Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Elechi Amadi Joins The Ancestors

na wa for you.

no need for insults or quarrels. its supposed to be a serious discussion about literature.

people's competencies are not always identical. we need to recognize competence when we encounter it.

allow me to mention, sir, that you have quoted what is known in semantics-relationship btw words and what they refer to- as the denotative meaning of visibility.

denotation is the literal meaning of a word or expression. like  'eba', in 'i want to eat eba' could literally mean you want to eat the food known as eba.

connotation is the indirect meaning of a word or expression. like you can say, 'he ate a mountain of eba'. you dont mean he actually are eba as big as a physical mountain. you are likening the size of the eba he ate to that of a mountain so as to suggest its large size relative to the conventional size of eba eaten at a time.

at the level of connotation, the indirect meaning, 'visibility' and 'acclaim' are the same thing or correlative. the literal understanding of visibility as the state of being recognizable to  sight is transferred  to that of being recognized in terms of achievement, 'acclaim'.

the relationship btw the denotative and connotative meanings of the word 'visibility' operate in terms of a continuum, from the literal to the connotative, the metaphorical.

visibility, in its denotative, literal sense, refers to the state of being recognizable, as  you recognize people who are visible to your sight. recognition implies acknowledging their presence. to acknowledge their presence means to note their location in space relative to their surroundings and to yourself. to do same in relation to a person's production, such as their art,  is to situate that production in relation to the body of achievement  constituted by similar productions and even to productivity in general, in an expanding  radius  of reference.  doing this is giving them the acclaim due them. that last kind of recognition is the connotative meaning represented by giving acclaim. people given acclaim are visible bcs their achievements are recognized.

 dr. Ola, as was her title then,  taught us about denotation and connotation in Introduction to Poetry in yr 1 while then dr. Ofuani, that being his title at the time,  taught us about semantics in yr 4, both at the University of Benin. God bless them. we thank God we are able to build on what they dutifully taught us.

to the best of my knowledge, the history of post-classical  Nigerian literature and visual art, as well as Nollywood,  has little or nothing to do with ethnic acclaim. the arts are Nigeria's perhaps one undisputable claim to indigenous  or indigenous inspired creative strategies , of global clout.

as for the rest in that mail, the high priests of the purest temple of knowledge, whom i admire, do not engage in that world.

thanks

toyin

On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 1:26 PM, Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk2005@gmail.com> wrote:

Toyin,

You are so predictable.

No wonder academics will not want to clear you because you are wont to misrepresent them and assume you know more than them, when you do not know very much.  I used the word "acclaim" you have turned it into visibility and ran on a frolic of worthless value with it.  Now read below and see the difference between acclaim and visibility:

acclaim

[uh-kleym] /əˈkleɪm/

verb (used with object)                   

1.          to welcome or salute with shouts or sounds of joy and approval; applaud:                

to acclaim the conquering heroes.

2.          to announce or proclaim with enthusiastic approval:                

to acclaim the new king.

visibility

[viz-uh-bil-i-tee] /ˌvɪz əˈbɪl ɪ ti/

noun                   

1.        the state or fact of being visible.    

2.        the relative ability to be seen under given conditions of distance, light, atmosphere, etc.:                

low visibility due to fog.

3.        Also called visual range. Meteorology. the distance at which a given standard object can be seen and identified with the unaided eye.   

4.        the ability to give a relatively large range of unobstructed vision:                

a windshield with good visibility.

5.        Typography. legibility (def 2).

Now that I have defined basic terms for you and filled some gaps in your linguistic acumen and appreciation of the vocabulary of English, if the Yoruba clap and applaud Soyinka and the Igbo do the same for Achebe will it not sound louder than the Ikwerre applauding Elechi Amadi?

Now climb down your high horse of self-opinion and arrogance and subject yourself to humble learning.  You come across as a juvenile who thinks he is brighter than everybody including his teacher (which may well be) but is yet to read a tenth of what informs his teacher's knowledge.  Go back to UNIBEN and get your masters and get your doctorate and then start pontificating left right and centre over the Internet.

In the absence of some proof of your peer assessment and commendation, you will remain nothing here but a waffle!

Cheers.

IBK

_________________________

Ibukunolu Alao Babajide (IBK)

(+2348061276622)
ibk2005@gmail.com

On 1 July 2016 at 09:04, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <oluwakaidara1@gmail.com> wrote:

May God bring the great artist to himself and take best care of those he left behind.

Great thanks for this, Ken-

'It was not grounded in responding to European misguided views; the world returned to Africa itself as the center, with its glories and its problems. That's why I resist all the time the need to continually read African thought as though it were still responding to colonialism'.

Along similar lines, I do my best not to refer to any period in African cultural production as post-colonial., even though I recognize the historical value of the term. I prefer the terms 'classical' and 'post-classical' bcs I see creators inspired by Africa adapting ideas and strategies from a particular cultural architecture to create new developments in a later stage of growth. I dont see why Africa has to be continually framed in terms of its colonial experience.

In the name of examining artistic legacies, though, I would like to look briefly at IBK's claim that 'He was a great writer in the league of Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe (his Government College Umuahia fellow alumnus) but as he did not have the huge backing of a resourced Yoruba or Igbo group behind him (and his role in the Nigerian civil war), he did not get as much acclaim as he deserved'.

 I have not looked closely at the social and economic contexts that contributed to Soyinka and Achebe's  visibility, but the invocation of ethnic identifications as being responsible for that visibility looks to me be historically inaccurate, since Soyinka's visibility began with his co- founding of Pyrates at the University of Ibadan, where Achebe also was, continued with the regard in which he was held by his teacher at Leeds, Wilson Knight, one of the more prominent Shakespearean scholars of the 20th century, who openly expressed what he had learnt from Soyinka when the latter was  his student-from what I recall,  and to whom Soyinka dedicated his iconic essay "The Fourth  Stage", continued with his time at the Royal Court Theater and his coming to Nigeria to conduct research on classical Nigerian drama through a British Council fellowship, foreshadowing the international character  of his career, from a later fellowship at Cambridge to directing the international theatre institute in Paris, to giving the BCC Reith lectures, among other developments. I have serious doubts about ethnic components as being central to Soyinka's visibility.

As for Achebe, whose career I know less about, I get the impression that the power of Things Fall Apart did not need any special group to help promote. The work will always speak for itself. Achebe, like Soyinka, was also very active outside writing, Achebe with the founding of the journal Okike and his role in the civil war and Soyinka with editing Transition and his role in Nigerian politics, from the radio station hijack episode to his civil war incarceration to so many other engagements, so people must notice him.

On the claim that Amadi is as great a writer as Soyinka and Achebe, I wonder how valid  that assertion is, though I have read only one piece of writing my Amadi, The Concubine, while I have read more from Achebe and Soyinka.

Achebe and Soyinka are simply unusually great writers. That fact cant be denied them. As for Soyinka, equaling Soyinka's achievement would be quite significant, on account of his quality of achievement across various genres.

If Okigbo had lived Soyinka would have had a ready contender. Soyinka, Achebe and Okogbo were primarily cultural visualizers and they did it particularly well, in their distinctive ways.

I'll read the rest of Amadi, particularly in relation to my favorite scene from the Concubine, one of the best pieces of writing I have encountered on the numinous  in reference to an African context.

thanks

toyin

 

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

Elechi Amadi. I would have loved to have met him. In some ways his novels were the most widely taught African novels of all. I know that is heresy with many who know little about the actual teaching of afr lit, and imagine it is all wrapt up in one novel, Things Fall Apart. But the novels that I think were steadily taught in all the African universities I've known were The Great Ponds, The Concubine, Sunset in Biafra, The Slave. His particularly readable texts were historical realism, no doubt inspired by the same impulse that guided Achebe, which was to present, and preserve, the world of an Igbo Africa prior to the coming of the Europeans, and that meant not only showing the conflict, to give interest to his accounts, but like achebe to glorify the culture and language, thought, of what he was reconstituting as "traditional Africa."  In short he, and the writers of that first generation, established a bedrock for our understanding of African literature, against which the subsequent generations could then react. My own belief is that it was that reading of his works, of his generation's work, that created what we can call the tradition of African literature. It was not grounded in responding to European misguided views; the world returned to Africa itself as the center, with its glories and its problems. That's why I resist all the time the need to continually read African thought as though it were still responding to colonialism. That was the past; we are past it ; and elechi amadi, along with achebe, Soyinka, ngugi, laye, kane—that whole generation of writers of the 50s and 60s—made it possible. The fathers, and along with aidoo, nwapa, etc—the mothers, of African literature. How appropriate that we salute his passing with the encomium coming from the 3d generation's spokesperson, osofisan.

ken

 

From: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, June 30, 2016 at 11:38 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Elechi Amadi Joins The Ancestors

 

Dayan ha emet

 

Elechi Amadi , another illustrious and unassuming Ikwerre elder gone, but not his literary legacy.

May his soul rest in perfect peace.

On Thursday, 30 June 2016 16:14:28 UTC+2, ibk wrote:

PRESS RELEASE:

ADIEU, ELECHI.

I called him Elechi, simply and without formality, as many did, because he was that kind of man. In spite of his age and achievements, he had no airs. In his company you laughed easily; and you learned, because he was full of yarns and wisdom. Certainly I was proud to be his friend, this man whose books were among the ones that taught us how to write. His prose was crisp, his narrative style brisk, compelling; he knew the art of total seduction through the manipulation of suggestion and suspense; he was thoroughly familiar with traditional lore and the world of mystery, magic and fabulation. You enter his fiction, and you are instantly gripped!. Even as you turn the last page, you find yourself king for more... And now he too is gone. No one of course was born to live forever, and the consolation is that Elechi at least stayed long enough with us to a full and ripe age. Still, his departure is painful, for it marks another sad loss from that fine generation of pioneers whose writing established and defined our contemporary literature, and gave our culture a refining ethical direction that, for better or for worse, the younger ones have since jettisoned. Adieu then, humble hero and superb story-teller! May you have a smooth ride back home to the ancestors!

FEMI OSOFISAN.

June 30 2016.

 

 

_________________________

Ibukunolu Alao Babajide (IBK)

(+2348061276622)
ibk...@gmail.com

 

On 30 June 2016 at 11:38, Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ace story teller, Elechi Amadi has just joined the ancestors. He will be greatly missed.

CAO.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

 

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.