Papers by Abayomi Awelewa
Studies in Literature and Language, 2021
Most gender inclined theories are aimed at awareness creation on experiences of women in order to... more Most gender inclined theories are aimed at awareness creation on experiences of women in order to promote their welfare. However, there is contention about the practicability of some of them because of their insensitivity to race and class. The controversy arises from the fact that none of them has the capability to completely tackle oppression against women, because, one which is applicable to a particular woman’s situation in a certain cultural background, might be totally unfeasible to another in a different cultural environment. This contention is what this study perceives as an intra-theoretical war, which focu-feminism emerges to end. Focu-feminism argues that women’s oppression varies from one circumstance to another and from one cultural background to another; each woman, therefore, requires to focus on herself and employ an approach she considers most suitable to overcoming oppression of any kind. The aim of this study is to investigate the global feasibility of focu-femini...
CSCanada Studies in Literature and Language, 2021
Most gender inclined theories are aimed at awareness creation on experiences of women in order to... more Most gender inclined theories are aimed at awareness creation on experiences of women in order to promote their welfare. However, there is contention about the practicability of some of them because of their insensitivity to race and class. The controversy arises from the fact that none of them has the capability to completely tackle oppression against women, because, one which is applicable to a particular woman's situation in a certain cultural background, might be totally unfeasible to another in a different cultural environment. This contention is what this study perceives as an intratheoretical war, which focu-feminism emerges to end. Focu-feminism argues that women's oppression varies from one circumstance to another and from one cultural background to another; each woman, therefore, requires to focus on herself and employ an approach she considers most suitable to overcoming oppression of any kind. The aim of this study is to investigate the global feasibility of focu-feminism with a view to ascertaining its applicability to the situation of the African woman. Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter is used for this investigation.
Texts and Contexts of Migration in Africa and Beyond, 2021
The search for the lost self is a special mobility in Africa tied to individual and corporate que... more The search for the lost self is a special mobility in Africa tied to individual and corporate quests for identity and spiritual well-being. Identity in Africa has many layers: cultural, socio-economic, religious and political. Within the different layers, the African, given the recent past history of colonisation and the unfortunate leadership challenge in post-independence African States, is condemned to seek life ‘elsewhere’ in order to escape socio-economic hardship which confronts him at ‘home’. So, he wanders from place to place seeking comfort that eludes him in his original homeland in foreign places. Segun Afolabi’s A Life Elsewhere provides a yardstick to measure, in literary terms, the myth and reality of migration from Africa to the Global North. Afolabi projects archetypal waifs who battle for relevance in foreign places as they search for the Golden Fleece.
Deploying Carl Jung’s theory of the archetypes and the collective unconscious and Hippolyte Taine’s theory of sociological positivism which projects race, milieu and moment as keys to unlocking the meaning of literary texts, Afolabi’s A Life Elsewhere is critically analysed to portray the life of an African as a mirage in the different short stories purposively selected from the anthology for this study.
The study concludes that the diasporic archetypes found in Afolabi’s A Life Elsewhere are reflections of the reality every African faces in their newfound ‘homelands’ and that projecting the metaphors of diaspora as an Eldorado, a Utopian space where every problem dissolves at the snap of a finger, is just in the imagination of the emigres.
Keywords: Archetypal waifs, The lost self, Migration, Metaphors of diaspora, African history
Papers in English and Linguistics (PEL) Vol. 20, (3&4), 2019
Suicide is the act of deliberately killing oneself or doing something against one's interest whil... more Suicide is the act of deliberately killing oneself or doing something against one's interest while leadership is the ability to provide guidance for a people. When the leadership fails in its bid to dispense its duties justifiably, the people are pushed to such an extent that they contemplate the termination of their lives. Africa has suffered more of leadership problems than any other continent, and it is not surprising that writers from this region have devoted their artistry to painting the gloomy situations. As we shall see in the selected novels, suicide is a direct response to the failure of African leadership. Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Okey Ndibe show through a Marxist Existentialist postulation that life is an unending struggle. The paper considers their art from the perspective of a bildungsroman, and extends it to a hagiography in the case of Wariinga in Ngugi's novel. It raises questions concerning the meaning of life, and concludes that if the leaders would truly lead and forsake their greed, less and less more people would find meanings for their existence; they would want to live and not commit suicide, for there would not be any social, economic, political or personal reason to do so.
Journal of American Academic Research, 2018
Contemporary African literature is marked by movement of authors from their original homelands to... more Contemporary African literature is marked by movement of authors from their original homelands to new spaces and creation of a new genre known as diasporic African fiction. Studies in this area are developmental. Selected for this paper are Uwem Akpan, Helen Oyeyemi, Chika Unigwe and Ekow Duker, whose works: Say You're One of Them, The Icarus Girl, On Black Sisters' Street and White Wahala, respectively reflect racial tension and identity conflict in the new diasporic African setting and circumstances that give birth to them. Applying postcolonial and psychoanalytic theories, this paper examines how the different nations of Africa and the social classes in the "imagined communities" portrayed in the texts have fared in their responses to the challenges of "arrested decolonization" in postcolonial Africa. The paper discovers that racial tension and identity conflict in Africa are a common problematic concern that arises due to colonial and postcolonial dynamics and that authors of African origin are worried, hence the commitment nature of their fiction, which tends to be psychotherapeutic. It concludes that diasporic African literature serves as a custodian of African consciousness.
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Papers by Abayomi Awelewa
Deploying Carl Jung’s theory of the archetypes and the collective unconscious and Hippolyte Taine’s theory of sociological positivism which projects race, milieu and moment as keys to unlocking the meaning of literary texts, Afolabi’s A Life Elsewhere is critically analysed to portray the life of an African as a mirage in the different short stories purposively selected from the anthology for this study.
The study concludes that the diasporic archetypes found in Afolabi’s A Life Elsewhere are reflections of the reality every African faces in their newfound ‘homelands’ and that projecting the metaphors of diaspora as an Eldorado, a Utopian space where every problem dissolves at the snap of a finger, is just in the imagination of the emigres.
Keywords: Archetypal waifs, The lost self, Migration, Metaphors of diaspora, African history
Deploying Carl Jung’s theory of the archetypes and the collective unconscious and Hippolyte Taine’s theory of sociological positivism which projects race, milieu and moment as keys to unlocking the meaning of literary texts, Afolabi’s A Life Elsewhere is critically analysed to portray the life of an African as a mirage in the different short stories purposively selected from the anthology for this study.
The study concludes that the diasporic archetypes found in Afolabi’s A Life Elsewhere are reflections of the reality every African faces in their newfound ‘homelands’ and that projecting the metaphors of diaspora as an Eldorado, a Utopian space where every problem dissolves at the snap of a finger, is just in the imagination of the emigres.
Keywords: Archetypal waifs, The lost self, Migration, Metaphors of diaspora, African history