Notes to pages– It is noteworthy that except for Baroka inThe Lion and the Jewel, marital
couples in Soyinka’s works are usually monogamous, the prime examples
being the Reverend and Mrs. Erinjobi inCamwood on the Leavesand Makuri
and Alu inThe Swamp Dwellers.
Michel Foucault,Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of
Reason, New York: Pantheon Books,.
See Michel Peucheux,Language, Semantics and Ideology, New York: St. Martins
Press,.
Wande Abimbola,Ifa: An Exposition of Ifa literary Corpus, Ibadan University
Press,.
Biodun Jeyifo, “Wole Soyinka and the Tropes of Disalienation,” in Soyinka,
Art, Dialogue and Outrage.
These include, among others: the “Obitun Dancers” who are ascribed to
Ado-Ekiti instead of Ondo (); the NEPU female activist Gambo Sawaba
(Gambo “Freedom”) who is called Salawa Gambo (); the Winneba
Ideological Institute in Nkrumah’s Ghana which is called Winneba School
of Political Science ().
On June,, the government of the military dictator, Ibrahim Badamasi
Babangida, annulled the decisive electoral victory of Mashood Kasimawo
Abiola at the federal elections intended to usher in an elected civilian gov-
ernment after a mediocre and repressive military interregnum of twelve
years. This act was massively resisted by huge mass protests and demonstra-
tions in many parts of the country, especially in the southwest. Most of these
protests and demonstrations were met with savagely brutal repression from
Babangida’s troops under the command of General Sani Abacha, the man
who would later succeed Babangida and institute the most bloody and cor-
rupt military rule in Nigeria’s post-independence history. For these reasons,
and also because Abiola later died under rather mysterious circumstances
on the eve of his release from Abacha’s dungeons, June,has since
been memorialized in popular political consciousness as the ultimate marker
of the tragedy of missed opportunities and an elusive destiny with humane,
democratic governance in Nigeria.
. ,
The clearest statement of this view can be found in Chinweizuet al.inTowards
the Decolonization of African Literature, Washington, DC: Howard University
Press,.
The essays in question are “And After the Narcissist?,”African Forumvol.,
no. (Spring), –; “Neo-Tarzanism: the Poetics of Pseudo-
Tradition” in Soyinka,Art, Dialogue and Outrage, “Aesthetic Illusions: Prescrip-
tions for the Suicide of Poetry” inReading Black: Essays in the Criticism of African,
Caribbean, and Black American Literature, Houston A. Baker, Jr., (ed.), Ithaca:
Cornell University Africana Studies and Research Center,,–, and
“L.S. Senghor and N ́egritude:J’accuse, mais, je pardonne” and “N ́egritude and