O YENIYI O KUNOYE

 ]

Postcoloniality, African Poetry,

and Counter-Discourse

I
F I N D I T N E C E S S A R Y to preface this essay, which attempts a para-
digmatic mapping of the postcolonial in modern African poetry, with
a critique of the emergent tendency to assign two sites – the metro-
polis and the margins – with different tasks in the postcolonial literary pro-
cess, and to appraise the implication of this for the future of postcolonial
theory /criticism. Gareth Griffiths’ “The Post-Colonial Project: Critical Ap-
proaches and Problems” appeals to me as a remarkable reflection on post-
colonial theory which also recognizes the implication of the critical practice
that it enables. In his essay, Griffiths embarks on what turns out to be a bold
critique of new directions in the postcolonial critical project, exposing the
apparent lapses in its institutional entrenchment. He appraises the gradual
marginalization of textual engagements in postcolonial theorizing in America:

the interest in writing from regions other than England and America which
characterised earlier approaches has shifted to an essentially philosophical
concern with issues of marginality, subalternity, and agency.1

1
Gareth Griffiths, “The Post-Colonial Critical Approaches and Problems,” in New
National and Post-Colonial Literatures: An Introduction, ed. Bruce King (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1998): 167.

© Texts, Tasks, and Theories: Versions and Subversions in African Literatures, vol. 3, ed.
Tobias Robert Klein, Ulrike Auga & Viola Prüschenk (Matatu 35; Amsterdam & New York
NY: Editions Rodopi, 2007); Humboldt Studies (General Editor: Flora Veit–Wild), vol. 3.
112 OYENIYI OKUNOYE ]

The consequence, he seems to imply, is a tendency to theorize the unknown

as theorists marginalize the creative and critical writing which has emerged
from the postcolonial world itself. Inevitably there is bound to be a debate
between scholars ignorant of writers from Nigeria, Kenya, India or Malaysia
or New Zealand, Australia and Canada. Griffiths’s position makes a case for
some acquaintance with the literary practices that are supposed to be the ob-
ject of the exploration of postcolonial theory and thus laments a remarkable
shift from the integrity that a foundational work such as The Empire Writes
Back earned by grounding its assumptions on some measure of familiarity
with the literatures it theorizes as opposed to the supposed disdain for broad-
ening the reference-point for subsequent theorizing in this context. His dis-
pleasure at the recycling of the works of select authors and their undue eleva-
tion as canonical texts in this regard leads logically to an attack on the grow-
ing alienation of theory from praxis:

Oddly enough, though the overall result of the invasion of the study of post-
colonial writings by theory has not been to add texts from indigenous lan-
guages to the body of material generally studied in Western institutions.
Rather the number has diminished even from the already limited represen-
tativeness constituted by the body of writing in English from these societies
to a few favoured canonical English texts, such as those by Rushdie, whose
form favours current methodologies.2

Griffiths’s critique of much of postcolonial theorizing in the Anglo-Ameri-

can academy is factually infallible, and his authority to pronounce judgment
on what he considers objectionable is informed by his recognition of the inte-
grity of theory as deriving from textual validation. But he ends up admitting a
mode of perception that assigns to the metropolis the task of theorizing what
is produced in the postcolony. This by itself is an unwitting affirmation of a
view which alienates theory from the sites of production for the works that
made it possible for even the text-conscious The Empire Writes Back to be
written. It is to this extent that he shares, if unconsciously, the positions of
other critics who erect the binary construct that separates the sites for the pro-
duction of postcolonial theory and postcolonial writing as a basis for arguing
against appropriating the postcolonial theoretical outlook in appraising litera-
tures from Africa. This has at the root of the demonization of postcolonial
theory and criticism in the African context.
Griffiths’ critique is relevant to this exploration only insofar as it draws
attention to the increasing alienation of some theorists from literature. His

2
Griffiths, “The Post-Colonial Critical Approaches and Problems,” 171.
] Postcoloniality, African Poetry, and Counter-Discourse 113

anxiety is not likely to be read as a form of resistance to theory, because he

speaks largely as a participant-observer out of a genuine concern for sustain-
ing a practice he has demonstrated abiding interest in sustaining, and his is not
merely a call to privilege critics whose credentials recommend them as reli-
able native-informants. He recognizes the increasing importance of institu-
tional location and practice in shaping disciplinary orientations in postcolonial
critical practice but seems to take as given the acceptance of the most rudi-
mentary notions about the postcoloniality of writings from such regions as
Africa and India that are taken as falling almost unproblematically within the
postcolonial sphere.
Frank Schulze–Engler’s “The Politics of Postcolonial Theory” is also a sig-
nificant statement, not only in the sense of exhibiting the dominant spirit in
Anglo-American postcolonial criticism, which, Olakunle George says, is in-
clined toward elevating “theoretical discourse, in and for itself, over creative-
literary discourses,”3 but also because it argues for the expiration of the writ-
ing-back paradigm in the appraisal of postcolonial writing. Schulze–Engler’s
contention is rooted in a feeling that the writing-back paradigm unconsciously
privileges a centre which is the imperial West and that its continued sus-
tenance will amount to granting the colonial past undue privilege in appre-
hending realities that concern postcolonial societies long after the termination
of colonial relationships. His concern, therefore, is with fashioning a way of
explaining postcolonial societies and their cultural production without assum-
ing that their history and experiences are perpetually determined by their colo-
nial history / memory. He acknowledges the possibilities of theorizing cultural
production in the postcolonial world based on experiences that are unique to
them. The import of Schulze–Engler’s call consists essentially in a search for
new possibilities of explaining postcolonial cultural production. His argument
against the continued adoption of the writing back paradigm is worth quoting:

First, it locates the dynamic of historical and cultural agency in a hypo-

statized ‘centre’. The cultural activities in the formerly colonized parts of the
world are presented as an ongoing reaction to a dynamic which originates
elsewhere. Secondly, local contexts are devalorized: what is important is the
way postcolonial literature subverts, interrogates and re-writes the imperial
discourse, but not how it reacts to specific historical, political, social and cul-
tural contexts in postcolonial societies. Thirdly, it results in a crippling of the
critical potential of theory since its privileging of colonial discourse effec-

3
Olakunle George, Relocating Agency: Modernity and African Letters (Albany:
State U of New York P , 2003).
114 OYENIYI OKUNOYE ]

tively prevents it from dealing with other political conflicts that lie outside
the politics of decolonization.4

But while Schulze–Engler’s argument stands to reason, it makes no parti-

cular reference to the reality on the ground within the societies it reflects
upon. Much of what he contends in the essay is rooted in the spirit of seeking
to theorize a culture without considering its present state. The author assumes
that a lot has been done already in terms of reading postcolonial writing via
postcolonial theorizing, the earliest phase of which he considers to be the
writing-back paradigm which The Empire Writes Back inaugurated. A ques-
tion that immediately arises is whether much has even been done in terms of
explaining, for example, African literature even in the much-vilified writing-
back paradigm. This, of course, will be apparent in the institutional adoption
of the strategy. The response to this is an emphatic no, because the capacity of
the writing-back paradigm, however obsolete some theorists and critics of
postcolonial literatures may think it has become, to help organize the reading
of the literature has not even been fully explored. Schulze–Engler does not
specify the context to which his observations apply. This is an error that even
The Empire Writes Back carefully avoids by recognizing the variety of post-
colonial experiences and the different responses to them. Inability to appre-
ciate the diversity of experiences that we designate as postcolonial, and the
necessity of recognizing that all postcolonial literary traditions and contexts
are not experiencing the seemingly rudimentary form of postcolonial critical
engagement, will account for the sense of finality with which Schulze–Engler
declares the writing-back paradigm obsolete. However, he is right to have
urged that new modes of explaining postcolonial literary practices beyond the
foundation laid by the pioneering scholar-theorists be sought. In fact, this is
becoming very pertinent in the experience of such African states as Nigeria.
But the reality is that, even in this case, the past and the present coexist, so
that the clear temporal delineation that his essay envisages is almost non-
existent. Schulze–Engler clearly assumes that all postcolonial literary prac-
tices must have first been subjected to a form of critical engagement that
accords primacy to their counter-discursive inclination. But this cannot be
proved. He also does not provide any evidence to back up this claim. I seek to
argue that, contrary to his assumptions, much African poetry remains un-
theorized in basic postcolonial terms.
The tendency to totalize, in the sense that gave rise to orientalism, is still
the commanding inspiration for much of the theoretical engagement of the

4
Frank Schulze–Engler, “The Politics of Postcolonial Theory,” A C O L I T Special
Issue 3 (“Postcolonial Theory and the Emergence of a Global Society,” 1998): 31–32.
] Postcoloniality, African Poetry, and Counter-Discourse 115

postcolony. This makes an assumption about an experience in any part of the

postcolonial world to be unproblematically adopted as typical and representa-
tive of the realities of another, even when they are spatially and experientially
disconnected. Contrary to the elevated arguments about the urgency of re-
thinking postcolonial writing as counter-discourse, I argue for its viability in
reading modern African poetry which has remained largely untheorized. Such
an approach reacts to the sustained contestation with regard to the postcolo-
nial credentials of African writing by mapping patterns of the postcolonial in
African poetry. In demonstrating the possibility of adopting the main para-
digms for analysing postcolonial literary production to the appraisal of Afri-
can poetry, I shall be identifying four major orientations in African poetry in
English, francophone and lusophone African poetry in English translation that
bear out its postcolonial essence. Works can be considered as postcolonial
that dramatize the corrupting influence of the colonial engagement on the
African; works that project conscious resistance to the colonial presence by
subverting imperialist distortions in the perception of Africa and Africans, and
works that excavate pre-contact indigenous literary practices in order to assert
cultural identity, accounting, in the process, for the prevalence of specific
forms of postcolonial consciousness within particular poetic traditions in Afr-
ica. In suggesting that the notion of writing back is probably the most appli-
cable to the creative vision underlying the production of much twentieth-
century African poetry, I consider informed insight into African history and
culture as essential for an appraisal of African writing as a project.
In a bid to challenge the relevance of postcolonial theory in the African
environment, Niyi Osundare poses a question that borders on “the politics of
the genealogy of the term ‘postcolonial’ in order to lump it in with other
“Western theories.”5 Jasper Gross presents a less problematical critique,
which projects the view of those opposed to the location of postcolonial
studies within a form of cultural studies. To him, “the theory of postcolonial-
ism is a mishmash of deeply confusing elements drawn from literary criti-
cism, history and philosophy.”6 Adebayo Williams, conversely, ascribes to
this critical project what, in reality, is a problem of text-bound approaches,
arguing that “the empiricist fetishisation of the text […] often bedevils the

5
Niyi Osundare, African Literature and the Crisis of Post-Structuralist Theorising
(Ibadan: Options Books, 1993): 5.
6
Jasper Gross, “Postcolonialism: Subverting Whose Empire?” Third World Quar-
terly 17.2 (1996): 244.
116 OYENIYI OKUNOYE ]

postcolonial critical project.”7 Surprisingly, these and many other critics of

postcolonial theory do not propose an alternative to it, especially as it pro-
vides a broad framework for the apprehension of localized and shared realities
in the literary cultures of postcolonial societies. As Edna Aizenberg rightly
affirms, “a postcolonial perspective contests that long-regnant North–South
direction of intellectual exchange and fosters […] a dialogue of cultures, lite-
ratures and critical discourses that have rarely, if ever, spoken to each other.’’8
These objections re-state Aijaz Ahmad’s charges against the postcolonial pro-
ject and its major proponents, especially the implication of the metropolitan
location of the Third-World intellectuals identified with it and the dominance
of the Western canon in the constitution of its foundational assumptions.9
The postcolonial critical project is remarkable for the uniqueness of its
conception of theory, accommodating as it does wide-ranging and often con-
flicting assumptions with regard to the response of the literary culture of post-
colonial societies to colonialism and all that it precipitated. And because the
most apparent evidence of a crisis in postcolonial critical practice is the lack
of consensus with regard to what constitutes the postcolonial, the latter, in the
context of this essay, is not just a temporal marker but also the designation of
a consciousness. If Commonwealth literature served the purpose of construct-
ing an identity for literary culture within the British imperial terrain, post-
colonial literature is, in addition to being theory-driven, more inclusive. Post-
colonial literature therefore makes possible the construction of a literary en-
vironment that primarily embraces the literatures of societies with a common
history of colonial experience. The strong link between the growth of the new
literatures in English and the institutional integration of postcolonial criticism
perhaps explains the dominance of anglophone literary formations in the
theory and practice of postcolonial criticism. This essay extends its explora-
tion beyond this traditional domain of postcolonial critical practice.
The absence of fixed assumptions and the coherence that have come to
characterize canonical Western high theory in contemporary postcolonial
criticism simply reveals the fact that the potentialities of theory cannot be
limited to the Western experience. Biodun Jeyifo corroborates this in “Lite-
rary Theory and Theories of Decolonization”:

7
Adebayo Williams, “The Postcolonial Flaneur and Other Fellow Travellers: Con-
ceit for a Narrative of Redemption,” Third World Quarterly 18.5 (1997): 822.
8
Edna Aizenberg, “‘I Walked with a Zombie’: The Pleasures and Perils of Postcolo-
nial Hybridity,” World Literature Today 73.3 (1999): 461.
9
Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London & New York:
Verso, 1992).
] Postcoloniality, African Poetry, and Counter-Discourse 117

the contemporary understanding of theory not only renders it as an exclu-

sively Western phenomenon of a very specialised activity, but also implicitly
(and sometimes explicitly) inscribes the view that theory does not exist,
cannot exist outside this High Canonical Western orbit.10

Critical practice in the postcolonial discursive setting is informed by the re-

sponses of the postcolony to colonialism and all that it inspired. The complex-
ity of the postcolonial critical strategy is thus a reflection of realities that have
shaped critical practice. Rita Abrahamsen asserts that “postcolonialism is not
a conventional theory in any traditional academic sense of the word and it
cannot be sensibly treated as one unified body of thought.”11 But most theo-
rists and critics operating within the field recognize the primacy of apprehend-
ing literary expression as rooted in a particular discursive practice. Postcolo-
nial theory takes it for granted that literary form and content are shaped by
factors that transcend the idiosyncratic choices of individual writers, acknowl-
edging the fact that the choices writers make are inevitably informed and, in
most cases, limited by factors rooted in the context – cultural, political, and
social – within which they operate, which are in turn determined by their
colonial history. The necessity of apprehending the variety of experiences em-
braced by the colonial reality accounts in part for the diversity of the theo-
retical formulations that license contemporary postcolonial critical practice.
The fusion of cultural and literary criticism is most evident in postcolonial
discourse. But we cannot conclude that the absence of assumptions and criti-
cal methodology in the tradition of mainstream Western literary methods
renders postcolonial critical theory less viable. The shared history of colonial
influence, which has produced recognizable cultural attitudes, creates enough
space for the distinctive practices which may be generated within particular
situations in the postcolonial world. For instance, hybridity and syncretism,
evidence of cultural impurity in many postcolonial settings, are realized in a
variety of forms and in varying degrees of intensity in different literary tradi-
tions.
The mapping of the terrain of postcolonial literary theory and critical prac-
tice in this essay is important only insofar as it unearths the relevant concerns
and issues that necessitate the enquiry. In this regard, it is important to recog-
nize the possibility of seeing major tendencies in postcolonial critical theory
and practice as inevitable developments, products of diverse theoretical ef-

10
Biodun Jeyifo, “Literary Theory and Theories of Decolonization,” paper presen-
ted at M L A Conference, Chicago (1993): 6.
11
Rita Abrahamsen, “African Studies and the Postcolonial Challenge,” African
Affairs 102 (2003): 189–210.
118 OYENIYI OKUNOYE ]

forts by intellectuals in the postcolony. Thus, the work of such intellectuals as

Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak and others will only represent an
attempt at inaugurating postcolonial discourse as a viable field of intellectual
endeavour. It is implied that their work derives authority from earlier theoreti-
cal efforts and merely clarifies the major tendencies in postcolonial discourse,
many of which are rooted in the works of such thinkers as Frantz Fanon,
C.L.R. James, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Chinua Achebe, Ng×g´ wa Thiong’o,
Wilson Harris, Chinweizu, Walter Rodney, and Aimé Césaire. There is no
better way to attest to this reality than by adhering to what has almost become
the norm in postcolonial studies readers and introductory texts in the field: the
representation of views and critical reflections on the diversity of theoretical
works that validate the project. This, in a way, suggests that the formal re-
presentation of the field as an academic enquiry is a way of imposing some
order on the limitless possibilities that the theoretical explorations in the field
open up.
The present study, as earlier indicated, does not conceive of postcolonial
critical theory as limited to metropolitan theorizing. It underscores the de-
colonizing intent of postcolonial literary theory, seeing the theory as not
merely providing an alternative perspective in the literary tradition of the
colonized but also taking up the challenge of developing appropriate strate-
gies for clarifying them. It takes it for granted that the literary traditions con-
cerned are capable of generating the strategies by which they are to be read.
Thus, postcolonial literary theory represents, in the universe of this enquiry,
an aggregation of the possibilities that the various traditions allow. The di-
chotomy between the settler colonies and others is a case in point. The critical
consensus is that “postcolonial studies are engaged in a two-part, often para-
doxical project of chronicling similarities of experience while at the same
time registering the formidable differences that mark each former colony.”12
The fact that assumptions legitimizing postcolonial critical practice are not
reducible like those of Euro-American critical approaches shows that the
latter are only an analytical tradition. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin in The
Empire Writes Back share this outlook, arguing that “postcolonialism is more
than a body of texts produced within postcolonial societies […]. It is best
conceived as a reading practice.”13 An encyclopaedic representation of the

12
Helen Gilbert & Joanne Tompkins, Postcolonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Poli-
tics (New York: Routledge, 1996): 3.
13
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory
and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (London & New York: Routledge, 1989):
193.
] Postcoloniality, African Poetry, and Counter-Discourse 119

critical strategies authorized by postcolonial theory in the context of this en-

quiry is both impossible and unnecessary.

2
In practice, the issues that predominate in postcolonial writing are often fused,
as writers tend to respond to the realities generated by the colonial experience.
But most of what can be said about postcolonial African poetry may also ap-
ply to other forms of African writing, just as some of the authorizing impera-
tives may exist in other postcolonial literary cultures. Thus, the second part of
this essay will be devoted to defining postcolonial tendencies in African
poetry. In a sense, African literature derives its relevance and utility from its
responsiveness to the collective African experience. Thus, its form and con-
cerns have been conditioned by the reality of the colonial engagement, either
in the sense of betraying the overwhelming European presence or of asserting
the African will to authentic self-expression.
As with many a postcolonial literary culture, the initial intimation of the
postcolonial moment in African poetry took the form of an enthusiastic
mimicking of the colonizer. This is the most glaring proof of the unconscious
renunciation of the self by the colonized. The colonized generally appropriate
with unwary excitement the epistemology and culture of the colonizer and de-
monstrate the same in the production of cultural forms which inevitably
betray some undue fascination with the colonial. The cultural appropriation of
the colonized manifests itself in the relegation or erasure of their idioms and
codes of distinctive identity. This is realized in the work of different genera-
tions of African poets through cultural mimicry, an inauthentically enthusias-
tic celebration of the benefits of a globalized culture, all of which underlines
the crisis of “cultural impurity.” The inability of the colonized to recognize
the complicity of colonial educational systems is generally responsible for
their immersion in the literary cultures of the colonizers. This naturally re-
sulted in the appropriation of European literary models.
Works operating within this form of postcolonial consciousness properly
betray the hybrid culture that produced them. This reality is proof of the fact
that African writing is heir to two traditions – the indigenous and the Euro-
pean. But to conceive of hybridity in African poetry as exclusively formal is
to misrepresent it. The motivation for poetic expression can also be explained
in terms of a crisis of self-definition, which has been the natural consequence
of undue fascination with Europe. Works in this tradition often operate as
autobiographical inscriptions in which the dominant voice is that of the bene-
ficiary of Western education who, in a bid to acknowledge the value of the
120 OYENIYI OKUNOYE ]

colonial project, presents him/herself as the concrete representation of the

crisis of inauthenticity precipitated by contact with Europe. An enduring con-
cern with this is evident in Gabriel Okara’s “Piano and Drums,”14 where a
profound awareness of the undeniable colonial association problematizes the
effort of self-apprehension. While registering a preference for all that is
African, the poet–persona often acknowledges the colonial affiliation as an
undeniable reality. “Piano and Drums” has enjoyed privileged status in the
instructional canon in anglophone West Africa and is probably the best-
known poem by Okara. The poet–persona is the ‘typical’ African who is
caught in the dilemma of making a choice between dancing to the beat of
traditional African drums – representing indigenous values – or enjoying the
piano, which symbolizes the intruding European culture. The best way to ex-
plain the enduring appeal of the poem is to say that most educated Africans
can identify with the confusion and crisis that it dramatizes. The crucial state-
ment in the poem comes at the end:

When at break of day at a riverside

I hear a jungle drum telegraphing
the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw
like bleeding flesh, speaking of
primal youth and the beginning,
I see the panther ready to pounce,
the leopard snarling about to leap
and the hunters crouch with spears poised;
And my blood ripples, turns torrent,
topples the years and at once I’m
in my mother’s laps a suckling;
at once I’m walking simple
paths with no innovations,
rugged ,fashioned with the naked
warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts
in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.
Then I hear a wailing piano
Solo speaking of complex ways
in tear-furrowed concerto;
of far away lands
and new horizons with
coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,

14
Gabriel Okara, “Piano and Drums,” in The Fisherman’s Invocation (Benin City:
Ethiope, 1978): 20.
] Postcoloniality, African Poetry, and Counter-Discourse 121

crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth

of its complexities, it ends in the middle
of a phrase at a dagger point.
And I lost in the morning mist
of an age at a riverside keep
wandering in the mystic rhythm
of jungle drums and the concerto.15

We encounter a similar situation in Okot p’ Bitek’s Song of Lawino and

Song of Ocol16 in which Ocol’s crisis of self-definition is ascribed to his ac-
quisition of Western education. But Lawino, his wife, emerges as the voice of
the larger society. This is a rare case in which the beneficiary of missionary
education is represented as opting for acquired values as opposed to those of
his own culture. This reveals the extent to which the colonial establishment
invested in the making of the African. At the height of severing his ties to
Africa, which he has demonized, Ocol adopts the perspective of the colo-
nialists in estimating the black heritage and the destiny of Africans. Lawino,
on the other hand, is a custodian of traditional African values which are taken
as irreconcilable with modernity. She constantly affirms the sanctity of re-
ceived values and advocates the unquestioning retention of traditional Africa.
But Omolara Ogundipe–Leslie describes her as a stereotype, a product of “an
elite view of the traditional African woman which fossilizes rural women in
time and space.”17
Much of the poetry of Atukwei Okai and Taban Lo Liyong betrays a
hybridized consciousness in a formal sense. The Ogun poems of Wole Soyin-
ka articulate the same dilemma, except that Soyinka constantly universalizes
the local. For instance, he creates a link between 6ango and such phenomena
as electricity. The Ghanaian Kofi Awoonor does not stop at admitting the un-
deniable reality of the European incursion but also underscores its destructive
impact on traditional African society. He laments the loss of the old order,
while suggesting that it is almost impossible to arrest the invasion of the West
that is observable in such facets of African life as the cultural, the religious,
and the economic. Senghor, Liyong, and Okai, very much like Soyinka, cele-
brate the prospects of the cultural harmony that the meeting of the West and
Africa could bring. p’Bitek is simply content with dramatizing the conflict
15
Okara, “Piano and Drums,” 20.
16
Okot p’Bitek, Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (Nairobi: East African Publishing
House, 1972).
17
Molara Ogundipe–Leslie, Recreating Ourselves: African Women and Creative
Transformations (Trenton N J : Africa World Press, 1994): 48.
122 OYENIYI OKUNOYE ]

precipitated by the colonial encounter and registering his grief over the lost
African authenticity.
But while hybridity and syncretism may be appropriate in clarifying some
aspects of anglophone African poetry, postcolonial lusophone and franco-
phone African poetry is best read in the context of a functional orientation.
This tradition, which is largely inclined toward protest, takes the form of posi-
tive self-assertion and deliberate subversion of symbols and images earlier
employed in demonizing Africa and the African in colonialist literature. It
somehow validates Tanure Ojaide’s observation to the effect that “there is,
culturally speaking, no art for art’s sake in Africa.”18 This trend, largely sus-
tained by a liberal variant of Negritude, creates a space for a pan-Africanist
discourse in which race-celebration and a negation of colonialist arrogance, as
disseminated in official colonial policies, are interrogated. Whether the focus
is on the work of Agostinho Neto, Léopold Sédar Senghor or Birago Diop,
what becomes obvious is that mainstream race-induced protest in African
poetry is preoccupied with an awareness of a history of collective denigration.
While this, in the case of the Negritude tradition, was aroused in the student
days of such writers as Senghor, Birago Diop, and their West Indian col-
leagues in France, popular resistance through the medium of literature in luso-
phone Africa came in the 1950s when Amilcar Cabral, Agostinho Neto,
Mário de Andrade and Francisco–José established a centre for African studies
in Lisbon. The shared heritage of colonial assimilation accounts for the com-
mon pattern of resistance revealed in postcolonial francophone and lusophone
African poetry. In each case, poetry is conceived as a product as well as an
inspirer of the growing discourse of race promotion.
Senghor celebrates blackness in “Black Woman” and “Joal,” while in “In
Memoriam,”19 which romanticizes the memory and the eternal presence of the
ancestors, the project of self-definition takes the form of an exuberant celebra-
tion of the African essence with a view to imbuing it with some measure of
mystery and beauty. But identity-construction in Senghor’s poetry is con-
stantly undermined by a fundamental contradiction – an indication of Africa’s
lack of self-sufficiency in cultural affairs. The latter has given rise to a certain
split consciousness which underlies the entire discourse. Central to this dis-
course is a keen awareness of the primacy of the Self/Other dialectic in the

18
Tanure Ojaide, Poetic Imagination in Africa: Essays on African Poetry (Durham
N C : Carolina Academic Press, 1996): 2.
19
Léopold Sédar Senghor, “Black Woman,” in Prose and Poetry, tr. and ed. John
Reed & Clive Wake (London: Oxford U P , 1965): 105; “Joal,” in Prose and Poetry,
106; “In Memoriam,” in Prose and Poetry, 103.
] Postcoloniality, African Poetry, and Counter-Discourse 123

process of identity-construction. Bernard Dadié’s input to the protest tradition

is simplistic. This is evident in “I Give You Thanks My God,” which is highly
apologetic in its promotion of the African heritage:

I give you thanks my God for having created me black,

For having made of me
The total of all sorrows,
and set upon my head
the World.
I wear the livery of the Centaur
And I carry the World since the first morning.
White is a colour improvised for an occasion
Black, the colour of all days
And I carry the World since the first night.
I am happy
with the shape of my head
fashioned to carry the world ,
satisfied with the shape of my nose,
which should breathe all the air of the World,
happy
with the form of my legs
prepared to run through all the stages of the World
I give you thanks my God, for having created me black,
for having made of me
the total of all sorrows.20

If much of the protest in Senghor and Bernard Dadié is realized through a

subversive transformation of imagery and symbolism, the same tradition in
much of lusophone African poetry – which is best represented by the work of
Neto – presents a more literal idea of protest. In this case, poetry is simply a
tool for popular mobilization, as much of it was intended to elicit a prompt
response in the concrete situation of anticolonial struggle. Anticolonial poetry
from lusophone Africa, constituted by the efforts of poets from Angola,
Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tome and Guinea–Bissau, is a negation of the
self-pity that Caetano da Costa Alegre (1844–89) expressed about his colour.
The tradition has been responsive to specific challenges and demands of the
contexts of its production. While Senghor’s aesthetic has largely appropriated
Serere matrilineal norms in feminizing Africa, the dominant image of Africa

20
Bernard Dadié, “I Give You Thanks My God,” in West African Verse, ed.
Donatus I. Nwoga (London: Longman, 1967): 114–15.
124 OYENIYI OKUNOYE ]

in his work being the black woman, lusophone African poetry is energized by
infectious optimism – proof of its engagement with the task of collective re-
sistance. In short, “Negritude aesthetic [… is] at once a revolt against Europe,
a search for identity and a celebration of […] Africanness.”21
A third and by no means less remarkable tradition of postcolonial African
poetry, which is dominated by the work of David Diop, conceives of the pro-
ject of decolonization as a task that should prioritize a radical rehabilitation of
African history. Central to the project is an awareness of the fact that the fic-
tionalization of history, which facilitated the misrepresentation of Africa,
could be subverted to effect a reconstruction in the context of the quest for
cultural recovery. The primacy of historical rehabilitation in the work of Diop
compares with efforts in the novelistic sphere by Ayi Kwei Armah, Ng×g´ wa
Thiong’o, and Chinua Achebe. Abiola Irele’s argument in “Narrative, History
and the African Imagination” is in this spirit:

Imaginative literature in particular has functioned side by side with historical

writing in the African assertion of an indigenous historicity, in the challenge
to Western discourse which has sought to deny us true historical existence
before our encounter with Europe.22

The common code of historical record in African poetry is an imaginative

recovery of the past. This, in a sense, makes the work no less credible, as it is
best apprehended as promoting a counter-discourse. Ng×g´’s consistent posi-
tion in both his fictional and his theoretical works is that a restoration of the
African experience is crucial to the African collective sense of self-definition.
History naturally emerges as a major site for cultural contestation, as the sense
of history of a people shapes their sense of accomplishment and self-esteem.
The fact that the right to narrate history is a form of power accounts for the
appropriation of the power of narrative by colonial establishments. The logic
of imperial domination necessitates the abrogation of historical records whose
codes of representation privilege the rights of the colonized to self-assertion.
This is always aimed at demonizing their heroes and erasing their major ac-
complishments from official records. The capacity of the imagination for the
construction of colonial histories is seized upon by revisionist histories, which
affirm the right of the colonized to retrieve their histories in a bid to re-tell
suppressed truths and thereby revive the collective memory of their people.

21
Charles Nnolim, “An African Literary Aesthetics: A Prolegomena,” Ba Shiru 7.2
(1972): 66.
22
Abiola Irele, “Narrative, History and the African Imagination,” Narrative 1.2
(1993): 167–68.
] Postcoloniality, African Poetry, and Counter-Discourse 125

David Diop’s obsession with historical reconstruction in “les vautours”

[The Vultures], and “Celui qui a tout perdu”23 [Loser of Everything] is not a
product of a belated expression of grief but a militant act provoked by an
awareness of the fraud that is colonialist history. There is thus a deliberate
effort at negating the very spirit of textual attitude in his rewriting of African
history. Diop’s creative project reflects an imaginative history and a decolo-
nized African geography, both of which eliminate the artificial identities pro-
duced by nation-states. The postcolonial imagination often demonizes the
European, validating their perceived inhumanity by excavating acts of viol-
ence and brutality that characterized their interaction with Africa. Conse-
quently, the colonial moment emerges as the tragic phase in the African his-
torical experience, accounting as it does for the emasculation and stagnation
of the continent. The heroes of Africa that are celebrated in Diop’s work are
common Africans of unspecified identity, just as the dawn of African history
is relocated to authorize the romanticizing of the precolonial space. What then
emerges is a creative effort that interrogates the colonial historical legacy with
remarkable courage. Diop’s poems possess a unique structure, which ac-
knowledges three significant temporal shifts in the African experience: the
glorious precolonial past; the tragic colonial era; and an on-going process of
reconstruction. This is evident in “The Vultures”:
In those days
When civilization kicked us in the face
When holy water slapped our cringing brows
The vultures built in the shadow of their talons
The bloodstained monument of tutelage.
In those days
There was painful laughter on the metallic hell of the roads
And the monotonous rhythm of the paternoster
Drowned the howling on the plantations.
O the bitter memories of extorted kisses
Of promises broken at the point of gun
Of foreigners who did not know love.
But we whose hands fertilize the womb of the earth
In spite of your songs of pride
In spite of the desolate villages of torn Africa
Hope was preserved in us as in a fortress

23
David Diop, “Les vautours,” and “Celui qui a tout perdu,” in Coups de pilon
(Paris: Présence Africaine, 1973): 20 and 44–45 respectively.
126 OYENIYI OKUNOYE ]

And from the mines of Swaziland to the factories of Europe

Spring will be reborn under our bright steps.24

Diop’s effort at historical reconstruction operates within a shared tradition in

the postcolonial world, the attempt at re-placing colonialist history. History, in
this case, is conceived as a construct – a narrative in which the narrator wields
incredible power with regard to the politics of representation. Postcolonial
history within the context of imaginative writing is therefore motivated repre-
sentation, the significance of which can only be appreciated when read against
a previous act of disagreeable inscription with historical utility. Abdul JanMo-
hamed has rightly noted that “because the relation between colonial and Afri-
can literatures is dialectical, the work of a given author can only be adequate-
ly understood in terms of its opposite.”25
The fourth trend in postcolonial African poetry is that which projects re-
course to pre-contact indigenous poetic forms as a symbolic act of cultural
resistance and recuperation. As a major, albeit often misunderstood, domain
for dramatizing the postcolonial condition, this tradition recommends itself as
a far more profound manifestation of the postcolonial literary consciousness.
Pioneering efforts in this regard were read as efforts at experimentation, a way
of rehabilitating local literary traditions in the bid to perpetuate their relevance
and adapt them to contemporary society. This tradition represents a signifi-
cant stage in the process of decolonizing a literary tradition and occurs only in
contexts in which the colonial project did not completely obliterate indige-
nous cultural practices. This, in part, explains why adaptations, translations,
and wholesale appropriation of indigenous poetic forms have particularly
characterized the work of anglophone West African poets right from the
second generation onwards. There is a reason for this:

in the English-speaking West Africa there has been a definite emphasis on

the reconstruction and re-evaluation of the autochthonous West African cul-
tures, especially as they still form an essential part of the composite postcolo-
nial culture of West Africa.26

The recovery of indigenous poetic traditions almost always derives impetus

from the invalidation of the epistemological bases for the appropriation of
24
David Diop, “The Vultures,” in West African Verse, ed. Donatus I. Nwoga (Lon-
don: Longman, 1967): 110.
25
Abdul R. JanMohamed, Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colo-
nial Africa (Amherst: U of Massachusetts P , 1983): 20.
26
E.N. Obiechina, “Cultural Nationalism in Modern African Creative Literature,”
African Literature Today 1–4 (1968): 24.
] Postcoloniality, African Poetry, and Counter-Discourse 127

European literary forms. This reality has given the most remarkable promise
of the likelihood of a reversal of order of influence: i.e. a situation in which
the literatures of colonizers may have to revitalize themselves by drawing on
postcolonial literary traditions. This, in a sense, is a way to explain the in-
creasing influence of magical realism, which derives its vigour from an inter-
rogation of the bases of Western realism, in the tradition of the Latin Ameri-
can novel.
While received critical attitudes will explain the recourse to the indigenous
in postcolonial African poetry as a form of experimentation, an informed ap-
praisal should discern the underlining issues of cultural relevance, literary
forms and traditions being produced and sustained within particular socio-
cultural climates. Colonialism propagated irrelevant literary practices, many
of which are being displaced with the declining influence of the colonial
establishment. This is about the most tenable explanation for the restoration of
indigenous poetic traditions in Africa as in much of the postcolonial world. In
practice, Kofi Awoonor, Okot p’Bitek, Mazizi Kunene, Wole Soyinka, Jack
Mapanje, Kofi Anyidoho, Niyi Osundare, Tanure Ojaide, and Okinba Launko
have demonstrated, in varying degrees, a consciousness of indigenous African
poetic traditions, which they retrieve through translation and the modelling of
their poems on traditional forms.
There is probably no better testimony to the fact that the appropriation of
ethnic literary idioms is becoming increasingly important than the measure of
scholarly attention it has received in recent times. Two of the most recent
studies of African poetry, Ezenwa–Ohaeto’s Oral Poetics and Contemporary
Nigerian Poetry27 and Charles Bodunde’s Oral Tradition and Aesthetic
Transfer,28 confirm this. If much recent anglophone African poetry is fed by
ethnic poetic practices, the works of the poets concerned may be seen as ex-
tending those traditions in spite of the fact that they use the medium of Eng-
lish. An informed appraisal of Ezenwa–Ohaeto’s Voice of the Night Masque-
rade,29 for instance, is impossible without some insight into the Igbo tradition
of masquerade poetry. The work of Niyi Osundare is equally indebted to
Oriki and Efe practices in Yoruba poetry; Ojaide draws on the udje con-
ventions of his Urhobo culture, while Kofi Awoonor and Kofi Anyidoho also

27
Ezenwa–Ohaeto, Oral Poetics and Contemporary Nigerian Poetry (Bayreuth:
Bayreuth African Studies, 1997).
28
Charles Bodunde, Oral Tradition and Aesthetic Transfer: Form and Social Vision
in Black Poetry (Bayreuth African Studies, 2001).
29
Ezenwa–Ohaeto, Voice of the Night Masquerade (Ibadan: Kraft, 1997).
128 OYENIYI OKUNOYE ]

acknowledge their reliance on the halo and dirge practices of the Anlo Ewe.
The poets have been particularly fond of satirical forms.
In justifying the recourse to indigenous literary idioms in contemporary
African literary practice, Brenda Cooper says:
The dominant cultural mood in Africa […] once the hard reality of the
betrayal of the hopes and dreams of independence has sunk, has been a
revived negritude and a heightened cultural nationalism.30

Perhaps no poem has made a stronger case for the necessity of employing
relevant poetic forms for the expression of the peculiar African experience
than Kofi Anyidoho’s “A Dirge for Christmas.” In legitimizing the subversive
nature of the postcolonial African poetic imagination, it interrogates the un-
justifiable imitation of European poetic conventions, and rationalizes the link
between cultural experience and literary expression:
In our songs there is no room for the lily
nor the bougainvillea’s stubborn beauty
We too sing but not of the glory of twilight
nor of melodies of lark bringer of dawn and dew.
Why
overburden our souls with weariness of sorrows
recalled to mind by joys of mythmaking neighbours
With
these blood-shot eyes what do we see in flowers
but the succulence of new crops sucked by sun
even while we starve to build our barns?
Dawn comes to our door
with no whispered promise of pleasures
The Death of old years
brings no remission of our pains
The Dew is but our Tears renewed at Dawn

So let alone our poets

To mourn Christmas with the chants of Easter Songs31

30
Brenda Cooper, Magical Realism in West African Fiction: Seeing Through a
Third Eye (London & New York: Routledge, 1998): 217.
31
Kofi Anyidoho, “A Dirge for Christmas,” Earthchild (Accra: Woeli, 1985): 62.
] Postcoloniality, African Poetry, and Counter-Discourse 129

3
This essay has been preoccupied with mapping the postcolonial in modern
African poetry. It has stressed that much of the argument about redirecting
postcolonial theorizing from the writing-back paradigm may not have been
informed by the state of the practice in much of the postcolonial world. What
becomes apparent is that there has been no significant effort at postcolonial
critical engagement with modern African poetry. This logically leads to the
question of whether we must see a shift from the writing-back paradigm to
any other as indicating a common pattern of development in the evolution of
postcolonial writing and theoretical engagement with it. Such influential texts
as The Empire Writes Back and Postcolonial Drama32 seem to have been pro-
duced with a keen sense of textual awareness, and they also exhibit a mastery
of the diversity and differences characterizing both the experience of colonial-
ism and the literary reactions to it. Even if, as Schulze–Engler suggests, we
must envision the liberation of postcolonial literatures from their colonial
past, it will be difficult to imagine a situation in which all of them will shift at
the same time from a shared colonial legacy. The sense of restraint which an
awareness of the present state of postcolonial writing produces does not allow
for an opening-up of the adventurous tendency to theorize the unknown that
has characterized much of the postcolonial theorizing undertaken in Australia
and Canada, which incidentally played a pioneering role in institutionalizing
postcolonial theoretical practice.
Who, then, speaks for the future of postcolonial literatures? The postcolo-
nial theorist – no matter what his/her physical location might be – cannot
claim this without interacting with the realities that produce reliable predic-
tions. Furthermore, there is diversity in defining postcolonialism and post-
colonial theory. Stephen Slemon argues that “there is no single post-colonial
theory, and no one critic can possibly represent, or speak for, the post-colonial
critical field.”33 If the exploration of the counter-discursive potential of mod-
ern African poetry is, then, the first stage in appraising its postcolonial orien-
tation, the present study may only have shown how much of the postcolonial
critical engagement of this tradition has been accomplished. The point that
has to be made is that critics and theorists operating within postcolonial lite-
rary traditions need not be seen as privileged native-informants whose prac-
tice and theoretical outlook are of little moment. What every credible theore-

32
Gilbert & Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice and Politics.
33
Stephen Slemon, “Postcolonial Critical Theories,” in New National and Post-
Colonial Literatures: An Introduction, ed. Bruce King (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998): 179.
130 OYENIYI OKUNOYE ]

tical project needs is a firm grasp of the terrain it engages with. If Bernth
Lindfors and James Gibbs were to be theorists in addition to being archivists,
their work would certainly command so much respect because it wwould be
grounded in more than adequate knowledge of the sphere they have chosen to
theorize. Whatever authority Edward Said’s Orientalism has today derives
largely from the textual validation of its thesis. This is apparently lacking in
much of what goes by the name of postcolonial theorizing today.

WORKS CITED
Abrahamsen, Rita. “African Studies and the Postcolonial Challenge,” African Affairs
102 (2003): 189–210.
Ahmad, Aijaz. Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London & New York: Verso,
1992).
Aizenberg, Edna. “‘I Walked with a Zombie’: The Pleasures and Perils of Postcolonial
Hybridity,” World Literature Today 73.3 (1999): 461–66.
Anyidoho, Kofi. Earthchild (Accra: Woeli, 1985).
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (London & New York: Routledge, 1989).
Bodunde, Charles. Oral Tradition and Aesthetic Transfer: Form and Social Vision in
Black Poetry (Bayreuth African Studies Series, 2001).
Cooper, Brenda. Magical Realism in West African Fiction: Seeing Through a Third
Eye (London & New York: Routledge, 1998).
Dadié, Bernard. “I Give You Thanks My God,” in West African Verse, ed. Donatus I.
Nwoga (London: Longman, 1967): 114–15.
Diop, David. “The Vultures,” in West African Verse, ed. Donatus I. Nwoga (London:
Longman, 1967): 110.
Diop, David. Coups de pilon (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1973).
Ezenwa–Ohaeto. Oral Poetics and Contemporary Nigerian Poetry (Bayreuth: Bay-
reuth African Studies Series, 1997).
——. Voice of the Night Masquerade (Ibadan: Kraft, 1997).
George, Olakunle. Relocating Agency: Modernity and African Letters (Albany: State
U of New York P , 2003).
Gilbert, Helen, & Joanne Tompkins. Postcolonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics
(New York: Routledge, 1996).
Griffiths, Gareth. “The Post-Colonial Critical Approaches and Problems,” in New
National and Post-Colonial Literatures: An Introduction, ed. Bruce King (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1998): 164–77.
Gross, Jasper. “Postcolonialism: Subverting Whose Empire?” Third World Quarterly
17.2 (1996): 239–50.
Irele, Abiola. “Narrative, History and the African Imagination,” Narrative 1.2 (1993):
156–72.
] Postcoloniality, African Poetry, and Counter-Discourse 131

JanMohamed, Abdul R. Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial

Africa (Amherst: U of Massachusetts P , 1983).
Jeyifo, Biodun. “Literary Theory and Theories of Decolonization,” paper presented at
M L A Conference, Chicago (1993).
Nnolim, Charles. “An African Literary Aesthetics: A Prolegomena,” Ba Shiru 7.2
(1972): 66.
Obiechina, E.N. “Cultural Nationalism in Modern African Creative Literature,” Afri-
can Literature Today 1–4 (1968): 24–35.
Ogundipe–Leslie, Molara. Recreating Ourselves: African Women and Creative Trans-
formations (Trenton N J : Africa World Press, 1994).
Ojaide, Tanure. Poetic Imagination in Africa: Essays on African Poetry (Durham N C :
Carolina Academic Press, 1996).
Okara, Gabriel. The Fisherman’s Invocation (Benin City: Ethiope, 1978).
Okot p’Bitek. Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (Nairobi: East African Publishing
House, 1972).
Osundare, Niyi. African Literature and the Crisis of Post-Structuralist Theorising
(Ibadan: Options Books, 1993).
Schulze–Engler, Frank. “The Politics of Postcolonial Theory,” A C O L I T Special Issue
3 (“Postcolonial Theory and the Emergence of a Global Society,” 1998): 31–32.
Senghor, Léopold Sédar. Prose and Poetry, tr. & ed. John Reed & Clive Wake (Lon-
don: Oxford U P , 1965).
Slemon, Stephen. “Postcolonial Critical Theories,” in New National and Post-Colonial
Literatures: An Introduction, ed. Bruce King (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998): 178–97.
Williams, Adebayo. “The Postcolonial Flaneur and Other Fellow Travellers: Conceit
for a Narrative of Redemption,” Third World Quarterly 18.5 (1997): 821–41.

]^
] Notes on Contributors and Editors 215

O Y E N I Y I O K U N O Y E is a Senior Lecturer in English at Obafemi Awolowo

University, Ile–Ife, Nigeria. His research interests are in postcolonial theory,
African poetry, Nigerian short fiction, and the literary practices of the new
African diaspora. He has published widely on African poetry and is editing a
book of essays on contemporary African poetry. His contributions have ap-
peared in Kunapipi, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, New Literatures
Review, Interventions, History in Africa, Cahier d’études africaines, Neo-
helicon, Journal of African Travel-Writing, and Journal of Asian and African
Studies, among others. He has been a Harry Oppenheimer Visiting Scholar at
the University of Cape Town, South Africa and a British Academy Visiting
Scholar at the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham,
United Kingdom.
F R E D O P A L I is Head of the Department of Communication at the Polytech-
nic of Namibia. His areas of academic and professional interest include Eng-
lish Romanticism, African poetry, intertextual studies, critical thinking, e-
teaching and learning, e-training of trainers, e-conference hosting, and profes-
sional communication. He taught a number of these areas for a long time at
Makerere University and the University of Botswana and continues to teach
several of them. He has, in addition, had stints as first Registrar and Coordina-
tor of the Centre for Teaching and Learning (C T L ) at the Polytechnic of
Namibia. His published articles include “Wole Soyinka’s Perpetuation of the
Romantic Cult of Creativity” and “The Significance of Communication in
Critical Thinking.” He is now working on a critical study of “Romantic Con-
tinuity in the Ooetry of Wole Soyinka and Okot p’Bitek.”
K W A D W O O S E I – N Y A M E , J R . teaches African Literature and Cultural
Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
He has published articles on topics relating to nationalism, gender and African
liberation in Research in African Literatures, Kunapipi, Ariel, Current Writ-
ing and The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, among others.
V I O L A P R Ü S C H E N K graduated from Humboldt University Berlin with an
M.A. in African Studies and Ethnomusicology. She is currently a doctoral
candidate in African Literatures at Humboldt University, Berlin and the Uni-
versité du Québec, Montreal. Her dissertation is an examination of the process
of intermediality (music in written texts) in African and Caribbean literatures.
F R A N K S C H U L Z E – E N G L E R taught at the universities of Frankfurt, Bre-
men, and Hannover and is now Professor of New English Literatures and Cul-
tures at the Institute for English and American Studies at Johann Wolfgang
Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. He has published widely on African,
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.