By Denja Abdullahi
Abstract
The winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature by Wole Soyinka in 1986 reestablished the importance of literature written by Africans in world literature. It introduced a peculiar kind of politics into African literature with respect to the canonisation of African writers and their works and the agency of eurocentrism in determining that through the Nobel Prize. The controversies surrounding the winning of the Nobel Prize by African writers beginning from Wole Soyinka to Abdulrazaq Gurnah, in their particularities, foreground the unending debate about who really is an African writer, in what languages should African literature be written and what kind of ideology should drive African literature? This paper examines some of the contentions that have come into play within Africa and among writers and readers of African literature with the winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature by African writers with a view to highlighting the positive and negative impacts of the Nobel Prize on African literature. The paper is premised on the submissions reached at the international colloquium on “Twenty Years After the Nobel Prize: Literature, Governance and Development in Africa” organised by the Association of Nigerian Authors(ANA) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile- Ife in 2006 in its analysis of the major issues that have come up afterwards till date.
Keywords: Nobel Prize, Reception, canonization, African writer, African literature , impact.
Introduction
In 2006, the Association of Nigerian Authors(ANA) held an international colloquium at the Obafemi Awolowo University ,Ile-Ife, in Nigeria with the theme “Twenty Years After the Nobel Prize: Literature, Governance and Development in Africa.” The colloquium that had in attendance scholars and writers all over Africa was also witnessed by two out of the four Nobel Prize for Literature winners Africa had produced by then: Wole Soyinka (1986) and Nadine Godimer (1991). The hosting of the colloquium itself was a recognition of the fact that the winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature by Wole Soyinka in 1986 as the first black African writer to achieve that was a watershed in African literature. The colloquium was thus a review of what that win had influenced or the shift it had caused in African letters and whether the ripple effects of that win made any significant impact on governance and development in the continent in the following two decades. The presentations at the colloquium analysing the developments in African literature since the two decades of Soyinka’s win, which were collated into a book entitled After the Nobel Prize: Reflections on African Literature ,Government and Development had the editors (Gbemisola Adeoti& Mabel Evwierhoma,2009)) remarking in the introduction to the book that the announcement of the Soyinka’s winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986 came with both celebration and indifference with some seeing it “as a landmark achievement for the writer, African literature and polity…To others.., it was a western prize awarded by westerners to another westerner ,but this time,from a different clime(11). While this ambivalence was the reception given to the winning of the Prize by Soyinka in 1986 as conditioned by the ideological stance of African writers and the readers of African literature at that time, the summation given by the editors of the general submissions at the colloquium being referred to was that indeed African literature had experienced tremendous growth since the Soyinka’s Nobel but could do better if Africa could overcome its ever present grim existential problems with greater commitment by its writers to participating in improving the polity in the mould of Wole Soyinka whose art and acts “transcends the traditional boundaries of arts and politics (20).
Biodun Jeyifo, in his keynote presentation at the colloquium entitled “The Unfortunate Children of Fortunate Parents: Reflections on African Literature in the Wake of 1986 and the Age of Neoliberal Globalisation” foregrounds Wole Soyinka’s towering artistic oeuvre before 1986 that had long established him as belonging ‘in the very front ranks of world literature” (23). Biodun Jeyifo proceeds to assert that, before the Nobel that came to Soyinka in 1986, African literature itself “had become full blown staple of the curriculum of literary studies” and that the Nobel prize to Soyinka though welcomed, was not being waited upon to confer any validation or conviction on “the significance of African Literature to Africa and Africans and to the whole world,” (24). Rather, Jeyifo wants the winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature by an African writer only in 1986 with the long rich history of African writings and writers to be seen as a pointer to the reluctant admissibility of African literature as a major “current of world literature and an important front in global decolonisation.(27). Tejumola Olaniyan, in his own take, submitted that the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Wole Soyinka in 1986 has had a generally positive effects on African literary creativity in the last two decades since the award, with the effusion of new literary talents across Africa and in the diaspora that had also won literary prizes and accolades for their writings.(46).
Without doubt, the Nobel Prize in Literature is an important literary prize which first win by a black African writer in the person of Wole Soyinka in 1986 brought about new dimensions to the unending debates of who an African writer is, in what language should he/she write, what should be the major concern of his/her writing and to whom should his/her writing be addressed or beholden? That Noble also brought its controversies about who is most deserving of the prize among the arrays of notable African writers and what and which intrinsic and extrinsic “politics” should an African writer play to be considered for the prize? The Nobel Prize for Literature and its reception in African literature by its award to four other Africans since Wole Soyinka (1986) to Abdulrazaq Gurnah (2021), has also thrown up the subtle but immense power of the literary prize in the canonisation of certain kinds of writers and literatures. Sifting through these many controversies surrounding the Nobel Prize for Literature as it is received and the impact it has made on African literary development positively or negatively and how African literature and writing can continue to thrive with or without the Nobel gaze will be the focus of the subsequent sections of this essay.
Canonisation in African Literature: The Nobel Prize and Other Agencies
It is a fact that, before the advent of the Nobel Prize award to Wole Soyinka in 1986, African literature from its oral forms right up to the advent of written literature with the coming of colonialism and imperialism had had its various centres of flourish, discourse and engagement going back to the works of writers of African origin who wrote the slave narratives in the diaspora such as Olaudah Equiano and others. The struggle of writers and academics such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o in Makerere University in the 1960s to decolonise the curricula of the English language and literature departments to include works written by African in colonial languages and in even African languages are well documented. The various African writers conferences held in the continent and outside it before 1986 such as the famous 1962 Makerere African Writers Conference were all attempts to define and set up standards for African literature and put up canonical structures within the confines and peculiarities of African literary history and practices.
While canon formation in literature may not be a conscious effort, it has been widely established that canonisation of a text or a writer goes through some procedure propped up by some processes ,institutions and circumstances. Wale Oyedele, in paraphrasing Ross, stated that “the sense of the canon…is that body of writing and other creative works that have been recognized as standard or authoritative” (155). He went on to advance that canonisation occurs when a “text hits a particular momentum of reception by an audience in its lifetime” (157). The question to ask here is who sets up the standards that admits a work into a canon and which audience adjudges a work as befitting the status of a canon? Saleh Abdu, in his keynote speech at the 36th International Convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), held in 2017 characterised that the process of forming a literary canon is often self-serving and fraught with arbitrariness and exclusivity( Saleh Abdu, 2017). Nonetheless, Wale Oyedele notes that the process of literary canonisation is often a function of the academy, prominent literary prizes and publishing houses (162-163). We are well aware of the power of the academy in promoting the canon because it is there that it is decided which texts to teach year in year out and which authors should be focused on. What determines these choices is dependent on the politics of what to include or exclude in relation to the general educational philosophies of those institutions and even inflected by their locations.In terms of critical enterprise, the same academy through the workings of its individual members or collectively determines the texts, body of works and the writers to receive robust critical attention or not and be the focus of continuous seminars, workshops and colloquiums. The academy extends further its influence in canonisation through its involvement in the agency of the award of literary prizes. Most literary prizes have, on their boards,experts from the academy mixed up with other experts within the book industry such as writers, literary editors, illustrators, media-based literary critics, book sellers, expert readers, etc. The publishing houses are also agents of canonisation as they determine the books worthy of publishing and promoting and they do also have their subtle links to the academy. An admixture of the roles played by the academy, literary prizes and publishing houses in forming the canon cannot be overemphasised.
We had earlier on pointed out the struggle by African writers and literary critics in 1960s, before the Nobel Prize for Literature first came to Africa in 1986, to put African literary texts and orature into the body of work taught as the “canon” in even universities based in Africa and the later struggles that went into establishing Africana or African studies departments in universities in the global North, where such texts became main staples. All these pointed at the fact that it took an usual long time for African literature to begin to make an appearance from the margins in which it was confined into mainstream “world literature”; a concept said to have been first addressed by Wolfgang Von Goethe of Germany to account for the multiverse and pluriverse realities of global letters. (Saleh Abdu,2017). However, long before the Nobel Prize and its attendant controversies berthed in Africa, Africans had been having canonical conversations among themselves right from its traditional periods of empire formation through oral epic poetry, court literature and scribal traditions that binds the religious and the secular together across many kingdoms. And the most poignant example of a canonisation structure in African literature at the advent of written literature was that of African Writers Series (AWS) established by Alan Hill of Heinemann Educational Books (HEB) which was formally inaugurated with the publication of the paperback edition of Chinua Achebe’s modern African literary classical novel Things Fall Apart, earlier released by the same publishing house in hardcover in 1958. This series between 1962-2003 had published about 250 literary texts across various genres-novel, short story, drama, anthology, autobiography, non-fiction, oral tradition and poetry (Nourdin Bejjit, 2019). The series edited by various persons in its history, with Chinua Achebe as one of the founding editors, selected texts written by African writers of various nationalities across the major colonial languages spoken in Africa(most originally written in English and others translated into English ) and reflected adequately the plurality of African creative literary expressions. It can be asserted in the context of this paper that the African Writers Series(AWS) as a publishing outfit ,though established by someone from outside the continent, was a major agency for the canonization of African literature and writers within Africa and outside it. This was made possible, because, as stated by Nourdin Bejjit:
The African Writers Series(AWS)enabled the dissemination of African literature worldwide and contributed to the creation of a critical sensitivity among readers and critics alike to its qualities and values. It is difficult to imagine the existence of a solid ‘tradition’ of African literature in English without the African Writers Series(12 ).
The African Writers Series has the unequalled fame of bringing into prominence – through its working methods of “re-issuing titles in or translated into English”(19 ) and the publication of the works of new writers- such African writers as Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, Ayi Kwei Armah, T.M. Aluko, Kofi Awoonor, Elechi Amadi, Gabriel Okara,Mongo Beti, Dennis Brutus, Thomas Mfolo, David Kunene, Peter Abraham, Alex La Guma, Tayeb Salih, Yambo Ouologuem, Mariama Ba, Flora Nwapa, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, Robert Serumaga, Bessie Head, Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, Thomas Mofolo, Cheikh Ahmadou Kane, Taha Hussein, Tawfik Al Hakim, Meja Mwangi, Sembene Ousmane, Ferdinand Oyono, Ahmadou Koromah, Taban Lo Lyong, Tchaya Utamsi, Nuruddin Farh, Yoseff Idris, Naguib Mahfouz,Leopold Sedar Senghor, Camara Laye, David Diop, etc. The works of these slew of African writers circulated widely across Africa and the world, solidified cross -cultural understanding of Africa and its literary and socio-political sensibilities within Africa and outside it. The African Writers Series to use the words of Tanure Ojiade can be said to have established “the cultural identity of modern African literature…” and could be presumed to have been “ a major consideration in establishing a canon for its text.” ( 9).
This robust history of the African Writers Series as a canon-formation agency for African literature later threw up its implication in the reception of the Nobel Prize for Literature when the Swedish Academy turned its gaze to African literature in 1986 through the award of the first Nobel Prize for Literature to a black African writer which was Wole Soyinka. The politics and controversies surrounding the award and reception of the Nobel Prize for Literature to the five African writers that have won it so far since 1986 (from Wole Soyinka to Abdulrazaq Gurnah) will be the concern of the remaining segments of this paper.
Wole Soyinka and the Nobel Prize
As the first black African writer and the first black writer in the whole wide world to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986 since its commencement in 1902, Wole Soyinka’s win brought about the necessary adulation and celebration in Nigeria and the continent as well as consternation in some circles on why the first Nobel Prize for literature in Africa should go to Wole Soyinka rather than Chinua Achebe who had long gained a honorific reputation as the “Father of Modern African Literature” on account of the soaring success of his 1958 classical novel, Things Fall Apart, which has long settled into the class of canonical texts of world literature. Achebe’s image as the then living patriarch of African literature was also achieved in relation to his work as one of the founding editors of the African Writers Series that announced and promoted numerous African writers and texts into the African and global literary spheres. That alone for many readers of African literature made Achebe deserving of Africa’s first Nobel Prize in literature. On the other hand, no one can dispute Wole Soyinka’s accomplishment as a profound and prolific writer with qualitative texts across all the genres of literature but what was questioned by his literary traducers is his obscurantist and eurocentric literary style that tends to pander towards global aesthetics rather than a purely African one. A literary critical troika led by Chinweizu released a highly polemical work Towards the Decolonisation of African Literature in 1980 which highly criticised Soyinka’s style and thematic concerns in his works as eurocentric and obscurantist. Literary critic of that mould were quick to point out as earlier referenced in this paper by Gbemisola Adeoti and Mabel Evwrhiorma that “it was a western prize awarded by westerners to another westerner;” the westerner in black skin being Wole Soyinka. Against the backdrop of Wole Soyinka’s earlier denouncement of the African Writers Series as engaged in the “ghettorisation” of African Literature and subsequent refusal to allow his works be published under the series, his critics concluded that though the quality of his literary production may be deserving of the Nobel, his politics as an African writer did not make him appropriate for the initial glory as the first winning African. Subsequent polite quarrelling between him and Achebe on account of a statement said to have been made by Achebe to the effect that winning the Nobel Prize Prize did not make Wole Soyinka “the Asiwaju (leader) of African Literature” exacerbated the feeling in some quarters that the Nobel was handed over to Soyinka by the Swedish Academy to spite Achebe and other African writers who had done much more overtly to project Africa ideologically and culturally in their writings.
The controversy over who should have first won the Nobel Prize in Africa between Soyinka and Achebe continued way till the death of Chinua Achebe in 2013 with Achebe’s supporters every year, since Soyinka won, expecting Achebe to be named a winner. Even at Achebe’s death in 2013, some of his literary admirers continued to expect a posthumous Nobel Prize award to him leading to Wole Soyinka’s angry retort in a newspaper interview that the call for him to nominate Achebe posthumously for the Nobel award (being qualified to nominate as a previous winner) had gone “beyond sickening.. obscene and irreverent.” He went on further to ask: “ was it the Nobel that spurred a young writer, stung by eurocentric portrayal of African reality, to put pen to paper and produce Things Fall Apart?”( www.theguardian.com, May 20,2013). In that same interview Soyinka debunked the honorific appellation often attached to Achebe’s name by his admirers as the “Father of African Literature,” wondering if Achebe was the first to write in Africa and whether his literary productivity pales into oblivion the literature produced in several parts of Africa from the pre-colonial period in African indigenous languages to the post-colonial time of the multiplicity of African letters in several other world languages.
Supporters of both writers, Soyinka and Achebe, vis-a-vis the Nobel Prize, have advanced subtle reasons why one won it and the other did not. Like Kole Omotoso summed up in his book Achebe or Soyinka : A Study in Contrast , while Achebe has been one-dimensional, often adversarial towards Europe in his writings, Soyinka is more adept at engaging with the multiplicity of the cultures of the world in his literary productivity (128). This adroitness is often ascribed as the reason for the eurocentric Swedish academy’s affinity towards awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to Soyinka rather than Achebe. Another popular Nigerian writer, Elechi Amadi, may have summed up another reason why Achebe never won the Nobel Prize, when he said that the 20 years hiatus Achebe took from writing and publishing as a result of the Nigeria- Biafra Civil war of 1967-1970, stymied his literary creativity and therefore he could not produce enough to merit the Nobel Prize( 2014). Many other persons have pointed out the prodigious literary productivity of Soyinka across all genres as against Achebe’s lean harvest to argue on who out of the two really merited the Nobel Prize. To some others, Achebe had long nailed his Nobel coffin when, in 1977 he published his stridently scathing essay against eurocentrism; “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” (Massachusetts Review, 1977).
Nagouib Mahfouz and the Nobel Prize
While Wole Soyinka may not be unfamiliar to the western world before he was awarded the Nobel by virtue of the language with which he wrote and by the intrinsic engagement with the west in his writings, Nagouib Mahfouz, an Egyptian writer in Arabic, was not too well known to the west, except in translation,some of which appeared in the African Writers Series. He was before his 1988 win a very popular writer in the Arabic speaking parts of Africa and the world and for particularly his convention- ruffling novel Children of Gebelawi and other monumental works such as the Cairo Trilogy. Nagouib Mahfouz’s Nobel win coming two years after Soyinka’s Nobel was well received by many in the continent even in other non-Arabic speaking parts as he had been translated into English and published in the famous African Writers Series. As argued by Mashrur Shahid Hossain, in his paper, “Nobel, Ogun, and the Africas:
African Nobel Laureates in Literature vis-à-vis Outsiderness and Otherness,” Nagouib Mahfouz was considered a sort of an outsider to the “eurocentric and white-centric” Nobel because of the “linguistic and cultural distances” of his works to the west (765). Nevertheless, the Nobel reified him as an important African and world writer of the Arabic expression and called further attention to his numerous novels that opened up a rare window into the literature and culture of Arabic speaking parts of Africa , snippets of which have been glimpsed from the works of other African writers who originally wrote in Arabic, such as Taha Hussein, Tayeb Salih, Yoseff Hussein and Tawfik Al Hakim.
Nadine Gordimer/ J.M Coetzee and the Nobel Prize
The winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature by Nadine Gordimer(1991) and J.M Cotzee (2003), both white South Africans writers, at the various times they won subtly threw up again the age-long questions of who is an African writer and what is African literature? Though they could not be called blacks but they are regarded as Africans, having lived in Africa and associated themselves as one. Though they are whites, they were known to be foremost opposition intellectuals to the apartheid system of South Africa which prevailed in that country until about 1994. Their literary works in overt manner (Nadine Gordimer) and nuanced ways (J.M.Coetzee) interrogated the evils of the apartheid South Africa regime, from which they could easily have benefited (being whites) and therefore may have contributed immensely to the acceptability of their Nobel Prize wins by the larger African readers and literary critics.
Abdulrazaq Gurnah and the Nobel Prize
Abdulrazaq Gurnah winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021 brought into focus another round of debates about the impact of the Nobel Prize on African literature, having been the first black African- Tanzanian (Zanzibari) writer -since Soyinka, to win the Prize after nearly twenty years it was last won by another African-through white –J.M Coetzee. It was also worthy of note that Abdulrazaq Gurnah has lived the better part of his adult life in the diaspora as an academic and a writer of a tremendous repertoire of ten novels dealing with the broad themes of exile,migration,memory and displacement. The surprise that came about when he was announced as the winner is his relative obscurity within the reading public in Africa and even the world in spite of his visibility as a literary critic of postcolonial literary discourse in the western academia , his popularity in the literary festival circuit across the world, his range of well-crafted novels interrogating the African colonial experience and the accompanying displacement, his being on a shortlist for the Booker Prize for one of his novels in the nineties and having also worked as an advisor for Heinemann for the African Writers Series in 1994 (Bejjit, Nourdin, 24 ). To illustrate this relative obscurity of his literary enterprise within the reading public worldwide, he himself said in an interview with David Shariatmadari after being announced as the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize that “I could do with more readers,” and his long-time editor, Alexander Pringle, expressed in that same report that : “He is one of the greatest living African writers, and no one has ever taken notice of him and it just killed me.” (www.theguardian.com, Oct. 11,2021 ).
To gauge the reception of the announcement of Abdulrazaq Gurnah’s winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021, an online literary magazine, Brittle Paper, conducted a survey among 103 African writers within Africa and the diaspora as soon as the announcement was made and the report was published on the 12th October, 2021 (www.brittlepaper.com, Oct. 12,2021). That report is hereby relied upon in this paper in our assessment of the reception of the win by Abdulrazaq Gurnah and the issues surrounding African literature it threw up or re-stated. The news of the 2021 winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature by another African was received jubilantly in the African literary community. Wole Soyinka himself rejoiced at the announcement and was reported saying that “the Nobel returns home.” The survey which captured both old and young African writers across all nationalities in the continent was unanimous in the various respondents praising Gurnah for his quiet dedication to his craft and his commitment to a lifetime of telling stories about ordinary humans that are displaced and may have been forgotten by history.Many of the respondents observed that the award to Gurnah is an inspiration to the unsung and the diligent writer. Some respondents noted that Gurnah may not have been a popular figure in the public literary imagination but that he has a prolific and large literary presence in European universities and literary festival circuits. Some expressed that the complex identity of Gurnah himself as a Zanzibari, Tanzanian, Swahili, Arab and African is a reflection of the multiplicity of African literature and that his winning the Prize has once again centralised African writing in world literature. Some of the respondents highlighted the fact that without doubt, the award more or less brought Gurnah and his works out from the obscurity outside academia to the global stage and had introduced to the world a new African canon.
Only a handful of writers interviewed admitted not to have read any of Gurnah’s novels. The comments of many other writers interviewed were general and addressed the import of the award to Gurnah as an African and to the position of African literature and its sensibilities in global literary politics. Only few of the respondents made allusions to having a read a few of Gurnah’s books which foreground the reality of Gurnah’s relative obscurity as an African writer even within the circle of African writers and intellectuals who should ordinarily be well read and informed of the works of major and prominent African writers. Okey Ndibe, a popular Nigerian writer, captures that fact well in his response thus: “In awarding Gurnah, the Swedish academy toed a familiar line: according recognition to relatively unknown but undeniably consequential writers.” Okey Ndibe, in his response, alluded to the perennial expectation of most African writers for a more famous and distinguished African writer like Ngugi wa Thiong’o to be awarded the Prize and the same was echoed in Mukoma wa Ngugi’s response as he said: “This is a huge recognition for African literature and East African writing. Certainly, I would have been happier if my father, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, had won …but Africa is home and this a great milestone for the African literary tradition.” I can remember that when Gurnah was announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize in 2021, in an online writing group I belong to, a few of us quipped that if we were asked to select a writer from East Africa deserving of the Prize, it certainly would have been either Ngugi Wa Thiongo or Nuruddin Farah , as these are the popular writers from East Africa in our imagination and possibly the global imagination. But, alas, we were not in control and as expressed by Saleh Abdu in his keynote referred to earlier “most literary prizes on offer today tend to be awarded on the basis of some (a times written) set of culture-specific criteria. Some however operate with undisclosed, even suspect criteria and motive. So often, prizes tend to have strings attached, perhaps the more prestigious the longer and tighter the strings.” Does the Nobel Prize in Literature fit into that kind of mould? A few of the respondents wondered why it would take a committee in “far away Sweden to force the world to (re) read Abdulrazaq Gurnah.” They call to mind the need for Africa to read itself more and translate its literature and share texts across linguistic zones and regions and not wait for foreign-induced affirmation through the Nobel Prize. The three francophone African writers interviewed (Ayi Renaud Dossavi Alipoeh, Edvige Renee Dro & Beth Umubyui Mairesse) were unanimous in their expression of the linguistic violence or displacement being experienced in African literature to the disfavour of writers from the francophone regions of the continent. Their response could be interpreted to mean that the french speaking writers of African origin within the continent are not getting due attention or being read enough by other Africans. Can this also be the reason why out of the five Africans that have won the Nobel,no Francophone African writer is part of them? A few other respondents expressed the wish that the Swedish Academy should train their light more on African women writers and their writings. Undoubtedly, the winning of the Nobel Prize by Abdulrazaq Gurnah in 2021 has brought the necessary and needed attention to his novels and he has definitely become canonised as stated by Tanure Ojiade when he wrote: “ Once a writer wins the Nobel Prize,his/her literature and culture assume a significance that would normally not be accorded it” (3). Maybe without Gurnah winning the Nobel Prize ,this conference dedicated to examining his literary productivity from various perspectives, in which this paper is being presented, would not have taken place and even if it would, it would definitely not be of this importance.
Making the Canon from Within: The Nobel, Other Prizes and Agencies
I will preface this section of my paper with the conclusive paragraph of Mashrur Shahid Hossain’s study of the last four African writers to win the Nobel before Gurnah, which was referenced earlier on :
If the till-now-centre – the West, the Occident, the First World, the Global North – has been determining and evaluating the nature and trend of literatures in the world on the basis of Nobel Prize (given by Swedish Academy), Man Booker Prize (UK-based-and-centred), Pulitzer Prize (USA-based), and ‘Commonwealth’ Prize, time must have come that the till-now-periphery – the East, the Orient, the Third World, the Global South – takes initiative to understand (if not determine) and appreciate (if not evaluate) the nature and trend of literatures in the world. The Nobel Prize must be divested of its universal/izing stature as the testimony or proof of writers’ achievements. The two phases of postcolonialism – relocating cultural nucleus and righting/re-writing colonialist discourses-have been in fruition..Let the third phase of postcolonialism start by having, claiming and practising the authority to define the inside and outside, the other and the same, the loss and attainment on one’s own. One must own one’s own. (782-783 )
In relation to African Literature, the above solicitation by Mashur Shahid Hossain and as implied in the foregoing exposition in this study foregrounds a form of “diaspora positioning” in our contemporary literature as posited by E.E. Sule (2018) in which our younger African writers in the diaspora tend to “de-ethnicise, de-nationalise and de-Africanise their imaginative and intellectual outlook” in their attempts to get western approbation and patronage as in the Nobel and other western literary prizes. E.E. Sule went further to decry the exogenous and “extroverted”” gaze of African literature with African writers in the west and even at home increasingly turning to the west for imagination,artistic form and validation (144). He noted the “west-based canon-making machineries that privilege the novel, the short story, or the fiction genre over other genres.” (148 ). Paraphrasing Eileen Julien, the theorist of the “extroverted African Novel,” E. E. Sule says: “ the global North …makes the rules,create the avenue (cultural,economic,political), evolves the canon,accepting a certain kind of novel into the canon.” (151). Tanure Ojiade seems to agree with this view of E.E Sule when he asserts that the African writers living and writing in the west seems to be defining the canon because of their exposure to the western literary industry,numerous support structures, promotion and prizes. (25 ).
It is, therefore, obvious that to correct this perceived western gaze of contemporary African literature, the African literary industry in collaboration with the African academy and the general African literary readership must work towards establishing its own homegrown literary prizes of continental prestige to promote African writers and literature across all genres. There are a few existing credible prizes such as the Nigeria Prize for Literature with a cash sum of $100,000 which has been on since 2004 and awarded every year devoted to a separate genre of literature each year in a four year circle( novel, poetry, drama and children’s literature). The prize is open to only Nigerian writers at home and in the diaspora. A continental wide prize of that nature needs to be floated, maybe by the Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA) or even the African Union. Such a prize will afford Africa to define its own canon and celebrate African writers and literary texts that will be read across the continent. With African homegrown literary prizes, the multiplicity of literary production in Africa to reflect the various strands encompassing all the languages of its literature cutting across the colonial and the indigenous will be accounted for. I am aware PAWA has made some efforts in recent times in instituting some continental wide literary competitions and awarding some prizes to texts across the major official languages of the continent( English, French, Arabic, Portuguese and Swahili). These attempts need to be scaled up and formalised with greater visibility.
The other important areas in which African literature can be reclaimed from its western gaze is in the areas of publishing and distribution of African literature. While it may not be possible to return to the romantic era of the African Writers Series which promoted African literary creativity and ensured Africans read themselves widely, there is need to encourage the various indigenous publishing houses to copy its best practices of publishing, translating, re-issuing and circulating widely the best of contemporary African literary texts within Africa and beyond. The academia across Africa has a role to play to ensure its literature departments syllabi and curricula are democratised and eclectic enough to cover literary productions across all the regions of Africa. There are gaps, as I noted in an earlier paper, in the areas of cross border -reading of African literary texts and continental -wide cooperation and understanding within African nations as we recedes from the literary and cultural ferments of the 1960s, replicated in continental-wide conferences, literary cum cultural ideological movements, multinational publishing houses and literary journals( Abdullahi, 2022) . These gaps like I stated in that earlier piece are being remedied with the upsurge in international book fairs within the continent, literary festivals, literary prizes, literary residencies, neo-Pan- African publishing houses, national and regional literary associations and the digital space that have seemingly eradicated the artificial borders among African writers. These renewed efforts have to be systematised deliberately to work for the African imagination, creativity and the making of its own canon.
Conclusion.
This paper sets out to be a reflection on the Nobel Prize in Literature as it affects the African literary imagination reflected on the receptions surrounding the winning of the prestigious global prize by five African writers from 1986-2021. The literary concept of canonisation was examined as it relates to African and world literature with the Nobel prize for literature in focus. The literary circumstances and peculiarities that surrounded and accompanied each of the five writers’ announcements as winners in the years they won were explored to determine what their winnings signposted to other African writers and African literature. Overall, the summation in the paper is that though the Nobel , no doubt, is a canonical world literary prize, African literature should not necessarily be bound or defined by it and that the continent needs to rise to its responsibility of making its own canon to project its own writers, writings and literary imagination.
Being a paper presented at the Pan-African Writers International Literature Conference in honour of the Life & Works of Nobel Prize Laureate – Abdurazak Gurnah – held from 22nd to 24th Nov 2023, at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
*Denja Abdullahi is the former President, Association of Nigerian Authors ( ANA). Email: [email protected]
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