Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Help

Kai! Rough crowd! lol! Anyhow, many thanks to all who reached out to me publicly and privately on this request. You have all been very generous with your time and I truly appreciate every response. I am sure my young friend will be elated to get the attention of all these eggheads. And yes, I am still collecting ideas. So keep it coming!

Thanks, again!

- Ikhide

> On Feb 3, 2014, at 5:00 PM, Obododimma Oha <obodooha@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You are right, Moses. I felt uncomfortable with that doctoral proposal
> and tried to suggest this discomfort by pointing the researcher to
> someone who worked on the same topic long ago. It won't be too hard
> for that researcher to count the teeth with the tongue, as the Igbo
> would say, and engage the reverse gear. Regards.
> o)(o
>
>> On 2/3/14, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Literature is not my field, but does this not look eerily like a return to
>> the old, tired and circular debates about the decolonization of African
>> literature? My sense is that Chinweizu et al broached and pretty much
>> covered that terrain and that Ngugi has exhausted his own language-centered
>> contribution to that polemic. The abstract posted by Ikhide seems passe
>> even to a non-literary person like me. Or are literary folks comfortable
>> with students simply resurrecting old debates or issues that have been
>> overtaken by new thinking and intellectual trends--by the dynamism of life
>> and lived experience? By the way, I am not against reopening old debates
>> and polemics if the reopening raises new, challenging questions. In this
>> particular case, I agree with Ken that the notion of African orality,
>> traditions, mythology, etc that the researcher deploys, and the way he
>> contrasts this with the tropes being explored by a new generation of
>> African writers create a false binary of "authentic Africa" and
>> "inauthentic or diluted Africa." It also obviously relies on a notion of
>> African cultures and performative and mythical traditions as fossilized
>> entities that could simply be quarried into "African" literary writing. A
>> more simplistic and uninsightful literary formulation is hard to find.
>>
>>
>>> On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 4:34 AM, Obododimma Oha <obodooha@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Ikhide,
>>> Ikenna Kamalu's doctoral research (which I supervised)was on that
>>> topic. He has a couple of publications on that, also. Your friend may
>>> wish to get in touch with Ikenna, who currently teaches at UniPH,
>>> through this email: <cikamalu@yahoo.co.uk>.
>>> Regards.
>>> Obododimma.
>>>
>>>> On 2/3/14, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
>>>> hi ikhide
>>>> i can't really help very much; i don't agree with the proposition here
>>>> about oral literature or euro lit, not in the way it is framed in the
>>>> quote below. "oral lit' becomes an invented category when it is
>>>> deployed
>>>> more or less ideologically and not with the careful construction of
>>>> those who study it. one book that might help frame this understanding
>>>> is
>>>> eileen julien's African Novels and the Question of Orality.
>>>> ken
>>>>
>>>>> On 2/2/14 9:57 PM, Ikhide wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> A friend is working on a research thesis, "Magical realism as a
>>>>> decolonizing tool in Ben Okri's narrative." He has asked me if I could
>>>>> refer him to books that cover or relate to this topic. His major
>>>>> question is, "where has oral tradition in Nigerian Literature gone?"
>>>>> So he is looking for nooks that cover oral tradition or use oral
>>>>> tradition in Nigerian narratives,
>>>>> employ myths, riddles, aphorisms in telling stories... His argument
>>>>> is along these lines, I think... "Amos Tutuola's publication of The
>>>>> Palmwine Drinkard (1952) most Nigerian authors have abandoned African
>>>>> folkloric narrative style. The closest to that kind of narrative is
>>>>> Ben Okri's The Famished Road (1991) which was based on the African
>>>>> Abiku myth. Contemporary Nigerian authors like Chimamanda Adichie,
>>>>> Biyi Bandele-Thomas, Chris Abani and Nnedi Okoroafor swung back to
>>>>> what Ngugi Wa Thiongo termed, in his essay, "Afro-European
>>>>> Literature", that is, "literature written by Africans in European
>>>>> Languages." They have, in their novels, refused to blend "the factual
>>>>> and the fantastic, the traditional and the technological landscapes"
>>>>> present in a postcolonial setting (Peters, 1993:23)."
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyway, any recommendation on books, I am sure he will greatly
>>>>> appreciate. I hope I hear from some of you folks..
>>>>>
>>>>> Many thanks in advance!
>>>>> - Ikhide
>>>>> Stalk my blog at www.xokigbo.com <http://www.xokigbo.com/>
>>>>> Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
>>>>> Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide
>>>>> <http://www.facebook.com/ikhide>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> kenneth w. harrow
>>>> faculty excellence advocate
>>>> professor of english
>>>> michigan state university
>>>> department of english
>>>> 619 red cedar road
>>>> room C-614 wells hall
>>>> east lansing, mi 48824
>>>> ph. 517 803 8839
>>>> harrow@msu.edu
>>>>
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>>>
>>> --
>>> *Obododimma Oha*
>>> Dept. of English
>>> University of Ibadan
>>>
>>> Blogs: http://udude.wordpress.com/
>>> http://x-pensiverrors.blogspot.com/
>>> Phone: +234 803 333 1330
>>> +234 802 220 8008
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>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's
>> greed.
>>
>>
>> ---Mohandas Gandhi
>>
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>
>
> --
> *Obododimma Oha*
> Dept. of English
> University of Ibadan
>
> Blogs: http://udude.wordpress.com/
> http://x-pensiverrors.blogspot.com/
> Phone: +234 803 333 1330
> +234 802 220 8008
> Twitter: @mmanwu
> Skype: obododimma.oha
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
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