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Neo-Colonialism in African Literature

Literary Analysis

by Obi Akwani, MGV Editor

African writers and all writers outside the mainstream of Western culture must contend with normative forces that operate to bring the writer’s perspective into conformity with dominant cultural perspectives. These normative processes operate institutionally and can limit the choices and resources available to the writer. Simple acceptance of these normative processes results in effective censorship of what can be thought or produced. Their colonial heritage renders African writers highly vulnerable to such censorship. It is therefore the responsibility of African writers and their institutional establishments to understand the processes of neo-colonialism in African literature and deal with it.

This piece of writing is one that I have contemplated for some time. It was on my mind in 2002 when I first began thinking about the publication of a new novel. The inspiration for it came as I scouted about for a suitable publisher for my novel. I hesitated to embark upon the writing out of an intuition born of fear and impressed by experience. Fear is one of the greatest stumbling blocks that could come before any writer. It is capable of killing off (effectively suppressing, temporarily or permanently) the creative instinct. Many writers – especially those of us outside of, but dependent upon, Western culture – learn this fear in the process of negotiating the pathways of the Western industry.

This fact about learned fear is true of the African writer especially. Fear is not necessarily a trembling nervous condition. Fear can be more subtle than that. It can be gently impressed through cautious persuasion and a natural implementation of consequences upon the unheeding. Colonialism made the African writer part of the Western cultural heritage, yet the African writer largely remains outside that culture, unable or unwilling to gain full acceptance.

There are three options open to the African writer who must be engaged in Western culture in the post-colonial era. Such a writer could plunge in, into that culture, writing his own adaptation and recreation. This could translate into a process of self-forgetting, an erasure of the old self and the erection of a new one in a new society. Another option is for the writer to take on the challenge of self-assertion, querying all things that limit available choices within Western culture. However, these are two options that hold out many fearful prospects for the writer. To be wholly self-forgetting is to lose anchor, to be without familiar points of reference and to begin an uncertain prospect of locating new anchors. Where would the African writer be at the end of this process? I would think that the “African” in the writer could very well be lost and the best that could happen – if such a writer persists in claiming to be an “African writer” – would be a transformation into an unalloyed negative critic of most things African. Most writers shun this option because it amounts to losing one’s Africaness or losing sight of what it can mean to be an African writer. On the other hand, to be self-assertive as an African writer within Western culture brings its own perils that will be explored in due course. Most people are, therefore, left with a third option, which is to remain on the periphery writing obliquely and inoffensively about issues that impinge upon their lives.

For nearly four years, I ruminated about writing on how neo-colonial fixations complicate the African writing enterprise. I wanted to do a good job and at the same time I wanted to stay safe and not do anything to further complicate an already difficult situation. Finally, in mid 2005 (April to be more exact) I decided (incorrigibly, perhaps) that I had to do it and began writing. And this is the result.

*****

For the greater part of my life, I have been a writer. When I was younger (in my teens and early twenties) I wrote without fear even though it was then more difficult to write – not difficult in the sense that I did not know how to write or what to write about; I was simply inexperienced. Nobody taught me the elements of being a writer. Those were not things that anybody thought to impart to Nigerian high school students at the time, and I am not sure that anybody is teaching them things of that sort today. Back in secondary school in the late 1970s in Nigeria, my English teacher (who also doubled up as French teacher -- in fact his role as French teacher came first) had noted the good quality of my English compositions and encouraged me to write more. That was the closest I came to formal instructions in literary writing. I remember how keen I was about writing at the time, and how impatient too. I was already contemplating the end of the work even as I wrote the first sentences. This habit of putting the end before the beginning instead of following the story to its destination made (and, of course, I did not realize this at the time) the contemplated work quite odious. Another thing was that I detested writing in long hand and, even though I lacked competence as a typist, I loved to doodle on my father's typewriter (computers were yet unknown in our world at that time).

A decade later, I wrote my first full-length work of fiction. It was a play titled “A Working Day.” That was a work of passion. Everything around me seemed to cry out against writing that work, yet I persisted. It took me about one month of intermittent, but steady writing to complete and I did it in long hand! While I wrote my hand often got cramped, from having to hold the pen in the same position for so long, and I frequently got feverish as the story pushed to be written and I excitedly labored to put down on paper ideas that were coming to me much faster than I could write them down. Now that I think of it, the experience has to have been the same as a pregnant woman feels at term when she must give birth. So you see, I was born a writer!

After the story was done, I decided that it had to be transcribed using the typewriter. In going through this process, I discovered that it gave me a chance to edit and refine my work. I also found that, for some reason, being engaged in this editorial endeavor rarefied my concentration, allowing me to become even better focused. A good concentration is indispensable to the writer, but often, in my experience, the pressures of censorship can deprive one of concentration. And, believe me, when you write without being properly concentrated on your work, the final outcome is at best prosaic. (This lack of concentration is, in fact, an affliction that mars the output of most Nigerian writing. The needed supports and defenses for the national intellectual space are not there. But that is another story.)

At this early stage, I had no worries about concentration or censorship (and even though I write about such things today, I am still not worried about lack of concentration or censorship). However, one day, while I was laboriously picking through the typewriter keys, tap... tap... tap, tap, slowly committing my play to typewritten pages, my father heard the pathetic sounds and rushed down to my room. Apprehensively he asked, “What are you doing?” It was an odd question coming from him. Before this time, my father had never queried me in such a manner under such conditions. When I responded, “Writing, of course,” his next reaction – asking me to stop what I was doing – was even odder, and suddenly, I found myself growing unusually impatient with him and my attitude became sullen and obstinate.

I did not want to stop and I told him so. I expected him to understand this. My father was a highly principled man. A lot of people, including some of my siblings, considered him a hard and unforgiving man. But I understood him and I know he understood me. Thus when I displayed such seemingly uncharacteristic determination to continue my writing, he surprised me by backing down and quietly withdrawing into the living room, where he always relaxed with his papers, and shut the door. Now that I think back on that, I realize that my father’s reaction was true to form. It would have been out of character for him to insist on dissuading me from doing something (such as writing ), which I was passionately inclined to doing.

My father had never been the type to discourage any of his children. He had always encouraged me, in particular, to be inquisitive and adventurous in learning and intellectual endeavors. In fact, that I felt no inhibitions at using his typewriter any time of the day is a simple enough attestation to his generosity of spirit in matters of learning.

But he was concerned for me. I felt that concern in the way he asked me to stop. I have always been able to make use of his typewriter for brief moments – typing out a letter or something else just as brief. However, even though this time the work was slow as usual, I had been clattering for quite a while. I believe this was what got him to leave the comfort of his reading chair to come up to my room. My father had always owned a typewriter as far as I can remember. And he was very good at it for a two-fingers’ typist. He wrote often and for long durations by hand, but always he transcribed his writings with his handy Underwood. Rarely did he write a letter or a petition for the community without it. And he was fast, fairly so. Even with two fingers, he was as fast as the average professional.

I am inclined to think, therefore, that the persistent slow tap, tap... tap, tap, tap of my typing must have grated to his seasoned ears like the jarring off-tone trumpet notes of a child-beginner in music lessons. How maddeningly distracting those tap, tap, tap sounds coming from my room must have been for my father, making mince meat of his reading concentration. I believe he was concerned that I was putting myself in a position of learning how to type... and write the hard way. For this reason, he tried to censor me. I did not realize this at the time, but my refusal to give up meant that I had won my first battle against a censor, albeit a loving and indulgent one – and I did not face any consequences for that disobedience, none that I know of, at least. I interpret my reaction as a rebellion against a paternalistic wish to limit my natural maturing choices.

*****

And this pinpoints the special problem of the African writer in our era. The African writer in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is caught between a natural instinct to give full, unfettered expression to the African experience on the one hand, and a post-colonial paternalism inherent in the dominant cultural will that seeks to affirm its own verities and remove any deviance.

African writers have many obstacles and distractions which they must overcome before they can truly come into their own. There are economic and cultural threats as well as the many allures of popular Western culture that combine to force a choice of theme and subject matter upon the writer. These obstacles and distractions are not new or unique to African writers. They have always presented challenges to writers and thinkers of every epoch. African writers of the 21st century face the same challenges as confronted 18th century European intellectuals of the Enlightenment Age. Like their European counterparts of 300 years ago, Africans today are faced with an all powerful, all pervading cultural and political force paternalistically dictating the scope and content of their thoughts. They must either accept those paternalistic precepts or, with difficulty, resist and overcome them.

The endurance of neo-colonial paternalism has engendered in Africa an over-reliance on forms. Neo-colonials are found in all walks of life, but their greatest impact is felt in the political and intellectual life where they have been put in-charge of affairs in Africa. They believe that there is a tried and true way for doing any and everything and, consequently, they fail to seek or encourage innovation from within. They always look without for acknowledged expertise and solutions.

The African writer must contend with this neo-colonial formalism and its attendant rules and regulations as well as their official and unofficial enforcers – system agents, standing sentry at every point, playfully demanding a token for the passage. And not every paternalistic censor or enforcer is as indulgent as my father. It is by far a harder job to resist the paternalistic will of the establishment to direct the course of the writer’s creativity – that acute ability to represent even the most obscure facts in unique and succinct ways. Still, it remains the duty of the writer to try. Not to do so may result in loss of focus and a substantial loss in creativity. Given these circumstances, I believe the job of the African writer cannot be done any other but the hard way.

The African writer's circumstances are unique. Though his chief task remains the same as for all writers in every era and place – to inform and educate the audience and through that process help society to reach a higher level of consciousness and civilization – the African writer must strive to do this under the watchful gaze of the neo-colonial establishment. This is not a very comfortable position to be in at this moment in history. To pursue the general goal of writing for African liberation and uplift, he has necessarily to be self-reliant ready to eschew what may stand between him and his goal. Self-reliance calls for self-confidence because without the later, unavoidable conflict with the neo-colonial establishment whose perceived interests may be threatened may prove overwhelming.

The African writer's immediate objective should be to thoroughly interrogate the African condition, leaving no stones unturned. But because such endeavors pose inevitable challenges to the neo-colonial establishment, the writer must be ready to endure the pressures of censorship that will come upon him as soon as he sets upon this goal. He is met with a creeping opposition that aims to dissuade from going after that objective. Such censorships are constant companions of the persevering African writer and usually come in the form of difficult-to-assail establishment rites of passage – unacknowledged standards for manuscript submissions, judgment in writing competitions, discretion of grant-giving agencies, and other rituals and standards set within the publishing industry. Because the contents and objectives in these practices, rituals and standards are not owned or initiated by him, their outcome may tend to negate the purposes of the African writer, placing him on the outside, deviant position beyond the scope of accepted norms and out of reach of his intended audience. For these reasons, African writers need to be organized to recognize and overcome the impediments to their creative progress. Only by such conscious organization can African writers hope to remain independent initiators of the standards by which their works are judged based upon the African literary purpose.

*****

Ever since the mid-twentieth century when the bonds of direct colonial ties began to be severed, African leaders – politicians and all – have imbibed a pabulum mix of ideas designed to retain their allegiance to neo-colonial precepts. The struggle today is not merely to break from those precepts, but to transcend them, to see and actualize the possibilities for Africa beyond those neo-colonial ideas.

This is the realm of the new struggle and the role of the African writer is central in this struggle. It is within this concern for intellectual freedom and independence that the next great struggle for civil rights is being waged. African writers do not fight to be isolated from the world around them, but they fight to assert their independence within it, to bring forth new ideas to be properly examined.

Our literary concern is not for the existence of the intellectual freedom of the African. It exists. We are concerned that people should recognise this freedom by its true nature. People should recognise in the factors contributing to the tribulations of the African thinker – the army of censors, some disguised as enablers, engaged in a relentless struggle to redirect, direct, delimit, even extinguish, the claimant's right to access – the assertion of that freedom. Therefore, African intellectual success cannot merely be measured in terms of how well it is accepted by the dominant establishment. Only in this way can we as Africans overcome the cultural prejudices that enshroud and divert our intellectual flowering.

*****

The African writer has been seduced by the values and priorities of the Western culture. This seduction has reduced the usefulness of any sense of community, common values and purpose that could exist among African writers. It has, most importantly, brought about a thriving neo-colonialism in African literature.

The African writer, like any other, desires recognition, acceptance and adequate rewards for his work. The satisfaction of such recognition first came to some African writers through the colonial establishment during the 1950s and early 1960s. That was when writers like Nigeria's Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and Amos Tutuola, and Kenya's Ngugi wa Thiong'o were first given recognition and praised for their independent works¹. Since then, the African writer has not been able to gain his own critical voice as such. The interpretation of his work has continued to be filtered through a prism of Western values and priorities.

For example, with the possible exception of the Republic of South Africa, today more African writing of recognized literary merit is published outside the continent (in Europe and America) than within. One important result of this is that the shaping of African thought and the determination of its output is taking place outside Africa. There are at least four or five literary awards for Africa operated annually by European and American publishers and other establishments². Each of these has criteria for judging what is of merit. The cash prizes they hand out and the publishing access they provide to the winners act as incentives to up-and-coming African writers. Those incentives shape their thoughts and tailor their writing to fit the publishers' criteria.

While all of this may seem benign and even beneficial to African writing, what seems to be forgotten is that writing is a cultural affair. Every piece of writing has a cultural purpose defined within its environment. It may be intended to entertain, educate, challenge or liberate the minds of its audience. More than that, the open secret of the publishing industry, especially in the Western world, is that it is a politicized institution. Most publishers shy away from “politically incorrect” writing and encourage those that express the dominant cultural and political values. This can be illustrated with personal experience.

It was while I was scouting about for a publisher in 2002 for my novel, that I began to realize just how highly specific the Western publishing industry is. Publishers in the United States, for instance, are mainly concerned with issues within American culture and society. Therefore, unless one is writing out of the American experience, or from an American perspective, trying to sell the idea of an African novel to American publishers is a very difficult thing. In my case – taking cognition that I did not send my manuscript to every possible publisher – it proved abortive. The priorities of postcolonial publishers in the United Kingdom have also changed. Even such publishing houses like Longman and Heinemann who specialized in bringing out African titles during the colonial and immediate post-colonial era have started to emphasis a different set of values in the type of work they elicit from African writers³. All of these publishers (perhaps rightly so) generally demand writing that appeals to their home (British-European) audiences. It is difficult to sell purely African writing unmediated by contemporary Western themes to any of these Western publishing houses, whether or not they have colonial connections. And this is happening at a period when African literature is evolving from the inward looking focus of the colonial and immediate post colonial era to a broader outlook that sees the problems and solutions in Africa from global perspective.

It is not that any one of these publishers eschews the publication of African works absolutely, but they all have conditions for accepting anything for publishing. By the time a good African writer succeeds in negotiating all the pathways of those conditions, the original vision for the writing project is effectively lost. Success in this case comes at the cost of a lost or modified vision. In order to find success in the Western literary circles, the African is forced to think differently, to transform his literary outlook before he or she can be considered successful within that circle. This is not a very good thing to be happening in the world of ideas. It amounts to institutional censorship of the African writers’ ideas. Most of the manuscripts that are rejected by Western publishers do eventually reach the book market via self-publishing or through small presses in the continent. If they are any good at all, most will certainly find a substantial market within Western academic circles, but may never be made available to the general African reader because of poor distribution networks in the continent.

Much of the obstacles confronting the African writer are as a result of the underdevelopment of the African literary institution. The industry is in the same condition as the rest of the continental economies. Its strategic importance is lost within continued reliance on old established colonial relationships. In Nigeria, for instance, most publishers have continued a colonial practice of sending their titles out to Europe for printing and distribution. This practice is a symptom of the general malaise afflicting the local economies. Because of neglect and under-development of basic infrastructures, the cost of doing business is comparatively higher in Nigeria, for instance. Publishers thus find it easier and cheaper to print their titles outside the continent. A lot of them also rely a great deal on the European institution for such small details as editing, typesetting, layout and design. These later practices bring their own problems which may not be fitted for discussion within this article, but are nevertheless serious in their effect on the public’s perception of the writers’ work.

Such practices attract enormous costs, which the publishers are yet to acknowledge. They do not allow for the African writer to know or realise himself as such. Ideally, the African writer should desire three things: the writer should strive to achieve a high degree of self-awareness. A realisation of the writer's consciousness will come as the creative instinct is applied to the struggle to expand the boundaries of literary possibilities. Thus the writer should never shy away from the challenges posed by censors. The writer must also seek acceptance in the broader world of writers. In this he is greatly aided by a network of enablers – literary agents, publishers and distributors – who must also be made aware of the critical importance of their roles. Acceptance in the broader world should not come at the cost of self-identity. If it comes at all, acceptance should be through engagement and dialogue. Thus the first priority is for the writer to find him- or herself as such and to mature within that discovered self. The ‘self’ in this case is a definable literary purpose. Hence there is the need for founding an enabling community, a network that will nurture and encourage the literary explorer to self-discovery.

Such communities of like minds already exist. They consist of writers, editors, publishers, agents and their associations, and others in the book and publishing trade – the librarians and booksellers and distributors. But they remain weak in most respects. They lack the organization, self-confidence and the self-awareness to help their members overcome the seductive and coercive forces that militate against a strong sense of community, purpose and identity.

*****

Edward Wilmot Blyden, ex-slave, educator, Presbyterian minister and one of the foremost African intellectuals of his time, foresaw the impending malaise of the African writer. Blyden’s own writing took place in the 19th century and in one of his essays he spelt out one of the underlying themes of his intellectual endeavours. Blyden wrote that an unbridled embrace of Western thought would do more damage to the African mind than had been done by 300 years of slavery (Blyden 1882). We are seeing that prediction made true today as Africans are fixated with forms moulded by others, even as the application of these forms yield mostly undesirable results for Africa.

As Africans living in the 21st century, we have been greatly seduced by Western civilization... and why not? It is a great civilization, one that has succeeded – against the selfish tendencies of man – in creating a world of expanded freedoms. It has been a very difficult and heroic journey from the narrow provincialism of the earlier and Middle Ages to the world of the early 21st. century – the Age of Information. Yet these freedoms are now threatened by a new danger coming out of the ideas of racialist theorists.

Today the African remains the test case for tyranny. It is over his natural resources that many of the conflicts that bring him pain, suffering and devastation are fought. It is against the African that much of the pettiness and cruelties of this world have been largely directed over the last 400 years. The African must awaken to these facts and act. He cannot allow himself to remain encased in an imperialist cocoon of ignorance. No matter how perilous it seems, he must rise and fight against those things that delimit and deny his possibilities. Otherwise the tyranny of imperialism would have won, even there in the spirit where it should be impossible for it to win, and become emboldened to spread. It is, therefore, the African who is the last bulwark against tyranny in this civilization. It is the African who must uplift the civilization of the 21st century. It is the African who must – even while striving to remain true to self – hold back, through the will not to be oppressed or suppressed, the threatening new dark-age. This is the essence of the new Civil Rights struggle. The battle has moved beyond a struggle for political and social rights; it has now moved into the intellectual realm where the struggle is for the assertion of the right to think and be freely productive.

For Notes & References