African Literature in the Post-Global Age: Provocations on Field Commonsense

Abstract

An exploration of African literary studies and what might be its most salient and informed tools of self-constitution and self-understanding in the contemporary moment. More than half a century after formal literary studies emerged in Africa, much of the field is still fixated with a deep suspicion of the true provenance of its own production. The paper theoretically distills some of the expressed or implied evaluative canons of belonging, explores their methods of application, and critically assesses their contemporary relevance—or even resonance. The goal is to arrive at what might be a most enabling conception of African letters for an age I conceive as “post-global.”

Marxism and African literary studies today

“…But Toivanen's essay is also an example of how Marxist analysis has, to a certain extent, been simultaneously absorbed and sidelined by the field; its broader concerns are present, yet the theoretical underpinnings are often absent. Olaniyan (2016) describes this tendency when, in a footnote that acknowledges the importance of the '"ideological" criticism' of Jeyifo, Ngũgĩ, and Onoge in the history of African literary studies, he writes that such a mode of critique can continue today without an understanding of its Marxist precursors: 'The effectiveness of the deployment of ideological awareness or critique today does not depend on knowing much about its conceptual subtleties in Marxist criticism whether generally or in African literary studies in particular ' (p. 395, n. 15). While this may be the case, I would respond that just because an ideological critique can occur without an appreciation of its Marxist lineages, this doesn't mean that it should.…”

The Ethics of African Studies in the Age of Oga Politics: A Response to Tejumola Olaniyan’s “African Literature in the Post-Global Age”

“…The article I am responding to in this paper, Olaniyan's recent "African Literature in the Post-Global Age: Provocations on Field Common Sense," published here in the pages of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, seems to be something of a continuation of Olaniyan's earlier thinking in SAQ and even of his earlier "Postmodernity, Postcoloniality, and African Studies" article of 2004. 2 If we understand this latest article as a sort of elliptical or suggestive and only provisional conclusion to that trilogy, we find that Olaniyan seems to be advancing a similarly broadening shift in Africana theory and critical scholarship toward a "post-global" critical lens and even toward what he calls "planetary" thinking, which situates our concerns at a level that is "larger than global." 3 Post-global literary studies, as he adapts it primarily from the work of Alfred Lopez, trains its sights on post-9/11 literature written by those who are the oppressed subjects of globalization, those creative writers from the global south whose writing interrogates the inequalities and disenfranchisement of impoverished immigrants, women, and minorities whose suffering results from the vagaries of neoliberal capitalism.…”

“…2 If we understand this latest article as a sort of elliptical or suggestive and only provisional conclusion to that trilogy, we find that Olaniyan seems to be advancing a similarly broadening shift in Africana theory and critical scholarship toward a "post-global" critical lens and even toward what he calls "planetary" thinking, which situates our concerns at a level that is "larger than global." 3 Post-global literary studies, as he adapts it primarily from the work of Alfred Lopez, trains its sights on post-9/11 literature written by those who are the oppressed subjects of globalization, those creative writers from the global south whose writing interrogates the inequalities and disenfranchisement of impoverished immigrants, women, and minorities whose suffering results from the vagaries of neoliberal capitalism. 4 Always in medias res, Olaniyan expands the terrain of the post-global to include similar literature and scholarship of the global south that predates 9/11, but nonetheless expresses the alienation of the poor and working classes as a result of globalization and neoliberal policies.…”

“…Nothing but the old formal and informal answers of more weapons, more walled up national boundaries, more deportations, more anti-immigrant xenophobia, more fanatical chauvinism of all kinds including religious, and more." 5 In short, the response to unprecedented global inequality is increased global inequality. It has become clear that globalization presented us with a utopic mythology of technological access, wealth distribution, and permeable borders, which might have been nobly pursued but certainly not achieved.…”

“…Even in his article on the post-global age, Olaniyan suggests "history appears to be moving remorselessly against those ["global anti-global"] positions, though we do not know to what alternative position." 8 It is always easier to look back than to know the future or even define the present.…”