The affirmative, the interstitial: Biodun Jeyifo and an inventory of postcolonial theory and criticism

ABSTRACT

A broad conceptual categorization of the composite field of postcolonial cultural studies using some keywords from the work of Biodun Jeyifo. The article situates Jeyifo's work in that field and profiles in outline form some of his major unique contributions. Apart from perhaps Edward W. Said and Gayatri C. Spivak, there is no other scholar more attentive to the radically dispersed accents of thinking the postcolonial. If many have missed much of Jeyifo's efforts, it is no doubt because those efforts have come in the form of essays and articles rather than monographs.

KEYWORDS:

• Postcolonialism
• Postcoloniality
• Biodun Jeyifo
• Interstitial
• Affirmative

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I began pushing this interpretation early in the field's history – see Tejumola Olaniyan, “On ‘Post-Colonial Discourse’: An Introduction,” Callaloo 16.4 (1993): 743–49.

2. On Wole Soyinka in particular, it is worthy to note Jeyifo's immense efforts, as the leading scholar of Soyinka, in the systematic explication and interpretation of the writer's characteristically complex works and worldview. For a few examples, see Jeyifo, “Wole Soyinka and the Tropes of Disalienation” (1988) and Wole Soyinka (2004).

3. For more on epistemological realism, see Williams, Unnatural Doubts 89–134.

4. See Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tejumola Olaniyan

Tejumola Olaniyan is the Louise Durham Mead Professor of English and African Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA.