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The Afropolitan Identity as a Rhizome Okwudiri Anasiudu
ELS Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities Vol. 4 No. 3 (2021): SEPTEMBER
Publisher : Hasanuddin University

Working within the tenets of Selasi and Mbembe’s notion of Afropolitanism and Guatarri and Deleuze (1987) concept of a rhizome, this paper interrogates and contextualises the Afropolitan identity as a rhizome. The aim is to deepen the conversation and debate on Afropolitanism as a new way of mapping the African cultural identity in synch with the world at large, while offering a new descriptive vocabulary for it. The examples interrogated in this study are drawn from selected African novels which evince the Afropolitan sensibilities. This is portrayed through rhizomatic characterisation. This study is also in conversation with Ede’s notion of "rhizomatic existence". This paper stresses that the rhizomatic features of the Afropolitan identity portrays the Afropolitan as an individual with transnational affiliations whose identity cannot be pinned in absolute sense to a single cultural geography. Importantly, the prefix “Afro”, in Afropolitanism suggests that Afropolitanism privileges Africanness while the cultural fusion which cosmopolitanism engendered in Africa’s metropole and beyond is the fulcrum upon which the idea of Afropolitanism is drawn from.

Transcending Hegemonic Phallic-Culture and Imaginaries: Afropolitan Feminism and Relocation as an Emancipatory Metaphor Okwudiri Anasiudu
Journal of Language and Literature Vol 22, No 2 (2022): October
Publisher : Universitas Sanata Dharma

The representation of the struggles of contemporary African women from low-income/middle-class families, and their attempt at breaking free from the hold of such struggles have not gained much attention in the criticism of recent African novels. To bridge this research gap, this study interrogates Helon Habila‘s Travellers; NoViolet Bulawayo‘s We Need New Names; and Chimamanda Adichie‘s Americanah. It underscores the experiences of Darling, Ifemelu, and Mary, as existential struggles which allegorize real-life challenges of low-income/middle-class contemporary African women, and their attempt to break free from the bounds of such challenges aggravated by a hegemonic phallic culture and imaginaries. Adopting a qualitative content-based analytic method and a conceptual framework anchored on the conflated term Afropolitan-feminism; the study demonstrates how the characters’ dissatisfaction with patriarchal exertions and their local geography animated by limited existential opportunities spurred their desire to relocate outside Africa. Importantly, their relocation constitutes a signature of action which could be read as an emancipatory metaphor for transcending those hegemonic structures, norms, worldviews, and imaginaries which militate against twenty-first-century African women's quest for agency.

Nnimmo Bassey’s Aesthetic Imagination and Social Meaning in We Thought It Was Oil but It Was Blood Okwudiri Anasiudu
Journal of Language and Literature Vol 22, No 1 (2022): April
Publisher : Universitas Sanata Dharma

This paper explores Nnimmo Bassey’s poetry collection: We Thought it Was Oil but It Was Blood. It interrogates the aesthetic imagination and language use in the construction of the poem as a text, and the social meaning wrapped in such imagination and language use. This paper draws insight from postcolonial ecocriticism and critical functional linguistics as theoretical frameworks. The methodology this paper adopts is qualitative, descriptive, and critical. The guiding motivation for this research is the dearth of critical study on Bassey’s We Thought it Was Oil but It Was Blood. The research problem and gap this study seeks to bridge is the minimal attention the available scholarship on Bassey's poetry offered to the exploration of aesthetic imagination and social meaning construed through the internal formal structure of the poem, realised through stanzas, and structures and the linguistic configuration such as deixis, metaphorical schemas. The analysis shows that place deixis, pronouns adjective, and metaphors are important linguistic designs Bassey deploys in construing his aesthetic imagination, particularly the social realities of the Niger Delta region such as the contentious issue of environmental justice, ecological despoliation, minority rights, and agitation whenever resource control is mentioned.

Literature, Idea and the Feminist Consciousness in Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” Okwudiri Anasiudu
ELS Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities Vol. 5 No. 2 (2022): June
Publisher : Hasanuddin University

Literature reproduces social realities. These realities are furnished through ideas and form in the service of a society and every of its moments and events in history. Drawing from the foregoing proposition, this study explores the connection between literature, idea, and the feminist consciousness in Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” in order to demonstrate Gilman’s foregrounding of the challenge of a married woman. This study notes that Gilman’s portrayal re-echoes the challenges of contemporary women against the exertions of patriarchy, and the denial of the female voice and agency in marital space. Gilman underscores her theme through specific narrative strategies such as the creation of a cognitively active and questioning female character; who is prevented from exercising her artistic abilities and whose agency is stifled as a house wife without a name in contrast to her husband Dr. John. Another strategy is through the use of symbols such as the yellow wall paper to allegorize the female condition in marital sphere in the similitude of a prison and a caged existence. Importantly, while this paper locates the society as an important source of inspiration for the feminist idea manifest in “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, this paper submits that Gilman makes a demand for social change, and her short story constitutes a type of resistance to the narrative framing of women in domestic sphere by men, institution, authorities and orthodoxies as marginal and subalterns.

Nigerian Poetry: A Systemic Functional Approach Okwudiri Anasiudu
ELS Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024): MARCH
Publisher : Hasanuddin University

Show Abstract | Download Original | Original Source | Check in Google Scholar | DOI: 10.34050/elsjish.v7i1.32583

Within the vast landscape of Nigerian literature, evolving into three principal literary genres, the critical study of poetry has been somewhat neglected, especially when contrasted with the substantial analysis devoted to drama and novels. This is partially attributed to the language used in poetry, its nature which is steep in semantic indirection and its method of pedagogy which often problematizes its appreciation. This study contributes to the study of poetry by exploring Nigerian poetry within the tenets of M.A.K. Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistic, and qualitative and descriptive design. The analysis focuses on a selected corpus of written Nigerian poetry in the English language, by Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, Tanure Ojaide, Odia Ofeimun, Psalms Chinaka, and Obari Gomba, which spans the oeuvres of three distinct generations and serve as exemplars of their respective generations. The study provides valuable insights into the significance of language, the evolution of Nigerian poetry, and its styles and functions. It is supported by tangible examples that showcase various elements, such as cohesion, deviation, and code-mixing. It offers a crucial understanding that the use of English in Nigerian poetry is not just a colonial legacy. It is a choice shaped by postcolonial reality. Its deployment is not incidental but a deliberate act of appropriation, protest, and a call for change. This is by the amplification of the voices of marginalized groups within Nigerian society such that language as a socio-semiotic system is deployed to tackle multifaceted issues that plague Nigerian society. The study submits that there is a nuanced tapestry of ideological and stylistic dialogue that connects and differentiates the first, second, and third generations of Nigerian poets. This intergenerational dialogue highlights a continuum of thematic and aesthetic concerns, with notable shifts reflecting the evolving socio-political landscape of Nigeria.

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