Comparative Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies

Language and Culture in African Postcolonial Literature

Language and Culture in African Postcolonial Literature Kwaku Asante-Darko Post-colonial literature is a synthesis of protest and imitation. It blends revolt and conciliation. This duality permeates its stratagem, its style, and its themes in a manner that is not always readily perceptible to critics. This has practical didactic implications for the contemporary literary endeavor in Africa. The central concern of this article is to assess the extent to which African protest literature seems to have imitated European and colonial literary discourse in matters such as thematic concerns, aesthetics, and methodology. The relationship of imitation, exchange, and hybridity is presented with the view to highlighting the thematic, methodological, and aesthetic differences between some aspects of African literature on one hand and the Western literary tradition on the other. The African colonial experience has dominated the origin and nature of contemporary African protest literature and rendered it opposed to Western standards of aesthetics. This Manichean perception must have been a reaction to Horace’s position, “O imitatores, servum pecus!” Imitators are a servile race. The rejection was reinforced by the general impression that Africa needed to evolve a literature that will not be an imitation of the literary norms of Europe. It is therefore not surprising that authors of protest literature advocated a literary endeavor, whose style, language, aesthetic standards and concerns were required to be different from those of the colonizing powers who were seen as having subjugated them and undervalued every aspect of their lives. The desire for originality was thus to become the prerequisite for authentic African literature, which would explore Africa’s past, buttress its present, and advocate a hopeful future. Wauthier observed that: “The hero of the African novel 1 is nearly always black, and if by chance he is white as in Le Regard du roi by Camara Laye, the action at least is situated in Africa and the story deals with African mentality. The poet, for his part, sings of the African woman and the land of Africa, or denounces colonialism” (Wauthier 1966, 24). It is from this perspective that Negritude came to be seen as an aggressive anti-racist condemnation of white supremacy. A closer look at the strands that went into weaving the fabric of this Negritude protest literature, however, reveals that in executing its work of protest, Negritude imitated some of the objectives and methods of the very racism it kicked against. It is worthy of note that in doing this, there is a move to the imitation of some of the salient methods of the colonial enterprise: The written word which colonialism had introduced to many parts of hitherto unlettered corners of the continent of Africa. The wide range of transformation occasioned by this attests not only to the necessity of literacy but also to the flexibility and pragmatism of African peoples when it comes to adapting to new exigencies. Jacques Chevrier explains the nature and impact of this novelty when he notes that: “A une civilisation de l’oralité se substitue donc progressivement une civilisation de l’écriture don’t l’émergence est attestée par l’apparition d’une littérature négro-africaine en langue française. Cette littérature, don’t les premières manifestations remontent à 1921, s’est affirm ée dans les années qui ont précédé l’accession à l’indépendance des États africains et elle s’est déployée dans plusieurs directions” (Chevrier 1984, 25). It must be noted, however that the social change introduced by this literary change was not completely imbibed as Chevrier seems to suggest here. To the rejection of the European literary style was added a measure of mistrust , however sullen, the mistrust of the entire European way of life. Michael Dei-Anang in a poem entitled “Whither Bound Africa” disputed the adoption or imitation of European civilization in the following words: “Forward! To what? / To the reeking round Of medieval crimes, / Where the greedy hawks/ O Aryan stock / Prey with bombs and guns / On men of lesser breed?” (Dei-Anang 18–19). The ravages of the Second World War thus become a symbol of European cultural indecency, and a justification for the rejection of Western values. Nonetheless, the universal nature of these European problems, and their implicit relevance to the Africa situation is reflected in the transposition of some European themes into the Africa environment. For instance, Sophocles’ King Oedipus is transposed as The Gods are not to Be Blamed by...