The Literary Artist and the African Experience: Reading Madubuike

Writing as an art, is a “social engagement,” which entails “a commitment on the side of the society” (Madubuike 1). Taking into consideration Ihechukwu Madubuike’s contention in his book Literature, Culture and Development: The African Experience, this article argues how literature involves a strong commitment and engagement with society and is not written merely as “art for art’s sake.” Histories, social practices, and political milieu play predominant roles in the writing of literature. “Our historical differences actually make a difference,” writes Dipesh Chakraborty, “This happens because no human society is a tabula rasa. The universal concepts of political modernity encounter pre-existing concepts, categories, institutions, and practices through which they get translated and configured differently” (xii). He raises a rhetorical question: “Can thought transcend places of their origin?” (xiii). Histories related to each place define and redefine thoughts, stories, and cultures. It holds true of any place, “including, of course, Europe or, broadly, the West,” (Chakrabarty xii) as well as of the once colonized countries of the world. Madubuike examines certain aspects of Anglophone and Francophone African literature in his book Literature, Culture and Development: The African Experience, which underscores the significance of rethinking histories, cultures, and ethnic differences in Africa, with the aim of bringing about positive change on the continent. The essays in this book have been published as journal articles, and have been put together here to trace a line of argument. Apart from essays, this book consists of the critic’s deep insights in the form of “Book Reviews,” “Opinion Articles,” and “Speeches,” which are not discussed within the limits of this article. The essays offer a perceptive understanding of situations across different societies in Africa, drawing on works not only by creative writers but also by philosophers and social activists. It is significant to look at what Stanley M. Macebuh comments on the eminent critic’s book: 

All of them [the writers, Madubuike takes into account in the book], I dare say, are deeply committed to explorations of what, according to Dr. Madubuike, Wole Soyinka describes as ‘the problem of self- apprehension.’ All are, each presumably in their own way, cultural nationalists, determined to explore the limits and necessities of freedom and self-determination, all only different in the methods and instruments they choose. (4)