Editor’s note
In the flurry of recent essays and criticism of current Nigerian poetry, Bestman Michael Osemudiamen writes this in-depth take, through the arguments of dialectical materialism and the reality of social class in shaping ideals, in evaluating the perspectives of the varying arguments, tagged “A commentary on Oko Owi Ocho’s ‘The Crisis of Interpretation and the Temper of New Nigerian Poetry’, the question of contemporary Nigerian poetry/The Fourth Generation Poets, and the Crisis of Consciousness.”
The recent criticisms about contemporary Nigerian Poetry, Fourth Generation Poets, and, indeed, the Crisis of Consciousness have kept me in awe. While I read them and feel the grip of their arguments, I have often reserved my comments on most of their critical evaluations—triggering, in fact. Yet, it is imperative to applaud this wave of criticisms that have surfaced since the last few decades—away from the tidbits that have once heralded the social media.
These debates on the question of art, identity, form, style, consciousness, and even artistic authority, these battles, in their snippets as they come, have oftentimes resulted in backlash between writers and critics. But if we don’t have these engagements, something must be wrong. In every epoch in society, there will always remain diverse demands and questions on what art should be; which changes with time. But, fundamentally, I feel many of the recent arguments isolate art from life and consequently fail to touch the fulcrum of the matter, mostly orbiting the spectrum of individuality and the expectations of what art should be.
In Oko Owi Ocho’s “The Crisis of Interpretation and the Temper of New Nigerian Poetry,” he feels understanding the continuum between Third and Fourth Generation Poets, providing a historical link, is the first, logical path in evaluating the New School and its shift towards Americanisation: “Due to the shapeshifting tendencies of this generation, missing the link between the poets of the third generation, and the emergence of the fourth at the interstice where they converge and depart, it is easy to accuse contemporary Nigerian writers, especially her poets, of not representing their reality,” he writes.
I think Ocho’s essay comes much closer in articulating the issues bedevilling contemporary Nigerian poetry, writers, and even critics. Though evaluative at its best, his essay still falls short of the same problem it raises: “the crisis of historical consciousness and clarity of ideas.” While he is correct that we need a “critical aesthetics that proffer a revolutionary turn”—the more generalised this sounds, the better—the specificity of that summation remains either limited or unclear by its subtle ethnic or national chauvinism.
Somewhere he mentions: “Our literature needs to return, and I suppose this return is to redefine our narrative towards a consciousness built on the ideas of decoloniality.” If this is the case—the base of his poetics—then every argument, immediately within the context of what is “Nigerian,” ceases to exist. Or, to be direct, one is forced to ask: what consciousness exactly does he refer to, even in its decolonial element? But rather, that will only stretch the argument into a primordial niche shaped by socio-political unrealities. By this, I mean, a complete teardown of everything non-African available within the African space: language, culture, religion, politics, ideas, name them—every atom of colonialism/imperialism.
As I have spoken at length with poets and critics like Arasi Kamolideen Oluwapelumi, AJ Dagga Tolar, and Seyi Lasisi, let me reiterate: the socio-political and economic contradictions in a country like Nigeria (in its years of evolution) are major factors for the crisis in consciousness and the paradigm shift towards the West or Americanisation. That is, if we follow Ocho’s logic of decoloniality, on one hand, and agree that Nigeria is a product of colonial rule, the argument of whether contemporary Nigerian poetry is Nigerian becomes jagged.
So, we are left to ask: a return of our literature devoid of any atom of colonialism would become characterised by what reality?
George M. Gugelberger writes in Marxism and African Literature, that “most African critics have confused geography and ethnicity with ideology . . . if they were original at all, they were frequently pseudo-radicalised through the label of Africaneity”—this time Nigerianeity, for those who have argued if there is anything Nigerian in Nigerian poetry, ignoring the class relations that bind writers, and even critics.
What literature was prevalent before colonialism, across the geographical terrain the country now claims, spoke to an imagination bound by the reality of the people in a given time. Its consciousness, in a socio-political and cultural sense, mirrored the organisation of society. Thus, any crisis of consciousness in literature is reflected in the shape society morphs into, over the years, either by internal or external dynamics. And Nigeria, a country devastated by imperialism and neo-colonialism, cannot be ruled out as long as the system of capitalism thrives.
The question that has pervaded literary circles has been what is Nigerian or African in our literature—say poetry, for instance? I guess this is partly what Ernest Ogunyemi’s “Is Contemporary Nigerian Poetry Nigerian?” attempts to answer by citing a few poems that bring to life Nigerian reality:
I get the sense all the time that Nigerian poets are not interested in Nigeria. The world around us is not interesting to us. We don’t find the maruwa or danfo bus interesting. The Third Poets wrote about the bus conductor, albeit satirically. We don’t even see the conductor. Boys are doing weed all over Lagos, some of us are those boys, we don’t capture the texture of their lives. We need to be able to write a poem about such simple Nigerian things as the generator, the woman selling fish, the man who talks too loud in the compound, and without any judgement, with grace. We need to be able to praise the ordinary aspect of our lives. Who is describing Nsukka in their poems?
While Ernest is right within the context of these daily witnesses, from people’s perspective, is this the reality they want? Or, relating this to writers, what would make our art uniquely ours or Nigerian?
It seems by this summation that what is Nigerian is a reality that is caused by socio-political and economic rot. A strive beyond this may shift the paradigm of what is uniquely or culturally defined as ours. But there is nothing simple in things like generators or about the woman selling fish or the man who talks too loud. If there is anything, it is only a reflection of economic backwardness which has stagnated our cultural or literary perception of the world. Yet, Ernest is closer to reality than Ocho’s drive toward the abstractness of decoloniality.
In other words, what has become our reality in this modern age of artificial intelligence, globalisation, and digitisation, cannot be founded on principles around identity/cultural chauvinism—we can’t return to the past. Themes migrate, as Leon Trotsky argues in “Literature and Revolution.” Yet, we have the past to master, learn, and take from, the lessons or methods to help shape our present milieu of ideological and socioeconomic crisis of the artist and critic. Why? Leon Trotsky points out:
…the form of art is, to a certain and very large degree, independent, but the artist who creates this form, and the spectator who is enjoying it, are not empty machines; one for creating form and the other for appreciating it. They are living people, with a crystallised psychology representing a certain unity, even if not entirely harmonious. This psychology is the result of social conditions.
Thus, Ocho, in the sense of providing a historical link between the Fourth Generation and earlier generations is on the right path towards continuum—the dialectic process of how present generations stand on the shoulders of the past. It is this continuity of literary history that shows the seeming reactions shifting and creating a tradition from what it seeks to break from. While the Internet and advanced technology keep breaking geographical, temporal, and lingual barriers, it is important to redefine what culture is and how it evolves side-by-side with societal organisation—both on political, economic, and social grounds, and how they reflect on the consciousness of the poet and critic.
Culture is the total accumulation of how humans acquire and conquer nature; and as this seems, what we hold so unique is just a productive reflection of the society itself. That is, our science and technology: techniques of surviving each epoch of society within class relation, interests, repulsion, and need. Art becomes a reflection of that dialectic interrelationship between a class and its artists, which in turn defines the culture and ideology that continually thrives.
Critics who have written or debated the question of what makes a Nigerian or African story, poetry, or whatever, and attach the word “contemporary” have only touched on the outer shell and not the seed. They can agree that there is/was a culturality of a “gong” and the role of the town crier in precolonial Africa, not forgetting the type of society such technology evolved from. Yet, its relevance is tied to the limits of its time—the invention of a tool that is culturally woven into meaningful form. Now, what would be the place of a “gong,” or to say the least, the “town crier” in Modern Africa, culturally? Society has evolved and so is the relevance or irrelevance of its culturality—in objects, symbols, art, lifestyle, etc—without destroying the past. The market, for instance, in precolonial Africa was never daily. It was because production was barely massive and technology/technique was crude. So, agriculture was subsistent. Trade was minimal as a result of distance and there were no logistics as we have today. Thus, culture is shaped by the economics of a society, in constant struggle.
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In postcolonial Africa, or Nigeria for specificity, where neocolonialism and imperialism have eaten deep into our roots to the point almost every necessity of our lives are imported or inaccessible, where the world is at a digital or Artificial Intelligence age, where multinational companies are plastered in every street corner, in a country that is backward in science, technology, and whatnot, even to the point of religion (which is not even uniquely ours), what does Ocho mean by our literature needs to return? To what exactly?
If by the aegis of decoloniality, does he mean what Ernest says about incorporating our indigenous languages or vernaculars to our work as Logan February, Nome Patrick Emeka, and Ajibola Tolase have tried in their poetry to qualify as Nigerian? If this is the case, then, the argument for decoloniality is fruitless. Or, does this return mean toward the question of Black consciousness as Senghor pushed with Negritude or Pan-Africanism? Or, is this narrative a return to talks about slavery, Mother, and so-called African ethno-literary idioms? If so, then I am sure Ocho may be alone in his realm. The Nigerian ruling class, for instance, do not seem ready to sacrifice what imperialism offers them. Hence, the question of decoloniality becomes a political, if not class-conscious, matter.
We ask: what would a Nigerian or African story or poem be about? What kind of reality should be posited that is uniquely classified Nigerian or African that even needs a catalogue of canonised debate, defence, or domesticating art as ours within the trajectory of how “Nigeria” came about, where it is, and the current roles and pangs of imperialism? In the end, the answers become clogged or vague or become tinged with individualised character. So when Ocho uses the word “survival,” I am sure he understands the socio-political, economic, and technological structures that have shaped the trajectory of the fourth generation, however he wishes to categorise them. His conclusions are borne out of his materiality, no doubt, owing to the writers and ideas he represents.
Setting a theory for the fourth generation poets—just as the first generation’s literature attacked colonialism, and the third, within a post-Independence clime glided towards democratic decay—means placing each trajectory in their appropriate context without sacrificing or refusing to nail the effect of global capitalism in Nigeria, which has fanned the individuality and themes of writers in the fourth generation towards uncertainty, trauma, longing, and drive. How within these periods, social media and the Internet make culture immediate and the techniques accumulated defeat time, place, border/barriers, or the “pronounced” identity of what is uniquely “ours,” or say the least, Nigerian. Because, what is concretely Nigerian about the clothes, phones, food—items, which from a critical evaluation, are mostly imported? Or, are these realities, in their individual expressiveness, not humanly unique in their own way? What is uniquely that substance that makes our poems or stories Nigerian that deserves all the logical razz? To confine art to place or identity or to become guardians of what art should be destroys it.
Then, there is Carl Terver who exclaimed in his essay “O, Griefa” about how poets should master language beyond a form of redundancy that devitalises art: “Let us not be the ones to finally send language to its grave. For God’s sake, YOU ARE A POET. You’re the magician of words, the bouncer at the entrance to the defiler of language, you are the Sufist, the enlightened one, the Buddha, you are the one whose muse doesn’t allow you sleep until you put that grievance on paper . . . ” In another essay, “The Miseducation of Nigeria Poets,” Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera conclusively points to how “poets are often the most sensitive members of society” and how he feels “we come from a society desperately in need of new ideas. And there is no better way to begin than to awaken consciousness in our poetry.” True, they are both correct, only within the context of the purpose of their essays, because they lack the ideological and political weight of their positions on a much deeper level, overlooking class relations in society, which Ocho subtly dangles with, without hitting, in his own essay. They isolate the social being of the writer and critic and spend their time on a melting ice.
Writing is a craft, says Zinsser. One that requires a level of intentionality—shaping, destroying, building. It was Dagga, I think, who said “creativity is the art of destruction.” But, in all sense of the word, art should be approached within the laws of art. It is within this periphery that Terver’s argument on how language must transcend mere clichés remains vital, if language must prevail. But beyond that, language itself in its mastery and profundity is a dictate of social accessibility, a reflection of our societal rot, which some Nigerian writers or budding writers have inherited or condemned into. This way, while poetry strives for a place beyond the ordinary, figurative language is a reflection of privilege. It was the advent of the printing press, capitalism, and the drive towards marketability that drove mass literacy, as opposed to the secluded character of language associated with the aristocrats, wealthy, nobles, and priests, that shows status.
A poor educational system, as the country suffers, poor reading culture, the lack of access to public libraries and books, are enough to make a writing conform to a singular trope or redundancies that lack diversity and profundity. It is this same cloud that covers the Jonas Mekas quote which Chukwudera cites in his first paragraph. That, civilisations perish because society fails to listen to their poets. Even when society does listen, without clearly defining the class relations present—even within the social classes writers belong to—society will still fall to ruin.
It is within these lines that Chukwudera’s “awaken consciousness in our poetry” is vague. Because poetry does little or nothing to change the world, but rather interprets, expresses, and encapsulates each human experience of the world. Yet, “we cannot approach art as we approach politics,” Leon Trotsky warns. It is independent—borne out of a subconscious, isolated mind towards crafting meaning from the world around. Thus, “art should be judged by the law of art” and by such premise, I presume it becomes a human production without any necessary ethnic or national confinement, however different or similar they thematically seem.
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BUT, IN ALL OF THESE, some critics have reduced art into a prism shaped by place, time, identity and individuality, and have possibly or slightly left out the causes behind the shapeshiftings. From what we have established, the reader, critic, and writer are all social beings. As George Paizis notes, “ideas do not exist independently of human beings.” It is within such terrain that literature becomes political—expounding the who or whom does the writer write for. This places reading, as well as writing, on the pedestal of choices, interests, opinions, and arguments that are subliminally class-based.
Thus, like Gugelberger states, “the paradox of many African writers, and even more so of many African critics, is the fact that they oppose Euro- and Americo-centric literary views but at the same time perpetuate precisely such views.” Thus, like Ocho mentions, most arguments lack the revolutionary turn. But, to be revolutionary in approach is to critically place society within its systematic scale and the place of the writer and critic in it. Indeed, POETRY WILL DIE—as Dagga Tolar intones in an unpublished essay—if we do not understand how society operates within the framework of its ruling ideology and through its apparatuses.
Let me put it this way: a lack of quality and properly funded and accessible education at all levels, which our critics overlook, can affect the supposed individuality of the writer and reader on whatever literary ritual they embark on. Bertolt Brecht asked for who does a writer write? Omafume F. Onoge expounded this tweaking “who?” with “whom?” Because in all these debates, while they are necessary, the fulcrum of the matter is barely touched. In a country where the average person is yet to live beyond survival or animalism, where reading culture is near-absent, where illiteracy thrives, where the poverty and unemployment rate keep devouring its populace by the nonchalance of a government that ignores education, for whom does a Nigerian writer write? Do we have a Nigerian readership in a concrete utilitarian sense? And in this context, do we think the average Nigerian in this milieu thinks about what is uniquely “theirs” literarily? We are back to a caucus.
The circle of arguments revolves around an occultic dot of fewer writers, fewer readers, and fewer intellectuals who in their political apathy take concrete or unconscious political stands. That is, in the coming period, one’s authority towards judging, commenting, or criticising art will be reduced to a set of illogical rants and beautified confusions. Or that the same critics or writers who are screaming about a case for Nigerian poetry will sooner than later consider your authority based on which foreign magazine don publish you? where you do MFA? And the value for art will become judged from the eye of marketability and the dominant idea in society—that is, of the ruling class; the same way the drive for most writers to find acceptability outside the country is conditioned by Nigeria’s treatment towards art, literature, science, technology, and creativity in general. Which foreign writer wants to kill themselves to be published in our magazines? (That’s not to say we have wack magazines. Maybe we do.) But, it is to buttress that the drive by our writers towards the West or Americanisation is not totally individual.
While the arguments are worth it, the over-polemicisation of what art should be or not be is like creating history in the void, where a huge part of the Nigerian populace still falls within the illiteracy rung, where even the small number who read cannot afford or access our books. But these are only peripheral. The fulcrum remains: how society is organised. And poetry cannot alone, in the comfort of our rants, change society. Yet, in folding our hands, society determines the path of the writer and critic, a case Oris Aigbokhaevbolo convincingly raises in his essay “The Death Of Nigerian Literature.”
Art can be improved upon. And that is not far from what I have intended to surmise. Thus, to improve art is to reorganise society to meet the basic necessities of every individual’s needs. Won’t we be amazed at how creativity and criticism will flourish when this is the case? Now, we write. But for whom? We are left to the throes of imperialism to decide: to the ruling class to define. And whatever we theorise cannot leap further than the material condition around it, however an individual tries to fantasise hell or heaven. Class exists and so are our ideals or consciousness, either in crisis or in revolution. It is the mode of society, understanding the class relations therein, that shapes the life, death, and limits of our literature.♦
Michael Bestman Osemudiamen writes from Lagos and Benin. He has been published in The 1919 Review, Vanguard, and African Daily News (New York). His forthcoming chapbook is A Portrait of My Father’s House as a Failed Country.