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Research in African Literatures 33.3 (2002) 240-243



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Hero Worshiping in African Literature:
The Case of David Attwell


Dear Editor:

Since scholars are more accustomed to doing obsequies and encomiums for departed colleagues than to composing praise songs for their compeers (or superiors), I was particularly intrigued by the two full-blown essays devoted to honoring Bernth Lindfors in your recent pages (34.4 [2001]: 143-54). Those essays are particularly interesting because they go beyond the scopes of the usual brief acknowledgments that scholars habitually append to their books. Of the two, however, Kenneth Harrow's gives a statement whose breadth and reach are more considerably balanced and objective. He begins by lauding Lindfors for the wide scope of his scholarly interests, which cover "the entire history of African literature: that he began the study of African literature not only when it was in its infancy, but that he was part of that beginning of the critical work [. . .] and has continued to be a bellwether for the discipline" (147). He then praises Lindfors for "the cohort of major scholars" he has raised, before going on to acknowledge that Lindfors's work nevertheless has both "strengths and weaknesses" (148).

In subjecting to scrutiny what he calls Lindfors's "principles," for example, Harrow finds that Lindfors could not possibly have covered every major linguistic region of Africa, so his field has been limited to "anglophonic literature, and in his early work almost exclusively in anglophonic literature" (148). Second, though Lindfors played a key role, along with publishers like Heinemann, in the establishment and definition of the canon of African literature, he has justified his role "through the notion that standards of publication have demanded certain approaches and values without asking whether this process of canonization might have implicitly advanced larger modernist projects grounded in Western epistemologies" (148-49). Consequently, Lindfors has "taken strong stances against those developments [. . .] that have led us from structuralism to poststructuralism to deconstruction to postmodernism" while holding to "the virtue of biographical and historical approaches" (149). By which I understand Harrow as saying that Bernth Lindfors is human: he is coming from somewhere and his work cannot possibly be devoid of a politics, an ideological agenda.

Harrow raises a pertinent point when he links the underlying passion in Lindfors's work both as a published scholar and as the editor of Research in African Literatures from 1970-1989 to issues of power: "Decisions over who will retain possession of the important works of culture, who decides what are important works of culture, and who will be empowered to produce such works are at the heart of all African areas of cultural production, from film to books. And these decisions are inseparable from the culture and intellectual industries of the West" (151). In conclusion, Harrow describes Bernth Lindfors's work as a search for "truth," adding, however, [End Page 240] that "truth is not an independent concept; that it is bound up with the same forces and interest that contrive to produce a culture, that is, forces with their own interests and that are articulated in the clothing provided by truth" (152).

For his part, David Attwell develops a picture of Lindfors that is rather larger than life, without any blemishes, a superman hero. He thinks Lindfors is sacrosanct because of his great achievements, and he proceeds rather less cautiously than Harrow to cut down others in order to enlarge the greatness of his subject of admiration. A former student of Lindfors, Attwell sees his mentor as an integral part, even the engine of African literary studies not only in Texas but the United States as a whole. A dynamo with a boundless energy and vision, Lindfors has drawn students like a magnet from the Third World: "So where in this squared-off, seemingly unnuanced intellectual complex was African literature? The answer was, in Lindfors's office [. . .] a haven, a nest, an oasis" (143). And as for "a few faculty who did not even know who Lindfors was," Attwell excoriates, "[t]hey should have known, since his research output was more voluminous than most, as...

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