Tragic mythopoesis as postcolonial discourse: critical writings expressions do they take? Finally, what have the writers and poets of
the African world written about these issues? These are the daunting
questions which Soyinka tackles in this book and this is why the book
is a melange of literary criticism, cultural theory, moral philosophy and
metacritical speculation.
Bearing in mind that all the writers and poets from all corners of
the African world – continent and Diaspora – whose writings Soyinka
explores inThe Burden of Memoryare male, this book contains some of the
most comprehensively comparatist reflections on world Black writing to
date. To his credit, Soyinka does not ignore peculiarities and specificities
of hemispheric, national and class differences among these writers of
the Black world; there is even an extended comparison between the
specific literary and cultural effects of French and British colonialism on
the elites of their respective colonies. But ultimately, his concept of this
“Black World” is formulated around a rubric of pure, autochthonous
anteriority which predates all waves of foreign conquest and domination
of Africa. Since, in this book, this notion is considerably amplified and
finessed beyond any of its previous incarnations in Soyinka’s critical
thought – definitely an advance on its expression inMyth, Literature and
the African World– it is useful to quote at some length from one of his most
extensive extemporizations on it:
By this I simply mean that, if we succeeded in leapfrogging backwards in time
over the multiple insertions of contending forces of dissension – be they of the
West or the Orient, and with all their own mutually destructive schisms and
fragmentations – if, by this process, we are able to regain a measure of anterior
self-knowledge, it may be possible to regard religio-cultural interventions as pos-
sibly no more than disruptive illusions whose ramifications hold the future in
thrall. In any case, how recent, in any effective way, were some of these in-
trusions? Of course, there is no suggestion here that the accretions of all such
interventions be abandoned on all fronts, not in the least....Our proposition is
simply one of recollection, to go back to our commencing code, memory. The
need for the preservation of the material and spiritual properties by which mem-
ory is invested. Acceptance of both its burdens and triumphs or – better still –
its actuality, the simple fact of its anterior existence and validity for its time. To
accept that is to recognize the irrationality of mutual destructiveness on behalf
of any values, any values whatsoever, however seductive – cultural, ideological,
religious, or race-authenticated – that intervened and obscured or eroded those
multiple anteriorities– of any kind – from which our being once took its definition.
(TBM,–) (My emphasis)
It is important to note that Soyinka talks of multipleanterioritieshere and
that this is the very first time that he pluralizes and relativizes the term