The Slave's Rebellion: Literature, History, Orature

7. Slavery in African Literary discourse: Orality Contra Realism in Yor

121 7 Slavery in African Literary Discourse Orality contra Realism in Yorùbá Oríkì and Omq Olókùn Á3in The governing assumptions of orality scholarship have served theoretical constructions of the unity of precolonial and postcolonial African experience very well, probably because its paradigms are highly amenable to analyzing the raw materials of the history of peoples with a relatively short experience of writing. Adopting axioms of orality studies, particularly those that stress the functionality of oral texts and the dynamics of immediacy in oral communication, enables African critics to produce sophisticated explanations of what distinguishes African cultures from others, especially modern European traditions. Literary and cultural criticisms of this kind generally treat oral and folkloric forms as signifiers and carriers of Africa’s native consciousness. Forms introduced under the aegis of European conquest, even when they are very old, are considered modern mainly because they are written. When such modern forms, such as the novel, enter wide usage and popular consciousness, critics account for their Africanness with the relationships they share with oral traditional practices. As a result, literary histories produced under the orality-literacy rubric assign textual “Africanity” by the closeness of each work to oral and precolonial forms. Adeeko, Slave's Rebelion 5/5/05 3:56 PM Page 121 In “The African Imagination,” for example, Abiola Irele argues that “despite the impact of print culture on the African experience and its role in the determination of new cultural modes, the tradition of orality remains predominant, serving as a central paradigm for various kinds of expression on the continent” (56). He suggests further that the immanent dynamics of African textuality embodied in the performance practices of the nonliterate griot can yield valuable insights into the “phatic, ludic, aesthetic, didactic, ideological, and symbolic” dimensions of African cultural production in both precolonial and postcolonial epochs. Harold Scheub, in his own study of the general patterns of the development of African narrative arts, is even more emphatic than Irele on the dominance of orality in the evolution of African literature and culture. He advances the thesis that “there is an unbroken continuity in African verbal art forms, from interacting oral genres to such literary productions as the novel and poetry. The strength of oral tradition seems not to have abated; through three literary periods, a reciprocal linkage has worked these media into a unique art form against which potent influences from East and West have proved unequal” (1). The tendency outlined by Irele and Scheub that oral traditions constitute the classics of African narrative aesthetics is also accepted by many influential historians looking for ways to demonstrate the truism that African history is deeper and vaster than the history of Europeans in Africa. Bolá1lé Awf, a prominent member of the well-known Ìbàdàn school of African history , suggested some time ago that historians of nonliterate societies such as Africa should view oral literary traditions as valuable sources for chronicling the evolution of social and cultural consciousness. Her presumption is that oratures, like written creative artifacts, do sublimate the dominant mentalities of their production and consumption milieu, and that historians of oral epochs should be able to revive and make them useful for an enhanced comprehension of the moving spirit of such times. Oral traditions may not be very reliable for the literal facts they claim, but patterns of verbal stresses and aesthetic elaboration in them may disclose clues about measures of significance that determine historical deeds in times gone by.1 Karin Barber ’s study of “the way language is used” in the praise poems of nineteenthcentury Ìbàdàn war chiefs outlines, in the spirit of Awf’s recommendations, the shifting contours of the concept of greatness at a precise historical moment among a Yorùbá people. Her well-received literary-anthropological study of oríkì, I Could Speak Until Tomorrow, demonstrates consistently how the content and form of oratures attest to the ideological machinations of the living societies that consume them. the slave’s rebellion 122 Adeeko, Slave's Rebelion 5/5/05 3:56 PM Page 122 The readings of Yorùbá lineage praise poetry, oríkì oríle, proposed in this chapter follow the Awf and Barber line of social inquiry and not the one that presents oral traditions as capsules of African “human essences.” My main focus is on the marginal presence of subaltern...