The literary critic as political sociologist: Abiola Irele and the postcolonial state in Africa

Abstract

Abiola Irele’s universal distinction as an accomplished literary scholar has had the unintended effect of occluding his important scholarly engagements with the sociopolitical genre known as the postcolonial state in Africa. That he was not a self-declared radical like many colleagues around him helped the occlusion. And then, the engagements came at critical moments rather than regularly. They were infrequent but always unfailingly substantive and foundational when they came, such that we must now wonder if it is not time to do the hard work of configuring them into the mainstream of Irele’s more literary-humanistic work. This article attempts that configuration, and underscores Irele’s contributions to the social science of the state in Africa.