Justice is the primary situation of humanity. Wole Soyinka, The Man Died
All protocols duly noticed, I need to thank the organizers of this symposium to mark the ninetieth birthday of WS, our personal WS, for inviting me to provide the keynote handle. Presently, I shall converse concerning the celebrant however for now, allow me to make some opening remarks concerning the theme of our symposium.
The demise of reality? No, the endless warfare between reality and falsehood, with justice between them as a form of umpire or intercessor. Ordinarily, folks don’t speak a lot about reality itself, speak much less concerning the demise of reality. They discuss their youngsters, their siblings, their neighbors and their jobs – if they’ve jobs. They provide thanks or give curses for small and huge acts of grace or misfortune. Something and all the things however reality or the demise of reality.
Additionally, folks lie so much, they’re profuse in producing falsehoods, casually or critically, generally for good causes. They lie about their age, their weight, their wealth or poverty, their triumphs and failures. As with folks basically, so it’s with governments and rulers. Certainly, the road of demarcation is just not between governments which lie and which don’t, it’s between governments which discretely lie to stop their populations or international governments from figuring out the true state of affairs and governments for whom falsehoods are the foundations of their energy and authority.
Lastly, we should contemplate the truth that in social life, generally info and lies, reality and falsehoods are so intertwined that it’s all however unattainable to inform which one is the reality and which is the lie. And as if this isn’t sufficient of a conundrum, generally reality is opposed, not by a lie, however by one other reality! Certainly, establishments akin to Legislation and Literature owe their existence to their capability to exploit to the utmost this occasional however endlessly repeated ambiguity between reality and falsehood.
Bearing all this in thoughts, we are able to see that when folks start to speak about reality and its disappearance, it implies that there’s something terribly improper in a household or a whole neighborhood. To maneuver from that time to speak concerning the demise of reality is to imagine {that a} dystopian apocalypse has taken place, not within the pages of a science-fiction novel however in the actual world itself. That’s what George Orwell felt when he wrote Nineteen-Eighty-four, maybe essentially the most highly effective novelistic allegory concerning the “demise of reality” in world literature in trendy occasions. In writing the guide, Orwell felt that a minimum of in some elements of Europe and Asia within the fast post-Second World Battle interval, a dystopia during which Reality had succumbed fully was the one actuality that folks knew. I shall have a number of issues to say about this novel later on this speak.
And now to maneuver extra instantly, extra centrally to the issues I actually want to discover on this speak, I need to agree with the deep fear indicated within the theme of our symposium the world, our world, is sinking deeper and deeper into this real-life dystopia of the “demise of reality”. Among the many innumerable indicators some stand out for his or her lack of any priority. There are the poisonous social media with their ubiquitous and infinite streams of conspiracy theories that appear to pose the best hazard. However there are different equally horrifying indicators and acts. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who has wealth that’s maybe better than any plutocrat the world has ever seen, is an avid and rabid purveyor and spreader of falsehoods. A former president of the USA, Donald Trump – who appears poised to be re-elected for a second time period – is maybe the best liar, essentially the most unashamed producer of falsehoods amongst rulers now and up to now. Furthermore, many governments and states, on all of the continents however principally in Europe and Asia, use disinformation as an invasive weapon to intervene within the politics and economies of different nations and in their very own states and amongst their very own populations. Along with all these, there’s the distinctive hazard and portent in AI which, greater than cloning, greater than genetically modified crops, appears additionally poised to erase any distinctions that stay between Reality and Falsehood. So are we seeing the sluggish demise twitches of Reality? Is the final word triumph of Falsehood about to occur?
Earlier than I give my response to this query – which shall be a “No” – I want to draw your consideration to the very fact the warfare between reality and falsehood is among the most ubiquitous themes of proverbs, tales, myths and scriptural texts in all of the world’s communities, languages and literatures. And in all instances and situations, justice and injustice are the instigators, the litigants on this timeless and endless warfare. I feel we must always draw classes, knowledge and inspiration from this huge and international treasure trove. At any charge, since it is a symposium to rejoice Soyinka’s lengthy life and equally lengthy record of achievements, I recommend that we aren’t gathered for a funeral, a wake; we’re gathered for a celebration of life! And I draw the apparent inference that the organizers of the symposium maybe selected this theme as a result of, among the many world’s most distinguished writers – and undoubtedly amongst all dwelling Nobel laureates – Soyinka has no equal in taking up the poisonous social media notably in his personal nation, Nigeria. What accounts for this exceptionalism? Is Soyinka mistaken in taking up this specific battle? One facet of my response to this query could shock or maybe even baffle you exactly as a result of it arises from considered one of his best abilities and accomplishments that’s lodged between Speech and Writing. Let me clarify.
Grasp of the Phrase but additionally its servant, Soyinka has not stopped writing for almost seventy years since his first critical writings had been printed within the 50s of the final century. He appears to have skilled no “drought” for any prolonged time period, or any hiatus as, over the a long time, he moved from one style to a different and throughout and round revisions of his relationships together with his readers and audiences in Africa and the remainder of the world. Amongst all writers in all literary intervals, that is excellent. It’s particularly distinctive amongst Nobel literary laureates, most of whom are inclined to publish few works after the award of the Nobel exactly as a result of that almost all prestigious of awards is made for works already printed, not for the promise of works nonetheless to return. Certainly, consequent to his Nobel award on the age of 52 in 1986, Soyinka switched from drama to fictional and nonfictional prose works as his most popular style of expression. After which he went on to provide a string of greater than twenty works of memoirs, faction, reflective essays and polemics, all totaling 1000’s upon 1000’s of pages. I’m 12 years youthful than Soyinka and I do have the popularity of being one of many preeminent students of his writings, however even I’ve felt enormously, enormously challenged to maintain up with the sheer vitality and fidelity of his productiveness, his post-Nobel productiveness. Girls and gents, compatriots and audiences in different areas of the world, if you’re questioning the place I’m taking this blessing of an extended life and productiveness, wait till you hear this: I hereby predict that at 100 years, WS will nonetheless be writing! On this prophetic be aware, I now pause in my lecture as I ask you all to shout or declaim 90 “gbosa” with me in honor of WS, our personal WS!
To proceed, I need to add that on the middle of any evaluation of Soyinka’s achievements have to be the mix of the enjoyment and instruction that a lot of his works have delivered to his readers and audiences in Africa and world wide. With a novel mixture of “intellectual” and “midbrow” aesthetics and content material, the early to center years of his profession each delighted and confounded many readers with poems and performs that had been extensively standard and different poems and novels that had been thought “tough” and difficult. His antimilitarist and anti-war performs and prose works positioned him within the entrance ranks of essentially the most revolutionary playwrights and writers of the mid-Twentieth century. Nowadays when college students of recent African literature speak of the “revolutionary writers of that interval, they assume primarily, if not completely of Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Ousmane Sembene, leaving out Chinua Achebe and Soyinka, each of whom led the best way in revolutionizing the reception and notion of recent African literature on our continent and on the earth at massive.
Right here, on a private be aware, I need to register an affidavit that’s based mostly on a novel expertise that may maybe not be duplicated. If I had been to call a piece of Soyinka’s that first “hooked” me and bought me hooked on his writings, it was “Abiku”, with its poetic magnificence and metaphysical enigma. As quickly as I encountered the poem, I felt that this was a author whose each work I’d and in whose mental firm I’d spend an enormous a part of my scholarship. Now, as I had by no means mentioned this expertise with my son, Lekan, contemplate my shock akin to wonderment when he was additionally so captivated by the identical poem a lot in order that he made it the idea of the concept-metaphor for the grasp’s thesis in structure that he wrote and defended at Cornell College.
To make clear what I stated earlier about a side of Soyinka’s accomplishment that’s so baffling as to result in wonderment, I now suggest that we should see Soyinka as each Grasp and Servant of the Phrase. That is partly as a result of he’s supremely gifted in his use of language, partly as a result of he can’t and won’t cease writing, however primarily as a result of among the many most distinguished writers on the earth – and undoubtedly amongst dwelling Nobel laureates – Soyinka has no equal in polemics and polemicizing. Proper from the earliest interval of his profession to the current day, he has by no means allowed restraint or decorum or Nobel laureate coyness stop him from becoming a member of a literary or verbal duel when he has felt provoked. In useless have a few of us, “awon omo Soyinka” pleaded with our mentor to carry again from discursive fisticuffs that we thought both useless or unworthy of him. I feel it was as I started to consider what to say on this keynote that I discovered the “clarification” for this ardour for polemics that stands as an exceptionalism amongst all dwelling Nobel laureates. What’s it? It’s this: Soyinka writes from qualities and predispositions in language that predate Writing when Speech had not but encountered Writing as a nemesis. That’s the reason in his most completed works of drama and prose, the factor that stands out essentially the most is speech and spellbinding speechifying. Because of this, it may be claimed that in a few of the greatest works of Soyinka, Speech and Writing come collectively in passages after passages of nice aesthetic high quality and thematic depth.
Writing traditionally got here to shove Speech apart within the authority and company to form the world and struggle for one’s rights. Within the cognomen of “illiterates”, those that have little or no or no Writing in any respect, had been marginalized to the endzone of participatory sociality. Even newspaper tabloids couldn’t and wouldn’t accommodate the “illiterates”. That’s till the arrival of the late trendy social media. There aren’t any requirements and most purveyors and shoppers are unafraid to make full fools and idiots of themselves. Speech regains its company, even when it’s not precisely Speech in its full flowering of sophistication and wonder on the earth’s oral cultures and traditions. It’s sufficient that in a world during which most of them are despised, oppressed and marginalized, the lots of its unbound tens of millions can use the huge open public areas of the social media to struggle again and demand for justice. I feel that Soyinka perceives them as barbarians, particularly since he has been brutally and vengefully focused by a lot of them, notably after the Nigerian presidential elections of 2023.
It isn’t my objective on this lecture to deliver a couple of reconciliation between Soyinka and his social media antagonists; this is able to be nothing lower than excessive naïveté on my half. The antagonism is rooted in social, financial and political contradictions that solely a revolutionary upsurge can handle and we appear to be in a pre-revolutionary historic second. However then who is aware of?
Earlier than I transfer away from this specific difficulty and switch to the concluding sections of my lecture, I want to level out that WS and his social media antagonists do share a minimum of one factor in frequent and that’s – justice, the demand for justice. Probably the most resonant and unforgettable sentence in all of Soyinka’s writings is that quote from The Man Died that stands because the epigraph for this lecture: Justice is the primary situation of humanity. Additionally, and to deliver this part of my speak to an finish on a lighter be aware, I want to suggest that based mostly on his location in each Speech and Writing and his urge for food for polemics and polemicizing, that henceforth, Soyinka be generally known as the “Grand Jenwitemi (Let Me Have My Say) of World Literature”! For many who would possibly miss the allusion to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti – Soyinka’s cousin – within the ludic but activist playfulness of this honorific chieftaincy title, let me remind you of the revolutionary maestro’s standard hit music, “Jenwitemi, o le panu mi mo!”
On this be aware, I now transfer on to the concluding part of this speak. Earlier within the speak, I promised to finish with some reflections which I’ll base on the treasure trove of proverbs, tales, myths, allegories and scriptural texts that may be present in just about of the world’s languages and cultural traditions. I repeat right here what I stated earlier about most of those discursive and symbolic supplies surrounding Reality and Falsehood: there’s an everlasting warfare between them across the centrality of injustice and exploitation in human existence. There’s additionally this in most of those supplies: the price of not taking note of this infinite warfare between Reality and Falsehood is nice, typically incalculable violence and distress to frequent humanity in its tens of millions, a whole lot of tens of millions. Allow me to retell two of such allegories.
[A] The Story of Bare Reality
In a interval of truce from warfare between Reality and Falsehood when there was even hope that there might be an armistice between them and every may dwell in and with the paradox that garments them each more often than not, Falsehood invited Reality to take a dip in a shallow properly with him. She accepted they usually each jumped bare into the properly. However no sooner had Reality settled down into what she thought could be a nice swim did Falsehood run away with the gown of Reality during which he then clothed himself. In useless did Reality plead and plead for her gown to be returned, considering that Falsehood was taking part in a prank that he would quickly tire of. However when it lastly dawned on her that this was no prank and Falsehood would by no means return her gown, she got here out of the properly in her nakedness. What she skilled that day has endured to this present day: as quickly as folks noticed her and her nakedness, folks ran away from her both in worry or disgust, taking her for a probably harmful lunatic or a idiot. And certainly, how many individuals care to be confronted with bare Reality?
[2] The Physique of Reality and the Head of Falsehood
To start with, Olofin created the heavens and the earth. He created people, animals and crops. Then S/He created Reality and Falsehood, leaving them to roam freely amongst people, animals and crops. S/He made Reality very large and highly effective however made Falsehood skinny and weak. To compensate for this drawback, s/he made Falsehood crafty and armed him with a machete. Someday, the 2 got here throughout one another and one factor led to a different and a struggle ensued between them. As a result of he was so large and robust, Reality felt overconfident and likewise slightly careless since he didn’t know that Falsehood had a machete hidden underneath his garments. This was why at a second within the battle Falsehood introduced out his machete and rapidly reduce off the top of Reality, with the thought that that may be the top of Reality. However he miscalculated as a result of the energy was nonetheless within the headless physique of Reality. And with this energy he grabbed the thin and weak physique of Falsehood. With one superhuman pull, he yanked off the top of Falsehood and positioned it on his personal physique. And that’s the reason from that day, now we have had that grotesque mismatch: the physique of Reality and the top of Falsehood.
These two allegories deserve prolonged and impressed exegesis. Clearly time doesn’t go away me with sufficient area during which to execute such an exegesis on this event. For our functions on this lecture, I’ll level to at least one single “lesson” in each tales. Allow me to make use of large English to say what this lesson is: the disambiguation of the real-life ambiguities and indeterminacies between Reality and Falsehood. In easy, trustworthy language, disambiguation means stripping life and existence of all their complexities and uncertainties. Simply think about when Reality has been killed off, we’ll now not be bothered with not having ever to inform the reality and we are able to then inform all of the lies we would like – as each Elon Musk and Donald Trump need all life on our planet to be – in fact with they and the tens of millions and potential billions of their supporters purveying and circulating the ruling falsehoods and conspiracy theories.
I point out Musk and Trump right here to underscore essential variations between the lies that the respective richest and strongest males on the earth produce compared with the falsehoods produced and consumed within the social media in a rustic like Nigeria during which, for essentially the most half, it’s the weak, the jobless, the despised and hungry that rely on the social media for his or her resistance, their quest for justice, most of them very younger folks in contrast to Musk and Trump and their followers. As a matter of truth, it’s a curious however odious undeniable fact that for the rulers in Nigeria, they don’t like or apply disambiguation of falsehood and reality as a result of if, for a telling instance, if their lies are stripped from reality, how else can they concurrently declare that oil subsidy exists however doesn’t exist? Meals is there however is just not there for the teeming tens of millions, tens of tens of millions. How else can there be a lot starvation the place famine and drought haven’t (but) develop into scourges within the land? Do Nigeria and the US exist on the identical airplane within the worlds of the social media? They do they usually don’t. Like the remainder of the world, Nigerians eat a whole lot of the lies and conspiracy theories produced and circulated by and from America and different high-income nations and economies of the worldwide North. We all know that Nigeria’s rulers want the nation and its nationwide financial system to develop into probably the most rigorously neoliberal disciples on the earth. However is Nigeria even a capitalist nation within the first place? How can rulers who persistently and messianically eat and or export capital be known as an actual capitalist nation? What’s capitalism with out capital? This, absolutely, is one other occasion of the disambiguation of reality and falsehood.
If these speculations appear to have strayed removed from our objective in gathering right here in the present day in honor of WS, perish the thought! His life and profession have been touchstones for essentially the most essential points for the survival of all, all of our peoples, particularly the place these points middle on or round justice, the primary situation of humanity. Certainly, I thank the organizers of the symposium for his or her perspicacity in selecting the theme of the symposium, not in an ex-cathedra method however in an interrogative register. Reality is just not lifeless. For if reality is lifeless, we’re lifeless, too. And I imply that in close to literal phrases, not as a metaphor or allegory.
I thanks in your persistence!
