Towards the Demolition of Jericho Walls: The Task Before the Writer in a Developing Polity
- By Segun Akinyode
- Published April 30, 2008
- Essays
- Unrated
Segun Akinyode
Segun Akinyode studied at Lagos State University, Lagos. He used to sleep a lot. However, the need to continue writing has substituted sleeping with reading, writing, walking, and eating fruits. He is currently a teacher in the General Studies Department, Moshood Abiola Polytechnic.
View all Entries by Segun AkinyodeIt is obvious that the Kenyan instance as quoted above was revolutionary in execution and humane in planning. When were the contents of any play discussed with workers and peasants in any of the developing society before they were put on stage? Are the remnants of our theatres not reserved for the eggheads and their students (an elitist outlet to propagate support for the hegemonic inclinations of the ruling class?) If the committed creative writer can adapt his people-oriented works into plays and toe the line of KCT in their production, won’t the theatre be returned to its old glory and relevance? The fact that the film and theater appeal very much to the recreation of life through physical actions, their propensity for prolonged residence in the minds of the audience is guaranteed. Acting within this ambit, the attitude of the masses/poor is shaped faster, stronger and sharper than when the print is the only medium of reaching the target audience.
Having dwelt so much on the vehicles for hauling the word, it is pertinent to examine the desirability of ensuring multifariousness in the contents of the word. The need to diversify the source and treatment of themes is a sine qua-non to ensuring an intensively steady brand of response from the ultimate receiver of the message of the creative sender. Is it only in the area of social infrastructure entitlement that the masses are lagging? Politics, education, technological integration, the relationship between our oral tradition and westernism, freedom fighting, the need for ideological engineering and re-engineering, human rights abuses, environmental pollution are some of the burning and pertinent realms worthy of exploration. It is most gratifying to note that the world of thematic choice and treatment is one that lends itself to robust manipulation and recreation based on the prevailing conditions in the writer’s clime. So, what remains for the creative communicator is to be sensitive to the changing colors and nature of the disparagement and neglect of the masses; he should also be responsive to their success and gains as it is from these silent but salient and roaring dynamisms that he can pick and choose his themes.
It is not enough to create relevant and intimate themes, the quality of character and characterization must match the aspirations of the subject matter. It would result in negative orientation if, after choosing the right theme, its treatment results in the creation of characters that choose suicide in the face of natural or man-made challenges requiring instance resolve and decision or heroes that choose to keep mute when they should be strident in their condemnation of inimical developments.
In this age of mass resentment, uprising, and vociferous reactions, the writer should endeavor to create protagonists who have the feel of the people. A hero who truly reflects the bashing of the toiling, suffering masses; a staunchly dynamic personality whose experiences are parallel with those of the common man is most likely to enjoy round sympathy than a soft, lily livered semi-intellectual, who dithers when crucial decisions are expected of him.
There is no gain saying the fact that a system that prescribes rules and laws without evolving an enabling environment for the conventions to thrive and be obeyed, will soon find itself reeling in a discordant social system. The allusion here is to the dearth of books. For whichever manner it is viewed, the prescription of laws is tantamount to the need for literary works to be available to the reading public. The anxiety and psychological trauma resulting from the unavailability of relevant literary works is the chaos in the reading climate.
The frosty relationship between the writer and the publisher in the developing system was raised far back 1986 by the Nigerian writer, the Late Cyprian Ekwensi that,
What ( I am) advocating is a lifting of the tight
and artificial control whereby books are
released to the reading public in droplet;
books are never available to be bought on
impulse, books are never printed in quantities
to meet the demand…
Faced with this type of lapse precipitated by whatever reason, it is still the writer who should design a temporary means of ensuring that his books are available ‘to be bought on impulse’ while the system is shoving and prodding the publisher to find a permanent solution to the unwholesome drift. Writers must be ready to finance the publishing of their works. They must be ready to learn the technology of publishing. They can do this as individuals or as a body of writers with similar hopes and aspirations. This arrangement is what is called self-publishing. The advantage is that the writer becomes the marketer of his works and he can determine areas where his work is most likely to sell and flood the venues with the product.
Heavy and intensive publicity breeds wide distribution possibilities. The writer who has decided to unburden himself of the troubles of our uninspiring publishers should not neglect publicity. Serial rights granted newspapers and magazines is one dimension of stimulating the interest of the masses even before the work is out of the printer’s shop. Is it not possible to hawk books like akara and moinmoin? Instances of this approach are obtained in the capital cities of several developing and developed environments. It may be argued that the books so displayed are old and second hand. But the question is can’t new books be displayed in like manner?
An addendum to the foregoing is Publish on Demand or what is referred to as PoD. This is a system where the book is printed after the buyer has signified his interest by placing order for such book. Needless to say, the technology involved may still be beyond the reach of the developing polities but the application of globalization, global village, and ICT phenomena should cater for the obvious technical obstacles that may threaten the success of PoD in the developing environments.
Another target audience, whose attention needs to be fed with imaginative news about the peculiar manner of subsistence in the deprived world and possible ameliorating alternatives, is the Africans in the Diaspora. According to a
… roughly 35 million citizens of African descent
in the
$450 billion per annum…
Apart from the huge financial potential, the possibility of being read compulsively is very high because, the other part of the report says,
African immigrants to the
highest educational attainments of any immigrant
group. 49 percent of African adult immigrants hold a bachelor
degree.
Translation is another salient responsibility of the writer. That the majority of literary works from the embryonic societies are written in the language of the colonial masters is constant. The unfortunate fallout is that, inasmuch as the trend continues, literary works will continue to be available for the consumption of the few miss-educated ‘literate’ ruling bourgeoisies. (That’s the very few of them who have the time to read.) Translating the seminal works into local languages may be realized through a concerted collaboration between the writer and the translator. It is even more pertinent against the backdrop of the lackadaisical attitude to creating the social and political climes for the Kenyan experience to flourish in the developing societies.
Establishing one’s métier as a writer is a sure way of sustaining one’s writing oeuvre. The writer in a developing social system should identify his forte. Once this is done, developing it, using the different areas of the diseased lives should not poise any difficulty to him.
Indeed, the tasks before the writer in a developing society are gargantuan but not insurmountable. What he requires is a change of orientation, focus and a will to reach out as much as possible. It should also always be at the back of his mind that, he is a an arbiter between the rampaging, insensitive political rulership that is daily unleashing socio-economic and political terror on the hapless, cowed electorate; the sympathy of his pen should tilt heavily on the side of the oppressed majority.
Thus, if the substance of this work is considered and employed in concert with other efforts of similar orientation by the literary communicators, not only would the teeming, reading masses have been provided with enough imaginative materials capable of informing the nature of their reactions; a society on course towards eliminating all the reactionary forces which are daily militating against the emergence of a near egalitarian developing society would have been put in place.
REFERENCE.
Egudu, R N Modern African Poetry and African Predicament. The Macmillan Press Ltd.
Stroke, 1978.
Ngugi’s response to a question at a round table discussion titled ‘The Role of Culture in the African Revolution’ published in The African Communist, No.113, Second Quarter, 1998.
Ewen, D.R. Nurudin Farah in The Writing of East and
Za-Ayem Agye Towards A Peoples Literature of Socio-political
Awareness in Literature and Society: Selected
Essays on African Literature, E. N. Emenyonu
(ed). Zim Pam African Publishers,
O. I. S. Odejimi Death of a Link, Campus Publications,
Ngugi, wa Thiong’o Writers in Politics, East African Educational
Publishers,
Booths, James. Writers and Politics in
Company,
Akomoye, Oko Towards a Sociology of the Nigerian Playwright: The
Playwright as an Intellectual in Society in Literature and
Society: Selected Essays on African Literature. E. N
Emenyonu (ed) Zim Pam African Publishers, Oguta,
