Wole Soyinka
between them is presented to a highly literate middle class entrepreneur
as inducement to also consult the occult powers of the illiterate spirit
medium; our literate entrepreneur must thus decide whether he will be
dissuaded by the bad grammar or be persuaded by the high recom-
mendation of the spirit medium’s powers of prophecy and divination,
powers presumably not in any way compromised by infractions against
the grammatical structures of the English language!
On a far more serious and controversial note, this openness to all
sources of knowledge including the esoteric and the occult, entangle the
narrative ofIsarain very problematic textualizations of the fusion of, on
the one hand, new ways of “seeing” introduced by colonialism and its
contradictions with, on the other hand, old ways of “seeing” recuperable
from precolonial sources. This attempted fusion is played out in diverse
domains and levels like religion, herbal lore and medicine, business and
the professions, and most dramatic of all, the institution of traditional
precolonial governance embodied in such organs and institutions as the
“oshugbo,” the “ogboni” and the throne of the “Odemo.” Deliberately,
Soyinka as author, and through the mediation of Yode and his cohorts
as protagonists, adopts a cultural nationalist stance in the conflicts and
antagonisms between indigenous and foreign sources of knowledge, this
being an open-ended nationalism that admits of a distant horizon signi-
fied in “Ashtabula,” but then relocates that horizon at “home” in Isara.
This nuanced, enlightened and multicultural nationalism is however
subjected to occultation in the case of the struggle for succession to the
throne of Isara.
This struggle is given considerable narrative space and is narrated
in the most enthralling and dramatic sequences inIsara. And like the
narration of the struggle of the Egba women inAk ́e, it ends the larger
narrative of the entire memoir. The reader’s sympathies are nudged in
a not too subtle fashion in the direction of the camp of Akinsanya’s
candidacy, the radical trade unionist who is expected to bring to the tra-
ditionalism of the institution of kingship the progressive and enlightened
consciousness he has garnered from his work and activities in Lagos.
But the opposing camp of reactionary traditionalists and opportunists is
backed by Agunrin Odubona, the most venerated warrior-hero of Isara’s
past struggles against local and British incursions into the Isara heart-
land, a fierce opponent of anything foreign, Western and new. Given his
venerable status, it is recognized that if he speaks on behalf of the oppos-
ing camp at the palaver convened to adjudicate between the competing
claimants, all is lost. Thus, Jagun, the next most venerated custodian of