excellent points! i really like the idea that we are always working in collaboration with others. we give talks, receive feedback, are criticized, give criticism in return, advance our ideas, see the develpments of seachanges that are immense. never alone. consider the heydays of bhabha and spivak, when postcolonialism was taught always using their texts. they came in the wake of said. and he that of foucault, of marxist criticism, and psychoanalytical criticism. all those are past, but never gone. today's world of criticism is vastly different from those who worked so assiduously on ideology and discourse, those who followed structuralist thought.
well, why not? we might have liked one music in our youth, but it changes, and we have to at least try to hear the new tunes of today.
ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2018 6:22:16 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: CHRIS WANJALA OBITUARY
tthank you for this important posting, the notice of the passing of an important figure in the field of african lliterature.
ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2018 3:58:49 AM
To: dialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - CHRIS WANJALA OBITUARY
Farewell To Kenya's Pan-African Griot
Adekeye Adebajo
Kenyan scholar and literary critic, Chris Wanjala, who died at the age of 75 this month, was among the pioneering first generation of post-colonial East African scholars of English Literature. Renowned for a self-effacing humility, he taught at the University of Nairobi for four decades, publishing 10 books and over 50 articles. A public intellectual, along with other university colleagues in the early 1970s - Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Okot p'Bitek, and Taban lo Liyong - Wanjala helped to transform the curriculum from a Eurocentric one to one which had African oral and written literature at the centre of its intellectual enterprise. In the process, they also transformed literature curricula across East Africa.
It was this story that Professor Wanjala told at a conference we hosted at the University of Johannesburg in August on potential lessons for curriculum transformation in South Africa from experiences in the rest of Africa. In displacing courses taught by British lecturers at the University of Nairobi that had focused solely on the Western canon, the young pioneers criticised Western education and philosophy for suppressing African voices of dissent and liberation, and set out instead to promote "aesthetic theories based on oral literature" centred on African people, society, and history.
Though he was part of this "Nairobi School of Literature," Wanjala continued to argue for a rigorous philosophical foundation to underpin this Africanization of a colonially-inherited curriculum, and insisted that the Western canon must continue to be taught alongside African literature, and that strong writing skills and textual criticism not be lost. He believed strongly that language could not be divorced from literature. Wanjala thus promoted the use of African languages, teaching Kiswahili literature. He further argued for the study of African political thought, and consistently criticised the "servile mimicry" of African scholars who sought validation from the West. The issue of cultural alienation was a central focus of his work.
Wanjala was a cosmopolitan scholar who was as conversant with Shakespeare and Dickens, as he was with Tolstoy and Brecht. He was, however, primarily an uncompromising Pan-Africanist who had an unusual grasp of not only East African literature, but also Southern and West African, as well as Caribbean literature. He introduced two generations of Kenyan students to Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Ousmane Sembène, Derek Walcott, Lewis Nkosi, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Alex La Guma, Nadine Gordimer, and J.M. Coetzee.
A subject that was particularly close to Wanjala's heart was the role of African intellectuals in society. Two of his memorable essays captured his rich insights into these debates. In a 2005 article on the iconoclastic South African writer of the Drum era of the 1950s, Lewis Nkosi, Wanjala described how the author often maintained a tone of "detached humour and urbane irony" in his literary criticism. He noted Nkosi's dismissal of black South African fiction as "lacking the combination of art and imagination needed to grasp the African reality," as well as the South African writer's often vitriolic criticisms, for example, dubbing Mphahlele's prose as "dull-witted." Nkosi could be even more scathing: "I fail to see what particular use a deranged poet is to the armed struggle." He felt that South African writers in exile played only a marginal role in the liberation struggle, especially if they lacked an organic link to the masses.
In a 2017 essay, Wanjala reviewed Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui's 1971 novel, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo, in which Mazrui tried Nigeria's greatest poet – who had been killed in the Nigerian civil war fighting for Igbo secession - in an African Hereafter for betraying his art by swapping his pen for a pistol, and for putting ethnicity before his country. Wanjala regarded Mazrui as having sided, in the novel, with the "Counsel for Damnation" – liberal Ghanaian lawyer, Apolo-Gyamfi – who like Mazrui, had studied at Oxford. Both Mazrui and Apolo-Gyamfi felt that the artist's loyalty was to broader society, and not to a parochial community. Wanjala saw Mazrui as portraying more negatively the "Counsel for Salvation" – Kenyan journalist, Hamisi - whom he felt viewed the artist as committed to a more communal Africa. Wanjala, is however, scathing about the alienation of the African intellectual and political elite from the masses, and accused Mazrui of "wagging his tail to please his imperial master."
Wanjala has now himself joined the ancestors in the Hereafter that Mazrui dubbed "After Africa." Farewell, "Mwalimu."
Professor Adekeye Adebajo is the Director of the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation at the University of Johannesburg.
Business Day (South Africa), 29 October 2018.
Professor Adekeye Adebajo
Director, Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation
University of Johannesburg
5 Molesey Avenue Auckland Park 2092
Johannesburg, South Africa
Tel: 011 559 7232
Fax: 086 527 6448
From: Adebajo, Adekeye
Sent: 18 October 2018 10:50 PM
To: 'Toyin Falola' <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>; Ndlovu, Khehla <ndlovks@unisa.ac.za>; Owusu-Ansah, David - owusuadx <owusuadx@jmu.edu>; Moyo, Cecilia <cmoyo@uj.ac.za>; harry.garuba@uct.ac.za; Higgs, Phillip <higgsp1@unisa.ac.za>; kmjohnson@howard.edu; c.knowles@ru.ac.za; zine.magubane@bc.edu; joel.modiri@up.ac.za; amorris@northwestern.edu; Motala, Shireen <smotala@uj.ac.za>; nthabiseng@nihss.ac.za; hlengiepn@gmail.com; csoudien@hsrc.ac.za; rugumamus@yahoo.com; Claudia Frittelli <cf@carnegie.org>; boubacarbarry4343@gmail.com
Cc: Opondo, Mary <maryo@uj.ac.za>; Tella, Oluwaseun <otella@uj.ac.za>; Ntuli, Phumzile <pntuli@uj.ac.za>; Adebajo, Adekeye <aadebajo@uj.ac.za>
Subject: More Sad news
Dear colleagues. Hope all is well. Unfortunately I have to pass on more sad news to the team. Earlier this week, we heard that Professor Chris Wanjala who presented on "Lessons from Kenya" at our August conference, died in his homeland.(See below).
All of you who met him at the conference will remember what a gentle, unassuming soul he was. I first met him at a conference in Nairobi a few years ago where we were celebrating Ali Mazrui. We shared a panel and connected, and he readily agreed to join this project.
He was part of the pioneering generation with Ngugi wa Thiongo and others who helped transform English literature departments across East Africa. In my recent conversations with him in Joburg, he assured me that these changes had survived the hard times and that he and his colleagues had even been built upon.
May his soul rest in peace, and we will find a way to honour him in the edited volume. Best, Adekeye
Prof Chris Wanjala Dies After Short Illness
· By JOSEPH SOSI on October 15, 2018 - 3:01 pm
A partial photo of Prof Chris Wanjala FACEBOOK
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· The Kenyan academia and the University of Nairobi are mourning over the sudden death of Prof Chris Lukorito Wanjala, a renowned literature lecturer and writer.
Prof Wanjala died on Monday, October 15, 2018, aged 75 while undergoing treatment at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, his son Alex Wanjalaconfirmed.
The late Wanjala joined the ranks of writers and literary scholars in 1968 as a freshman at the then University College, Nairobi, and has over the years proven to be a top brain in literary criticism across East Africa and beyond.
Prof Chris Wanjala, he died on Monday morning after a short illness
His son Alex, also a lecturer at UoN, says his father was well and had attended a funeral at their ancestral home in Chesamis, Bungoma County during the weekend.
After the relative's funeral, Wanajala travelled to his home in Lwandeti where he was taken ill and was immediately moved to Eldoret for treatment.
"He was dashed to a hospital in Eldoret where they gave some emergency treatment and he was quite stable throughout the day. And the doctors said they would keep him there for two or three days as they carried out tests," Mr Alex told Nation.
While at the hospital, Prof Wanjala's son indicated the respected author complained of extreme chest pains and stomach pains.
Away from his work as a lecturer, Prof Wanjala was also a columnist with a literary segment in the Saturday Nation.
His most recent contribution in literature is dubbed Memories We Lost, an anthology of short stories which was chosen as a set book for secondary schools.
Prof Chris Lukorito Wanjala
Professor Adekeye Adebajo
Director, Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation
University of Johannesburg
5 Molesey Avenue Auckland Park 2092
Johannesburg, South Africa
Tel: 011 559 7232
Fax: 086 527 6448
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