Perspectives on Written Cameroon Literature in English

6. Ideology In Three Dramatic Works: Victor Epie Ngome’s What God Has Put Asunder, And Bate Besong’s Beasts Of No Nation And Requiem For The Last Kaiser

101 6 Ideology In Three Dramatic Works: Victor Epie Ngome’s W What God Has Put Asunder, And Bate Besong’s Beasts Of No Nation And Requiem For The Last Kaiser. The well-known Marxist model of society consists of the economic base and the superstructure. The base is made up of the material means of production, distribution and exchange, while the superstructure is the ‘cultural world of ideas, art, religion, law and so on’ (Barry 1995: 158). According to Marxist scholars, the elements of the superstructure are not ‘innocent’ but invariably shaped or determined by the economic base. In the domain of Marxist criticism there is nothing like an original Marxist aesthetics for the simple reason that beyond their scattered comments on art and literature, the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, never evolved any sustained theory of art and literature. The narrative of Marxist aesthetics today is but an attempt by later scholars to apply Marxist ideas to art and literature, one of which is ‘ideology’, the key term in this article. While an orientation in Marxist aesthetics, known as ‘vulgar’ Marxist criticism, would privilege the exploration of works of literature solely for their ideological content and relating it to class struggle and the economy, the critical Marxist approach adopted in this article is one which seeks to explain the three Anglophone Cameroonian dramatic texts under discussion from both the ideological and aesthetic perspectives, showing how these are rooted in the social and general history of the authors’ epoch. Coined by a French man, Antoine Destutt de Tracy in 1796, the term ‘idéologie’ (ideology) was fated to develop fully in the hands of Marxists like Karl Marx, Lenin, Antonio 102 Gramsci and others, hence its centrality in Marxist Criticism today. A slippery term that does not have a single accepted definition but rather rival definitions, ‘ideology’ is considered by David McLellan to be ‘the most elusive concept in the whole of the social sciences’ (Quoted in Heywood [1992] 2003:5). The impossibility of an easy definition thus indicated, the definition chosen for the purpose of this study, which will be modified in the course of the discussion, is the one proposed by Andrew Heywood: Ideology is a more or less coherent set of ideas that provides the basis for organized political action whether this is intended to preserve, modify or overthrow the existing system of power. All ideologies therefore (a) offer an account of the existing order, usually in the form of a ‘world-view’ (b) advance a model of desired future, a vision of the ‘good society,’ and (c) explain how political change can and should be brought about – how to get from (a) to (b). (Ibid: 12). A weapon sometimes used by people to criticize or condemn those with a rival set of ideas or beliefs, ideology possesses an emotional and affective character since it is a means of expressing people’s hopes and fears as well as their aspirations and sympathies. The objective world is out there, but the way we see or interpret it is due to our ideology; for, according to Heywood, we ‘look at the world through a veil of theories, presuppositions and assumptions that shape what we see and thereby impose meaning on the world’ (Ibid:13). And when we sometimes accuse others of being ‘ideological’ even when we are guilty of the very sin, adds Heywood, it is because in making us see the world through a ‘veil’ of assumptions, ideology is ‘effectively invisible’. Radical critics with unpopular “social priorities” are often regarded as “ideological”, says Terry Eagleton. For him this is because ‘ideology is always a way of describing other people’s 103 interests rather than one’s own’ (Eagleton 1983:211). Elsewhere Eagleton stresses that ‘Ideology is not in the first place a set of doctrines; it signifies the way men live out their roles in class-society, the values, ideas and images which tie them to their social functions and so prevent them from a true knowledge of society as a whole … the imaginary ways in which men experience the real world’ (Eagleton 1976:16, 17, 18). In the preface to the latter work, Eagleton affirms that literature is a vector of ideology when he says ‘ideologies [are] the ideas, values and feelings by which men experience their societies at various times. And certain of those ideas, values and feelings are available...