I must say I am tired
very tired
tired of all devotion to death and dying...
And I am tired
tired of all these noises of
condolence from those who
love to look upon the anger of the hungry
not their heard (sic) and stroll back home
worrying and forever worrying
about overweight and special diet for dogs and cats (25-26)That modernity is a harbinger of progress and civilization remains a notion that is
implicated in migrancy. The historical antecedent to which it turns is however thoroughly
imperialist. This brings about another angle to cosmopolitanism in “Slums of the Earth”.
While the engagement of the poem goes to confirm the remark that Anyidoho’s poetry
displays a concern for “the whole of humanity” (Senanu and Vincent 305), it nevertheless
attests to the fact that the fate of the black race and the Third World in general is
paramount in his poetry. The teleology of progress and civilization is normally presented
in favourable and attractive terms by the West. However, such anticipatory explications
are hardly balanced in the sense that they often represent the narratives of the imperial
side. Therefore, the degree of progress that is made especially in temporal and spatial
terms within the framework of imperialism national and transnational is a function of
the retrogression forced on another unit of temporality and space. Ananya Roy (2004: 67)
elaborates on this:
The notion of progress operates in time and space. If some places are seen as backward,
then moving ahead also implies being ahead of such places. Such geographical
articulations of development and underdevelopment constitute a key dimension of the
modern. They imply that progress can only exist in relation to what is seen as backwards.The point, then, is that Anyidoho goes beyond the patronizing nature of the above
analysis to show the contemporary angle to the formulation of the opinions on the
malaise of postmodern gentrification. Globe trotting and gathering of data on world