Abstract
In this paper, I interrogate the efflorescence of African diasporic literature, insisting that, much as it is welcomed and praised, it has negative implications for knowledge production on the continent. The premise for this conclusion is that literary works produced abroad, especially in North America and Europe, undergo certain material processes of production that undermine the realities of Africa. America and Europe, constituting a powerful literary capital, do demand a certain way of seeing, reading, and interpreting Africa. Their gaze invariably sanctions the kind of literature produced and the kind of Africa imagined, which in most cases is at variance with the reality of the continent. Thus, African diasporic literary works have the tendency to become a discursive formation with a powerful ideological positioning that throws up more questions than answers about Africa. I critically engage Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short story "Jumping Monkey Hills" to illustrate the material processes of production that undermine knowledge production about and in Africa. Herself one of the most celebrated diasporic writers today, her story, I contend, is an ironic instrument for interrogating her works and those of others who are in the process of producing Africa for the Western gaze.
Introduction
At the turn of the twenty-first century, African literature, especially Nigerian literature, has experienced a boost in diasporic writing. No doubt, the diasporic genre has enriched our literature, in that some of the biggest names in African literature today emerged as diasporic writers, and their voices continue to be shaped by the diasporic condition. I refer to writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Vamba Sherif, Aminatta Forna, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Biyavanga Wainaina, Helon Habila, Doreen Baingana, Leila Aboulela, Sefi Atta, Teju Cole, among others. Most of them live permanently abroad, some travel home now and then, but they are evidently concerned about the fate of their continent. But their living abroad throws up a crucial question of geo-determinism: how does their living outside Africa determines the kind of literature they write? (Julien 17-28). This question needs answering, and urgently too, especially in the context of knowledge assessment. We often hear statements such as the best of African writing today is produced outside the continent in the sense that conventional publishing and processes of knowledge productions are extremely weak on the continent (Adesanmi and Dunton 7-19; Shercliff 10-12).
Content
Expectedly, the diasporic turn is receiving critical attention through theoretical and analytical categories such as migration, transnationalism, multiculturalism, deterritorialisation, globalisation, hybridity, identity formation, among others. Most of the studies of diasporic literary and cultural production, especially those done in the west (see Okpewho and Nkiru's The New African Diaspora, Cajetan and Taylor's African Migration Narratives), often foreground how diasporisation has enriched global literary writing and scholarship, although it is obvious that what is often seen as “global" is what appeals to the Western literary capital. But other scholars (Graham Huggan; Eileen Julien 667-700, Amatoritsero Ede 112-129) have also been critical of the diasporic turn especially in the ways in which it exoticises, singularises and reduces African literature to a single story (to echo Adichie) in the West, and undermines literary production in Africa.
While admitting the benefits of the diasporic turn to African literature, I would like to share my critical thought on it. I interrogate the diasporic condition from the perspective of knowledge production in Africa, wondering to what extent the diasporic turn has helped or harmed literary production at home. I am strongly of the view that the production of African literature and knowledge in the diaspora, much as some scholars praise and pose it as the best of African epistemology, has a negative consequence, one that affects both the version of literature produced abroad and the one produced at home. Although the diaspora has existed since slave trade or colonialism, I take the migration phase of the late twentieth century as the diasporic turn with which I am concerned. I use the Nigerian experience as a point of reference.
My analytical reference is to a short story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, perhaps the most celebrated African diasporic writer today. Reading her "Jumping Monkey Hill" I make the point, among others, that the Western legitimising machineries which enable and validate African literary production in the diaspora subtly manipulate the direction of African literature in a way many would consider as negative. Consequently, conteinporary African writers are confronted with a dilemma that, on the one hand, denies them an opportunity to get properly published at home; and, on the other, frustrates their desire to tell what they think is the authentic African story (contentious as the notion of authenticity is), not one mediated by the Western protocols for worlding continental particularities. Herself an example of a worlded or glabalised literary mind, Adichie ironically offers us a view with which we can rethink the notionof the diasporic mode ifAfrica is to fully decolonise itself and gain epistemological freedom.
While admitting the benefits of the diasporic turn to African literature, I would like to share my critical thought on it. I interrogate the diasporic condition from the perspective of knowledge production in Africa, wondering to what extent the diasporic turn has helped or harmed literary production at home. I am strongly of the view that the production of African literature and knowledge in the diaspora, much as some scholars praise and pose it as the best of African epistemology, has a negative consequence, one that affects both the version of literature produced abroad and the one produced at home. Although the diaspora has existed since slave trade or colonialism, I take the migration phase of the late twentieth century as the diasporic turn with which I am concerned. I use the Nigerian experience as a point of reference.
My analytical reference is to a short story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, perhaps the most celebrated African diasporic writer today. Reading her "Jumping Monkey Hill" I make the point, among others, that the Western legitimising machineries which enable and validate African literary production in the diaspora subtly manipulate the direction of African literature in a way many would consider as negative. Consequently, conteinporary African writers are confronted with a dilemma that, on the one hand, denies them an opportunity to get properly published at home; and, on the other, frustrates their desire to tell what they think is the authentic African story (contentious as the notion of authenticity is), not one mediated by the Western protocols for worlding continental particularities. Herself an example of a worlded or glabalised literary mind, Adichie ironically offers us a view with which we can rethink the notionof the diasporic mode ifAfrica is to fully decolonise itself and gain epistemological freedom.
Conclusion
My main argument has been that the diasporisation of African literature, much as it is praised in the present time, has its negative consequences on African knowledge production. The premise here is that creative writers are involved in fashioning African epistemological system, and as such the knowledge contained in their literary works about Africa can project the continent. For writers based outside the continent, or living on the continent but patronising Western publishers, what they produce of Africa needs interrogating. This is because they are put under pressures by the publishing protocols of other continents, especially the West. Knowledge production in Africa can only attain epistemological confidence and freedom if machineries and protocols for literary and cultural productions are based on the continent. Contentious as this conclusion may be, it remains one of the crucial methods with which Africa can attain full decolonisation, which is a panacea for the kind of development the continent needs to favourably conmpete with other continents of the world.
References
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Africa, vol. 32, no. 1, 2005, pp. 7-19.
Adewale, Toyin. "Introduction." 25 New Nigerian Poets, edited by Toyin Adewale. Ishmael Reed Publishing, 2000, pp. iii-v.
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. The Thing around Your Neck. Lagos: Farafina, 2009.
Azuah, Unoma. "Of Phases and Faces: Unoma Azuah Engages Sefi Atta and
Chika Unigwe," Research in African Literatures, vol. 39, no. 2, 2008, pp. 108-116.
Diala, Isidore. "Esiaba Irobi: Poetry at the Margins." African Migration Narratives: Politics, Race, and Space, edited by Cajetan Iheka and Jack Taylor, Rochester University Press, 2018, pp. 256-278. Ede, Amatoritsero. "Narrative Moment and Self-Anthropologizing Discourse." Research in African Literatures, vol. 46, no.3, 2015, pp.112-129. Huggan, Graham. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. Routledge, 2001.
Ibironke, Olabode. "African Writers Challenge Conventions of Postcolonial Literary History."
Rethinking African Cultural Production, edited by Frieda Ekotto and Kenneth W. Harrow. Indiana UP, 2015, pp. 29-51. Iheka, Cajetan and Jack Taylor. "Introduction: the Migration Turn in African Cultural
Productions." African Migration Narratives: Politics, Race, and Space, edited by Cajetan Iheka and Jack Taylor, Rochester University Press, 2018, pp. 1- 18.
Julien, Eileen. "The Critical Present: Where is 'African Literature'? Rethinking African Cultural Production, edited by Frieda Ekotto and Kenneth W. Harrow, Indiana University Press, 2015, pp. 17-28. "The Extroverted African Novel, Revisited: African Novels at Home, in the World." Jowrnal of African Cutural Studies. DOI:10.1080/13696815.2018.1468241.
Mudimbe, Valentin-Yves. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. James Currey and Indiana UP, 1988. Oguibe, Olu. "Esiaba Irobi: The Tragedy of Exile," Syncretic Arenas: Essays on Postcolonial African Drama and Theatre for Esiaba Irobi, edited by
Isidore Diala, Brill, 2014, pp. 1-19.
Ojo-Ade, Femi. Exile at Home. International Publishers, 1998.
Okpewho, Isidore. "Introduction: Can We 'Go Home Again?" The New African
Diaspora,
edited by Isidore Okpewho & Nkiru Nzegwu, Indiana University Press,
2009, pp. 3-30.
Olaniyan, Tejumola. "African Cultural Studies: Of Travels, Accents, and
Epistemologies." Rethinking African Cultural Production, edited by Frieda Ekotto and
Kenneth W. Harrow, Indiana University Press, 2015, pp. 94-108.
Osofisan, Femi. "An Experience of Publishing in Africa.” The African Writers'
Handbook, edited by James Gibbs and Jack Mapanje, Africa Books
Collective, 1999, pp. 32-35.
Shercliff, Emma. "African Publishing in the Twenty-first Century." Wasafiri, vol.
31, no. 4, 2018, pp. 10-12.
Soyinka, Wole. You Must Set Forth at Dawn: a Memoir. Random House, 2007.
Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. "Diaspora Dialogues: Engagements between Africa and
Its Diasporas." The New African Diaspora, edited Isidore Okpewho &
Nkiru Nzegwu, Indiana University Press, 2009, pp