‘I function as journalist and scholar’
Akin Adesokan is a Professor of African Cinema and Literature at the Indiana University, USA. He is also a writer, a journalist. He worked with a couple of media organizations in Nigeria, before relocating to the United States of America. He is the author of Roots in the Sky, among other books. He is a member of the Fagunwa Study Group, a group of intellectual think-tank devoted to the promotion of Yoruba culture and literary values. Edozie Udeze encountered him in Akure, Ondo State, during an international conference on Soyinka and Fagunwa
This is the second edition of the Fafunwa International Conference put together by the Fafunwa Study Group, what does this really mean to the group and to humanity generally?
Yeah, that is an interesting question because it was purely accidentally that the group came into being. There has always been a group of people who are contemporaries who in informal ways always talk to one another, the way you journalists do with one another. In our own case we used to meet from time to time. But it became clear at a critical point that this group will come into being. We realized that D. O. Fagunwa is a canonical writer. But then the last book on him was published in 1984, so what is so important about him that we should form a group around him or in his name? There was some kind of lacuna in the awareness about literature and literary writers in Nigeria. Even here in this conference mention has been made about how people truly began lately to show interest in Professor Wole Soyinka’s works.
So when those complaints came we then felt we could regroup to reassess the works of Fagunwa. This came to be in 2013, as part of the anniversary of the death of Fagunwa. That was why we had that conference in Akure in 2013. We said instead of really complaining or doing a one-off journal, or a special issue of journal of the works of Fagunwa, why not a conference by a group of friends where we will talk about him. So we chose Soyinka, a renowned writer who has also translated the work of Fagunwa into English to give the keynote. Soyinka has equally been influenced by works of Fagunwa. It was really beyond our expectations. The family of Fagunwa warmed up to it. The conference was indeed great and it came out successfully well. The governor of the state then, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko really supported it. The conference was held and the Centre For Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC) then headed by Professor Tunde Gabriel Babawale also supported it. And then a book came out of it. When the book came out in 2016, which I edited with Professor Adeleke Adeeko, it came out in West African review. The book presentation took place at the University of Ibadan. There also was Mimiko who graced the occasion alongside other scholars and important personalities.
Even the Fagunwa family was there. So everybody really felt energized and encouraged. The idea therefore is that having had that success, we have to sustain the tempo. This gave birth to this second conference which incidentally coincides with the 85th birth day anniversary of Professor Soyinka. All of these happened unexpected but ultimately justified the efforts put into them to make them work. The idea is to use the name Fagunwa but tie it to Soyinka and still have both as theme for our conference. This deepens the intersection between both of them. This is so because the first conference was strictly on D. O. Fagunwa. But this one is on Soyinka, sort of continuing and it intersects with Fagunwa’s own works because the group is called Fagunwa Study Group. He is considered a canonical figure, I mean D. O. Fagunwa and his works embody what the Yoruba cultural values stand for.
African modern literary values are espoused by him. Yet he was not alone in this regard. There is Thomas Mopolo from Lesotho who wrote on Shaka the Zulu. So there are other writers like Fagunwa who championed literary narratives in Africa. They also need to be celebrated on equal scale. In different ways these writers have been celebrated in their countries. Thomas Mopolo has always been celebrated in different ways and in different locations. It only follows that Fagunwa should follow suit. I am not also forgetting Peter Abrahams of South Africa who wrote Mine Boy in 1946, a book that exposed for the first time the atrocious deeds of whites in South Africa. Or what was seen as Apartheid. Abrahams did his work, yet these other group looked at the cultural values of the people in their literary offerings. They stood at an intersection between what you can call oral culture and literary or writing culture. Peter Abrahams was a writer in the sense that he was using the English Language, writing novels the way people like Charles Dicksens and others did. But Mopolo was collecting oral history, the stories of the people and their beliefs to render their tales. He told the story of Shaka the Zulu the way it had not been told before.
Fagunwa’s attention was on forests, using forests to tell his stories and relating same to human and animal existence. This embodied both oral and traditional African narrative style and you are now relating both to modern times. How do you reconcile them in this conference?
Okay, the point essentially is that two things are involved. It is not only the way the stories are located in the forests, but because it happened at the beginning of literary history, if you like, literary tradition, those were therefore standard expectations. Fagunwa was trying to work at a level where a particular generation of story tellers were about to be known. So, he became a pioneer who became versed in his people’s culture and language. He served as a bridge between the old and the modern forms of literary culture. He dwelt on story of hunters and what they did in the forests. He mastered names of animals, trees, plants, shrubs. He knew their ways of life and how they related among one another. But no work stands on its own. A few years after Fagunwa wrote his own, people started writing about history and in fact among Yoruba writers there was an attempt to create new writings. What we are saying is that this is a forest of a thousand demons, Olodumare and all that. But now we are living in the cities. We no longer live in the forests or near forests. So, the scenes have changed, the narratives have taken new shapes and forms. So people who wrote afterwards truly shifted attention from those. By 1953 people made efforts to promote what you can call realistic literature. We had stories on crimes in Lagos, about urban dwellings and so on. These were stories about colonialism. Cyprian Ekwensi and others came into the picture with interesting stories on modern life styles and the cities.
Ekwensi wrote the title The Loco Town and so on. At that time too people began to use music to relate our experiences in modern times. So the literary firmament grew. All of these came together to give us modern literature. And also Fagunwa stories I see them as parables, stories of narratives we enjoy. But they are also parables that you can find some kind of writing on philosophy and psychology of the people. There are lots of philosophical ideas in what Fagunwa wrote. Irrespective of the fact, that he was setting these stories in forests and things like that, like ghosts and spirits and animals, he was using them as metaphorical figures. Or what you can call arch-types that actually allowed him to see how the real life works. In these forests were prefigured things that actually pertain to modern life, modern issues…
You were into journalism where you reigned for years. Now you are on the other side as an academic. What has the transition been like?
In a way itself, when I was a journalist, I was also an activist journalist. When we were in Tempo and so on, we tried to combine both. We were always being shut down, living underground and running from place to place. So, there was always that urge to add some kind of political bent to it. I would write about arts, but I would also talk to politicians like Abiola and others. So, for me it was a way to prepare myself. All these happened during the military regime. When it was clear that Obasanjo was to become president and those struggles by Abiola and Abacha were over, I decided it was time to move on. I decided to move, for I was not only a journalist, I was also a writer, a committed writer. It then became clear to me that I could not do that in Nigeria. I needed to leave, to change to a new clime, where I would exercise my intellectual prowess to the full. And the only way to do it and where to do it was the United States of America.
Where I would be to be more productive and study more, was what was uppermost in my mind. In the US I went to a graduate school and there once you go to graduate school you can either return home to teach or branch out. For me then there has never been a separation from academic writings and journalism. For me all those intertwine and up till today, I do all of them together. It was only in the last year and half, that I stopped writing my journalism column. It was in Premium Times. It was a monthly column. I still do it once in a while but not with the kind of dedication you guys give to journalism. The point is that I still use the same skill as a journalist. The difference is that being an academic in America, for instance, is very professional, very tasking.
Every year, I turn in what I have done and what I have to do to my employers. I have to tell them how many books, how many articles I have written. Then how many conferences I have attended, how many journals I have reviewed or written for. This is called annual report, and even before I traveled out I had to inform them. That is part of the urgency of my work as an academic, a scholar. It is on the basis of my contributions in these aspects that, they will decide either to increase my pay or not. When I was to come for this conference, I told them. And when I get back I will give them the costing and they will pay me the expenses. So, that is how it works. For me however, writing is part of my culture, whether as a journalist or as a scholar. I can write on Wole Soyinka or on Lagos culture as part of my academic contribution. But for me, writing is a part of departure whether I write about Wole Soyinka or about Lagos, or write a column on Ganduje or whoever.
In other words, academics does not place any restrictions on your freedom to write?
Well, in a sense that nobody is going to ask me, if I do not produce a novel. So, to that extent, you know, it doesn’t put any restrictions on me. Even before I became a Professor, it was always, when – when will I have time to write? In fact, what journalism has done for me is to give me the discipline to sit down to write some kind of paper. I write, when I write on academic paper, I write from a different register than when I write fiction. This is so because I have developed the skill. I’ve also found that the kind of writing that I found most useful, is the one I really enjoy. When I do academic paper, I do what I really care about.
The face of colonial literature has changed considerably. Suddenly the issue of feminism, gay rights, have come up now. Now, cultural writing does not seem to have space anymore. Do you think therefore that because most Nigerian writers at home who do not write about these issues are being short-changed in areas of global literary recognitions and awards?
Well, that is true and it is true for every period. There is always what you call the ruling ideas of a time. The ideas that are dominant, the ideas that people feel are interesting like at a point afro hairdo was good. People felt it was modernization. People who didn’t believe in modernization didn’t follow. That is always a part of history. So, what we have now is a grand swell of questions of identity, questions of identity in terms of being female or being gay or in terms of being marginalized or in terms of being disabled and so on. Point is that previous periods had a way of ignoring these certain identities. And if you ignore something, it doesn’t mean that that thing is going to keep quiet. It is going to find a way of being relevant, making you pay attention to it. So, that is what is going on and what I’ll suggest now is that ideas are focusing on these current issues, focusing on question of feminism as you put it, questions on transgender and everything. Those are issues you focus on and when you do that you tend also to ignore the other aspects. And those you now ignore will also come back at a point to demand for attention. But I think the best way to do this is that history does not stand still. And what is important is that if you have something to say even if it does not agree with the issues of the moment go on and say it. Just manage to say your own – manage the space available to you, and say it in a way that it will become integrating and interesting.
I keep saying it like I said it in the session I chaired. Why have people suddenly become interested in the book The Interpreter which Soyinka wrote in 1968, when he was in jail? He even wrote it earlier and it could not be published because he soon went to jail. That was over fifty years ago and now people talk about it as if it was written yesterday. So if you say and write something with integrity, it will remain relevant. No matter what it is; the topic you treat, somehow it will find its own space. Now what happens outside the country sort of places pressure on writers to write or speak in a particular kind of way. But I think it is not really what it should be. People have to keep in mind that a tree does not stand alone. What you at a time may ignore may at another time come to be important and relevant. It is the nature of history and also of culture because in the area of fashion things will come to change the scenario. This is how it works. At a time we are complaining we are also able to use android. On one hand, we have access because we are able to have a new mode of communication. May be you are even technologically more savvy than someone in America. Many of them do not have access to what you know and have. There are people in America who do not have access to water. There are people even in Ohio who do not have access to water. That’s a question of poverty; of class differences. So when you talk of America it is not as if everybody in there is privileged. No. There are people in America who are not well-taken care of. Yet there are people like Dangote who have it all.
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