Voices from the Global Marketplace: Radio Drama, Neoliberalism, and the BBC in Nigeria

Abstract

This article contrasts one of the most popular BBC radio plays in contemporary Nigeria, Story, Story: Voices from the Market (2004–17), with an earlier BBC radio play, Wole Soyinka’s The Detainee (1965), to make a case for decoupling the two periods of postcolonialism and neoliberalism. In The Detainee, Soyinka is in closer conversation with Samuel Beckett, whose austere radio plays also map the postcolonial condition. This form of alliance, however—what Edward Said would call affiliation rather than filiation—is distinct from the trans-national connection imposed on Story, Story, further helping to elucidate the fundamental differences between these two periods. Story, Story, particularly in its rich, stereo sound field and verité aesthetic, offers a striking example of how neoliberal imperatives are cross-hatched with contemporary radio aesthetics. Recorded on location in a market square in Nigeria and written, produced, and voiced by a team of Nigerian broadcasters, Story, Story breaks from the BBC’s typical model in the 1960s of creating programming in London for distribution in Africa. Nonetheless, Story, Story’s autonomy is severely restricted: the program is funded by the UK Department for International Development and features plot lines that echo messages from international aid groups. Whereas other studies of development radio have been sanguine about the links between the Global North and Global South, this article attempts a more critical reading that joins the study of radio drama to the critique of neoliberalism forwarded by Wendy Brown.