kagablog

10-21-2005
by
Obadele Kambon

ngugi wa thiongo

It is said that “The actions of one generation, become the history of the next generation and the histories of several generations become the traditions of a people” (Nobles 2003).

Similarly, the theories of generations that have come before become the reality of those generations yet to be born. If one does not understand how contemporary African issues and problems (i.e. mass health care, mass food production, better infrastructure, etc.) are linked to and find their inception in theories of unilineal evolution, social darwinism, man vs. man, man vs. nature and others that have been created in the interests of the non-African, one will not understand how the intergenerational process of healing similarly may find its inception in theories designed to shape reality in the interests of African people.

Given the power of art in the form of literary production, this also can be true of theories of African literature as it is from the base of African literary theory, collective and/or personal, that the African literary artist creates.

If African literary art in and of itself is to be seen as a legitimate enterprise, it is due to the power of art to shape the consciousness of people and therefore society. It has been argued that, “Art is not a mirror to reflect society…but a hammer with which to shape it” (Brecht 2003).

It is with this type of theoretical approach emphasizing function and responsibility in literary art that the African literary artist makes her or his art relevant to the societal and social conditions.

This is a theory of the functionality of art that is not new to the African context due to the sociologically and historically conditioned necessity of such a view. It is said in Twi, “Otomfo tono deε εhia no” or “The blacksmith strikes where it is needed.” It may therefore be said that the extent to which the endeavor to theorize African Literature is connected to shaping the reality of African people in the interests of African people is the determining factor in our consideration of what literary theory has to offer the continent.

This potential offering is articulated most clearly in theories of African Literature and Function and in theories of The Criticism of African Literature.

It has been proclaimed that, “Power is the ability to define reality and to have others respond to that definition as if it were their own” (Nobles 1985: 107). As has been argued elsewhere, literary art in and of itself has an enormous potential to define perceptions and conceptions of reality.

Achebe makes the assertion that, “If art may dispense with the constraining exactitude of literal truth, it does acquire in return incalculable powers of persuasion in the imagination” (Achebe 1988: 95). He goes on to say that, “The great virtue of literary fiction is that it is able by engaging our imagination to lead us ‘to discovery and recognition by an unexpected and instructive route’” (100).

It is this that makes the role of art, the literary artist, and theory of literary production legitimated in the African context. In understanding the nature of art and its functionality one is able to speak reality into existence or at the very least recognize one’s own potential to do so.

This is a theory of art that understands that the truth of artistic production reveals itself more clearly in the goals of persuasion and shaping consciousness, behavior, society, and therefore the future than in the confines of the pages on which the art is written.

The power potential of African Literary theory exists in its ability to define perceptions and conceptions of reality as manifested through art, and therefore the destiny of African people. Literary theory has the potential to define reality in the past, present and to present possibilities of a future.

However, this potential is determined to a large degree by whether or not the literary artist and the theory of artistic production to which he or she adheres accounts for the interests of the people for whom it is produced. The usefulness of any offering in the field of African literary theory is thus determined by whether the African theorist “see[s] reality in its unchangingness or in its changingness,” and whether or not (or perhaps the degree to which) the theorist sees his or her potential to shape reality by shaping art (Ngugi 1988: 101). This is the potential of a literary theory that is connected to the interests of African people as relates to questions sovereignty, self-determination, etc. African literary theory is useful only to the extent that it is connected.

An example of this type of literary theory, one that is connected to the needs and interests of African people, can be seen clearly in Chinua Achebe’s essay entitled, “The Novelist as Teacher” (Achebe 1975). In this essay, Achebe proclaims that, “The writer cannot expect to be excused from the task of re-education and regeneration that must be done. In fact he should march right in front” (45). This is a re-education and regeneration that speaks to helping our “society to regain a belief in itself and put away complexes of years of denigration and self-abasement” (44).

This is a theory of the Function of African Literature that speaks to the power of literary art in that it calls for the artist to create “a different order of reality from that which is given to him; an aspiration to provide himself with a second handle on existence through his imagination” [emphasis his] (Achebe 1988: 95-96). This type of literary theory speaks to the potential of the literary artist to shape conceptions of the present, of the nature of societal and social interactions, of history itself. Indeed, it has been affirmed that, “Those who will to transform destiny must first will to transform history.” The role of this African literary theory is no less than to conceptualize an art that can speak to our collective potential to shape our own destiny by creating a different order of reality.

In the African context, one way in which this must take place is in decolonizing the African way of thinking and perceiving reality.

For this is a manner of thinking that, for example, causes the African to finance his own oppression through the created tastes and desires inculcated by the non-African in terms of clothing, entertainment, etc. This concrete economic and paradigmatic issue is largely the result of an other-directed personality, which acts first and foremost in the interests, economic and otherwise, of the non-African.

Njabulo Ndebele affirms that, “The greatest challenge of the South African revolution is in the search for ways of thinking, ways of perception, that will help to break down the closed epistemological structures of South African oppression, structures which can severely compromise resistance by dominating thinking itself” (Ndebele 1994: 66, 67).

This issue is by no means one that is local to the locality of South Africa, but rather manifests itself in the lives of Africans throughout the world. The task of addressing this issue is the function of a connected literature, a literature that if, in and of itself, is to be perceived as legitimate must address our internal and external issues and interests. Within this perception of African literature, the writer functions primarily as a teacher who, through changing the thought patterns of our people, in actuality causes a change in the behavioral patterns and therefore the destiny of African people.

It is said, “Watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Watch your words, for they become your actions. Watch your actions, for they become your habits. Watch your habits, for they become your character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny” (Browder 1992: 4).

A theory of African literature indeed has the power to shape the future of African people. It is when this theory is connected to our need to take our fate into our own hands that it has something to offer the continent.

This is also true in the case of theorizing African literary criticism.

According to Biodun Jeyifo, “Critical discourse assures not only the survival of literature, it also determines the condition in which it survives and the uses to which it will be put” (Jeyifo 1994: 34). In this sense theory of African literary criticism has the potential to act as a shaper of that which shapes in criticizing both literary art and theories of literary production.

Adebayo Williams similarly posits that “criticism is the handmaiden of art and there is a symbiotic relationship between them” (Williams 1982: 80). However, similar to theories of functionality of African literature, it is the degree to which criticism is connected to the needs of African people that it may be said to have something to offer in the African context. Williams posits that, “A theory of cultural production in Africa must also be a theory of cultural and political redemption. No criticism is politically innocent” (Williams 1991: 19).

Criticism is not politically innocent in the sense that critical discourse within African literature must be connected to the political, societal, social, psychological, etc. goals within the African contextual environment. This criticism of engagement, for the most part, has been manifested in the African context with varying degrees of success and varying aspects of focus. According to Izevbaye:

The earliest critical attitude towards contemporary African literature seems to have been influenced by non-literary interests, the most important of which was nationalism or the desire to create an indigenous tradition that would be more or less independent of foreign models (…) literary theory and criticism was a means of achieving this independence (Izevbaye 1971: 27).

This notion is echoed by Williams in conveying that, “This new criticism was forced to wage a treacherous two-front war: a stirring attack on the enemies of Black heritage on one front and, on the other, a rear-guard action against those who scoured emergent African literature for sociological and anthropological data with a view to confirming the thesis of the Black savage” (Williams 1982: 82).

This connection between the theories of criticism which speak to the needs of the African situation and the historically and sociologically conditioned context in which said theories have been produced is clear. Indeed, as “literature was sociologically conditioned, so was, by nearly inevitable historical conjecture, its criticism” (Williams 1982: 82). This is to say that this criticism has been (at least in the past) one that is connected to the issues of the African context. This has not been a criticism of feigned objectivity as advocated by the non-African in the interests of the non-African, but rather a literary criticism of connectedness, which speaks to the healing of the African.

It has been through the vehicle of criticism that such discourses as “who is to be the critic of African literature,” of “the language of African literature” and others have come to the fore. These are not discourses of abstract objectivity but are rather discourses, which address larger issues of self-determination and self-sufficiency. For as long as the direction of discourses pertaining to these larger issues are determined by the non-African, the African will be constantly subjected to the wills, desires, and goals of others who provide theories designed to control and destroy. As thought determines behavior, the role of literary theory and its criticism has been that of a fighter on the battlefield of psychology as a means to change behaviors and thereby the conditions of the African situation that has recently (within the last few hundred years) come to be largely determined by the non-African in the interests of the non-African.

The issue of language in the African context is closely tied to issues of self-determination, self-sufficiency, self-worth, etc. As stated by Izevbayo, “It is generally recognized that language is inextricably linked not only with cultural attitudes, but with the user’s conception of reality. For this reason, as recent critics have pointed out, language is potentially the most subtle and effective means of mental colonization” (Izevbaye 1971: 128). For, when others control a people’s thinking, they also control a people’s behavior and potential for shaping reality in their own best interests. This lack of control is manifested in the social, psychological, societal, and other problems that we now find in the African context that work in the best interests of the non-African such as the previously alluded to financing of our own oppression through created tastes and desires. As advanced by Dr. Carter G. Woodson:

If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one (Woodson 1992: 84-85).

According to the foremost critic on the language question, Ngugi wa Thiong’O, this was the function of the imposition of non-African languages on the African as “the most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic and political control can never be complete or effective without mental control” (Ngugi 1986: 16). This process of control was legitimated by theories of backwardness and primitiveness that many of we Africans have accepted in our rush towards glittering whiteness, thus reinforcing a subservient condition that is outside of our best interests. With the goal of devaluing the culture and controlling the thinking of the African, the non-African engaged in a process of:

The destruction or the deliberate undervaluing of a people’s culture, their are, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature and literature, and the conscious elevation of the language of the coloniser. The domination of a people’s language by the languages of the colonising nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonised (Ngugi 1986: 16).

African acquiescence to this phenomenon is a serious basis of criticism. A criticism that focuses on the language question in the struggle for liberation in the African context is in actuality fighting for that which will change the thinking and thereby our way of conceptualizing the world, relating to our environment, each other, and the issues that we face in African society for ourselves.

In addressing the question of who is to be the critic of African literature, we must simultaneously must address issues of audience, self-determination, self-worth, etc. The progress of this discourse has led to a situation wherein African critics are coming “to be the judges…qualified to assess the works of African authors” in a context wherein the field of shaping that which shapes consciousness (i.e. criticism) has been previously dominated by those “whose knowledge of us is very limited” (Emenyonu 1971: 10; Achebe 1962).

These discourses and theories of African literature serve to shape the direction of African literary production in the role of a guide. If we are to accept that art in and of itself is a legitimate enterprise in its function to shape the consciousness of a people, we must accept that that which shapes art, literary theories, are also legitimate.

In the pursuit of the resolution of very concretely manifested issues pertaining to sovereignty and self-definition, among others, one cannot hope to attain solutions without first addressing root causes of thought and behavior in the interests of subsequently determining one’s own destiny. In the African context, this must be the role of a connected art and connected foundational theories of artistic production.