“The Being That Animates All Things”: Cannibalization, Simulation, and the Animation of Oral Performance in Ngugi's Wizard of the Crow

Abstract

This essay radicalizes thoughts on the anxiety expressed over the fate of African oral performance. It examines first the values of the dynamism of African oral performance through the illustration of the notion of “cannibalization.” It thereafter opts for the notion of “simulation” to highlight Ngugi's elaborate if not unprecedented centralization of oral storytelling in Wizard of the Crow, contending that the text succeeds nevertheless as a novel even when measured against the paradigms of the novel tradition.

Keywords::

• African oral performance
• Wizard of the Crow
• cannibalization
• simulation
• the novel tradition

Acknowledgment

I am also grateful to Prof. Grace Musila, who facilitated the presentation of an earlier version of the article in the English Department of the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa in April 2011, during which contributions from a vibrant faculty and postgraduate students enhanced the thesis of the essay.

Funding

This research was funded by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) through the African Humanities Programme Fellowship award.

Notes

Notes

¹ Much as this authorial comment is so, Granqvist (125) reveals from a privileged angle of having listened to readings from both the Gikuyu and English translation while the writing of the novel was in progress over so long a period of time and concludes that Ngugi's “translational practice of shuffling between the two language versions was bound to modify each text in a mutual way, thereby parodying in fact the essentialist question of which came first, the African language or the Western.”

² In Nigeria, for instance, the award-winning musician 9ce has become the toast of most fans simply because he has found inspiration in Yoruba proverbs and wise sayings, which he deploys in speaking to present twenty-first century realities. By so doing, he has been able to garner fandom across generations, and unlike many others among his contemporaries, he is held in high esteem by elders, who see him as taking the performance of Yoruba oral tradition beyond local levels, in view of the international appeal his music enjoys.

³ Even in the twenty-first century, African American poetry continues to be described as performance poetry because of the unique way it foregrounds orality. Writers of the African American tradition have equally attributed the centrality of the performance of their works to the heritage of African oral tradition. This is in spite of the several centuries separating the two spaces (see Lansana 14–18).

⁴ As I have argued elsewhere, modernity can no longer be read in the singularity of the Western epistemic order, as there are layers and intermingling of modernities in Africa. In this case, any instance of new modernity is merely building on the existing ones. Therefore, to always see what is indigenous to Africa as constituting tradition and suggestive of a plebeian antinomy of Western modernity is a misconception about the complexity of the discourse of modernity (see Olaoluwa, “What a Loss!”).

⁵ See Nwangi 28.

⁶ We know the old has merely taken advantage of the immunity that comes with age and ignorance to “speak truth to power,” as toward the end of the novel he reappears to affirm that his intervention or interruption on the day was intentional and informed.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Senayon Olaoluwa

Senayon Olaoluwa, a Wits University Research Associate, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where he coordinates a program in diaspora and transnational studies. His articles have appeared in English Studies, English Studies in Africa, European Journal of English Studies, and Current Writing, among others.