Hanna Mak

10 May 2016

Essay 1: The Paradox of Knowledge

Whenever I am tasked with looking back on a course in order to summarize or otherwise confront what was learned, the attempt is always frustrated by the inevitable realization that I have only just scratched the surface of the material. This sentiment holds especially true for this course—almost more so than any other that I have taken in the past. Perhaps this may be attributed to the richness of the texts, as well as the fact that my knowledge of both Greek tragedy and African literature has previously been relatively limited and superficial; and yet, the problem of confronting these texts is ultimately one that extends well beyond the page. A distinct and elaborate work of art from an entirely unfamiliar culture both demands and deserves a greater understanding of that culture than anything that my cursory knowledge of African culture may supply.

But perhaps the heart of this problem may have been illustrated in the preceding sentence—“African culture.” What does that even mean? Reflecting upon this question, Horace Miner’s anthropological satire, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” comes to mind; in an essay which employs stiff anthropological language, Miner describes and analyzes the American obsession with the mouth and body: “The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of the powerful influences of ritual and ceremony.” Critically, Miner’s description is not wrong—nor is it exactly right. The concept of culture is mummified by such explanatory language; perhaps one description is much more a likeness for its studious preservation of detail, but what use is speaking to such a likeness that cannot speak back, offering its much needed rebuttal? What stories do we necessarily overlay onto such an anthropological stasis, in order to merely envision the way that culture may appear in life? I found our course’s comparison of African literary texts with Greek tragedy to be both fruitful and persuasive for their often comparable measure of depth and metaphysical gravity—but I must acknowledge that both of those texts have been primed, perhaps inescapably, by my limited outsider’s understanding; tensely academic, borderline neurotic, and always treading lightly in language.

Perhaps now the experience sounds terrible or confounding. This experience of disorientation is, however, necessary and conducive to learning, particularly in the first approach of the uninitiated. The complex and culturally mixed nature of the material in this course necessitates a heightened judiciousness, beneficial for its exercise. In order to properly allow each text its due, one must not only acknowledge the inevitable variance between African and Greek texts, but also the variance between works of disparate African cultures; some textual and ideological features correlate, some others do not—still others may convince us that they do correlate by their initial appearance, but perhaps at their core, signify something else entirely to those with a different cultural gaze. This intellectual trap has been at the forefront of my mind throughout this semester, with mixed results. In my midterm, which analyzed the Apolline and Dionysiac forces in Bacchae and Death and the King’s Horseman, I implicitly acknowledged my innate attraction to “universal” or culturally shared textual elements, while attempting to negotiate their associated dangers of oversimplification. The essay was inspired by the initial chapters of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, which strongly resonated with me—there was a verisimilitude in his poetic lines on the deities’ perpetual imbalance, and I stand by my essay’s recognition of this force in the works of both Euripides and Soyinka. However, post-midterm, I found myself disagreeing with his assertions more and more (particularly his broodings on democracy, as well as his elitism, finally laid bare when he ceased to grapple with the indescribable); this gradual divergence reveals much of the cultural subjectivity that even celebrated philosophers might foster in their analyses of literature.

Turning to the subject of my research essay, however, I experienced a sharp feeling of dissatisfaction with the final product. Dr. White accurately pinpointed one of the primary issues in the essay as a matter of “how much to separate the potential identification of Soyinka’s dramas with western models from their independent or Afrocentric development”—this failure of clarification and analysis on my part makes manifest the delicate nature of the relationship between our western and African texts in the course. I was strongly tempted to explore the African metaphysical aspect of Soyinka’s work, largely for my lack of familiarity with the subject; at the same time, however, I neglected to establish its link to many of Nietzsche’s comparable assertions in metaphysics, and even Soyinka’s own training in the Greek classics. On the one hand, one feels the need to emphasize the elements of Soyinka’s works which are uniquely African and transcend western influence, but on the other hand, those elements of the west are demonstrably present, and must be addressed. In Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat, the western and African stylistic elements operate in a similar coexistence, and are equally as complicated to tease out in any satisfactory way. In class, we recognized that occasionally the style of narration shifts from omniscience into “us” or “we,” and occurs when a chapter opens in a marketplace setting—a uniquely African manifestation of the Greek agora. While this comparison seems apt, its occurrence is comparatively rare—in this sense, its total significance is difficult to evaluate. For me, it also raises the question of whether each of the similarities between African and Greek texts are truly present in any universal or humanist essence, or whether they appear to be there simply because we are actively seeking them.

Despite this reservation on my part, I do endorse (however tentatively) the existence of some universal or humanist ideas, if only for the incredibly cynical implications of their complete denial. The emergence of the marketplace or agora in Death and the King’s Horseman and A Grain of Wheat did function in a similar manner as those in Greek tragedies—these narratives each stressed the larger, often metaphysical implications of their tragic events upon the lives of the many, and the agora served to tie individual threads of narrative together in a frequently reinforced, community-oriented bearing of witness. The narratives which failed to consistently establish this connection, such as The Rape of Shavi, and Things Fall Apart in its middle section, while rich and significant texts, reflected the absence of this agora; a reinforcement of communal significance is necessary to establish a forceful sense of resonance and resolution in tragedy. It facilitates the public staging of a work’s most tragic and significant events, oftentimes affirming a permanent shift in the world’s metaphysical axis. In this sense of its contribution, the agora plays a substantial role in the cross-cultural, time-transcendent experience of tragic literature.

While the thematic and stylistic similarities of Greek and African texts are important to consider for their individual cultural implications, however, it is the broader picture that has proven the most lastingly beneficial—the intellectual exercise to be found in the process of unravelling these subtle cultural and textual distinctions. The articulation of these subtle differences is a skill that I will continue to hone, although the continuance of its struggle has demonstrated substantial room for improvement; likewise, the foundational knowledge imparted in this course has given me a route to further pursue the study of both African literature and Greek tragedy, where previously I had none at all. Now that I know how much I do not know, at least I am off to a strong start on this Sisyphean climb (though hopefully the boulder doesn’t roll back down and crush me).

Essay 2: Tragic Bloodlines: Familial Ruin in Africa and Greece

          In much of its treatment of the tragic hero’s error as an individual, Aristotle’s Poetics essentially describes the ancient forerunner of the morally ambiguous anti-hero figure-- an archetype that is becoming increasingly popular in modern media today: “a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty” (13b). One point where its hero crucially differs, however, is in his or her particular connection to family. Even in the Poetics’ sparse treatment of the family’s thematic role in tragedy, one notes a distinct whiff of an almost mythic fatalism, perhaps less common in modern narratives than in classical: “[T]he best tragedies are founded on the story of a few houses—on the fortunes of Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, and those others who have done or suffered something terrible…” (13c). Here, one is imparted with the sense that in Aristotle’s view, where the individual may err, in the great tragic families, this tendency towards hamartia is fated, passed down through the blood like a curse; the family of Oedipus representing its prime example. The thematic prominence of family is notably featured in African tragic narratives as well as Greek; however, their respective treatments do present subtle differences. While Sophocles’ Antigone and Buchi Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi each present family as a central theme, their interpretations also necessarily differ for a variety of reasons, most notably situated in culture, genre, and form.

          In order to establish a more developed sense of the classical treatment of this theme, Antigone may serve as an appropriate point of departure; it patently exemplifies Aristotle’s notion of the great, ill-fated houses as central to the “best tragedies.” Even without the direct presence of Oedipus, the “highly renowned and prosperous” man at the center of his house’s tragic story, his willful spirit lives through his daughter, Antigone. This intensely willful spirit may be seen in her harshly challenging words to Ismene at the opening of the play, even before her sister knows the situation or has a chance to hesitate: “For Creon this matter’s really serious./ Anyone who acts against the order/ will be stoned to death before the city./ Now you know and you’ll quickly demonstrate whether you are nobly born, or else/ a girl unworthy of her splendid ancestors” (42-7). This spirited willfulness, however, with its emphasis on noble or ancestral “worth,” is perhaps depicted as less of a tragic flaw in the play than a reaping of the fate sown by her sire and brothers before her: “I’ll do my duty to my brother--/ and yours as well, if you’re not prepared to. I won’t be caught betraying him” (56-8).

She will not be caught, in the eyes of the public citizenry, or of the gods--she acknowledges no other choice, in adherence to her publicized role. Familial duty and the higher law of the gods take precedence over the law of state, put in place by iron-fisted Creon; in a similar fashion as Polynices in Oedipus at Colonus, who knowingly marched to his doom as if fulfilling some ordained role of destruction, Antigone follows a comparable track in her fated yet conscious self-sacrifice. In keeping with Aristotle’s emphasis on the greatness and renown of these tragic families--which strongly concerns the public dimension of their actions, for good or ill--the respective, inherited fates of Oedipus’ children are heavily tied to this perception of the public, both in terms of the general citizenry, as well as the never-faltering gaze of the divine. While the blood presumably passes on the “noble” character traits which doomed Antigone proudly touts, it also bestows a social role which enables her sacrifice to occur in the first place; without the signifying weight of her social position and family connections, her death would not signify in much the same way. For Aristotle, a drama that imparts the stories of these great, tragic houses must “end unhappily”-- it is “the right ending” (13c). In this sense, the greatness of a family in a tragic work often fatefully charts its destruction, even as it elevates. 

          In Buchi Emecheta’s novel, The Rape of Shavi, the theme of family and royal blood also features prominently in the narrative, and in some sense, her novel demonstrates a similar fatalism; but importantly, that fatalism is less one passed down through the blood than one of a post-colonial cast. Rather than depicting an internal familial ruin that radiates outward into the affairs of the state, the ruin is largely imposed on their society from without, in adherence to its utopian genre. On the one hand, Asogba is a prince, in keeping with the favored Aristotelian notion of a “highly renowned and prosperous family” as forming the basis for greatest tragic narratives; his hamartia is evident in the escalation of his ambition--a trait which began with a genuine belief in the possibility of a better life for his people, and his commendable desire to let no one die in the drought. And yet, on the other hand, as an admirable character with mild curiosity and ambition, who began with only a distaste for his father’s “negative pleasure in humiliating his mother” and who thought to help the strangers first and “talk about their humanity later” (15), the most significant shift in his character ultimately occurs as a presumable result of his poor treatment in England: “Look at our women and see how clean they can afford to keep their body cloth. What else do you want me to do for our people, father? You’ve no idea what I suffered from the albinos” (154-5). His initial, relatively harmless impatience with his father escalates into an outright disregard; he dismisses Patayon’s disapproval, sinks into a shallow materialism with his jeep and guns, and becomes visibly alienated from his community, even his “chill diplomatic laugh” not ringing “true to his own ears” (151). Where Oedipus or Creon’s tragic flaws were propagated by a stubborn entrenchment of their characters, Asogba’s was enhanced by an external influence; where Oedipus’ tragic fate seemed handed down through his family’s cursed blood, Asogba’s most dire familial problems were only fated in the sense that they were essentially set in motion by unavoidable, ruinous chance--the crash landing of a white man’s plane.

          Furthermore, one of the most significant departures in The Rape of Shavi from Aristotle’s view of the great tragic family is the ending of the novel, which resolves itself on a note of rebirth, evading the final destructive blow of fate. Rather than an extensive familial curse, Asogba’s failings seem more akin to the sudden, restorative powers of a brushfire; while his destructive behavior stems from his interaction with the Europeans, his bloodline is snuffed from the earth by a European influence as well, dying of syphilis and producing no heirs. The population of Shavi is reduced by the drought and starvation, but Asogba’s personal failures die with him: “It was his half brother Viyon who carried on the Shavian line …who had always behaved like Patayon” (178). Here, the slow and deliberate spirit of Patayon is reborn in Viyon’s rule, and Asogba’s monumental failures ultimately served to instruct the community in “a lesson about [their] way of life, [their] civilization” (178). In short, while the benefits of Greek tragedy are largely reaped by the spectator in catharsis, in Emecheta’s Utopian or postcolonial novel, the “lesson” is demonstrably absorbed by its own fictional community, projecting an image of strength and the hope for resurgence from a double “rape” by an external, European force. In this light, perhaps it is unsurprising that the narrative functions of these two families would differ, as the tones and ideological motives for which they are composed are demonstrably different. While the two depictions of family do differ on a cultural level, perhaps their greatest differences are more reliably accounted for in their difference of genre and form. Where Aristotle’s Poetics consciously speaks to the classical tragic example of Oedipus, Emecheta’s modern novel integrates a wide variety of genres and influences--ultimately, it maintains much of tragedy’s gravitas, but follows a different path to attain it.