Home, Exile, and the Space In Between

Okpewho, Isidore.

Research in African Literatures, Volume 37, Number 2, Summer

2006, pp. 68-73 (Article)

Published by Indiana University Press

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ral/summary/v037/37.2okpewho.html

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Home, Exile, and the
Space In Between
ISIDORE OKPEWHO
Binghamton University

A BST R ACT
This paper is a statement on the function of African literary criticism at the
present time, in that it argues a new ethic of contemporary discourse on Afri-
can literature that sets its lights on the sad state of affairs on the continent.
There are no real gains for anyone when scholars are driven from their coun-
tries and their cherished pursuits by unpleasant social and political conditions
created by power-hungry politicians. Whether we are engaged in the study
of oral literature or modern writing, we should contribute our quota toward
restoring sanity in Africa by questioning the logic of power relations projected
by our texts. It is our duty to help “nurture a new generation of scholars who
will not flinch from questioning the assumptions underlying the ideas fed to
them, the way their predecessors were seldom inclined to do.”

I recently spoke over the telephone with a sister-in-law in Lagos. I had called to
enquire about her and a few other relatives of ours living in parts of Lagos affected
by the recent explosions at the Nigerian Army munitions depot at Ikeja. She
and her immediate family had narrowly escaped the catastrophe. But two of those
I enquired about were not so lucky. Although they had suffered no personal harm,
one’s house had completely collapsed while the other’s roof had caved in. Naturally, I
was thankful that their lives had been spared. But it was disturbing enough to think
their names could have been in the shocking list of casualties released by the Nigerian
authorities. In the days that followed, I was to hear of even more acquaintances who
had suffered various levels of loss, even death, in their families.
I believe that many scholars who have lately relocated to the US would agree
with me that, whether or not we are directly affected by these tragedies frequently
reported from Africa, they generally have the effect of painfully deferring our cher-
ished hopes that sanity would someday return to our land of origin. Worse still, every
time such sad tidings come from home, it is hard to avoid a certain sense of guilt
about the fate of those we have left behind. We are lucky enough to have escaped

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 ISIDORE OKPEWHO ! 69

the depressing conditions back home and found a safe haven here, where we have an
opportunity to raise our children and pursue our professions. But while we may not be
directly responsible for those acts of social and political mismanagement by which our
leaders deny our people the basic rights and securities of life, we cannot help feeling
that in fleeing our countries we have left our relatives and friends to their devices in
increasingly insufferable conditions. No doubt there are some among us who, having
given up hope that normalcy will ever return to their country, have decided to erase
all memories and links to the past and build a new life for themselves here. But those
who retain the stubborn hope that sanity will someday prevail will need to reexamine
their scholarly preoccupations and see what they might do towards aiding that goal.
A few decades ago, it was possible for a writer who felt his work had done nothing to
arrest his society’s drift towards chaos to attempt a more practical solution–like hold-
ing up a radio station or taking up arms–however ill-starred such a step turned out
to be. But the conduct of affairs in many an African nation has become so demonic as
to discourage any illusions by the citizen of exercising honest conscience, let alone of
challenging the government’s authority in any regard. Which is why some of us have
fled our countries to settle elsewhere. However, even if we cannot directly influence
the conduct of affairs in the continent, we can at least begin to ask the kinds of ques-
tions that may not always have been part of the rules of our professional engagement
but that may help lay the foundations for a morally responsible order of existence
in the future. We should begin to nurture a new generation of scholars who will not
flinch from questioning the assumptions underlying the ideas fed to them, the way
their predecessors were seldom inclined to do.
What I am calling for is nothing short of an ethical agenda in our investigative
labors. For those of us in literary study, this will mean that we retreat a little from
our pet propensities toward theories and modes of discourse that may have advanced
the horizons of humanistic study but that have proved woefully incapable of creating
the climate for a humane conduct of affairs in the world in which we live. In my more
recent study of tales of empire in my part of Africa, I have taken a close look at the
logic of traditions we have grown so accustomed to celebrating that we are unaware to
what degree they have woven themselves into systems of political engineering that are
responsible for much of the instability that plagues us today. It was interesting to find
Simon Gikandi coming to a parallel insight in his recent reflections on postmodernist
theories of difference—part of the mantra of contemporary literary discourse—in the
context of tales of horror that continue to come out of Africa. According to him,
[W]hile there is a widespread feeling in the American Academy that the rise of
theory has led to the politicization of the humanities, theory appears, on closer
examination, to be a symptom of the failure of the human disciplines to intervene
in the politics of everyday life. It is indeed telling that in a world dominated by
stories of terror and genocide, stories that defy interpretation, intellectuals, having
renounced meanings, rules, and moral judgments, have not proven to be of much
practical use. For a generation conditioned to believe that difference is the essence
of identity, how does one make the point that this difference is also the source of
some of the most ghastly events of our time? (Gikandi 11)

In my own reflections on the oral tradition, I have dared to suggest that we begin
indeed to problematize those texts that have become part of our cultural canon and
that might be the model of political conduct by present-day leaders. Let me illustrate
70 ! RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITER ATURES

with a few details from the Sunjata story, no doubt the most celebrated of the tradi-
tions of the African epic. Most of the known versions state that Sunjata’s mother
Sogolon, the Buffalo Woman from the royal house of Du, is given to two itinerant
hunter brothers of the Taraware clan as a reward for subduing her and terminating
her rampage in a kingdom that has denied her her rights. But then the story makes
them surrender the woman to Nare (Fa-)Maghan Konate (or Keita), for whom the
woman has been destined to bear a son who will rule over the Manding nation after
his father. In his rather insightful discussion of “The Buffalo Woman Tale,” Stephen
Bulman tells us the woman becomes Nare Konate’s wife so that Sunjata will be shown
to have descended from royalty on both his father’s and his mother’s side. But what
does this say of the Tarawares? Bulman suggests “the epic” presents them as mere
itinerant hunters “with no overt royal connections.” But this is not the picture we get
from Bamba Suso, one of the bards in the Gordon Innes edition of Sunjata versions,
nor from Fa-Digi Sisoko in the John William Johnson edition, both of whom present
the Taraware clan as nobility. So what, beyond the myth of manifest destiny, justifies
the surrender of the woman to a king about whose personal merits the tradition is
largely silent?
Political alliance, perhaps? This may well be so, for later on in the Sunjata story
we find the embattled hero putting the highest premium on Tira Makhang, a mem-
ber of the Taraware clan, as his most dependable ally in the war against Sumanguru.
So where does that leave Faa Koli, an outstanding warrior of the smith caste whose
defection from Sumanguru’s side is no mean factor in the weakening of the Susu
resistance? Faa Koli, of course, protests the prejudice, as does another of the allies.1
Having defeated Sumanguru, Sunjata plans other wars, the best known being his
attack of the Jolof king for ridiculing Sunjata’s request for horses. In Johnson’s edition,
both Faa Koli and Tira Makhang vie for the honor of leading the campaign against
the Jolof; again Tira Makhang is favored over Faa Koli, and for the rest of the Sunjata
legend little is heard about Faa Koli. You wonder, does Faa Koli’s status as a “smith”
cost him the estimation of his upper-caste leader? The logic of political decisions in
these traditions leaves one wondering about the fate of the social structure.
Sometimes these decisions are so arbitrary, so capricious, as to be entirely
indefensible. For instance, in D. T. Niane’s edition of the story, Fran Kamara, king of
Mema, first makes the exiled prince Sunjata his viceroy, then names him successor
to the throne if Sunjata would decide to remain in Mema rather than press plans to
return to Manding. Kamara’s advisers endorse the offer, clearly because it has been
announced as a royal fiat that may not be gainsaid, and we of course wonder on
what moral or constitutional ground a king would award succession to his throne
not to a qualified citizen but to a total outsider, however well endowed. Then there
are those panegyric epithets, recited by Banna Kanute in Innes’s edition of the story,
to the effect that as a result of Sunjata’s frequent war-mongering, his people revolted
against him, whereupon
He waged war against Manding nineteen times,
He rebuilt Manding nineteen times. (237: verses 2062–63)

The great hero and king, making war on his own people just to safeguard his para-
mountcy? It has also been recorded that, on his return from his mission to punish the
Jolof king for his insult on Sunjata, the Taraware warrior Tira Makhang was set upon
 ISIDORE OKPEWHO ! 71

and assassinated by a band of soldiers sent by Sunjata, who obviously felt his kingship
threatened by the now acknowledged heroism of Tira Makhang: this historic conflict
between the Keita and Taraware clans has had repercussions in Mali’s contemporary
political life (Johnson, “Dichotomy of Power” 15).
These are not idle questions. Even if we allow that there is no more than a
mythic or symbolic import to many details in these traditions, we are at any rate
justified in questioning the logic of the powers claimed by our epic heroes and the
fate of communities that find themselves at the receiving end of their whims. We are
justified because, in the postindependence record of indigenous African governance
of nearly every African nation, we find the same capriciousness in our real-life lead-
ers—Mobutu, Banda, Bokassa, Amin, Abacha, to name a few—that we find in the
legendary ones, and wonder by what unkind fate the lines between myth and reality
so easily blur in Africa. What I am castigating here is not so much history or tradi-
tion, about which we can do nothing now, as the uses to which they have been put
by African leaders in the sociopolitical dispensations of our day. The problems we
all face, whether we are scholars reflecting on epic texts in the comfort of our study
or peasants on whom the cost of our leaders’ whims rests far less easily, are too real
for us to pretend the epics we celebrate have no bearing on our present condition.
This does not mean we should stop collecting epics. It only means that, in studying
them whether as literary or cultural legacies, we also ask questions that might help
our people address problems of today created by the fault-lines of history. The fault
may lie with outsiders who imposed certain systems and outlooks on us. But it may
also lie with ourselves.
I began these reflections by lamenting the conditions that forced many of us to
leave our countries and seek refuge in the United States and elsewhere in the West.
But I really should acknowledge that it is precisely this condition of exile that has
enabled me to see my scholarly preoccupations in a broader perspective, especially in
terms of appreciating the continuities between the traditions of Africa and the African
diaspora. I believe I can say, with some degree of certainty, that scholars in a country
like Nigeria are severely limited by available resources in the scope of investigations
they can pursue. The result of this is to render the curriculum in the university
departments unduly parochial in their outlook. For instance, at the English Depart-
ment of the University of Ibadan, which I know best, African American and Caribbean
literatures have for about three decades had the status of compulsory courses at both
undergraduate and graduate levels. But even with the best of intentions, scholarly and
pedagogic efforts in these fields have been rather token, due to a dearth of materials
and of incentives for growth. Those scholars who have the occasional opportunity
to travel out may come home with a few books and articles, but the climate in which
they return to work hardly encourages anything like an extended dialogue with the
intellectual culture from which they have brought home those articles.
Living and working in America has, therefore, helped many of us to achieve a
certain sense of fulfillment by providing us the resources and “a liberating space,” as
Kofi Anyidoho recently called it (2), for degrees of intellectual growth we had only
distantly craved in Africa. Yet the irony here is that having so much at our disposal
makes us equally sad to think how many of those we left behind, especially the stu-
dents, would wish they had even a modest share of these resources. Now and then,
we hear that someone or other in the academy has left to pursue a lucrative position
in a multinational corporation or a political post at the state or federal level, putting
72 ! RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITER ATURES

an already impoverished situation so much deeper in starvation. In a sense, then, the

intellectual famine steadily destroying our institutions is comparable in scale to the
periodic tragedies—bomb explosions and all that—that claim lives in the general
society. If I may be permitted to adjust some lines from Walcott,
How can we face such slaughter and be cool?
How can we turn from Africa and live?
(“A Far Cry from Africa” 18)

The point I am urging here is that, however challenging our investigations of

cultural and other continuities between Africa and the diaspora may be, we cannot
justly ignore the political issues in which such efforts are imbricated. And it may be
well for us to recall that these studies have their foundations in the work of Black
intellectuals and activists—DuBois, Padmore, James, Blyden, and others—who saw
the liberation of the race as basically an ethical duty and drew no lines whatsoever
between their intellectual and political charges. If we can only recognize that there is
something fundamentally wrong in the conduct of affairs in Africa, we should commit
our intellectual and other energies to an agenda of restitution. It is not enough to send
books to university libraries or even to reorient our analytical strategies in a more
radical direction. Nor is it enough for our disciplinary associations (ALA, ASA, etc.)
to make such solidarity gestures as holding periodic conferences in “safe” countries
on the continent. We need to go further by actively lending our support to initiatives
undertaken, at various levels and forums, whether by the United States government
or by international organizations, to hold African governments down to their obliga-
tions to create a healthy atmosphere and humane conditions for life and work in their
countries, and to impose severe restrictions (especially of funds and movement) on
governments whose records (in human rights, probity, etc.) are even remotely ques-
tionable. If we continue to pretend it is not our business that electoral rules are juggled
and elections rigged with impunity by incumbent governments; that journalists and
writers are silenced and even executed, often at the prompting or connivance of lead-
ers who are never called to question; that justice ministers are assassinated and the
culprits are allowed to move about with considerable freedom—if we as Africanist
scholars let these gross abuses pass without loudly crying foul, then what is the real
goal of our interest in Africa? We have usually designed convenient tags for identifying
the continent’s political, cultural, and other stages of experience: precolonial, conflict
of cultures, postcolonial, etc. Perhaps we are waiting for one or more of its countries
to self-destruct before we can find the right tag for its afterlife?
It will be clear, from the above reflections, that I am the kind of exile Said
recently described as “exist[ing] in a median state, neither completely at one with the
new setting nor fully disencumbered of the old” (49). On the other hand, one does
not really need to be an exile to appreciate the ugliness of the conditions that prevail
in many an African country today. I admit that having grown up in Africa makes me
more sensitive to the deterioration of things than one who never lived there. But if we
are all in the business of making a living from studying Africa, it really makes little
difference which one of us calls for the sort of critical orientation I have recommended
here. If we are not part of the solution, we are clearly part of the problem.
I vaguely recall that, in the telephone conversation I had with Bob Cancel about
the ALA conference in San Diego, he requested me to give him the title of the pre-
sentation I would make at the plenary session he was putting together. It took me a
 ISIDORE OKPEWHO ! 73

while to come up with a title. And I must ask his indulgence if the topic I chose, and
the presentation I have given here, is not exactly the sort of song he expected me to
sing for my dinner. Perhaps I am still a little disoriented.

NOT E
1. In Innes’s edition of the story (63–71: verses 515–660), the griot Bamba Suso
introduces the leaders summoned by Sunjata to his alliance: Kama Fofana, Makhang
Kamara, Sankarang Madiba Konte, Sora Musa (i.e., Faa Koli), and Tira Makhang. Both
Madiba Konte (verse 554) and Faa Koli (verse 610) question the special attention given by
Sunjata to Tira Makhang.

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Innes, Gordon, ed. Sunjata: Three Mandinka Versions. London: School of Oriental and
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. Once Upon a Kingdom: Myth, Hegemony, and Identity. Bloomington: Indiana UP,
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