Canvassing the generative: Fela and Olaniyan’s cultural analysis of the African state

Abstract

One of Tejumola Olaniyan’s most significant contributions to the analysis of African social formation is his emphasis on approaching the African state as a fundamental “generative canvas” for cultural (re)production. This article engages his thesis in exploring how the state is not only a cultural practice and a site of culture but also a phenomenon that is generative of culture, particularly when culture is approached as central to the conception and practices of the political. I develop this argument through a re-engagement with and reinterpretation of Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s lyrics, which Olaniyan has interpreted in useful ways, as some of the most generative means of understanding the postcolonial state. I develop three perspectives extracted from Olaniyan’s work, that is, “hermeneutic horizon,” “ethics of attention,” and “reformative energies,” to explore Fela’s lyrical theorization of the state/power in postcolonial Africa.