that she is the dutiful housewife who always puts her husband’s interests ahead of hers. At this stage, she knows nothing about his claim of innocence but is immediately concerned about his wellbeing when she finds him enduring the despicable conditions of jail life. She is “anxious for his sake”, not worried about herself as the offended party, should the rape charges against her husband turn out to be true. She brings him warm clothes to wear and some tea to drink so that he should not catch pneumonia. She even promises that she will “do anything to make him comfortable” (180). All of this is done before she asks him the obvious question: “Why did you do it?” (181). When the question is finally asked, Mikindong offers no response, except the angry retort: “Stop it! Stop it! ... You will never understand. Nobody will understand” (181). He sidesteps the question by assuming the position of a grossly wronged individual, and yet Akwen feels no inclination to insist on a satisfactory explanation for the scandal, nor to reprove him for it. Within the play, her role is that of a mouthpiece for the playwright’s perceived image of the ideal wife – one who is dutiful, understanding and submissive under all circumstances. From the stage direction, one also notes a pertinent difference between the portrayal of Akwen and that of Rufina. Akwen is said to be in her twenties, and is already married. Rufina, on the other hand, is in her thirties and besides being anxious over her age she is still unmarried. Akwen is a schoolteacher, an indication of her educational superiority over Rufina who

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runs a chicken parlour. The difference in the age, marital status and profession of the two women is a deliberate encoding of socio-cultural values that dictate desired and non-desired models of femininity. Akwen is introduced only towards the middle of the play and the timing of her appearance is effective in that she comes as a significant contrast to Rufina. She is everything the latter is not: young, married, submissive, enduring and quiet in her disposition. She is calm, understanding and forgiving, whereas Rufina is boisterous, irrational and vindictive. Akwen seeks not revenge and asks no questions but responds to life’s unfortunate situations with a benign acceptance and faith in God’s ability to rectify them. She cares for her home with diligence and even tolerates her husband’s preference to eat chicken at their neighbour’s when she can prepare it for him at home. Her womanhood is thus elevated as the ideal to be emulated by African women while Rufina’s is castigated as the anti-model.

Symbolism: Of Men and Chicken Chicken is a significant symbol in The Rape of Michelle, in terms of the sexual politics at play within the world of the text. Chicken, as it is known in many societies, is an item for human consumption; few people would see it as a pet. It is vulnerable and completely helpless in the face of demands for its sustaining qualities. In modern times, it is even more susceptible to human manipulation because of the growing demand from densely populated countries and the desire for food production companies to meet the supply needs of their markets. Perhaps it is the manner in which the chickens are subjected to mechanized reproductive techniques and the ease with which their lives are ended in the rush to meet demand that has moved many people from different backgrounds – both cultural and religious – to turn to vegetarian diets. However, in spite of the increasing popularity of vegetarian culture, chicken remains a major source of protein for many families around the world. In Cameroon, chicken is a delicacy, as opposed to mushrooms or snails. Physically, its tender skin and glittering colour makes it more attractive to the human eye than fish or pork. It has an irresistible aroma and taste when prepared with a variety of local spices. In chicken parlours, for instance, it is not simply fried or boiled as it is done in most homes but grilled or roasted as well. It is also prepared in a variety of sauces (tomato stew, pepper soup etc), but the peculiarity of its taste is especially noticeable in what is popularly known in Francophone parts of Cameroon as poulet

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braisé. The delicacy of this particular dish is perhaps what accounts for the irresistible force attached to chicken parlours. In The Rape of Michelle, Mikindong seems unable to resist the desire to frequent Rufina’s chicken parlour. His constant presence there is not because of any shortage of chicken in his own home; neither is it because of his wife’s inability to prepare some for him. Note her particular frustration at his actions: Mikindong: But we only went there for the chicken and a drink! Nothing else. Akwen: Don’t I cook for you in this house? Can’t you drink at home as you are doing now? But, of course, you must go to chicken parlours where mothers and their daughters will fight over you and throw you into jail. And I have to suffer trying to get you released. (198)

Akwen reveals, albeit unconsciously, a distinct reality about her husband’s reason for patronizing Rufina’s chicken parlour. In fact, her question “Don’t I cook for you in this house” immediately annuls Mikindong’s argument that he goes there for the chicken only. It is not so much the chicken itself that draws him to Rufina’s as it is a special kind of ‘chicken’ that he cannot have at home. Inferring from his own statement above, Rufina’s chicken seems to have a special flavour, taste and attractiveness to it. He is therefore irresistibly drawn to this chicken even though he knows the dangers associated with it. The play suggests that chicken is a symbol for Michelle, the young, tender, ‘succulent’, attractive and enchanting girl whose titillating words and coquettish moves enslaves Mikindong. He is drawn to her like a dog to a meaty bone. The corollary of his desire is personified in his jail time – the ‘danger’ he subjects himself to because of his flagrant preference for Rufina’s ‘chicken’ as opposed to his wife’s. Akwen seems to be conscious of her husband’s weakness in the face of an overpowering female sexuality, but her feelings of inadequacy in comparison to Michelle make her respond to his continued visit to Rufina’s with benign acceptance. Interestingly, what she begrudges most is not his stubbornness but the fact that she has to “suffer trying to get [him] released” from jail (198). So intense is her devotion to him that the sexual implications of his stubbornness pale into insignificance. Her role as Butake’s image of the model wife is thus enhanced by traits of docility, passivity and indifference to male sexual indiscretions. There are two main arguments in relation to chicken as a symbol, which should not necessarily be seen as contradictory. On the one hand, chicken represents Michelle’s vulnerability to sexual exploitation by Ngenge and Eno whose flirtatious attitude towards Michelle explicitly frames a sexual desire that borders on explosion. On the other hand, it symbolizes the destabilizing

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potential of Michelle’s budding sexuality, since the play projects her as a femme fatale – a dangerous woman from whom every sane man should keep away. Either way, the play presents a stereotypical view of female sexuality. The paradox in the play is that what is usually perceived as vulnerable to male sexual exploitation becomes exploitative of the male body. In other words, the supposedly powerless female body becomes the body that dominates the sexual space and seeks to establish its power by usurping the male prerogative. The ideology that emanates from this paradox is that female sexuality per se is no threat to men – in fact, it is welcome, but active female sexuality is an undesirable element as it creates social disruptions that threaten the very foundations of society. Beyond the scope of male-female relationships, chicken takes on greater significance especially in relation to the theme of moral decay highlighted in the play. Given that Michelle is the ‘chicken’ that entices Mikindong and his friends to Rufina’s chicken parlour, the chicken parlour, with its proprietorship under female control, becomes a social structure that threatens man’s perceived moral integrity. There is a subtle suggestion that beyond keeping female sexual desire in check, the chicken parlour should remain under constant male surveillance, or, better still, snatched from under female control. Following the Bakhtinian concept of the devouring and devoured body, one can extend the significance of the chicken symbol to include the act of eating itself as an act of power. According to Morris (1994), in the Bakhtinian worldview, man’s encounter with the world in the act of eating is joyful and triumphant because he devours the world without being devoured himself. The act of eating suggests a power relation in which the eater not only dictates to the eaten the terms of the encounter but also inevitably dominates the space. In The Rape of Michelle, the eating of chicken is a metaphor for the greedy extortion of the less powerful, and this is especially so considering the theme of corruption that is glaring in the play. So then the chicken parlour comes to symbolize a debased judicial system in which the legally defenseless – the ‘chickens’ – are preyed upon by the legally wise.

Structure: The Gender Implications The structural presentation of the events in the play is also quite significant in terms of highlighting the playwright’s perceived sense of moral justice. In the court scene, Michelle’s account of the rape scene is narrated by Michelle while Mikindong’s is dramatized or re-enacted as a flashback, projecting it

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as the ‘true’ version of the incident. The flashback technique is employed here to magnify such binaries as truth and falsehood, right and wrong, good and evil. After the first scene, Rufina’s role in the play is completely effaced. While Akwen is introduced as the loving support Mikindong needs to cope with the traumas of his being charged with rape, Rufina is physically taken away from the play and her presence is only felt in the form of a piece of paper – the medical certificate she procures in defence of Michelle’s case. She hovers in the background of the actions; we do not see her despairing over her daughter’s supposed rape but are told by the policeman and Akwen, respectively, that she is “always in the Commissioner’s office” (179) and is “bent on sending [Mikindong] to jail for as long as the law demands” (181). Thus, she is kicked off-stage as an irrelevant character but is projected from backstage as an embodiment of the corruption that thrives within the legal system. Her association with the Commissioner echoes that of Jagua Nana and Uncle Taiwo in Ekwensi’s novel. This association between two prostitute women and powerful political figures highlights not only the commercial nature of the search for socio-economic security in the city but also the intertextuality that exists within African writing by men.

Naming as Alienation Michelle’s alienation from indigenous culture is indicated by her possession of a non-traditional name. Naming practices in a work of art often function as an index of the narrator’s or character’s respect for the named individual (Toolan 1990: 269). While Mikindong, Akwen, Ngenge, Eno and Zende all have names that can be affiliated to some ethnic group in Cameroon, Michelle is given a French name. Considering Cameroon’s colonial history, such a name would suggest that she has been assimilated into French culture and has therefore lost her roots. Her alienation stems not only from her detribalised state but also from her adoption of a cultural lifestyle that is considered unwholesome by the proponents of tradition. Thus, she lives on the margins of her world – rejected by the dominant actors in her own society (men), and yet not fully a part of the European culture she seeks to emulate.

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Woman as a Nation: An Overall Stylistic Appraisal It is imperative to return to the theme of moral decay referred to earlier, because it highlights one of the most significant metaphors in Butake’s play – the metaphor of woman as a nation. One has to recall that the case between Michelle and Mikindong goes to court and both parties make an attempt to prove their innocence. The point to note is that in this courtroom can be found liars and cheaters. From the accuser and accused to the magistrate sitting in judgment of the case, there is no one untainted with guilt of performing some unacceptable act. Even Akwen the idealized ‘heroine’ who comes to the rescue of her husband can only succeed by playing the ‘game’ of the state – bribing the magistrate to release Mikindong on bail. Significantly, then, the courtroom, like the decrepit bus in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, is symbolic of a deteriorating sociopolitical system that houses citizens who through their individual indecencies contribute to its filthy and declining state. However, more vivid than this symbol is the prostitute metaphor which provides an “index of the state of the nation” (Stratton 1990: 117). Michelle’s sexual harassment of Mikindong and the subsequent rape charge is an allegory for a deteriorating political and judicial system. In addition, just like Rufina targets Mikindong as the object of her desire, the desperate and gullible are preyed upon by the high and mighty in society who extort from them for their own political and economic enrichment. Female sexuality thus becomes a metaphor for the socio-political degeneration of Cameroon as a nation. What Stratton (1990) calls the analogy between prostitution and national degradation is implicit in the depiction of Michelle and Rufina as morally degenerate and corrupting forces. In the final scene of the play, Mikindong and his friends gather at his house to celebrate his appointment as principal of the high school in which he teaches. His lawyer and the court magistrate soon join them in celebration. Only Michelle and Rufina are missing from this assembly, suggesting not only that they are the losers of the battle but also that they are the principal initiators of the corruption that has eaten deep into the roots of society. Through these two characters, woman is made a metaphor for a nation that is not only in a state of decline but has lost its intrinsic values. The play’s stylistic strength may be considered impressive, but the ideology that emanates from it is unquestionably anti-feminist, for while the symbols and metaphors function effectively to convey the writer’s message, the message itself is replete with sexism and undue biases against women. Interestingly, The Rape of Michelle appears as the last of the plays in the

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Lake God collection, even though it was written and performed before all the others. Perhaps it is Butake’s awareness of its ideological weaknesses that dictated its positioning.

Conclusion The analysis above has shown that in Butake’s play female sexuality is brought under the scrutinizing gaze of the male. It is questioned for being active and rejected for being deviant. The predominant ideology in the play is that of a dissident sexuality that needs to be toed back into the line of acceptable female sexual behaviour. The Rape of Michelle was written in 1984, no doubt a time when Cameroonian women’s sexual lives were still rigourously scrutinized under the patriarchal lens and talks on gender equality and women’s empowerment were ruthlessly hushed down by a dominating male population. 7 Butake’s construction of woman in this play draws heavily from socio-cultural practices and ideologies that operate to downplay women’s quest for independence from social structures of power. As illustrated above, the play subscribes to a “long-standing tradition of polarizing reason and passion as masculine and feminine, respectively” (Wolfson 1994: 32), for in its association of women with the irrationality of children it endorses a hegemonic masculinity that inevitably espouses a mutation of the female voice. In addition, its portrayal of women as ‘witches’ whose mission in life is to rob ‘pious’ men of their virtues (see Ong & Peletz 1995) consigns it to the category of African plays deeply entrenched in the male literary tradition.

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It is sad to note that even in the late 1990s the concept of gender equality was still largely un-welcomed in many societies in Cameroon. Speaking about the Moghamo and Bafaw societies, Endeley (2001) reports that because of cultural patriarchy men and women generally felt that the women’s empowerment project had no place in their cultures because men were by definition the custodians of power and authority.

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References Ambe, H. (2007). “Change Aesthetics in Anglophone Cameroon Drama & Theatre.” Bayreuth African Studies 83. Armah, A. K. (1968) The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Oxford: Heinemann. Butake, B. (1984, 1999) “The Rape of Michelle.” In Lake God and Other Plays. Yaounde: Éditions CLÉ. 175-199. ——., (1986, 1999) “Lake God.” Lake God and Other Plays. Yaounde: Éditions CLÉ. 5-58. ——., (1989, 1999) “The Survivors.” Lake God and Other Plays. Yaounde: Éditions CLÉ. 59-85. ——., (1990, 1999) “And Palm Wine Will Flow.” Lake God and Other Plays. Yaounde: Éditions CLÉ. 87-114. Butake, B., Doho, G. (1994, 2002) Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon. Bamenda: Patron. Cameron, D. (1990) “Introduction: Why is Language a Feminist Issue?” In D. Cameron (ed) The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader. London / New York: Routledge. 1-28. ——., (1995) Verbal Hygiene. London / New York: Routledge. ——., (2006) On Language and Sexual Politics. New York: Routledge. Chitauro, M., Dube, C., Gunner, L. (1994) “Song, Story and Nation: Women as Singers and Actresses in Zimbabwe.” In L. Gunner (ed) Politics and Performance: Theatre, Poetry and Song in Southern Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. 111-137. Dipoko, M. S. (1968) Because of Women. London: Heinemann. Dreyfus, H. L., Rabinow, P. (1982) Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Ekwensi, C. (1961) Jagua Nana. London: Heinemann. Endeley, J. (2001) “Conceptualising Women’s Empowerment in Societies in Cameroon: How does Money Fit in?” Gender and Development 9(1), 34-41. Etoke, N. (2006) “Writing the Woman’s Body in Francophone African Literature: Taxonomy Issues and Challenges.” CODESRIA Bulletin 3 & 4, 41-44. Evans, J. (1983) “Mother Africa and the Heroic Whore: Female Images in Petals of Blood.” In H. Wylie, E. Julien, R. Linnemann (eds) Contemporary African Literature. Washington D.C.: Three Continents Press. 57-65.

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Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Allen Lane. ——., (1981) The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. London: Allen Lane. Ignatowski, C. (2006) Journey of Song: Public Life and Morality in Cameroon. Bloomington / Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Lyonga, N. (1993) “Natural Democrats: Women and the Leadership Crisis in Cameroon Literature.” In N. Lyonga, E. Breitinger, B. Butake (eds) Anglophone Cameroon Writing. Bayreuth African Studies 30. 175179. Mernissi, F. (1987) Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society. Bloomington / Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Morris, P. (1994) The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov. London: Edward Arnold. Mullins, E. (1985) The Painted Witch: Female Body, Male Art. London: Secker & Warburg. Ngara, E. (1982) Stylistic Criticism and the African Novel. London: Heinemann. ——., (1985) Art and Ideology in the African Novel: A Study of the Influence of Marxism on African Writing. London: Heinemann. Ngongwikuo, J. A. (1980) Taboo Love. New York: Exposition Press. Ngufor, E. (2005) The Arts, Culture and HIV/AIDS Victims: Meeting Community Needs through Theatre [Web Page] Retrieved 25 Jan 2008 from http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/03_1/samba16.html. Ngugi wa Thiong’o. (1977) Petals of Blood. London: Heinemann. Ngwang, E. (2004) Female Empowerment and Political Change: A Study of Bole Butake’s Lake God, The Survivors and And Palm Wine Will Flow. [Web Page] Retrieved 25 Jan 2008 from http://pagesperso orange.fr/oracle974/text/74c21e88- 579.html. Niger-Thomas, M. (2008) “Buying Futures: The Upsurge of Female Entrepreneurship Crossing the Formal/Informal Divide in Southwest Cameroon.” In P. Geschiere, B. Meyer, P. Pels (eds) Readings in Modernity in Africa. London: The International African Institute. 4248. Nkealah, N., Odhiambo, C. (2008) Interview with Bole Butake. Wits University, South Africa. Odhiambo, C. (2007) “Impotent Men, Energized Women: Performing Woman-ness in Bole Butake’s Dramas.” In M. Kolk (ed) Performing Gender in Arabic/African Theatre. Amsterdam: Intercultural Theatre Series 4. 165-180.

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——., (2009). “Whose Nation? Romanticizing the Vision of a Nation in Bole Butake’s Betrothal without Libation and Family Saga.” Research in African Literatures 40(2), 159-172. Ong, A., Peletz, M. (eds) (1995) Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schipper, M. (1987) “Mother Africa on a Pedestal: The Male Heritage in African Literature and Criticism.” African Literature Today 15, 35-54. Schulz, M. (1990) “The Semantic Derogation of Woman.” In D. Cameron (ed) The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader. London / New York: Routledge. 134-147. Senkoro, F. (1982) The Prostitute in African Literature. Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press. Strachey, C. (ed) (1901) The Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to his Son. London: Methuen. Stratton, F. (1990) “Periodic Embodiments: A Ubiquitous Trope in African Men’s Writing.” Research in African Literatures 21(1), 111-126. ——., (1994) Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender. London / New York: Routledge. Toolan, M. (1990) The Stylistics of Fiction: A Literary Linguistic Approach. London / New York: Routledge. Wallman, S. (1996) Kampala Women Getting By: Wellbeing in the Time of AIDS. London: James Currey. Wolfson, S. (1994) “Lyrical Ballads and the Language of (Men) Feeling: Wordsworth Writing Women’s Voices.” In T. Morgan (ed) Men Writing the Feminine: Literature, Theory and the Question of Genders. Albany: State University of New York Press. 29-57.

Chris Wasike

Figuration of ‘troubled motherhood’ and Feminization of the Ugandan Nation in John Ruganda’s Plays 1 Introduction The late John Ruganda remains, arguably, one of East Africa’s most eminent dramatists, director, theatre critic and practitioner. His dramatic genius has been particularly outstanding and a number of his politically nuanced plays have, to this day, continued to feature prominently in the English and Literature curricula at both high school and university levels in East Africamore so in Uganda and Kenya. Up until his passing away in December 2007 after a long battle with throat cancer, his intellectual influence had transcended his writings and theatrical performances and certainly immortalized him into an unmistakable trailblazer in the East African theatre landscape. Apart from the three plays The Floods (1980), The Burdens (1972) and Black Mamba (1972) which are the focus of our current analysis, Ruganda has written and produced other equally popular dramatic works such as Covenant with Death (1973), Music without Tears (1982) and Echoes of Silence (1986). He even published a collection of short stories titled Igereka and Other African Narrative stories (2004). This article focuses on what I consider to be arguably John Ruganda’s three most recognized, studied and politically engaging plays namely: The Floods, The Burdens and Black Mamba. It is also the premise of this article that the three plays by far represent the most sustained dramatic exposition of the political turmoil and decline that characterized the Ugandan nation in 1970’s and 1980’s. I am keen to illustrate how the playwright uses the female characters’ voices, bodies and their sexuality as metaphors of reading the complexities, contradictions and constructions of the Ugandan nation especially during Idi Amin’s dictatorship. Fully aware that different scholars have pointed out the tenuous reality of attempting to read the post colonial Africa nation within the ambit of motherhood, I am not unproblematically seeking to oversimplify this trope into a stable monolithic concept that can 1

A draft of this paper was initially presented at the University of Botswana’s Department of English 5th Conference titled Mapping Africa in English Speaking World that was held from 2nd to 4th June 2009. However this version is markedly different and includes new concepts especially on ‘troubled motherhood’ and the African literary canon.

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easily be identified in literary works. Indeed the fact that the figuration of nationhood is always an ‘imagined’, constructed and contested terrain, the trope of mother Africa is equally fluid and problematic. However in the current analysis, I proceed from the assumption that gender is a set of lived and embodied realities, and hope to demonstrate how Ruganda’s project of highlighting the role of women in the society is, in many ways, a politically conscious strategy of reconfiguring and re-imagining the Ugandan nationstate within the historical reality of Amin’s dictatorial era. To validate the key thrust of our arguments, we will engage in an exegesis of Ruganda’s simultaneous depiction of female characters and dramatic deployment of their roles as metaphors of the political order in Uganda at the time. With the benefit of Michel Foucault’s 2 figuration of the body as a socially produced regime of knowledge and power, our analysis hopes to demonstrate how Ruganda’s plays project the female characters’ bodies as symbols of sexualized identity and contradictions, yet recognizing how the same bodies can be read as canvases that intersect between the semiotic and material dimensions of gender power and the imagination of the nation. In a sense, the article hopes to show how Ruganda’s dramaturgy as deployed through the female characters, their bodies and their dramatic conversations are subversive to the extent to which they gesture towards a feminizing project; much like what Patricia Allen (1991: 68) refers to as “the feminist challenge to patriarchal authority” and a corresponding and equally overdetermined “attempt to create convincing and interesting women characters”. However, to unravel Ruganda’s gender figuration of his female characters as subversive allegories of the postcolonial Africa nation in general and in some instances Uganda, it is contingent that we briefly sketch out snippets of the historical events of the Amin era that are imbricated and alluded to in the three plays under discussion.

2

For more on how knowledge, power and the human body are related see Foucault Michel. 1972. Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock Publications. I am particularly interested in Foucault’s argument that all bodies perform power based on knowledge and how the interplay of power symmetries influences the gender order in every social context.

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‘Troubled Motherhood’ and the Idi Amin Figure in Ruganda’s Plays The image of Amin as a ruthless murderer has remained significant, not just to Uganda’s political experience and history, but as a ubiquitous personality cult that has spawned many volumes of literature. Indeed apart from Ruganda’s plays there exists a huge dearth of outstanding (both creative and non-creative) works 3 that were inspired by the character of Amin and images of turbulence in Uganda in the 1970’s. Notably, and for fear of victimization, most of the works especially by Ugandan authors could not be published until after the overthrow of Amin in 1979. A lot many other writers like John Ruganda and Peter Nazareth were forced to escape from the repressive state apparatus of Amin’s tyranny and only wrote from the safe havens of exile. Others like Alumidi Osinya remained in Uganda but could only use pseudonyms to protect their real identities, but the likes of Byron Kawadwa were not lucky to survive Amin’s killer squads (Mbowa 1996: 88) Based on the large production of works that targeted exposing the grim picture of the Amin reign and an equally overwhelming attention to his effect on the national psyche, one can arguably agree with Kiyimba‘s (1998: 127) assertion that Idi Amin is still the “most dominant single factor in Ugandan literature today”. Ruganda’s plays are heavily inundated with characters, events and themes that can easily be traced back to the period that Amin reigned although they also speak directly to postcolonial African dictatorship in general. Because of the political situation at the times he wrote and performed his plays, many of his dramatic plots sound like allegories of the Ugandan nation. In The Burdens for instance, the central female character of Tinka is moulded as a ‘troubled mother’ figure of the Ugandan nation. The play recounts the fall to disgrace and squalor of a once rich politician who has since been deposed from his position as a government minister and is now wallowing in abject 3

I have in mind works such as Henry Kyemba’s A State of Blood (1977), Donald Westlake’s Kahawa (1981), Leslie Watkin’s The Killing of Idi Amin (1976), James Konrad’s Target Amin (1977), Wole Soyinka’s A Play of Giants(1984), Byron Kawadwa’s Song of Wankoko (1971), Peter Nazareth’s The General is Up(1984), Alumidi Osinya’s The Amazing Saga of Field Marshall Salim Fisi (or How the Hyena Got His!(1977)and Alan Tacca’s Silent Rebel(1984) . For a more detailed discussion of the plight of writers during Amin’s dictatorship, see also Kiyimba Abasi. 1998. “The Ghost of Amin in Ugandan Literature” in Research in African Literature Vol. 29 No.1 pp 124-38 and Mbowa Rose. 1996. “Theatre and Political Repression in Uganda” in Research in African Literatures Vol. 27. No.1 pp 87-97.

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poverty and penury. Wamala, a former cabinet minister in the Old Veteran’s government and recently released from detention because of his alleged involvement in an attempt to topple the government he once served in, is clearly finding it difficult to accept his new demeaning status of impoverishment. Wamala takes to heavy drinking to drown his sorrows and depression, whiling away his time and little earnings with his equally frustrated colleagues at the Republic bar. He continues to live under the illusion that things are not what they seem to be as he engages in debauchery and idle chitchat much to the chagrin of his wife Tinka. Meanwhile his two childrenKaija and Nyakake – can barely eke out a living. Kaija is particularly frustrated by the fact that even as a grown boy he still has to share bedding with his sister Nyakake who constantly wets the bed and continues to make his nights unbearable. At the beginning of the play, Ruganda uses stage directions to explain how Tinka wears an “I have been through hell” kind of face (The Burdens, 1). In a sense, Tinka is the epitome of a troubled mother symbolism and the image of an abandoned wife. From her facial features, one can clearly discern a female body that is harassed and humiliated both by her own husband and the harsh realities of the family’s changed lifestyle. Clearly, Tinka’s troubles seem to emanate from the tyranny and brutal treatment he gets from her husband. To a certain extent, she becomes a victim of a patriarchal violence meted out by his insensitive husband. In one particular incident, Wamala injures her in a scuffle over a bottle of enguli which he had stolen from Tinka’s brew hidden outside their house. Wamala’s character can be read as having a lot of resonances with the political discourse that informed Idi Amin’s dictatorship. As Wilhem Reich reminds us; In the figure of the father, the authoritarian state has its representative in every family, so that the family becomes its most important instrument of power. (Quoted in Alden 1991: 68)

The same view is adumbrated by Patrician Alden (1991: 75) who argues that “patriarchy is a key variation of African dictatorship and indeed the fundamental ground upon which it flourishes”. The Burdens is apparently more about the depiction of the struggle for control of familial space between Wamala and Tinka; a struggle that affects the lives of Tinka and the children but more so the female body of Tinka that looks jaded and emaciated. But in an interesting folkloristic twist, Ruganda in The Burdens employs an oral narrative to illustrate Tinka’s troubled femininity and motherhood.

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After repeated cajoling and persistence from Kaija, Tinka reluctantly narrates the story of chief Ngoma, who in a bid to look fair regrets making his beautiful daughter Nyenje to get married to a leper. In the narrative that has a lot of parallels with Tinka’s own life, paramount chief Ngoma sends out word that whoever wants his only daughter’s hand marriage must climb up a tall tree and bring down a gourd that contains her umbilical cord. Unfortunately, a leper who offers himself for the challenge manages to sing his way to the top and retrieves the gourd much to the chagrin of the chief who regrets his fairness. This narrative bears a lot of similarities with Tinka’s plight. In many ways she believes that just like Nyenje in the story she had the misfortune of being duped into marrying a “common leper stinking with leprosy and commonness”(The Burdens, 17). This oral narrative is an allegory of not just Tinka’s troubles, but also echoes the feeling of betrayal in many post-independence African countries, Uganda included. Tinka’s and Nyenje’s disappointment resonates with the political implications of the mother trope in which many patriarchal political systems misuse the mother figure as a symbol of nationhood in order to perpetuate masculine hegemonies. More significantly though, the idea of personal narratives as allegories of the nation can easily be gleaned from the plot of events in both Black Mamba and The Floods. Borrowing from Fredric Jameson’s idea of allegory as captured in the article “Third World Literature in Era of Multinational Capitalism”, we can argue that the stories of the private familial destinies in Ruganda’s three plays are “allegories of the embattled situation of the public third world culture and society” (Jameson 1986: 69). Indeed as Patrick McGee (1992: 241) adds, allegory “arises from a culture in which the real world has become meaningless, devoid of intrinsic value, fragmented yet mysterious”. Narrating about the chaotic state affairs during the initial years of Amin’s rule, Mutibwa (1992) for instance remembers how two years into his reign, Amin had suddenly turned into a systematic, ruthless and intolerant brute who unleashed terror and death to anybody who countenanced opposing his coup take over. At the beginning, many Ugandans were prepared to give the new administration the benefit of doubt apparently imagining it was a welcome relief from Obote’s earlier repressive regime (Kiyimba 1998: 124). Incidentally, a number of foreign governments (including Israel and Britain) were initially duped into congratulating and recognizing Amin’s ascension to power. More so, his initial pursuit of “statesmanlike policies convinced many early cynics that Amin was indeed a ‘man of peace’” (Mutibwa 1992: 78). But within a short period after his takeover (between

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1971 and 1973), “the coup which had been greeted with jubilation began to deteriorate into a systematic breakdown of organized social institutions” (Kiyimba 1998: 124). The slaughter of civilians and members of the armed forces who were perceived to be loyal to ousted president Milton Obote was particularly rampant during the early years of Amin’s. Even more worse was when he ordered the expulsion of Israelis and citizens/non-citizens of Asian origin in August 1972. Through his rule, Amin was known to have been extremely inhuman and callous as his henchmen unleashed unprecedented terror on a hapless population. His murder squads were unstoppable and many people lost their relatives and friends as suffering, fear and despondency reigned. In Mutibwa’s (1992: 79) words “he was a combination of guile, buffoonery and utter ruthlessness in killing anyone even remotely suspected by him or his subordinates of being unfriendly”. Some of the characters and events in Ruganda’s three plays appear to resonate with events in Uganda at the time the plays were first written and performed within and outside the country. For instance, at the time The Burdens was first performed at the Uganda National Theatre by Ruganda’s own Makonde Group sometime in January 1972, the play’s storyline couldn’t have been more succinct. The character of Wamala as carved from the image of a typical politician who has lost favour with the reigning political elite was particularly poignant. As a former cabinet minister who has just been released from detention for his alleged involvement in a coup attempt on the Veteran (a veiled reference to Amin) who is the head state of an imaginary African country, Wamala keeps complaining of how his freedom is meaningless especially because of his penury. He is even considering going back to the Veteran to plead for clemency as a way of trying to financially rehabilitate himself. However, his wife reminds him that he was lucky to have gotten away with a mere two-year detention instead of the firing squad. The mention of firing squads alludes to the ruthless death squads that ran riot during Amin’s regime. Yet Wamala’s continued blaming of the Yankees for his ouster echoes what former president Milton Obote and his allies did, when they kept blaming their ouster on certain enemies who were working with foreign powers to eliminate them (Mutibwa 1992: 79). The figure of a troubled woman as an allegory of the nation is even more emphatically deployed by Ruganda in one of his most philosophically and morally engaging plays titled Black Mamba. Namuddu, a semi-literate wife of a house help called Berewa is persuaded by her husband to join him at his white master’s house in order to, allegedly, assist him with his chores so as to make the couple get rich fast. However, as events unfold, it becomes evident that Berewa has duped his whore-loving employer, Professor Coarx, to have

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his wife sleep with him as a prostitute in exchange for money. Though reluctant at first, Berewa manages to convince his wife to offer herself to Professor Coarx and make sure she extorts as much money from him as possible. The following conversation between them best captures the crudity and indecency of this proposal as Berewa attempts to rationalize his bid to literally ‘pimp out’ his wife as a way of ensuring what he calls ‘progress’ and ‘prosperity’. Namuddu: How you talk! Berewa, do you really love me? How can you lend me away to another man? Berewa: I am not lending you to anybody. You are mine. Every fly knows that you can’t help being mine. But then necessity obeys no law. Namuddu: Now I know what you are after- one of these town girls. That is why you have had to lend me to your master. How I hate him! How I hate you! Berewa: If I wanted another woman I wouldn’t have called you here. Namuddu: That’s not the point. Berewa: Then the point is that you must talk sense. You must see things exactly as they are. We must prosper- that is important! (Black Mamba, 9)

Incidentally, Berewa uses the promise of modern consumerist rewards such as good dresses and shoes as a way of convincing his wife to sleep with his boss against her will. Ironically, even after earning her first hundred shillings payment from the encounter with Professor, Berewa insists that he should be in charge of the finances and he “must bank it straight away” (Black Mamba, 8). Her protests about the need to get herself good high-heeled shoes, necklace, ear rings and a hand bag so as to look like Namatta are ignored by Berewa who keeps insisting that there is plenty of time to earn more. Namuddu continuously protests that sleeping with her husband’s boss is immoral and not the ‘right way’ of helping her husband to get rich fast but Berewa retorts; Berewa: And what is right about being poor? What is moral about sweating oneself to death for only one hundred shillings a month? I don’t see why you are weeping, Namuddu. We have got to use what we have. And what we have got is your body and mine. Those are our major sources of income as things stand now. If God expects us to use our blessed bodies he wouldn’t have given us the bloody brains to think how to use them; nor would he have had us poor like this. Berewa: We can’t be blamed for giving what the rich want, when we have the chance. The Professor here is infatuated by your good looks. We must praise the Gods on high for showing us the way to get our daily potato. (Black Mamba, 12-13)

Interestingly, the readiness with which Berewa is willing to let his wife to peddle her flesh for monetary gain smacks of capitalism and masculine

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conspiracy on his part. At first Namuddu imagines it was a once-off incident but when Berewa keeps egging her on to extract as much as possible from the professor, Namuddu realizes that her husband means business. The sexual liaison between Professor Coarx and Namuddu is a double-blind metaphor that on one hand denotes economic promise for her yet it again signals bodily misuse and the patriarchal use of sex as a vehicle of oppression. The situation between Namuddu and her husband is a mirror of the political context in many postcolonial African countries. More importantly though, the character of Namuddu and especially her body is a cogent social metaphor that Ruganda’s employs to explain African dictatorships. On the one hand, the masculine deprivation and mercantilistic instincts that propel Berewa and Professor Coarx to think of Namuddu’s female anatomy only in terms of capitalistic gains and sexual gratification respectively, is probably a summation of the crass levels of moral and social decadence that characterize many tyrannical regimes after independence. This conspiracy by Berewa can also be interpreted to speak to how African political elites literally ‘pimp’ there motherlands, in cahoots with former colonialists (here represented by Professor Coarx). It is a sign of moral decadence and economic desperation that seem to propel a man to dispense with his moral sensibilities for the sake of quick material gain. The sense of betrayal that Namuddu feels towards her husband’s decision to literally mortgage her body for money is as bad as the brutality and systematic violence that many dictators like Amin and his henchmen visited on hapless citizens. The betrayal of Namuddu by her husband is an epitome of the disappointment that many post-independence political rulers put their citizens through. The despondency and helplessness that Ugandans felt as they constantly remained at the mercy of Amin’s brutal state apparatus is similar to what Namuddu feels as she is compelled by her husband to sleep with his boss for money. Although the events depicted in the play are not peculiar to Uganda or Amin’s time, but the fact that the play was initially performed to full houses at the Makerere University, Main hall at a time when Amin’s tyranny was at its peak, speaks volumes about its social relevance then. The harsh economic realities of the times then made many Ugandan’s to resort to desperate measures. But at the centre of this desperation is the troubled female body which remains as an index of dire hopelessness. For a man to resort to lending his wife for money is a clear demonstration of hard economic times. Yet we can’t rule out the fact that, the despondency and balkanized poverty that occasions many dictatorial regimes could have pushed many to the edge of literally mortgaging their own bodies for survival and engaging in “necessary pieces of drama for the hungry times” (Black Mamba, 70). Thus

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Berewa’s indecent proposal to his wife and Namuddu’s predicament might as well be symbols of the desperate circumstances then. But in The Floods, John Ruganda is more upfront in his exposition of the political events during Amin’s rule. Unlike in the two other plays discussed above, the characterization and dramatic deployment of themes and plot in The Floods are all directly informed and inspired by events in Amin’s Uganda. The story line of the play revolves around two characters namely: Bwogo, a prominent member and henchman of an imaginary dictatorial elite and Nankya who is a pseudo-intellectual. The so called State Research Bureau that Bwogo heads is in fact a government terror outfit whose sole purpose is to eliminate enemies of the state. The Floods is conveniently structured into three closely-knit waves with each one symbolizing the escalation of conflict and confrontation between the two protagonists. For instance, at the very beginning a headman is frantically trying to mobilise citizens to vacate an island (most probably in Lake Victoria) in order to avoid ‘floods’. The government has announced, through the radio that all people should clear from the island because there are looming floods .However, a recalcitrant fisher man called Kyeyune refuses to heed the call because he senses a trap. As the drama unravels, it becomes evident that all the island dwellers that were duped into getting onto boats so as to be saved from the floods have eventually been shot and drowned in the lake by the SRB (acronym for State Research Bureau) boys. It also becomes increasingly clear that Bwogo had initially planned to have Nankya and her mother killed on the same boats despite having had an intimate relationship with her before. Throughout the play, Bwogo and Nankya are constantly at odds as they strive to claim the moral high ground in relation to the country’s dictatorial regime: Bwogo: The cat and rat game we are indulging in. Let’s cut it out. It’s becoming dangerous. Nankya: You started it. We are not half-through yet. Let’s drive it to the very end, however bitter, you said. Bwogo: (accusing voice but delicately) Did I now? Nankya: (aggressive). Didn’t you? Bwogo: (half apologetic).In the heat of the moment, maybe. Effective prodding and needling did it. You made your point. Nankya: So did you. Loud and clear. Wasting no punches. Hitting where it hurts most (The Floods, 35).

From the extract above, it is clear that their romantic relationship is deployed and sometimes turned upside, even if subtly, to explain the predicament that the Ugandan nation faced during the harrowing years of Amin’s rule. With a mixture of pain, anxiety, suspense and resilience, Nankya is portrayed as a symbol of the Ugandan nation. She is depicted as both vulnerable and

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resilient in the context of male subjugation. Although Bwogo accuses her of ‘sleeping’ her way to academic prominence, she also reminds him of the ruthlessness of the killer squad (SRB) which he heads. The treacherous character of the killer squads is even reiterated by Kyeyune when he recounts how he discovered a human finger while eating fish. Even more horrifying is the incident when Kyeyune witnesses the massacre of the islanders in the rescue boat which reminds him of an incident when he fished out a dead body of a brigadier with three nails in his skull and genitals in his mouth. This chilling experience is reminiscent of the treacherous and callous activities that were undertaken by death squads at the height of Amin’s tyranny. Sadly, like in The Floods, it was mostly the poor, women and children who were the main victims. Throughout the play though, many other female characters are deployed as symbols of troubled femininity. For instance, in his appropriation of folkloristic material to illustrate postcolonial African contexts, Ruganda in The Floods uses the legend of Nyamgondho’s defilement of the mythical woman Nalubale as emblematic of the troubled African nation. In addition, Nankya’s mother who was raped by soldiers, resulting in the conception of Nankya, is a clear symbol of a femininity that is troubled right from the womb. Within the purview of the Ugandan context, Amin’s tyranny can be understood as a state apparatus that in many ways defiled the nation. Although the female body is generally supposed to symbolize sanctity and purity, the act of defilement and rape signals contamination and dehumanization of the same body. But in what sounds like a prophetic conjecture, the contrived ending of The Floods appears to anticipate the overthrow of Idi Amin in 1979. In the play, the female character Nankya is instrumental in luring Bwogo to the house on the island, which eventually makes it easy for the coup plotters to catch him. Unbeknown to Bwogo, Nankya is not as naïve as he had initially imagined her to be. She is not a mere sexual object and hapless pseudointellectual. Rather, she turns out to be self-consciously perceptive about her own feminine powers and uses them to the fullest. As the play ends, Nankya is the centre of anticipated change. In a way the mother trope as configured by Ruganda through Nankya in The Floods is repackaged into a liberation symbol for the Ugandan nation. To a certain extent, Nankya fights to restore the sanctity and purity of the female mother figure of Nalubale.

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Subversive Female trope and the Re-imagination of the Nation The idea of the nation us a subversive female trope is not new in African literature. Indeed the fact that many cultural discourses regard masculinity as authority and femininity as subjugated subjectivity, the shifting and unstable of signification of nationhood has to often stand out as subversive. In many ways therefore, the troubled mother figuration of nationhood can only redeem itself by confronting patriarchal authority. Emmanuel Yewah (2001: 68) has argued elsewhere that for many African writers; Who are disillusioned by broken promises, independence, betrayed by postcolonial rulers who have appropriated national discourses, conscious of dictators’ human rights abuses within their imagined sovereign space, have turned their creative endeavours into weapons to challenge, indeed deconstruct any signified that could correspond to the nation.

Nonetheless, the mother trope as an allegory of nationhood is underpinned by fractures and contradictions. Tom Nairn adumbrates this same point when he says that the post-colonial nation (Africa included) has been so named as the “modern Janus and its development inscribes progression and regression, political rationality and irrationality” (1981: 94). He goes on to add that the “ambivalent figure of the nation is a problem of its conceptual indeterminacy; it’s wavering between vocabularies; the comfort of social belonging… [and] the injuries of class” (quoted in Hutchinson 1994: 307). This figuration of the nation has persistently been circulated in African literary works of the postcolonial period. Because of the political upheavals that have faced many African countries like Uganda it is understandable that many critics tend to read and write the nation as the ideological framing and apparatus of state power. But perhaps Ernest Renan’s definition of the nation as read in Hutchinson etal (1994: 17) is most cogent to our analysis of John Ruganda’s drama as an index of the African symbol of a ‘troubled and subversive motherhood’. “A nation” he argues, “is a soul, a spiritual principle constituting of the past and the present… the end product of a long period of work, sacrifice and devotion”. He emphasizes that; A heroic past of great men of glory (I mean the genuine kind), that is the social principle on which the national idea rests. To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have accomplished great things together, to wish to do so again, that is the essential condition of being a nation. Common suffering is greater than happiness. In fact national sorrows are more significant than triumphs because they impose obligations and demand a common effort (Hutchinson et al 1994:17)

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Renan’s views speak directly to Uganda’s historical reality and Ruganda’s attempts to re-imagine the context through his female characters. The Idi Amin era in Uganda is a specific epoch that was so traumatizing to the soul of the nation that it remains one of the most sorrowful eras which incidentally has consistently been used to define and re-imagine its nationhood. Ruganda’s deployment of female characters clearly gesture towards a reengineering and rebirth of the Ugandan nation amidst the trauma of Amin’s era. Most of his female characters are projected as subversive protagonists who defy the patriarchal systems of governance that are run by men. In The Burdens for instance, Tinka refuses to be pushed down and subjugated by her husband. She subverts the male stereotype of women as helpless by picking up the challenge to change the course of things. Despite the family’s dwindled fortunes, she sticks out her neck as the sole bread winner of the family as she weaves mats and sells enguli, an illicit local gin, to keep the family afloat. Meanwhile, both Wamala and Tinka compete for the attention of their children as they frequently seek to influence them against each other. But Tinka’s tenacity and resilience is even more evident. When Kaija confesses to her about what his father told him about her; she is quick to counter the accusation with more vehement counter-accusations against Wamala. Consider the following excerpt, for instance: Kaija: That you kept pulling him down and down. A millstone round his neck, he says. A big burden. Tinka: He has never been up, Kaija; I want you to know that. Never been really up. As high up as men like Isaza, or Isimbwa. A lamb is not a lion, son (The Burdens, 6).

In a bid not to be outsmarted by her husband, Tinka seeks to regain the upper hand by seeking favour with their son. Tinka is not about to allow his husband to poison Kaija’s mind against her and she is more than ready to paint the picture of Wamala as a failure who is solely responsible for the family’s fall from grace. This blame game and contest for their children’s attention between man and wife sometimes degenerates into physical confrontations. In one particular incident, Wamala injures her in a scuffle over a bottle of enguli which he had stolen from Tinka’s hidden place outside their house. In a role play, Tinka who assumes the character of Vincent Konagonago, taunts and dismisses Wamala’s puerile ideas of a ‘Slogan Syndicate’ and ‘Two Tops’ safety match sticks. In this play-within-a play scene, Tinka is not just foregrounding and rehearsing what Wamala should expect when he goes to meet Mr. Konagonago, but she also uses the opportunity to perform feminine power and poke fun at his shattered ego. In a

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subversive kind of way, Tinka seems to be reminding Wamala that he is no longer on top of things because of his impoverished status and lack of financial capital. For instance, while in the character of Konagonago, she reminds Wamala that he is only a poor man whose economic powers have diminished. The following extract best illustrates this. Tinka: I don’t do business with penniless little men. Wamala: They are the backbone of this…They would favour Two Tops matches. Tinka: They are the burden we have to carry. They idle away the day waiting for manna to drop from heaven of the men who’ve sweated… (The Burdens Act II, 57)

While this is a mere role play, Tinka doesn’t spare any opportunity to indirectly lampoon Wamala’s habit of wasting a lot of time on ‘idle’ small talk as if ‘waiting for manna from heaven’. Her haughty dismissal of Wamala’s ideas is subversive so to speak, and Wamala is stirred into a rage as he starts calling Mr. Konagonago names like swindler. The role play is a reflection of the real tension in their lives. In the context of their own marriage, it is not lost on the reader to notice that Ruganda uses this dramatic technique as an interventionist strategy of deploying subversive female power. While Mr. Konagonago is used to dismiss Wamala’s infantile ideas, in real life Tinka is actually subverting the patriarchal power hierarchies by chiding him as ‘a penniless little man’ ‘waiting for manna to drop from heaven’. It suffices to infer that the Tinka as the mother figure is in fact confronting and subverting masculine power as wielded by her husband. But what is evident from all these physical and psychological mind games is that Tinka refuses to be subordinate and submissive to her husband. She subverts the archetypal figuration of a wife as a timid mother who has to diligently acquiesce to everything from an abusive husband without fighting back. Indeed Tinka throws the gauntlet at Wamala’s feet always refusing to be down trodden and oppressed. Although she understands their dilemma as a family that was once well-to-do, she still defies the male stereotypical notion of women always taking the blame for every failure in the society. As a typical mother she is caring and concerned about the welfare of her children, (for instance Nyakake’s frequent cough and Kaija’s pair of shorts and a bed) but she is quite militant and impatient with her husband who splurges his meagre earnings on alcohol and women. For example, she warns Wamala on his lecherous ways thus: “I am going to kill that bitch of yours, I warn you. I will pluck out her squinty eyes. She is making all of us suffer” (The Burdens, 26). Aware of her husband’s ‘illicit intimacies’ Tinka confronts him about it and doesn’t take it lying down. In a way she is a mother and wife who refuses to be subservient and submissive. Although she complains about her

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husband’s irresponsible behaviour and how it affects the plight of the family, she goes out of her way to take up the challenges and seeks pragmatic solutions. Tragically, after one of those particularly stressful and acrimonious days, Tinka fights with her husband and in the process, loses her cool and stabs him to death. This act puts her into a spin of fright and as she converses at cross purposes with her children in a bid to hide the murder from them, she is clearly remorseful and perturbed. While the character of Tinka in The Burdens is a social metaphor of the Ugandan nation, she is also a symbol of the subversive female that is a source of hope and regeneration. For one, her suffering emanates from the fact her husband has been deposed from his former privileged position. As she weaves mats and sells illicit gin to eke out a living, the husband is drinking away his problems at the bar. This suffering mother/wife motif can be transposed onto the national context to depict how Amin’s masculinised dictatorship was too immersed in its own tyranny, oppression and killings at the expense of the suffering citizenry. Incidentally Wamala is good symbol of the masculine state apparatus although he has fallen out of favour because of regime change. But on the other hand, the suffering masses as symbolized by Tinka confront the abusive and negligent father figure of the nation-state. In a way, the killing of Wamala by Tinka can be interpreted as the symbolic slaying of an oppressive tyranny that is projected as masculine. To a certain extent though, the character of Tinka is portrayed as creative but also destructive, life- enhancing but also life-terminating, which is contradictory so to speak and subversive to a large extent. From a misogynistic point of view, Berewa in Black Mamba looks at his wife’s body as commercial merchandise that quickly be commodified into a source of fast riches. Professor Coarx on his part only appreciates Namuddu as an object of sexual pleasure. The sublime reality though is that values herself and understands the power of her sexuality. Ultimately, she doesn’t allow her husband and the professor to misuse her and get away with it. In the last scene she stands her ground and confronts both of them. The dramatic tension and irony is heightened when Berewa is forced by the turn of events to declare the police office and to all present that in fact Namuddu is his true wife. He even confirms to the sceptical arresting officers by produces a copy of their marriage certificate and family photos. Overall Namuddu’s character is a vivid figuration of the Ugandan nation. The alacrity with which the male characters appropriate her body for either capitalistic ends or sexual pleasure speaks directly to how the Ugandan national soul was defiled and indecently misused by Amin’s tyranny.

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Yet Namuddu still demonstrates a sense of subversion and resilience by not only defying the masculine naming and stereotyping of her character as vulnerable. She subverts and confronts the masculine subjugation apparatus that is represented by his husband Professor Coarx. Namuddu: You may take the rags you bought me, the tattered shoes and everything that you gave me- but you will not get a cent of this money. You can go on raving for a whole year and slap me as many times as you wish, but you will not get this money, the money I got out of my own sweat. (Black Mamba, 51).

But in her defiance of Professor Coarx’s sexual exploitation, Namuddu is even fierier as she confronts him. Namuddu: Do you think because all women you have been bringing in and sending out are prostitutes, Namuddu is also a prostitute? Don’t go on calling me a prostitute, Mwalimu, while you don’t know who I am. Namuddu: Do you think just because you are white and learned, everybody else doesn’t matter? Do you expect us to spread out our garments to cover up your lust? Why don’t you do the right things, if you have any prestige at all? Why do you have to regret after sucking all the pleasures?

Clearly, Namuddu is not taking her exploitation (both from her husband and Professor Coarx) lightly. She maintains her conscience and self-pride despite her denigration. Thus, her portrayal can be read as an iconic signifier of a Ugandan nation that was determined to keep rising even after being defiled, exploited and literally mortgaged away by a masculinised Amin tyranny. Her temerity and tenacity as she takes on her tormentors is as symbolic as it is subversive in the Ugandan context of the time. But for Nankya in The Floods her role as an agent of change is embedded in his character construction as an intellectual who is quite immersed in issues of feminism. Although she is projected as a pseudo-intellectual who literally sleeps with the oppressor, at the end of the play she stands out as a beacon of hope. Nankya also cuts the image of a Janus- faced trope of femininity which has many slippages and contradictions in terms of understanding a nation. Indeed it is characters like Nankya who help Ruganda to explore the complexities and multiple points of views associated with postcolonial African dictatorships. While she is certainly subversive in her persistent attempts to confront and resist repression, the fact that she was once Bwogo’s girlfriend raises questions about the moral flipside of fighting tyrannies. Indeed the fact that she is an intellectual and thoroughgoing feminist she is still remains problematic as an agent of change for women especially because of her lack of urge to act in a radical way At the end of the

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play though she is clearly the icon of a new national rebirth solely because of the pivotal role she played in the removal of a Boss’s dictatorship by duping Bwogo into being arrested by the coup leaders.

Conclusion In all of Ruganda’s plays discussed above, it is evident that the female body appears to be configured in line with discourses of the natural body identity of motherhood .Yet the same bodies dramatically inscribe dominant social norms or the ‘cultural arbitrary’ of a new motherhood trope upon themselves. In our analysis, we have witnessed how Ruganda’s deployment of three female characters namely Tinka, Namuddu and Nankya captures the roles of different classes of women in the social configuration of the nation. While Namuddu is depicted as a rural woman who has to grapple with the anxieties of late capitalism when she visits her houseboy husband, Tinka is a typical figuration of a fallen politician’s wife struggling to come to terms with her new station. Nankya on the hand is an intellectual woman who, incidentally, has to face similar circumstances like the rest of the women in a patriarchal setting. To understand these processes of corporeal inculcation on the female characters in the three plays, we attempted to unpack how their various identities are dislocated and repackaged within the agency of social power and the reconstruction of the new Ugandan nation. All the three characters, we have argued, are stock representations of the reality not just in Uganda during Amin’s time but in the African postcolonial context. To underscore Ruganda’s gender figuration of his female characters as social metaphors of the Ugandan nation, we briefly sketched out the historical events of the Amin era, which informed his works. Through our analysis this paper has, hopefully, shed light on how social power is constructed as masculine and affirmed by equally masculinised state apparatus, which have to be constantly confronted, challenged and subverted by the feminine, weak and oppressed as symbolized by the mother figure. In a sense, the Mother Africa symbol in many literary texts in Africa (but more specifically in Ruganda’s dramatic texts) signifies men’s nations that have to be feminized in order to arbitrate on the conflicting national identities in post independent Africa. The three plays discussed here are subversive because on the surface they seem to speak to women’s vulnerability and powerlessness yet at the same time celebrating their resilience and ability to stand up in the face of unabated patriarchy. The female characters continually voice their insignificance and helplessness in the nation of men with a hope that they

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will influence a change in the status quo. Ruganda’s dramatic intervention helps highlight the subversive and sometimes contradictory representation of female characters, not just in patriarchal society but one that is under a violent dictatorship. Through his works he has demonstrated how the gender relations intersect with politics, morality and dramaturgy in an attempt to understand the Ugandan nation.

References Alden, P. (1991) “New Women and Old Myths: Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and Nuruddin Farah’s Sardines.” Matatu 8. Foucault, M. (1972) Archaeology of Knowledge. Tavistock Publishers: London Hutchinson, J., Smith, A.D. (1994) Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jameson, F. (1986) “Third World Literature in the Era of Capitalism.” Social Text 15. 65-88. Kiyimba, A. (1998) “The Ghost of Amin in Ugandan Literature.” Research in African Literatures.Vol. 29 No. 1, 124-138. McGee, P. (1992) “Texts between Worlds: African Fiction as Political Allegory.” In K. Lawrence (ed) Decolonizing Traditions: Views of Twentieth Century “British” Literary Canon. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 239-60 Mbowa, R. (1996) “Theatre and Political Repression in Uganda.”Research in African Literatures. Vol.27. No.3, 87-97. Mutibwa, P. (1992). Uganda since Independence: A story of Unfulfilled Hopes. C. Hurst &co Publishers: London. Nairn, T. (1981) The Break up of Britain. Verso: London. Ruganda, J. (1973) Black Mamba. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers. ——., (1972) The Burdens. Nairobi. Oxford University Press. ——., (1980) The Floods. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers Yewah, E. (2001) “The Nation as a Contested Construct” Research in African Literatures Vol. 32. No.3.

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Language and Meaning in Efo Mawugbe’s In the Chest of a Woman …during my second research stay in Ghana in 1997, I realized with amazement that not a single Ghanaian play had been published since my first visit in 1993. A four year long void is certainly something to think about. Pietro Deandrea: “Fertile Crossings.”Cross/Cultures 53, 185.

Pietro Deandrea’s observation above symptomatizes the critical problem of the publication of plays in Ghana. In the same work, Deandrea quotes Mohammed Ben Abdallah’s frustration with the dearth of published plays in the country. Abdallah’s remarkable bluntness “they (publishers) are not interested in publishing plays”, is not only a telling comment on the general publisher disinterest in Ghanaian playwriting, but also a lament on the stultification of Ghanaian drama and dramatic talent owing to the extremities of commercialism that dictate the choices of publishing houses. Judging by the paucity of published drama in the 1990’s one may get the impression of an absence of playwriting. On the contrary, playwrights like Efo Kodjo Mawugbe were struggling unsuccessfully to get their plays, most of which had been stage successes, into print. In 1994, Bamham et al (40) made the following comment about the future of Ghanaian drama “Efo Kodjo Mawugbe and other young playwrights give evidence of a new resurgence of Ghanaian drama.” Bamham’s prediction was, perhaps, based upon evidence of plays that were beings written and produced, at the time, plays whose stage performances have remained the only form of public exhibition. Although Mawugbe started writing drama in the 1970’s, his first published play, In the Chest of a Woman produced in 1984 was came out in 2008. It needs to be mentioned at this point that Mawugbe is not the only playwright facing such frustrations 1. This chapter examines the plays of Efo Kodjo Mawugbe. It commences with a brief review of Ghanaian drama and then focuses on two plays, In the Chest of a Woman and Prison Graduates, which has a second title, Acquired

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I have written a number of scripts that have been successful on the stage but have not been published. One published told me without having seen the script, that kid I had short stories or a novel, than he could look at that.

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Prison Traumatic Syndrome. The review of Ghanaian drama has been necessary in order to establish a historical context for an examination of the drama of Mawugbe, the most recent Ghanaian playwright to get into print. The analysis of the plays considers subject matter and the use of language in the plays.

Ghanaian Drama An examination of the development of drama in Ghana before the 1990’s reveals an appealing story. The earliest dramatic writing by a Ghanaian is traceable to Kobina Sekyi. James Gibbs (2009) reports that “In October 1916, the Gold Coast Leader recorded that a performance of The Blinkards, written by one of the former pupils of Mfantsipim, Kobina Sekyi had been staged.” This play was not published until 1974. Produced in – to borrow Gikandi’s expression – “the crucible of colonialism” (Gikandi 2004: 55), the play amply demonstrates the influence of colonial culture on less discerning Africans like Mrs. Bofusem whose unquestioned acceptance and attempted dissemination of English middle class culture pit her against her more enlightened compatriots who would rather have the society respect traditional African cultural values. Although this play adopted the Shakespearean five act structure, it was a linguistic ground breaker in that the playwright wrote in English with a Fante translation. In essence, therefore, it appealed to both Akan and non-Akan audience – the latter group comprising educated nonAkan speakers of English as well as the expatriate British population. Sekyi’s The Blinkards was followed by other plays like F.K. Fiawoo’s, The Fifth Landing Stage (1937) and J.B. Danquah’s The Third Woman (1939). Commenting on these plays, Angmor (1988) asserts that the drama initiates the style of its progenitor (English drama) in the areas of scene and act division and characterisation. The list of pre-independence drama is a modest one, perhaps reflecting the level of literary activity at the time – not many people were literate enough to read and write plays. If pre-independence drama attempted to imitate English drama in style, post-independence playwrights departed significantly from this. The writers sought a distinctively African voice in their plays, perhaps, in consonance with the prevailing liberationist philosophy of the time. One important avenue for this lay in African oral literature, and here, the colossal figure of Efua Sutherland straddles the traditional forms embodied in folklore and Western dramatic literature. She founded the tradition she called anansegoro upon which plays like Foriwa and The Marriage of Anansiwa (1975) and

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Edufa (1967) were based (Gibbs 2009). These plays were successfully experimental in their fusion of folklore and Western dramatic elements. Sutherland was founder of the Ghana Drama Studio, an experimental theatre, in 1957. Banham et al (1994: 38) express her influence on the development of theatre in Ghana in the 1960s in the following terms: (she) was associated with Nkrumah. She tried to translate some of the early ideals of state into a socially based programme for the development of drama and performance out of traditional forms combined with professionalism.

The underlay of liberationist and developmental dialectics is evident in this comment. It is indeed conceivable that Sutherland would employ her dramatic talent to serve the development interest of the newly independent African state. Other playwrights of the early post-independence era include J.C. de Graft, author of Sons and Daughters (1964), Through a Film Darkly (1970), Muntu (1977) and Mambo (unpublished). Though a cultural nationalist, deGraft demonstrates in his drama, a critical awareness of the raging conflicts in Ghanaian society in the 1960s, arising out of the confluence of Western and Ghanaian cultures. Ama Ata Aidoo, another celebrated Ghanaian playwright, like Sutherland, is very interested in the development of theatre, and the role it can play in the transformation of society. Aidoo’s has two very popular plays. The Dilemma of a Ghost (1965) and Anowa (1970) Asiedu Yirenky, Martin Owusu and Yaw Asare are other playwrights who have experimented with traditional firms. Asiedu Yirenky’s “Ama Pramaa” in the Kivuli collection is an adaptation of the tale of the girl who rejects her parents’ choice of husband for her and chooses one of her own only to suffer dire consequences in the end. Martin Owusu’s The Story Ananse Told (1970) and Yaw Asare’s Ananse in the land of Idiots (2006) also based on the folktale figure of the ubiquitous Ananse. Finally, Mohammed ben Abdullah is worth mentioning owing particularly to the fact that of all Ghanaian playwrights he explores historical themes. He is interested in the role of drama and theatre in the chronicling of history. His plays which include The Fall of Koumbi (1989) and The Slaves, are often based upon historical events. The foregoing review establishes the fact of a flowering of dramatic writing before the 1990’s – all the plays cited above were published before 1990. The puzzling question then is: what could be responsible for the dearth of published drama in the 1990’s? To this question one may hazard a response which is not unrelated to the prevailing politics of the time. In the

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1980s and 1990s Ghana experienced a period of harsh economic conditions, the cause of which may be traced to the structural adjustment programme that the ruling PNDC government adopted, based on conditionalities imposed by the IMF. In 1992, the country adopted a new constitution which set in a period of political experimentation. It is possible that the harsh economic situation may have affected publishing in the country. In addition, the post 1992 political situation may have given rise to so much economic uncertainty and skepticism that publishers found safer berth with novels and other publications, mostly contracted to them by institutions and organizations. Thus, many a playwright was frustrated during the period. Ben Abdallah’s comment cited earlier aptly reflects this frustrating situation. Paradoxically, although the National Theatre was commissioned in 1993 (Gibbs 2009), there were few dramatic publications during the 1990’s. It needs to be mentioned that the situation has not changed any dramatically, to date.

Efo Kodjo Mawugbe Efo Kodjo Mawugbe, or Efo as he is popularly called, was born in 1954 in Kumasi. He attended Mawuli School, Ho, and the School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana, where he obtained a Master of Fine Art degree in Playwriting. He is currently the Artistic director of the National Theatre of Ghana. Mawugbe started writing drama in the 1970s with his first play, “A Calabash of Blood” a radio play in 1975. This was followed immediately by “The Unbending Branch” and “Aluta Continua in 1979. These plays were produced on Ghana Broadcasting Corporation Radio, at the time the only radio station in the country. Efo says that he wrote radio plays mainly because of the frustrations of getting plays produced on stage. Besides, radio provided an easier avenue to present his drama to a wider audience than the stage would permit. Efo’s play Prison Graduates is the 2009 award winner of the BBC’s International Playwriting competition in the category of English as a Second Language. Efo also wrote a number of stage plays. These include “Constable No Rank”, “The G-yard People”, “Take Me to the Altar”, “Tata Amu”, “Queen Zariba”, “Free Juice for all”, “Upstairs and Downstairs” and In the Chest of a Woman (2008). One rare bird in the aviary of Ghanaian drama is drama that expounds political themes. Mawugbe provides such a creature in the form of plays that satirize political situations in post-independence Ghana. Plays like In the Chest of a Woman, Prison Graduates or “Acquire Prison Traumatic

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Syndrome”, “The G-yard People”, “Upstairs and Downstairs”, and “Ananse, Kweku Ananse”, have themes that are firmly political.

In the Chest of a Woman Mawugbe’s In the Chest of a Woman opens with the Queen of Kyeremfaso, Nana Yaa Kyeretwie, and her “she” son, Owusu Agyemang engaged in a game of “Oware”, a game of pebbles, which Nana Yaa uses to teaches Owusu the “prince” the art of warfare. In the middle of the game, messengers arrive from the palace of Nana Yaa’s brother, the King of the Ebusa Kingdom to inform her that her brother, Kwaku Duah, has ordered them to bring Owusu to his palace to be trained in the art of Kingship. Gripped by panic, Nana Yaa lapses into a trance-like state as the reality of her situation hits her so strongly, and, with imminent exposure staring her in the face, she begins to relate to Owusu the truth surrounding her birth. Owusu was born a girl, and she has had to embark on the subterfuge of disguising her as a boy in order to outwit her younger brother the King. In a flashback, we are told that her mother the Queenmother, on her deathbed, had partitioned the Kingdom, allocating Kyeremfaso and a few villages to her, and the whole Kingdom of Ebusa to her younger brother Kwaku Duah, on the grounds that he was a man. Nana Yaa had rejected her portion, and with threats, asked to be made Queen of the Ebusa Kingdom, as she was the elder. The Queen mother made a final edict: Kwaku Duah would be King, but after him, whichever of the two had a son first would have the advantage, as that son would ascend the throne. Kwaku Duah had a daughter, and later, when Nana Yaa had her child, also a daughter, she planned the deception, parading Owusu as a boy, and bringing her up as such. Now, she is to part with Owusu, she is afraid that her plot would be exposed. She warns Owusu to be careful, and in particular, to avoid sitting on a stool of judgment in the palace, as it is taboo for a woman to sit on it unless she has been made Queen. At the palace of Kwaku Duah in Nkwanta, Owusu’s good looks make her the toast of the women, and in particular, she wins the heart of the princess, Ekyaa, her cousin. Adwoa and Akosua, the two celebrated gossips, having observed Ekyaa closely announce to the King that she is pregnant. Upon carefully interrogating Ekyaa, the King is convinced about veracity of the report of the gossips. However, Ekyaa refuses to name the man responsible for her pregnancy. At a public durbar of chiefs and elders Ekyaa is put on trial, and, as part of his training in Kingship, Owusu is invited to sit on the

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stool of judgment and judge her cousin. Owusu condemns Ekyaa to death, and proclaims that the genitals of the man responsible for her pregnancy be severed and presented before the gathering, on an “apampa”, a wooden tray. Ekyaa names Owusu as the man who made her pregnant. The executioner responsible for executing Owusu and producing her genitals to the gathering reports his discovery: Owusu is not a man but a woman. When the King attempts to free Owusu because, after all, she is a woman and could not have been responsible for Ekyaa’s pregnancy, Nana Oppong, the most vociferous critic of the King, reminds him of the tradition which forbids a woman who has not been formally “enstooled” to sit on the judgment stool, and insists that Owusu has violated the custom and deserves to die. After a lengthy debate which involves the chiefs, elders and general public, the King invites the executioner to take the two girls away to be executed. Abrewa Nana, the oldest woman in the palace requests the King’s permission to make an intervention. She asks Ekyaa to grant her two favours. First she demands to know if the man who made her pregnant is circumcised or not (that is whether he is a commoner or a royal, as royals were not traditionally circumcised). Ekyaa replies that he is a “sack wearer” (a royal). The second favour is for Ekyaa to name the man responsible, as it would be unfair for her to die whilst the man lives. Ekyaa announces that it is Nana Oppong’s son. Nana Oppong is immediately arrested. The King attempts to abdicate as tradition demands under such circumstances, but the people insist that they love him, that the customs were made by men and so could be altered by men. This being so, the people decide to pardon the condemned persons, and the First Elder orders that the executions be halted. An engaging storyline, no doubt, and so it has been necessary to relate it in a little more detail. At the opening of the play the Queen, Nana Yaa, in the game of pebbles with Owusu, uses the moves in the game to teach war tactics to the latter. The “Oware” game and military lessons being taught Owusu through it appropriately set a polemic tone for the play. The immediate impression emanating from this opening is that Owusu is being prepared for battle. We are not sure what battle and who the enemy is until the arrival of Nana Kwaku Duah’s messengers with instructions from their master to take Owusu away. In her trance-like state, occasioned by her panic at the unexpected arrival of Kwaku Duah’s messengers, she discloses Owusu’s real identityto the latter. She is a girl, Ekua, born on a Wednesday. Later, she also reveals her motivation for keeping secret Owusu’s real identity; she intends to use her to undermine the tradition that places premium on male children. Thus, Nana Yaa’s adversary, as we discover, is tradition; the tradition that denied her the throne of the Ebusa Kingdom because she is a woman. In the

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flashback that relates the circumstances leading to her decision to embark on the subterfuge, she stakes her claim to the throne, “I am the elder child. Customarily, it is I who must succeed you and not my younger brother.” The dying Queenmother, through an elder, corrects her, “Well Princess, our mother insists that never in the history of Ebusa has a woman ruled where there is a man to do so, and so you must accept…”. Nana Yaa’s reaction to this is caustic: Nana Yaa: Tell her I say no. I don’t want to be honoured then. Tell her that. Where is it written That a woman can not rule when there is a man? I want someone to tell me (20-21)

To demonstrate her combativeness, Nana Yaa gets physical and dares any of the men who have threatened to cut off her tongue if she refuses to shut up, to make god their threat. Her extraordinary boldness and aggression subdues Ofori, the man who steps forward to take up her challenge. The arrival of Kwaku Duah’s messengers places Nana Yaa in a very uncomfortable dilemma. She is not sure that she has prepared her “son” adequately for the task she wants to undertake, and besides, she did not anticipate that she would have to release her to go alone to the palace of her brother. She is thus compelled to arm her with warnings about the dangers she is bound to face in the palace. In particular, Nana Yaa warns Owusu about the special stool of judgment. As Nana Yaa sees Owusu off, the soliloquy of the former at the end of the “first leg” of the play does not only emphasize her motives for undertaKing this venture, but also announce the main theme, the fight for women’s ascendancy in a traditional male dominated society: Nana Yaa: Ye spirits above May you let me live to see the Successful end of the wheel of change I’ve set in motion. A wheel of change that shall leave all men convinced that In the chest of a woman Is not only an extension of the breast and a feeble heart? But a flaming desire to possess and use power. (36)

The “Second leg” introduces the second theme of the play, identity, which was hinted at by Nana Yaa in the first leg “so be sure that your true identity shall forever be kept hidden.” Owusu cries out:

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I want to be a girl, to taste the joy of womanhood. I have suffered for far too long (29)

This is the painful cry of one who has been compelled by the inordinate ambition of an unsympathetic mother to concede to be used as a pawn in a dangerous game whose end is uncertain. The switch of the action to the palace of Kwaku Duah, provides the appropriate testing ground for Nana Yaa’s ambitious stratagem. But her fight is blighted by one slight chink in her armour, namely, the fact that her charge is a woman disguised as a man. The cross-dressing is not enough to suppress Owusu’s femininity. In fact her effeminate nature becomes evident, and thus he becomes an attraction for the women in the palace, including the gossips Adwoa and Akosua. Akosua for instance declares “He is such a beautiful boy. What is such feminine beauty doing in a body like that?” The dramatic irony in this speech is obvious. Her nemesis turns out to be her cousin, Ekyaa, who falls in love with her, encouraged by her father, the King. When against the custom, Ekyaa gets pregnant, the King, as part of his attempt to impart the tenets of Kingship to Owusu asks the latter to sit in judgment over her cousin. To prove that he is up to the task, Owusu condemns Ekyaa and her unknown lover to death. The final drama of Owusu’s identity is played out in public before her mother. How does Owusu cope with this imposed identity, especially when Ekyaa names her as the man responsible for her pregnancy? Owusu’s own judgment implies that she must die and her genitals severed and presented before the gathering on an “apampa” (a wooden plate). The only possibility for her salvation rests in a declaration of her real identity. But she is hesitant, and implores her mother to help her out of the embarrassing predicament she has placed her in: Owusu: Mother, save me… People of Ebusa Don’t listen to her, it’s not true… I am not a…

But her mother is not helpful either: Nana Yaa: (Screams) That you are not what? ... What do you want me to tell the people you are not?... (84)

In the end, she is condemned to death, and her executioner is burdened with the onerous responsibility of discovering and announcing the deception.

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Executioner: Nananom, the Prince has no male genitals Crowd: (Stunned) What! Executioner: The Prince is not a Prince but a Princess Nana Opong: Look here, what kind of Kwaku Ananse story is that? Executioner: The Prince, my noble elders is a girl. Crowd: Incredible Executioner: He is a she.

Unable to bear the embarrassment Nana Yaa collapses and dies. Inevitably, she falls victim to the plot she has hatched to undermine the customs and traditions that once denied her the throne of Ebusa. At the end of the play, she is the only one who dies. However, if Nana Yaa’s aim was to strike at the custom and tradition and expose their unfairness, one can say that she has achieved some measure of success. Her expressed plot was to get her daughter “enstooled” as “King”. In this, her intention may be considered unjust as she is “smuggling” her in through the backdoor as it were. Although her plot placed her daughter on the verge of death, she can be commended for creating the platform for the people, the King, chiefs and elders to rethink the customs and traditions. In the end, the tradition that demands that Ekyaa, Owusu and Nana Oppong die are brought into focus and overturned. Okyeame Boateng: Nana Opong what of the unborn child in that protruding flesh? Can’t that child be spared? That unborn child is innocent. It has committed no crime. Why must we allow the axe of customary justice to chop it? Elders: Yes, why…Why?...Why? Nana Opong: Because that is the hard customary bone of contention We are gathered here to chew. The seed in that womb is the cause of this gathering. That seed is unwanted. The Ebusa Kingdom has no place for bastards! (At this point, if it is possible, the 2nd Elder throws the issue to the members of the audience to also share their thoughts. However, it must be carefully orchestrated and moderated.) 1st Elder: (Kneeling down and holding firmly unto the legs of Daasebre) We made you King over us King: (Sadly) No, you did not. Crowd: Yes, we did! 1st Elder: We love you as our leader King: (Sadly) That is not so. Crowd: That is so, O King! 1st Elder: We shall not allow you to become a slave to customs and traditions of men. King: Is it not the custom that made me King?

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Crowd: No! It is we the people who made you King! 1st Elder: Okyeame, who made the customs? Okyeame: We, the people, made the customs Crowd: Yes, we made the customs and we made you King! Okyeame: (To the crowd) If it is so, then the same people can unmake the custom Crowd: Yes! 1st Elder: Okyeame, tell the executioner the people say he should halt the killings!

First, the custom demands that if a woman gets pregnant out of wedlock she be made to suffer the ultimate penalty-death. But this issue is brought up for reconsideration as a result of Nana Yaa’s deception. In this case it becomes an issue of public debate. The final word comes from the King, and it is a reechoing of tradition “Executioner You can now take all of them away from my sight”, and then he makes the most profound statement that perhaps , sets the crowd re-thinKing their customs and traditions. When the custodians of the people’s custom become innocent victims of the custom they have in their custody life under this coulourful umbrella pales into nothingness. As the King attempts to abdicate as demanded by custom, the people rush in and prevent him from doing so. Their intervention is significant, as it initiates a reversal of the custom. The play thus dramatizes the conflict between a senseless adherence to traditions that are evidently injurious to the people who hold them on the one hand, and the unconventional attempts to undermine them and create fresh vistas for the existence of the people in a rapidly changing environment on the other. Nana Yaa’s own efforts may appear puny in light of the prevailing customs of the people; nonetheless the unexpected corollary to this is the general outcry of the people against the damaging customs.

Language A notable stylistic feature of Mawugbe is the adoption of the “legs” for the acts of the play. In an interview I held with him, he explains that “a play is like a journey. You take the first step. But I prefer ‘leg’ because ‘step’ is too ordinary. So you can have a number of ‘legs’ up to the end of the play”. According to Agyemang Osei, the writer of the introduction to In the Chest of a Woman, “Mawugbe has a proclivity for satiring situations through the use of witty aphorisms, poetic language and punning.” Indeed, the thematic concerns of the play are not only serious, the plot also embodies an action which violates the custom. As such Mawugbe uses language which, in

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its sublimity, is able to carry the weighty issues of custom and tradition, and at the same time witty enough to reveal the undercurrent of rebelliousness in the play. In Kongi’s Harvest one of Kongi’s Reformed Aweri refers to the language used in the palace of Danlola the traditional ruler as “ponderous tone rhythms”. This is intended to be a derogatory reference to the use of proverbs and imagery, a technique that invites critical reflection to unravel the layers of meaning. Similarly, language use in Mawugbe’s play which is also set in a palace exhibits such features. However, unlike Soyinka who presents imagery and proverbs for the reader or audience’s contemplation, Mawugbe often unravel the imagery and proverbs for his audience. He employs the Ghanaian traditional figure of the “Okyeame” the King’s interpreter sometimes referred to as the linguist, to either re-couch the King’s and the other people’s pronouncements, or in some cases add adornments and colour to the language. But in every instance, meaning is further illuminated in the Okyeame’s presentation. An example is the following: Nana Yaa: Get it across to the great King’s chief messenger that I man ready for his message. Okeyeame: Nana says, if the message one has to deliver is as huge as a cause, one does not require a pair of ears as large as a river to row it on. For her ears, small though they may seem are capable of hearing anything, so unfold your tongue.

In this case whereas the massage from the Queen, Nana Yaa is presented in plain unadorned language, Okyeame embellishes it with imagery. His request to the messenger to speak is equally couched in metaphorical language “unfold your tongue.” Mawugbe’s peculiar use of language is not limited to proverbs and imagery. He has a strong penchant for humour and this comes out forcefully in his use of witticisms, and puns. For instance, when Okyeame Bonsu comes in to report the arrival of Manager’s from Kweku Duah’s palace to Nana Yaa, he forforgets to prostrate himself. The Queen reminds him, and his response is humorous. Nana Yaa: (suddenly getting furious) Look here! Must I keep reminding you that each time you talk to me you ought to go down. Okyeame Bonsu: I forgot… Nana Yaa:You what? Okyeame Bonsu: I mean I almost did… I am sorry.

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Nana Yaa:(Sternly) Next time you forget, I shall hand you over to the executioners to take care of your head so you don’t forget anymore. Okyeame Bonsu: (Prostrating himself before Nana) Before you. Her Royal Highness, I shall make the ground my sleeping place and wake up only when you ask me to do so.

Similary, witticism is also evident in Okyeame’s reply to Nana Yaa’s enquiry as to whether they have been offered water as is the custome. Kwaku Duah’s messengers refused the water, much to the surprise of The Queen and Owusu, Owusu: You mean they refused to accept the water you offered them. Okyeame Bonsu: Yes. Owusu: Why? Okyeame Bonsu: Perhaps they feared the message they have for Nana might get wet.

In the fourth leg of the play, the two gossips Adwoa and Akosua report to the King their suspicion that his daughter is pregnant. As the dialogue between the two women on the one hand, and Nana and Okyeame on the other progresses, the King and his Okyeame find ways to rubbish the woman’s suspicions. The dialogue between them may appear to present the case of a King trying to make light of the important issue of this daughter’s pregnancy out of wedlock, but it may also show the King is not a humourless man preoccupied only with weighty affairs of state. King: So, that is why you think she is pregnant. Akosua: No my Lord, I haven’t finished. The other day I took a careful look at her palms when she was asleep and they look very pale Adwoa: Her veins stand out most of the time Akosua: She has become very quick tempered Adwoa: And ready to shout at anybody at the least provocation. King: She has too much blood in her system, that’s all. Okyeame Boateng: I think you’re right, Daasebre. It’s too much blood Akosua: She vomits very often, and looks sluggish; sleeping most of the time. Okyeame Boateng: Nana, that is fever. Yes it’s fever; I am sure of that. Let’s get the roots of the nim tree and boil…

In this dialogue, it could appear as if the King and Okyeame are engaged in common banter with the gossips. However, the King gets serious when he confronts Ekyaa. His interrogation of Ekyaa is done in parables which the latter takes literally. King: My daughter, rumours have it that, the piece of fertile land, I’ve willed out to you in the valley of those two hills on the border with Ayaase, has been cultivated by some unknown person and the crops are almost ready for harvesting. Ekyaa: What are you saying, Father… that my piece of land has been cultivate?

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Whoever did that must be sought and made to face the full rigours of the law. What right has the one to cultivate a protected stool land? King: Without permission. Ekyaa: Yes, Father, without permission. That’s the most annoying part of it all. Father, why don’t you bring the law breaker to book? (Sobs) King: Wipe your tears, my daughter I have already done all that. Ekyaa: (Excitedly) Oh, thank you Father King: But soldiers couldn’t find the culprit. My soldiers rather think you are the right person to know the culprit. Ekyaa: (Flaring up) Me?... that’s nonsense. What sort of soldiers are they? If I knew the offender, Father, I would be the first to come to you with his name, I swear to that. King : (To no one in particular) What I don’t seem to understand is how a woman’s piece of land could be Cultivated without the woman knowing the farmer.

Finally, in the fourth “leg” of the play, when Executioner comes to report that Owusu is not a boy as they have all been made to believe, but a girl, we have a play on the pronoun “she” and “he” Executioner: The Prince, my noble elders, is a girl Council: Incredible Executioner: He is a she Elders: How? (there is confusion everybody is talking at the same time) Executioner: She….He….she…..He…. has breast

In the Chest of a Woman is a play with a typically traditional Ghanaian background. In this play, issues of culture, especially Akan custom and tradition with its matrilineal inheritance system, come out strongly. The play questions some of the negative aspects of this custom. Though inheritance is matrilineal it does not put women in any dominant role. Women are never the Kings when there is a man around, even if the man is much younger. This custom is the focus of Mawugbe’s play. 2 In keeping with the traditional background of the play, language involves the use of proverbial and more sublime forms. Efo explains that he grew up in Akan culture and took particular interest in the palace. Thus, one finds that his language is suffused with Akan linguistics forms used in the palace.

2

Mawugbe claims that a synthesis of experiences motivated writing of the play. These include the level of male chauvinism in the society and the fact that the mentality of people in authority has a major role to play in the direction of change in society.

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Prison Graduates Prison graduate or Acquired Prison Traumatic Syndrome was originally written for the stage and adapted later for radio. The play won the BBC international playwriting award for 2009. One of the members of the panel describes the play as a “surreal, post-colonial fable where Woza Albert! meets Samuel Beckett.” The play satirizes the state of sterility that characterizes the post-independence situation in Ghana. In particular, it criticises the mismanagement of the health, education and religious spheres. Four ex-convicts Chaka, Abutu, Gomido and Besabasa are given their freedom through a presidential amnesty. Outside the prison gate they attempt to come to terms with their new status and to plan for their future. First they decide to adopt new names, and then they discuss the kinds of employment they could go into. Areas like sports management, religious leadership (ministry) Agriculture, as well as journeying outside the country are considered. But in each of these cases the four end up parodying the ways in which the particular occupation is subverted to serve parochial interests. In similar fashion they consider politics the hospitality industry and health. Finally frustrated at the prospects of failure as a result of the rot, corruption and graft that characterizes every facet of life in the new free state they are entering into, they reconsider their freedom and by a two-to-one vote with one abstention they crawl back into prison on pads. The play is redolent with references to significant events in Ghana. The most obvious one is the nation’s independence. As the four convicts are given their freedom from prison and emerge from prison, they express how they feel about their freedom in terms that echo a nation’s independence. Chaka: (To Abutu) And you my brother, tell us how you feel right now. Abutu: To tell you the truth, I feel like a nation just attained independence after centuries of colonial rule. Basa: Na true. Sot make una change we are names. [Pause] Gomido:I think the brother is right. We need new names and new freedom song. Something resembling a national anthem. [He stands and places his right hand across his chest and begins to sing “God Save the Queen”] Basa: Abi wey kine funeral song be dat one you dey sing? Gomido:That is our new national anthem. Don’t you like it? Abutu: [Emphatically] No! Chaka: Why? Abutu: We need to be original. We need something of our own. To reflect our new status… our independence… our freedom… Our sovereignty… our emancipation! Don’t you see? We need to create for ourselves a new identity… A new image. A new personality. The Exconvict-Personality.

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Gomido sings the British anthem which Basabasa calls a “Funeral song”, but Abutu objects to it and suggests that they get an anthem to reflect their new independent status. This could be a reference to Ghana’s independence day when “God save the Queen” was replaced by the new national Anthem. In addition they decide to change their names. Again this is an oblique reference to the change of the name of the country from the Gold Cost to Ghana at independence. One destructive development in the post-independence era is the political in-fighting that characterized the nation’s life. This development is projected by Mawugbe in the frequent quarrels between Basabasa and Abutu. Basabasa states his new name in the following terms:”De title of my new name na Basa Into Brackets Squared. Even though the name my papa and mama give me for baby na shika.” It is interesting to note that Basabasa in Akan means confusion, or disorder. The old name Shika (Gold) is another reference, perhaps to the “Gold Cost” and so it follows that this new name is a reflection of the post-independence chaos in the country. This confusion finds immediate manifestation in the quarrels between Basabasa and Abutu. At the end of one of these quarrels, Chaka, evidently the leader of the group authoritatively intervenes: Chaka: [Authoritatively] Stop it! I say…..Hey you folks, I say stop it. [Silence] All these post-independence agitation won’t help anybody. All this name-calling and undermining don’t take us anywhere. It is most unhealthy for our post-prison life. We are free people. What do we do with our newly found freedom? That should be our major concern. Our collective future as newly independent ex-convicts is what should engage every ounce of energy left in us. Do you understand?

Again one finds resonations of contemporary political issues in this speech. Phrases like “Post-independence agitation “and” collective future, give this speech the appearance of a presidential broadcast to the nation. After this symbolic opening in which setting and situation are clearly defined, the ex-convicts take up issues of relevance to the nation. The first issue to be discussed is sports, and here the exodus of talented footballers abroad, aided by greedy and corrupt managers and administrators is the subject. When Abutu says that he wants to go into sports management, the other ex-convicts thinks he must be mad to want to go into an apparently unprofitable venture but after he has explained the benefits, Gomido agrees with him: Abutu: [Protest vehemently] How dare you. That’s most unfair! I am a businessman, all I do is scout for buyers on the foreign market and sell out the local boys. If I sell a player for 150,000 US Dollars, I pay the player 15,00 Dollars. But his money shall be kept in joint

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account with me as the sole signatory. You see, most of these chaps cannot even sign their names. Do you call that exploitation? Gomido: That’s business.

Gomido on his part wants to go into religion. He wants to establish a synagogues which he calls “synagogue of Jesus Christ of the people by the people for the people”, - the first “Global Democratic church of Christ as Chaka restates it. Mawugbe’s castigates the proliferation of new religious movements, many of them founded by individuals who have become very dictatorial in their churches. The Bible is often the watershed from which such charlatans draw their exploitative messages. Gomey: [Assuming the posture of the preacher] The good book teaches us to lay up our treasures where? Chaka & Co: In Heaven! Gomey: Yes in Heaven. But you can only get there through your Bishop. Your Bishop is God’s own chosen gatekeeper to the divine treasure throne of Heaven. The Bishop is God’s money carrier from earth to Heaven. So channel all your treasures here on earth through whom. Chaka & Co: THE BISHOP!

Other worrying aspects of national life that Mawugbe satirizes include Agriculture and politics. Gomey confesses that all he really wants to do is to go into farming. But he is not thinKing about the kind of farming that will provide food for the people; rather he wants to go into the cultivation of Indian hemp which could fetch him a lot of money suggesting the possibility that even Agriculture can be subverted. Gomido also suggest that he wishes to go into politics. In a mock political debate, he is interrogated by his colleagues. The responses he gives to heir critical questions point to important political issues that sub-Saharan Africa has been compelled to grapple with. Issues like “democracy and good governance and the relationship between the under-developed and the developed world are mentioned. However, Gomido makes a most insightful suggestion: So long as sub-sahara Africa produces what her children do not consume, and continues to consume what she does not produce, the sub-region and her children shall continue to be at the mercy of the developed countries.

Abutu in his own suggestions about what he intends to do with his new found freedom, states that he would want to travel out of the country to seek his fortunes. The frustrations of travelers seeKing visas to the United Kingdom are enacted by the four with Abutu as the visa applicant and Gomido in the

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role of consular officer. At the end of the interview Abutu is denied a visa, whereupon he demands a refund of the non-refundable fees he has paid. Mawugbe’s cavil with the frustrations people who have paid high visa fees go through only to be denied visas, especially at the British High Commission finds expression in Abutu’s final outburst: Abutu: [Angrily] Cheats! You knew you were not going to issue me with the visa, and yet you deliberately subjected me to this humiliating interrogation as if I were a criminal under cross-examination in a court of law. Is that how you were interviewed at our national Mission in your country when you went seeKing visa to come down here? (Screams) Give me back my money! Where in your country is a man paid ¢900,000.00 for interviewing a person for less than fifteen minutes?

Finally Mawugbe focuses his satirical lens on health administration. Abutu says he intends to go into business selling coffins. The others finds that a rather morbid venture to go into “I tell you, our brother is suffering from cemetery cocidiosis”. To illustrate his point, Abutu draws their attention to data in the newspapers on the number of HIV/Aids Infections that take place daily in the country - over two hundred people are infected daily. To prove his point one of their numbers is supposed to play the role of a dead man. In fact, he is not just supposed to close his eyes and die, he needs to go through an expensive death “Since there is an expensive way to live, naturally, there ought to be an expensive way to die.” This expensive death involves falling sick “as a result of high blood pressure, and be rushed in a Mercedes Benz, C class to either Nyaho clinic or SSNIT Hospital.” Gomido, on whom the lots fall feigns illness and is taken in a taxi to the government teaching hospital. At the hospital the unprofessional work ethic of the nurses is revealed. One of them insists on patient producing a hospital card before his emergency would be taken care of, whilst the other the OPD nurse attends to her more urgent business of applying lipstick. And when she does turn her attention to the ailing man and his attendant, it is to make a fuss over his name. Other obstacles like depositing of money before attention is given to the patient (cash and carry) and the absence of beds in wards are satirized. In the midst of all the goings and comings the patient (Gomido) dies and is taken to the mortuary. The point of the hospital scene enactment is to demonstrate that as a result of all the frustrations that one goes through in the stifling socio-economic conditions of the post-independence era, one certainly is death. Thus the most profitable business is casket maKing. In the final leg of the play, the ex-convicts are so frustrated outside prison that they decide by a vote of two-to-one with one abstention to return to the

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P.R.I.S.O.N – Palace reserved for Important sons of the Nation. To extend the symbolism at the beginning of the play, if release from prison symbolizes the declaration of the nations independence then it would appear that the attendant frustration of the post-independence era makes a return to the servitude of the colonial master, represented in this play by the “Man in a tuxedo with a filled Champaign glass more desirable.

The Language of Satire The effectiveness of Mawugbe’s satire emanates from his use of language to both phatic and matalingual ends. The phatic functions of language is a drama, according to Pfister (1998: 113) helps create and intensify the dialogical contact between the figures” this function is responsible for the way dramatic figures maintain communicative contact and the manner in which that contact establishes relationships among them within the internal communication system of the play. These relationships are also significant within the external communication system in their determination of the reception of the drama. A major observation one can make in the case of Prison Graduates is the absence of the type of conflict that pits one character or group of characters against the other; the interest in the play lies in the phatic use of language. In the play, there is a curtain concurrence on the part of the characters, to parody socio-political situation. This technique has been employed by Perey Mtwa et al in Woza Albert! and by Wole Soyinka in Madman and Specialist 3 (see for instance, Yankah 1995). The use function of language is a source of cohesion among the characters in the drama as is evident in the following dialogue: Chaka: I tell you folks, the only time you experience the beauty of democracy is when you step out of prison after a long sentence. Basa: Like Kwame Nkrumah Gomido: Like Nelson Mandela…(Sings) Free Nelson Mandela, walKing side by side with Winnie Mandela on the crowded narrow street of SOWETO. Abutu: Can you imagine that… You are in this prison for only God knows how many years, then one day, out of the blues, you have all the freedom in the world hurled at you… in fact, thrown at you like a basketball. Hahahaha!

3

The influence of Wole Soyinka is very evident in the play, and Mawugbe concedes in an interview I had with him, that he was influenced by Soyinka’s Madam and Specialists.

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Gomido: A basketball can hurt your fingers if you don’t know how to handle it. Chaka: Freedom could equally be dangerous if not handled with care. Basa: For me, ino dey like basket ball at all.

Even when there are occasional disagreements between dialogue partners as we see in the case of Abutu and Basabasa, these often serve to reinforce the bond between them in that they immediately draw attention to the threat to their homogeneity, and chaka immediately calls them to order: Abutu: [Trying with difficulty to control his laughter] Come to think of it… an illiterate Primary School dropout having for his name a mathematical equation. [Laughs] Instead of sticking to his simple rural name of Kwaaadonto! Of Nkontompo [More laughter] Basa: [Angrily] Your moda be the Kwaaadonto… Your farad be de jimi-jimi Kwaadonto. De jimi-jimi Nkontompo… Chaka: Cease-fire! Basa: Your moda wey dey for your village na him be people Kwaadonto… Your whole family be Kwaaadonto! Chaka: I order you two to cease-fire… Now! [Silence]

The metalingual function is the most dominant in the play as the satire is brought out successfully through this function. At every turn in the play our attention is being drawn to the language. The aspects of language use include the unexpected use of commonplace names events and activities, discrepancy in the use of codes and registers, surprising descriptions and metaphors and the use of puns. Basabasa is the illiterate among the group of ex-convicts and he speaks pidgin in the play. His pidgin register especially creates humour in the play in response to Gomido’s request for Abutu to stop shouting ”your shouting ends where the other fellow’s ear begins,” the letter replies: Basa: Abi you craze… or una ged alligator peeper for una nyash? Abutu: Will you shut up! Basa: I no go shut up. Una want de eardruns break poooaaah! Before you sabey say in fit hear you?

Apart from Basabasa’s use of pidgin, the introduction of expression from various Ghanaian languages, notably, Akan, Ewe and Ga is another source of humour in the play. For instance, Abutu insults Basabasa in Akan “You illiterate “Kwandonto”. Again, a most significant instance of the use of expressions from Ghanaian languages happens after Abutu has been denied a visa. He turns on the consular agent and gets very vituperative:

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Abutu: [Highly agitated] You are all a bunch of Diplomatic extortionists….. Hoo… Digulor-Kwakye, Hoo! Fiafito….Ewi…..Kwonfoo….Baras! Ole! Jagunda! Hoo!....

He calls the officer “thief” in different Ghanaian languages – Ga, Ewe, Fanti, Twi and Hausa. Although these expressions may mean nothing to the nonGhanaian reader, Ghanaians will find the utterance very amusing. Mawugbe has a particular penchant for the unexpected introduction of commonplace nouns, expressing and activities into his dialogue in fascinating combinations that provoke humour. These expressions and activities are usually those in currency, like web address, radio frequencies, which are virtually unrelated to the activities or issues at stake in the play. Take for instance the following numbers given to the prisoners. Officer: Prisoner number xyz21/3488 fm Abutu: Yes Sir! Officer: Prisoner number www.com 96.3 Gomido: Yes Sir!

These numbers and web addresses have been introduced for humorous effect. Similarly the response given by Basabasa when his number is announced and the officer’s reaction to his response is intended to have a comic effect. P. Officer: [TalKing really fast] Prisoner Kw24/111/66 Basabasa: [Excitedly] Hallelujah! All Inmates: AMEN P. Officer: [Sternly] Who is that dozing Prisoners? [Pause] Since when did Hallelujah and its next door neighbor-amen, became the standard response in this yard?

Prison Graduates was written in 2002 a year in which Ghana adopted a new constitution which ushered in parliamentary democracy. Mawugbe employs the expression “democracy” which had become a popular word in Ghana, in the play to humorous effect. This is achieved by, for instance, the combination of the expression with religion. Especially, the description of Jesus as “democratic Jesus”, as in the following song is most startling. Gomido: [sing] Darling Jesus. Democratic Jesus Oh democratic Jesus you are wonderful Lord……

What follows this song, however, is anything but democratic. Abutu in the role of a church announcer announces that there will be a “ten-day Holy Spirit revival/crusade from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00p.m. everyday”, and it is a must

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attend for all church members. This is not democratic, and so, Jesus may be democratic, but man is yet to understand and emulate his democratic nature. Finally, one needs to mention Mawugbe’s use of puns Punning on words is in the play is another remarkable source of humour. One aspect of this technique approaches malapropism. At the opening of the second “leg” of the play, the four main characters are outside the prison gates, and are being seen off by the Chaplain. The scene is introduced with such a pun: Chaplain: You are now free, librated, in fact, emancipated! Abutu: And emaciated

Placing “emancipated” contiguously with “emaciated” in the dialogue above may suggest that they are emaciated due to inadequate nutrition in prison, but a juxtaposition of these words at the beginning of their freedom with their final words at the end of the play suggest that “emancipation” is indeed “emaciation.” At the end of the play they decide to return to “prison” which is an acronym for “Palace Reserved for Important Sons of the Nation. Gomido & Basabasa: [excitedly] Bye-by… We’re off to dine in the Palace….. Bye-bye Babasaba: [In a whisper] Abi, make you tell am say we be hungrily indebted poor Ex-cons. (shouts) Abi I say tell am quick quick.

Unable to handle their freedom or as they say, “freedom could not handle us” they crave for the food in the prison. “Emaciation” in this context could be said to lie not only in prison, but in “emacipation” as well. Another instance of punning on words can be found in the visa interview involving Abutu as the interviewee and Gomido as the consular officer. Gomido: That’s interesting. What is your profession? Abutu: [confidently] I am a Barrister Gomido: I see. Any letter of support? Abutu: [Pulls a sheet of paper from his pocket] Here are you. Gomido: (collects the paper and reds it) I see.. so you are a solicitor Abutu: Excuse me Gomido: Which how firm do you work for? Abutu: (surprised) Me…Law firm? I say I work with a bar …chop bar… drinKing bar.

Certainly the play on “bar” and “barrister” - “bar” as in a “law” firm”, and “bar” as a “drinKing bar”, is comic. The audience having settled for “barrister” as solicitor especially with the accompanying “document” will be amused at the altered meaning.

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Conclusion That Ghana has produced admirable dramatists of stature is indisputable. Whilst some of these playwrights like Kobina Sekyi and J. C. deGraft confronted the prevailing social problems of their time, others like Efua Sutherland and Ama Atta Aidoo attempted experimentations that combined western dramatic convention with traditional oral story-telling forms, producing drama that departs markedly from the western literary theatre tradition that many are used to. The early tide of experimentation and socially critical playwriting was dimmed by a dearth of published dramatic writing in the 1990’s, although some very remarkable theatrical activities were taKing place during the period. Opened in 1993, the National Theatre which many thought would be a spur to the reemergence of drama in the country has not lived up to this expectation. It is within this historical context that the drama of Efo Kodjo Mawugbe becomes an important revelation, as his plays give promise of a resurgence of dramatic writing, and hopefully, publishing in the country. As the Artistic director of the National Theatre, many hope that he will adapt his creative ingenuity to harnessing the theatrical talent in the country and ushering in an era of dramatic renaissance. The analysis of the two plays in this write-up In the Chest of a Woman and Prison Graduates which incidentally are his only published plays, provides sufficient credence to his creative talent. The plays demonstrate his critical awareness of contemporary socio-political realities in the country and his willingness to articulate and bring them to public disapprobation through drama. One could describe Mawugbe as a patriotic playwright with a mission to provide a satirical mirror for the society to perceive its imperfections.

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References Angmor, Charles (1988) “Drama in Ghana” In Richard Priebe (ed) Ghanaian Literatures. New York: Greenwood Press. Banham, Hill, Woodyard (1994) The Cambridge Introduction to African and Caribbean Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Iloyd (1981) Woman Writers in Black Africa. Westport: Greenwood. Deandrea, P. (2002) “Fertile Crossings: Metamorphoses of Genre In Anglophone West African Literature.” Cross Cultures 53. Amsterdam / New York: Rodopi. Gibbs, James (2009) “Nyin-kyin: Essays on Ghanaian Theatre.” Cross/cultures 53. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Gikand, Simon (2004) “African Literature and the Colonial Factor.” In T. Olaniyan, Ato Quayson African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory. Malden: Blackwell Mawugbe, Efo Kodjo (2008) In the Chest of a Woman. Accra: Sunshine Productions. Pfister, Manfred (1988) The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. “Prison Graduates” Original manuscript. Yankah, V. K. (1995) “The Tropes of Degeneration: Language and Meaning in Wole Soyinka’s Madmen and Specialists.” Asemka No.8. Yankah, (2006) “Theatrical Communication and National Development: A Study of Theatre for Development in the Greater Accra and Central Regions of Ghana.” Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Ghana.

Ibrahim Esan Olaosun

Incantation as Discourse: A Discourse-Stylistic Study of the Confrontational Scene of Ola Rotimi’s The Gods are Not to Blame In some parts of the world, the major use of incantation is to cast spell on an object or a person. In African context, incantation has both positive and negative connotations: there are incantations of fortunes, armoural incantations, and incantations of spell. When incantation is used to call up evils on an object or a person, it becomes a spell. This is called Egun or Epe in Yoruba language. When it is used for self defense, it is called ma dari kan; when used to seek out fortunes, it is called Awure or Ofo Ori Ire (Dopamu 2000). Oduyoye’s (1998: 203) description of incantation as “potent speech” encapsulates very splendidly the Africans’ discernment of the concept. According to her, incantations are words which have the power of becoming events in life simply by being uttered and for her, it is the juxtapositions of Hebrew piy and mi-se-wah “command, commandment” in King 13:21:21.She opines further that an ofo (incantation) is an order comparable to the authority that inheres permanently in the words of God as revealed in the Holy Quran (Suura 16:40;20:17;35:82):’inna-maa ‘amruhu ‘idaa ‘araada say an,an yaqu la lau kunfayakun’. Both in Africa and elsewhere, incantation is generally understood to be more powerful than other mundane or common place languages and this power is often connected with mysticism or supernatural sources. This study departs slightly from this humdrum view about incantation by connecting its strength to the nuance of its linguistic formations.

Aim and theoretical framework of the study This work is a study in discourse stylistics, a branch of stylistics, which focuses on the structural and socio-functional elements of discourses. This branch of stylistics employs the tools of grammatically- oriented discourse analysis to texts’ analysis and unites this with the approach in linguistic stylistics. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that incantation is a rich text from structural and rhetorical dimensions. First, emphasis will be placed on the grammatical formations in the text with due consideration for its

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“compositional structure” (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 5).The kind of grammatical analysis that will be conducted in this study is that which Halliday (1985: xvii) recommend in the following words: In order to provide insights into the meaning and effectiveness of a text, a discourse grammar needs to be functional and semantic in its orientation, with the grammatical categories explained as the realization of semantic patterns.

In line with Halliday’s submission above, the textualization strategies used in the texts of incantation under study will be described. Secondly, the rhetorical system of the text will be examined to demonstrate how it relates to or models real life or common place arguments. In summary, the grammatical organization and cohesive mechanism of the text as well as its eloquent/ expressive traits will be related to their semogenic (meaning creating) content. As a theoretical ground for the first pre-occupation above, I will dwell shortly on the features of well organized text with a view to setting the standard with which to measure the structural content of the texts of incantation under study. A written or spoken discourse is said to be well organized when it fulfils some or all of the following seven conditions: cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativeness, situationality and intertextuality (See Kamil 2006 on: http://www. tlumaczeniaangielski.info/linguistics/ discourse.htm). Halliday and Hasan (1976: 4) describe cohesion as “the relation of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a text”. In other words, cohesion concerns the unity and connectivity of the various propositions in a text such that it is easy to follow it and its progression. Cohesion is achieved in texts by grammatical (substitution, ellipsis, reference, conjunction) and lexical (reiteration and collocation) elements called cohesive devices. Coherence simply means "fastening together" of ideas or propositions in texts. Halliday and Hasan (1976: 10) submit that cohesion is “the set of semantic resources for linking a sentence with what has gone before”. Similarly, Daniel Kies (1996) identifies techniques of achieving coherence in texts as repetition, synonymy, antonymy, pro-forms, collocation, enumeration, parallelism, transition and exemplification. By intentionality is meant that a text must be purposeful or that its message must be conveyed with intention of meeting some communicative target. In other words, the propositions in well -organized texts are goaldriven. Generally speaking, there are two aspects of language functions: macro and micro functions. Halliday’s classification of language function as ideational, interpersonal and textual only account for the macro-function of

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language. Several other functions (micro) that language can be used to accomplish include physiological, phatic, recording, communicating, reasoning, identifying and pleasure function. Also, a well-organized text is properly contextually embedded; it supplies, through its propositions (sentences or utterances), an hypothetical context through which readers or listeners could pick the appropriate, out of several other meanings that the propositions are capable of generating. This phenomenon of a text describes its situationality. The overall goal of a text is the conveyance of information. In other words, well-written/spoken texts are informative or have the quality of informativeness. The information conveyed is usually, except in some rhetorical situations, complete, clear and accurate. Moreover, a well-organized text has acceptability feature, that is, it communicates agreeable facts. With this quality, the text enjoys the approval of its target audience(s). Finally, a well-organized text is a demonstration or a manifestation of intertextual relations among texts; it is “an absorption and transformation of another” (Kristeva 1990) or other texts. In other words, it is not an isolated language product; it draws upon, identifies with, and improves upon certain realm of sources. Incantation, no doubt, is a culturally- embedded discourse. In my analysis therefore, I will also draw upon the principles of socio-semiotics, a branch of semiotics which focuses on social meaning-making practices of all types, whether visual, verbal or aural in nature (Thibault 1991) and which establishes a disjunction between meaning production and social practices. This framework is particularly suitable for this study because it shares many of the pre-occupations of pragmatics, sociolinguistics, cultural studies and discourse analysis. By drawing upon it in my descriptive account in this study, I will be able to account for aspects of eco - social meaning in the incantation and relate them to its begrudging context.

Contextual background of the play and a review of some earlier studies Ola Rotimi’s drama The Gods Are Not to Blame, published 1971, is a skilful transplantation of the theme of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex to African soil. It is the story of Odewale who, by the interplay of his and parents’ action, commits two most execrable crimes: patricide and incest. Since its productions thirty nine years ago, several scholars, within and outside Africa,

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have worked on this and some other Nigerian drama (e.g. Dapo Adelubga 1978, Ezenwa-Ohaeto 1994, Isidore Diala 2005 and Odebunmi 2006). Commenting on Ola Rotimi’s style in The Gods are Not to Blame, Adelugba (1978: 214) avers: ...The Gods Are Not to Blame, apart from its appeal to modern Nigerian on the ethical level, is its adventurous creation of a new theater language which borrows effectively from the indigenous oral tradition and uses metaphors and proverbs from our common agrarian background, the flora and fauna of our country, the birds, beasts and flowers of our native land...

The view above aligns with, and is corroborated by the view of Isidore Diala (2005: 1) that drama is a “culture-authenticating” literary form. Commenting on the ritual and mythological resourcefulness of Irobi’s drama, Isidore claims that the African/ Igbo dramatic form exhibits some cultural distinctions as opposed to Echeruo’s “Eurocentrism of the Greek model”. By this, Diala insinuates that an African drama is an “appropriation of a formation rooted in a specific African culture” (28). Ezenwa-Ohaeto (1994) had earlier conceived of African culture as a “drama culture”, which offers the playwrights from the region, creative strategies, involving mostly, the “enrichment of their plays through utilization of diverse cultural features”. The implication of the views above is that: in order to ascertain the overall appeal of an African drama, the analyst inevitably has to call upon the actual mediating African cosmology, where the drama takes root. My analysis of the texts under study will premise upon this claim. Noting the scantiness of studies devoted to the linguistic analysis of the text, Odebunmi (2008), studies the pragmatic functions of the crisismotivated proverbs in The Gods are Not to Blame. Using Mey’s (2001) model of Pragmatic Acts, Odebunmi reveals that The Gods are Not to Blame is characterized by two types of crisis motivated proverbs, namely, socialcrisis motivated proverbs and political crisis-motivated proverbs. The present paper is an addition to, and a furtherance of the efforts of the few Nigeria language scholars, like Odebunmi (2006) and Oloruntoba-Oju (1998) who give attention to the aspects of the linguistic resources of the text. In advancing the efforts of these earlier scholars, the present study (beguiled by its richness) concentrates on one aspect of linguistic resources of the text, which has been largely neglected: the incantatory passages. It would be demonstrated in this paper that incantation is not only a cultural product but also a peculiar linguistic formation which obligates the attention of stylisticians, cultural semioticians and other discourse analysts.

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Data Analysis After the theoretical preliminaries above, the rest of this paper will be committed to data analysis. I will first present the data and this will be followed by a descriptive account of it. It is imperative to note that the confrontation which brings about the incantations involves two parties: king Odewale (OLD MAN) with his entourage and Odewale who conflict over ownership of a farm land. The data is labelled- A and B to enhance easy reference during analysis. The ‘actional’ elements of the discourses are not included in the data for they are not directly relevant to the concern of this study, which is to investigate the semio- linguistic qualities of incantation. However, their places are indicated by braces. TEXT A Odewale: what are these before my eyes? what are these before my eyes? Are they mountains or are they trees? They are human beings and not trees. They are human beings and not trees. For trees have no eyes; and mountains have no eyes. Then let these eyes around me close. Close, close in sleep. That is my word-the mountain always sleeps. Sleep...sleep...sleep... [ ] Remain standing, remain rootedA tree stump never shifts. Stand there...stand back and sleep, sleep I say, Sleep till the sun goes to sleep And you wake up to know my power. Sleep...sleep...s-l-e-e-p [ ] TEXT B Old man: No termite ever boasts of devouring rock! I am your lord, your charms can do me nothing. Venom of Viper does nothing to the back of a tortoise. The grinding stone says you must kneel to my power; The basket says you must tremble when you see me; Mortal and pestle say you must bow countless times to power. The day that the partridge meets the lord of the farm, it jumps into the bush with its back or it drops dead. Drop dead, drop dead [ ]

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The plant that rivals the opa tree in size Is killed by Opa; the tree that over-reaches the Oriri seeks its own death; And the plant that entwines its branch With the branch of Omoluwere Will be strangled by Omoluwere drop dead ...drop dead...I say, drop d-e-a-d... drop d-e-a-d... Odewale: [ ] When Ogun, the god of iron, Was returning from Ire His loincloth was a hoop of fire. Blood...the deep red stain Of victim’s blood his cloak [ ] This is... Ogun And Ogun says: flow! Flow...flow... f-l-o-w [ ]

Analysis of text A This text is astonishingly rich in rhetorical and grammatical resources. Its rhetorical structure is represented below: Exponence of the Verbal Acts what are these before my eyes? what are these before my eyes? Are they mountains or are they trees?

Semantic function

They are human beings and not trees. They are human beings and not trees. For trees have no eyes; and mountains have no eyes.

Answering

Questioning

Giving reason

Discourse Act/ Rhetorical Function 1. Invocation of assaillants’spirit of humanness. 2. Clarification of the actor’s frame of perception. 3. Defamiliarization of the familiar. 1. Reconstruction/ reaffirmation of reality. 2. Simulation of senses. 1. Justification of affirmation. 2. amplification of

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Then let these eyes around me close. Close, close in sleep. Remain standing, remain rootedSleep till the sun goes to sleep And you wake up to know my power. Sleep...sleep...s-l-e-e-p

Commanding

the mountain always sleeps A tree stump never shifts

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argument Conditioning of the assailants to a passive state.

Negotiation of concessive acceptance of condition.

As the analysis above might not be comprehensive enough, I explicate in greater details shortly. The mesmerizing begins with question act and this is followed by the answer to the question. This question- answer strategy models the technique in normal everyday argumentation. The questions are not asked felicitously for the actor certainly knows the answers to them. The choice of the near demonstrative-these- as opposed to the far one-thosesuggests that the objects of the question are near and are perceptible to the actor. The congruent question, as indicated above, serves to strengthen the logical quality of the incantation. At another level of interpretation, the question act serves in this incantation, what Hawkes (1977: 116) describes as “the coding of mystery” as it frames the familiar as if they were unfamiliar. The actor employs this logic of de-familiarizing and re-familiarizing in order to construct a clear frame of perception for himself and compel the mental frame of his assailants to a confused state of riddle. The actor, acting upon the assailants’ knowledge of themselves, prepares a favourable ground for the potency of his charm. By compelling the assailants’ admittance of their humanness, the actor is able to aim his ‘verbal bullet’ at that significant part of the assailants- their eyes, having established the fact that after all, they are human beings with eyes. The incantation is also characterized by affirmative verbal acts, especially in the adverbial clauses of reason” for trees have no eyes; and mountains have no eyes”. This serves in justifying the actor’s earlier answer to his

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question. The argument that plants do not have eyes may be unacceptable to biological scientists, who, for instance believe that green plants are sensitive to light and move in the direction of it. But in their primitive science, both the actor and the assailants share the mutual belief that plants do not have eyes. After putting into effect a damaging admittance on his assailants through arguments of reason, the actor then lunches his ‘magical missile’, conditioning them to a passive state, for it is in this state of man that man’s spirit can be attacked. It is a common knowledge that many of the evils that befall humans happen when humans are asleep. That is why the actor intensifies the imperatives “Sleep...sleep...s-l-e-e-p” In the final part of the mesmerizing encounter, the actor negotiates from his assailants a concessive acceptance of the passive state to which he has subjected them, bulldozing them with factitive acts “the mountain always sleeps; a tree stump never shifts”. That “mountains always sleep, and that “a tree stump never shifts” are established cultural facts. Facts like these are capable of having overwhelming effects on thought; no wonder why the charm works on the assailants, making them fast asleep and standing transfixed. So far, I have shown that the text of incantation under analysis is rich in rhetorical resources by describing its rhetorically maneuvering strategies. I can now dwell on the ‘textualization’ elements therein. It will be demonstrated that the text is a well formed discourse as it is unified, coherent and emphatic. The text develops relations among its component parts through syntactic and lexical re-iteration, conjunctive and referential devices. These are exemplified below.

Repetition The first three utterances of the incantation illustrate the cohesive phenomenon of repetition. The second question utterance is a total reiteration of the first. Similarly, the second alpha clause in the compound interrogative utterance “Are they mountains or are they trees?” exhibits structural sameness with the first clause. This device is generally used in discourses for performing emphatic function. In the context of this incantation, the repetition serves in endowing the incantation with hypnotic quality and in representing the annoying state of the actor. Textually, the repetition reflects an aspect of its sophistication, making it somewhat musical or poetic. Also, there is the repetition of the lexemes- trees, mountains, eyes and sleep. These lexemes are significant to the interpretation of the incantation.

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They are connected, through the operation of metaphorization, to enhance meanings and effects in the incantation. In the utterance “remain standing, remain rooted”, the lexical item “rooted” illustrates the cohesive phenomenon of partial repetition as it hacks back on the lexical item “standing”. This partial repetition contributes some flexibility to the incantation, making it a text of variety and in this way, has some poetic qualities.

Reference The incantation is highly unified. It has strong linkage quality and this qualifies it as a high discourse. The linear structure of the text is presented below for illustration:

What are these before my eyes? What are these before my eyes? Are they mountains or are they trees? They are human beings and not trees They are human beings and not mountains. For trees have no eyes; and mountains have no eyes. then let these eyes around me close Close, close in sleep, close in sleep That is my word the mountain always sleeps Sleep…sleep…sleep

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Remain standing remain rooted a tree stump never shifts. Stand there… Stand back and sleep I say. Sleep till the sun goes to sleep and you wake up to know my power. Sleep…Sleep…S-l-e-e-p… The exhophoric demonstrative reference, “these” in utterances 1and 2 in the text serves in estranging the assailants and the choice of impersonal “what” instead of the personal “who” to refer to them in “what are these before my eyes” serves as a demeaning device to reduce the humanness quality of the assailant and make them feel embarrassed. In furtherance of this demeaning act, the actor likens them to trees and mountains. The anaphoric pronominal “they” repeated thrice in the encounter serves as a thematic device for bringing the assailants to the center of the verbal attack.

Conjunction Conjunctions are judiciously used in the text to express several “logicosemantic senses” (Martin, Matthiessen and Painter 1997: 184). For instance, the causal conjunction “for” in “For trees have no eyes; and mountains have no eyes” and the temporal conjunction “then” in “then let these eyes around me close” perform strong linking function. In this incantation, the actor displays a verbal act of self- contradiction by first framing his assailants as non-human and later affirming that the objects of the impersonal pronoun-What- are human objects. The reason for this affirmation is signaled by the conditional positive causal conjunction of reason “for” in “for trees have no eyes and mountain have no eyes”. He then expresses the subsequence of this affirmation in the use of the negative temporal conjunction “then” in enhancing the verbal imperative – “let these eyes around me close”. The grammatical connection between this utterance and the earlier one is that the former is subsequent to the latter.

Reiteration In addition to the associations between sentence utterances discussed above, words are also structured in a way that they exhibit some internal connection with one another. The second question- utterance in the text is a total

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reiteration of the first. Also, the second clause of the compound sentence“Are they mountains or are they trees?” is a structural repetition of the first. There is partial lexical reiteration in “remain standing, remain rooted” for the word “rooted” partially restates the word “standing” as the former hacks back to the latter. Whether total or partial, reiteration is a lexical/ structural device for making texts emphatic and this is also the case for the text under study.

Analysis of Text B This text of incantation is dominantly a text of demonstration of experience and knowledge, conciliation of beliefs and staging of factual realities. The factual content of the incantation can be described under logical, ecological and cultural categorizations as follows.

Logical Facts In the Old man’s incantation, many facts are implicitly expressed. Arriving at their unequivocal senses will involve some rational processes. For instance, the metaphors of termite and rock in “no termite ever boasts of devouring rock,” and the metaphor of viper and tortoise in “venom of viper does nothing to the back of a tortoise”, are significant in the context of the incantation. The first metaphor is clarified, by logical connection, to “I am your lord; your charm can do me nothing”. The logical process is described below. 1.

Premise statement No termite ever boast of devouring rock

2.

Venom of viper does noting to the back of the tortoise.

Deductions 1. Rock is superior to the termite. 2. I am the rock; you are the termite. 3. Termites can devour. You are viper I am tortoise

Fallery I cannot be devoured.

The poison of your charm can not harm me.

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Ecological Facts Several ecological facts are articulated, using animal and plant imagery. In (2) above, the hard quality of the tortoise’s cell is harnessed to render the rival’s charm impotent. Also, the Old Man harnesses and appropriates the quality of some trees in expressing the hardiness of his charm. The trees include Opa, Oriri and Omoluwre. The semiotic elucidation below clarifies the semantic value of the signifying practice in the context of the incantation. At the primary level, Opa is a form of tree- bamboo tree. It is of betterquality than other trees in terms of height and “fecundity”. It usually dominates its ecological setting. At another level of the semiosis, Opa is a very authoritative secret cult in Yoruba society. It is a down-to-earth group, as it deals with offenders in a “capital” way. It therefore can be seen as an indirect invocation of the cultic power of Opa to unleash terror on the opponent. In addition to these senses, the actor plays on the semantics of the second syllable of the di-syllabic word .The syllable /pa / is a verb which means “to kill”. This sense is indirectly invoked in the incantation to dampen down the opponents’ confidence. Oriri is another kind of tree specially known for long height. The tree is especially strong and can withstand powerful wind. In spite of the height, the turgid stem cannot be easily broken and the heavy branches are strong windbreakers. Other trees that are not as heavy may face the risk of being destroyed by wind if they rival oriri’s height. In this encounter, the Old man frames himself as Oriri in terms of magical power and Odewale as an ordinary tree, which is dancing at the bridge head of death by picking a race of strength with him. In addition, Omuluwere is a creeper-tree. It has several branches that curl and twirl. The tree is mulish in these growth acts. It is very taut and unbreakable. It establishes disparaging association with other trees. The reference to these trees and their exceptional domineering vigor may compel the opponent to back out of the “deadly’’ scuffle.

Cultural facts The Old man also draws upon his cultural experience, and appropriates it to defy the power of his rival. The African cultural experience of pounding is expressed in ‘’Mortal and pestle say you must bow countless times to power” and “the grinding stone says you must kneel to power”. The images below illustrate the cultural phenomena under explanation.

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What each of the images above suggests/symbolizes in the context of this incantation is acquiescence to a superior authority/power. The woman that is pounding above certainly bends to the pounded substance. Likewise, the woman that is grinding kneels down. In African context, the acts of bending and kneeling are acts of respect and submission. These are harnessed in this incantation to compel the opponent’s submission. Similarly, in the expression “the day the partridge meets the lord of the farm, it jumps into the bush with its back’’, the Old man draws upon his knowledge of farming and the usual, somewhat unholy relationship between farmers and the destructive rats, rabbits and rodents that feed on their crops when the owners of the farm have returned home. From the foregoing, it can be said that an incantatory discourse is a corroboration of inter-textual relations among texts. This is because the incantatory texts under study pencil in heavily upon the Yoruba cultural texts in expressing definite factual realities. This text is also rich in grammatical resources. All the utterances in the incantation are declarative sentences. They are dominantly active sentences, following the SPCA structure. This sentence pattern represents an aspect of the authoritative use of language. The choice of the passive form in “the plant that rivals the Opa tree in size….” to “the plant that entwines its branch ….is strangled by Omoluwere” is a thematic device for rendering the rival passive. This structure illustrates the relations of language form and function.

Conclusion This study has revealed first that the incantatory texts of Ola Rotimi’s The gods Are Not to Blame embody a vital formal element of the dramatic text. It has also been demonstrated, through the analysis of its prototype in this text, that incantation is rich in semio-linguistic resources, for its rhetorical and grammatical content are sharp in expressing power, wading authority and resisting suppression. The language sample is sophisticated, full of wits and weighty facts. It is an intensified language-the type which, using the words of Monsuld (2007: 51), “creates meaning and power”

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References Adelugba, D. (1978) “Wale Ogunyemi, Zulu Sofola, Ola Rotimi: Three Dramatists in Search of a Language.” In O. Ogunba, A. Irele (eds) Theatre in Africa. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press. 201-220. Dopamu, P.A. (2000) Ofo Ori Ire. Ibadan: Sefar Oluseyi press. ——., (2000) Ma Dari kan.Ofo Isegun. Ibadan: Sefar Oluseyi Press. Ezenwa-Ohaeto. (1994)”The Cultural Imperative in Modern Nigerian Drama: A Consolidation in the Plays of Saro Wiwa, Nwabueze and Irobi.” Neohelicon. Vol.21 No. 2. Hawkes. T. (1977) New Accents Structuralism and Semiotics. Great Britain: Methuen. Isidore, Diala. (2005) “Ritual and Mythological Recuperation in the Drama of Esiaba Irobi.” Research in African Literatures 36(4). Kies, D. (1996) Grammar Around and beyond the clause. [Web Page] Retrieved 25 May 2009 from: http://papyr.com/hypertextbooks/gram mar/style2.htm. Halliday, M. A. K., Hassan, R. (1976) Cohesion in English. London / New York: Longman. Halliday, M. A. K. (1985) An introduction to Functional Grammar. London / New York: Edward Arnold Halliday, M. A. K., Matthiessen, C. (2004) An Introduction to functional Grammar. Great Britain: Hodder Arnold. Mosuld, S. (2007) “Literature as Discourse Illustrated in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.” In M. Olateju, R. Taiwo, A. Fakoya (eds) Towards the understanding of Discourse Strategies. Nigeria: Olabisi Onabanjo University Press. Odebunmi, A. (2008) Pragmatic Functions of Crisis-Motivated Proverbs in Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not to Blame. [Web Page] Retrieved 24 Mar 2009 from: http://www.linguistik-online.com/33_08/odebunmi. pdf. Oduyoye, M. (1998) “Potent Speech.” In E. A. Adegbola (ed) Traditional Religion in West Africa. Ibadan: Sefar Oluseyi Press. Oloruntoba-Oju, T. (1998) Language and Style in Nigerian Drama and Theatre. Nigeria: Ben-El Books. Rotimi. Ola. (1975) The gods are not to blame. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thibault, J. P. (1991) Social semiotics as praxis: Text, social meaning making, and Nabokov's Ada. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Contributors Adeyemi Adegoju holds a Ph.D. in Stylistics/Conflict Rhetoric from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and teaches Stylistics in the Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Some of his articles have appeared in Africa Study Monographs, Geolinguistics, Linguistik Online, The Public Journal of Semiotics, Journal of Pan African Studies, and The International Journal of Language, Society and Culture. Remmy Shiundu Barasa teaches in the Faculty of Education, St. Augustine University of Tanzania. His research interests are in narrative theories and contemporary African literature. He holds MA (Literature) and B.Ed. (Hons) degrees from Kenyatta University in Kenya. Chin Ce is one of the new generation of African writers from Nigeria, a poet and novelist. He is the author of three volumes of poetry, An African Eclipse, Full Moon and Millenial (2008) and a trilogy of fiction, Children of Koloko, Gamji College and The Visitor (2008). He is also the author of two new volumes of criticism: Bards and Tyrants: Essays in Contemporary African Writing (2008) and Riddles and Bash: African Performance and Literature Reviews (2010). Adeyemi Daramola (Ph.D. Macquarie, Sydney) is a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos, Akoka, Yaba, Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria. His research interests are in Systemic Functional Linguistics – theory and application, Stylistics, Discourse Analysis, Modern English Grammar, Semiotics, Applied Linguistics and Translation Processes. He is currently the Vice- President of Modern Language Association of Nigeria (MLAN) and formerly, National Secretary, Nigeria English Studies Association (NESA). Mikhail D. Gromov was born in Moscow on 27.08.1967. After graduating from the Department of African Studies, Moscow, Lomonosov State University, with MA in African literature and Swahili language, he joined Ph.D. course at Gorky Institute of World Literature (Moscow), which he completed successfully in 1993. Since 2003 he has been living and working in Kenya, where he currently holds the post of Assistant Professor of Literature at the United States International University in Nairobi. His works have been published in such journals as Kiswahili and Nairobi Journal of Literature; he is a regular contributor to the journal Swahili Forum and

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regular participant of the Swahili Colloquiums at the University of Bayreuth since 1995. Recently he participated as one of the authors in the international project Outline of Swahili Literature, published by Brill in 2008. His areas of interest are literatures of Eastern and Southern Africa in English and indigenous languages, Swahili literature, comparative literature. Anette Hoffmann, Ph.D. is an independent researcher, writer and curator. She obtained her doctorate at the University of Amsterdam in 2005 with a dissertation on praise poetry in Namibia and its poetic constructions of landscape and identities. In 2007 to 2009 she was Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of the Western Cape. At UWC she worked on the history of the anthropometrical project of the German Hans Lichtenecker in Namibia in 1931, and curated the exhibition ‘What We See’ (shown in Cape Town and Basel), with visual and sound materials of the collection. The exhibition catalogue, edited and co-authored by Hoffmann, appeared as What We See. Reconsidering an Anthropometrical Collection from Southern Africa: Images, Voices, and Versioning (Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2009). Currently she is based in Berlin and works on historical sound recordings from Mozambique and South Africa. Her research interests include oral poetry, the performativity and historical status of the recorded voice, archived sound recordings from Southern Africa, genres of speech in orality, as well as visual and acoustic archives. Iwu Ikwubuzo, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics, African and Asian Studies, University of Lagos. He received his B.A, M.A and Ph.D from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. He was a CODESRIA Laureate in 1996 and a former Sub-Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos. Dr. Ikwubuzo’s research focuses on Igbo Literature, oral and written, particularly in the areas of Igbo myths and poetry. He has to his credit about thirty scholarly articles published in learned journals, both locally and internationally. Some of his recent publications include “Fostering national unity using parallel motifs in Nigerian mythology.” in R. Anifowose & T. Babawale (Eds.), An agenda for a new Nigeria: The imperative of transformation (2006) (34-52); “Creative inputs of deity myth by two Igbo playwrights”, International journal of multicultural education, 1(1), (2007), 187-201; “Mary Angela Uwalaka, Ofo: Its juridical and linguistic potency” [a book essay], Dialectical anthropology (2007), 307-317.

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Martina Kopf, Ph.D. is a scholar of African Studies and teaches francophone and anglophone African literature at the Department of African Studies, University of Vienna. She is currently member of the research project “Colonial Concepts of Development in Africa 1920-1960,” (www.univie.ac.at/colonial-development) where she covers the section of French and British colonial literature. She has edited a special volume of Stichproben – Vienna Journal of African Studies (2006) on “Sexuality and Power in African Literature” and published two monographies in German, one on relations between history and literature in West Africa, with a focus on the writing of Werewere Liking, and one on trauma, narration and memory in the writings of Assia Djebar and Yvonne Vera. Justus Kizito Siboe Makokha is a Kenyan literary critic and poet who lectures in the Literature Department, Kenyatta University, Kenya. He is DAAD alumnus formerly based at the Free University of Berlin, Germany where he obtained his doctorate and taught for several years. He holds an M.A. (Literature) and B.Ed. (Hons) degrees from Kenyatta University and a DrPhil from the Free University of Berlin. JKS Makokha is the author of two books and co-editor of several new books on literary criticism, African literatures and postcolonialism. His recent-most publications include: Negotiating Afropolitanism: Essays on Borders and Spaces in Contemporary African Literature and Folklore (Rodopi, 2010) co-edited with Jennifer Wawrzinek, and East African Literature: Essays on Written and Oral Traditions (Logos, 2011) co-edited with Dominica Dipio and Egara Kabaji. K. M. Mathews is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Saint Louis University with certificates of Women’s Studies and Teaching Skills. She holds a Master of Arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis in Islamic and Near Eastern Studies. Her current research is in critical discourse analysis. Other research interests revolve around the themes of motherhood, identity, and women’s community in postcolonial and ethnic American women’s writing. Bright Molande is a Senior Lecturer in Literature at the University of Malawi where he has taught for the last ten years. At the time of writing this chapter, Molande is based at the University of Essex researching in Malawian Literature for his Ph. D. He also studied for his MA in Postcolonial Studies at the University of Essex after a Bachelor of Education (majoring in Literature and the Teaching of English) at the University of Malawi. He has served as Head of the Department of English for two years. Bright Molande

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‘prematurely’ read his first paper at an international conference as a Keynote Address at the University of East Anglia in 2007. He takes interest in critical theory and cultural studies with a Postcolonial orientation while specialising in Malawian Literature. Molande is also a published poet born in 1973 in Thyolo, Malawi. Naomi Nkealah is a Ph.D candidate in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She holds a Masters degree cum laude in Pan-African Literatures from the University of Pretoria. Her articles have appeared in South African journals such as the English Academy Review and Tydskrif vir Letterkunde (Journal of Literature). Her major research area is gender in literature. James Odhiambo Ogone holds a Master of Arts in Literature from Maseno University, Kenya. His research interests include African American literature, Postcolonial studies as well as oral literature. Ogone John Obiero is a DAAD scholar and doctoral candidate at the Afrikanistik Institut of Leipzig University in Germany. He holds a Master of Arts in Linguistics from Maseno University, Kenya. He is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics, Language and Literature at Maseno University. He takes interest in language revitalization and has published several books as well as articles in journals. Ibrahim Esan Olaosun, Ph.D. is a lecturer in the Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University Ile- Ife Nigeria, where he teaches courses in Stylistics, Semantics and Discourse Analysis. He has published papers in these fields and in the fields of Sociolinguistics, Semiotics and Pragmatics in learned journals and books. Adesola Olateju, Ph.D. is of the Department of Linguistics and African Languages, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria where he teachesYoruba stylistics and literature. He holds a B.A. Hons., second class upper; M A; M Phil. and Ph.D in Linguistic Stylistics all of the university of Ibadan, Nigeria. His areas of specialization are African Verbal stylistics, Yoruba literature and culture, while his research interest, at the present, is in the language of Yoruba political discourse, precisely in the documentation, characterization, language engineering and stylistic analysis of language of political discourse, using the example of the Yoruba language. Dr Olateju

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was formerly a Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of African Languages and Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison 2007-2009. Shawkat M. Toorawa (PhD 1998 University of Pennsylvania) is Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at Cornell University. His areas of research are the literary culture of ninth-century Baghdad, the Qur’an as literature, modern Arabic poetry, the Southwest Indian Ocean, and Mauritian literature. His publications include Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur and Arabic Writerly Culture (London and New York, 2005). As editor, his publications include The Western Indian Ocean: Essays on Islands and Islanders (Port-Louis, 2007) and a forthcoming series devoted to original Mauritian writing. Daria Tunca currently works as an F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Liège in Belgium. Her areas of research include postcolonial literature (with a focus on Nigerian fiction) and stylistics. She has published articles on Ben Okri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chris Abani and New Zealand writer Janet Frame, and has co-edited a collection of essays on British-Caribbean author Caryl Phillips with Bénédicte Ledent (forthcoming with Rodopi). She maintains a website on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (http://www.L3.ulg.ac.be/adichie) and an online bibliography of works by and about Ben Okri (http://www.L3.ulg.ac.be/okri). Michael Wainaina is Associate Dean, Graduate School, Kenyatta University, Kenya. He holds MA and Ph.D. degrees and teaches courses on African literature at the Literature Department in the same institution. He has published widely in the fields of Popular Culture and Orature in contemporary Africa. He is the author of Worlds of Gikuyu Mythology: A Mytho-Structural Analysis of a Culture’s Modes of Though and Practice (2009). Chris Wasike has taught Literature at high school and University levels for more than 10 years. Currently on leave from Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology where he teaches Literature in the Department of Language and Literature Education. He recently completed his Ph.D. in African Literature from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. His research interests are in African Literature, folklore, Drama and Communication. He is currently engaged in research on urban cosmopolitan and traditional music and popular media cultures from Kenya.

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Russell West-Pavlov is Professor of English Literature at the Institut für Englische Philologie, Freie Universität Berlin. He is the author of Figures de la maladie chez Andre Gide (1997), Transcultural Graffiti: Diasporic Writing and the Teaching of Literary Studies (2005), Space in Theory: Kristeva, Foucault, Deleuze (2008), and Spaces of Fiction/Fictions of Space: Postcolonial Place and Literary DeiXis (2010). Victor Yankah, Ph.D. is currently the Head of Theatre Arts at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. His research areas include the drama of Wole Soyinka, African Film and Applied Theatre. He has co-authored a number of literature modules that are currently being used for Distance Education in Ghana. His creative writing includes Sikaman a play that was performed in commemoration of the centenary anniversary of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Dear Blood an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone and Demoncrazy a comedy that was first stage-read in Kennesaw, GA, and then performed at the International Festival on Theatre for Development (FITD), Ouagadougou. He is also co-founder and President of the Association of Screenwriters of Ghana, (ASSOG).