Visionary mythopoesis in fictional and nonfictional prose role of paradox, chance and contingency in human affairs, especially
given the fact that these typically find little space in “scientific” and
even journalistic expostulations on politics and the political. The second
and far more contentious feature of Soyinka’s political writing, is his all-
encompassing investment in the decisive role of subjective, voluntaristic
forces in history, and arising from this, his over-valorization of will and
volition in the confrontation of human subjects with political and so-
cial calamities of the magnitude imposed, at one level of macro-political
structures, on Nigeria and much of the African continent by the run of
military and civilian despots who have dominated political governance
in the entire post-independence period. The specific expressions and
consequences of this privileging of voluntarism by Soyinka in writing the
self and writing the nation and the continent into history are taken up
for further discussion in the concluding chapter of this study.