DAILY INDEPENDENT 10/18
Monday, October 18th, 2004

Culture, Ethnic Tradition and African Literature Today (1)
By Emmanuel Sule

Our world, like a wandering snake, is, whether we like it or not, gradually 
sloughing off its skin of culture and ethnic tradition. Westernisation, science 
and technology have held our breaths. Most of what we hold as our cultures 
and ethnic traditions today are like water held in a basket. Someone, who boasts 
he or she is from Hausa culture, soon realises he/she owns little or nothing 
of the real substance of Hausa culture. At least, every one wakes up to this 
reality helplessly every day; every one talks about a thing, which used to be – 
and ought to be, today, because of its cultural values – but is not in being. 
A modern African writer is also helpless about the situation, although in his 
or her idiosyncrasy, he or she prides himself or herself in being the 
custodian of culture. Rapid technological advancement is fast taking control of 
things. With such a situation what does an African writer do?First, he looks back 
to the early canons. The literature of culture contact or conflict is a 
formidable genesis. This literature, itself, is an age, loaded with many strands of 
culture and ethnic tradition. The toilers of this age, led by Chinua Achebe of 
Nigeria, make a list of writers that have become household names in 
departments of English (and allied departments) in African universities. These writers 
were born into bucolic settings and grew up imbibing much of their cultures and 
ethnic traditions. Although most of them went to school outside Africa, they 
held Africa to their breasts the way a woman holds her baby to her breasts and 
vice versa.And when they wrote it was natural that culture and ethnic 
tradition bustled in their works, triggering in them ideas and nuances, actions and 
attitudes, phenomena and philosophies that could be sourced from culture and 
ethnic tradition. Ambitious francophone and Caribbean writers came up with 
Negritude to attract and immortalise the beauty in the cultures and ethnic 
traditions of Africa. Given their birth histories and experiences, it was natural that 
their works had culture-embedded storylines and insistent bucolic flavour. 
And by the way, what could they have produced apart from that? I do not intend 
to denigrate them even though some of them – including their headmaster, Achebe 
– overdid culture and ethnic traditions thus edging their works towards 
anthropology and ethnography. They were confined to (or hamstrung by!) the three 
factors, according to Hippolyte Taine, which account for the particularisation 
of a work of arts namely biology (race), culture (environment) and history 
(epoch). Again, I ask, if they had not done a literature cooked in culture and 
ethnic tradition, what would they have done? After all, that age had a 
desperately yearning eye on Africa: colonialists were just fascinated that a literature 
could come out of Africa. And since the literary adventure (or misadventure!) 
of Tutuola, Palmwine Drinkard, received stupendous attention, those who could 
guide their pens on paper saw how they could portray their culture to the 
outside world. The attention they did get. But we must not be guided by that 
attention and call their works great simply because they were works of culture and 
ethnic tradition. Some critics insist – without enough substantiation – that 
literature written in that age, because of its culture-bound complexion, is 
great literature; and that we do not have great literature any more since we 
have abandoned our culture and ethnic tradition.Now, questions flood my mind. 
When you say a great writer of that age, say, Wole Soyinka, became great (if at 
all the yardstick for greatness should be the Nobel Prize) because of his 
romance with Yoruba culture and tradition, then tell us who didn’t write about that 
during that age and why didn’t all of them become great on that account? Did 
people see greatness in Soyinka’s works because he wrote about Yoruba culture 
and tradition or because of HOW he wrote about the culture and tradition? If 
at all culture and ethnic tradition, the ingredient for superior literature in 
Africa, is what we can use to judge writer’s prowess in literary pursuit, then 
would Soyinka’s dramas have been considered better than Ola Rotimi’s whose 
main forte derives from culture-specific dramatic adventurism? In other words, 
isn’t Rotimi a patron of culture and historical tradition more than Soyinka? 
Of what use is it if, in assessing our writers today, we jump into the past, 
dust up an old great writer, compare him/her with the writers of today and 
consider the old writer’s works greater because they are rooted in his culture and 
ethnic tradition?In our age today, we have to know that literature ought not 
to be a slaving apology to culture and ethnic tradition. Great writers in the 
past had written about culture and ethnic tradition because it was an age that 
culture blossomed, signposting several social realities. It was an age of 
tales by the moonlight; it was an age of authentic African ritualism when the 
minds of men were yet tautened in the phenomenal greatness of African traditional 
religion; it was an age that elders upheld social structures with wisdom and 
youth trod the path of wisdom burrowed by elders. Such an age with its cultural 
and traditional realities could not have substantiated literature in any 
other way apart from what we see in the works of the first generation writers of 
African literature. And as at that time that culture and ethnic tradition 
flourished in the womb of literature, there were some writers who wrote in pitiable 
apology to culture and tradition. Amadi’s The Concubine, Nwapa’s Efuru, 
Munonye’s The Only Son are a few examples of heavily culture-laden literature that 
lacks adequate artistry to live as important works of literature.   

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~