Tejumola Olaniyan Research Articles

Olaniyan’s legacy: metacriticism in African literary and cultural studies

This article highlights Tejumola Olaniyan’s often repeated interventions regarding the importance of a practice of metacriticism as a means of ensuring robust growth in the field of African literary and cultural studies. It also serves as an introduction to a special issue in the Critical Legacies series of the Journal of the African Literature Association, dedicated to an examination of Olaniyan’s contributions to metacriticism in African literary and cultural studies from a wide range of perspectives. Read together, the eight essays in the special issue, and the four additional shorter essays in the “Notes from the Field” section of this issue offer critical engagement with several major principles developed in Olaniyan’s writing as well as a model for undertaking metacriticism in African literary and cultural studies.

Of gaps and scars: a voyage in Tejumola Olaniyan’s performance theories and the throes of postcoloniality

“The gap,” Tejumola Olaniyan asserts in a 2009 article, “is the specter that haunts performance…the force that determines the genres and languages of performance.…all our performances are ways of bridging the gap.” Olaniyan speaks here of the dialectics and throes of performance, arguing that the gap articulates an intervening space between what is and imaginaries of what should be. Drawing on this intervention, this paper proposes that the gap functions not only as a cultural performative but also as a way of understanding Olaniyan’s perennial engagement with the scars of coloniality and the throes of postcoloniality. I link the theory of the gap with Olaniyan’s first important book, Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance, and demonstrate how the gaps/scars mantra is apposite in his readings in postcolonial dramaturgy. I read Olaniyan against playwrights like Femi Osofisan and others to demonstrate how performances serve to bridge and breach aesthetic and political gaps.

Common sense, uncommon sense: Tejumola Olaniyan in the theorization of African postcolonial Drama

This paper engages Tejumola Olaniyan’s “Femi Osofisan: The Form of Uncommon Sense.” The essay in question undertakes a reading of a representative selection from the corpus of Femi Osofisan’s plays, employing the theory of uncommon sense which Olaniyan himself formulated. Olaniyan projects uncommon sense as a reflection on Antonio Gramsci’s theory of common sense put forward in his Selections from Prison Notes. He presents it as a new dimension of contemplation which explores new possibilities and unsettles old conclusions. To prove his position that Osofisan’s plays represent the form of uncommon sense, Olaniyan rifles through the playwright’s oeuvre and produces detailed readings of some of the works using the theory. I undertake three main tasks in this paper. First, I evaluate the accuracy of the positions taken by Olaniyan on some of the plays of Osofisan that he investigates using the theory of uncommon sense. Second, while affirming that uncommon sense as formulated by Olaniyan is seminal, I try to see whether it is not possible to re-constitute this principle around the notion of cultural hegemony that Gramsci is best known for. Finally, I attempt an application of the reconfigured theory in the analysis of Ama Ata Aidoo’s Anowa

On interregna: Tejumola Olaniyan and the radical normality of theory

In this brief meditation on Tejumola Olaniyan’s theoretical writing, I explore the entanglements between Olaniyan’s widely-cited concept of the “postcolonial incredible” and the notion of an “interregnum,” drawn from Antonio Gramsci. By reconsidering Olaniyan’s use of terms like “overthrow,” “presupposed,” and “normality,” I argue that Olaniyan theorizes the crisis of African postcolonial politics as a crisis of modernity itself. Given that Gramsci used the concept of interregnum to describe a transitional context in which some old order was already dying, while a new one could not yet be born, I ask what it might mean for Olaniyan and the subjects he has researched, such as Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Femi Osofisan—or indeed any radical activist, rebel, or theorist—to overthrow the transition.

“Arrest the dance!”: rethinking Tejumola Olaniyan’s “postcolonial antinomy” and the politics of art activism

Drawing on fieldwork on the emerging radical street performance culture in Nigeria, I reflect on the implications of Tejumola Olaniyan’s approach to popular culture and political activism, with a particular focus on his profound and provocative analysis of Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s Afrobeat. In Arrest the Music!, Olaniyan adopts a cultural-materialist approach to locate Fela’s Afrobeat in the postcolonial conditions that generated its aesthetics and politics. Rather than concentrating exclusively on the oppositional messages in Fela’s lyrics, Olaniyan excavates the “antinomies” structuring Fela’s music practices and reads these antinomies as embodiments of an oppressive yet “enchanting” postcolonial modernity. In the context of Olaniyan’s readings, I interpret the production of a radical street performance culture in Lagos in relation to the extensive processes of neoliberal restructuring taking place in urban Nigeria, and I examine in which ways postcolonial antinomies continue to structure contemporary artistic practices. This paper calls for a more nuanced reading of the politics of activist art in contemporary Africa, and especially the agonistic entanglements of local artistic activism and the neoliberal agendas forced upon it.

The theater of Tejumola Olaniyan: African performance and the possibilities of strangeness

This essay traces the thematic of performance across Tejumola Olaniyan’s prolific scholarship. Even when Olaniyan is not writing about performance per se, his conceptualizations of the African state, which yield terms such as “enchanting,” “strangeness,” and the “postcolonial incredible,” blur distinctions between governance, theatricality, and affect. The lens of performance reveals tensions in Olaniyan’s thought as he works to not only affirm its visionary potential but also demystify the state forces that seek to efface that potential. I argue that Olaniyan’s conceptualizations of aporia and antinomy helps resolve these tensions as well as illuminate the dynamics of postcolonial creativity. I then turn to the theatricality of Ugandan poet and activist Stella Nyanzi, whose “radical rudeness” expands upon Olaniyan’s ideas of artistic dissent through her performance of sexuality and desire.

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

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.

Incredible, libidinal, strange: African queer studies and Tejumola Olaniyan’s legacies

This article gives an account of Tejumola Olaniyan’s under-appreciated role in supporting the emergence of the field of queer African literary studies, and provides a provisional historiography and bibliography of that field. The article then reads Olaniyan’s work, in particular Arrest The Music! Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics, through a queer lens. Olaniyan’s examination of the “strange” relationship between the African state, its rebels, and its subjects, across his archive, and his nuanced discussion of transgression and norm—“libidinal” and otherwise—offers rich intellectual potential for African queer studies, and queer studies at large.

Violence-as-Norm in the Postcolony

Abstract In this paper, we explore forms of statist violence in both colonial and postcolonial contexts to underscore it as a constant in a postcolonial location like Nigeria. In addition to exploring how statist violence works, we also position civic dissent as a strategy employed in the colony and postcolony to confront statist violence. Our theorization of “violence-as-norm” is motivated by earlier ideas like the works of the South Asian Subaltern Studies Collective, Tejumola Olaniyan’s “postcolonial incredible,” Toyin Falola’s views on violence within Nigerian history, and Achille Mbembe’s notions of banality and vulgarity in the postcolony. Our paper engages with Peter Omoko’s Majestic Revolt to demonstrate how “violence-as-norm” mediates colonial violence and civic dissent. Furthermore, by close-reading Chiedozie Omeje’s “When Cowards Win,” we explore postcolonial forms of violence through the EndSARS movement against police brutality in Nigeria to demonstrate how civic dissent is performed and ruptured in the contemporary moment. Ultimately, our research positions the Fanonist category of violence as a way to imagine the inherent coloniality of postcolonial nation-states, thereby extending the critique of the nation-form in postcolonial studies.

Methods in performing Fela in contemporary Afrobeats, 2009–2019

ABSTRACT In the 1982 documentary Music is the Weapon, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, arguably the inventor of Afrobeat, pronounced that: ‘My name is Anikulapo: I have death in my pouch. I can’t die. They can’t kill me!’ Fela passed on in 1997, yet his revolutionary practice, in message and in musical form, means that he lives on in the imagination. Over the last decade, Afrobeat has transformed in both terminology and practice. For some, Afrobeat has morphed into an ‘apolitical genre by an industry more concerned [ … ] with producing easy listening [and danceable] music’ (Negus 1996, 41). While Fela’s sons Femi and Seun Kuti continue to play Afrobeat as originally proposed, thus maintaining a relative patent on their father’s invention, the bulk of the current usage relies on simulation and as Afrobeats. This paper focuses on the practices of a selection of Afrobeats musicians who have appropriated the text, synthesised the sound, conjured the appearance and invoked the name and symbolisms of Fela. The paper draws from Tejumola Olaniyan’s delineation of the stages in Fela’s creative career in illustrating how contemporary popular musicians entextualise Fela in their respective creative careers. These Afrobeats artists have performed the ‘Fela stages’ in their corresponding bodies of work through several means including, but not limited to, the textually analogous, dedicatory, apparitional, amalgamated, and by the means of coming to realisation.

Tejumola Olaniyan: Tribute and Celebration of a Quintessentially Boisterous and Illustrious Intellectual Career

Tejumola Olaniyan:Tribute and Celebration of a Quintessentially Boisterous and Illustrious Intellectual Career Pelumi Folajimi Tejumola Olaniyan was a child of destiny. He was destined to be great. Indeed, he was great; he was a great scholar and amazing researcher. Fondly called Teju or T. J. by friends and colleagues, he lived from April 3, 1959 to November 30, 2019. He studied in the Department of Dramatic Arts, the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), the department and the university where I also studied. In 1982, he became the president of the Dramatic Arts Students' Association. Teju was the first to earn First Class Honors for the Bachelor of Arts in the department (in 1982), something achieved by only one other student since. Teju earned a master's degree in the Department of English at the University of Ife and became a lecturer in the Department of Dramatic Arts before he relocated to the US in the 1980s, where he earned another master's degree and a PhD at Cornell University. The first time I heard about Teju was in 2008 while I was in the final year of my undergraduate studies at Ife. With the fantastic stories of Teju's exploits I heard and his works I encountered, my respect and admiration for him grew. I didn't have a chance to meet Teju until summer 2012 when he visited his alma mater, where I was then a young and enthusiastic lecturer. In 2013, Teju sent me an email to invite me to the inaugural conference on D. O. Fagunwa at Akure. Meeting Teju, again, was an exciting experience. He and I continued to interact and exchange emails and in 2015, I joined Teju at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I pursued my graduate career. Indeed, I continued to interact with Teju; maintaining a healthy and respectful relationship after I left the university. Fortunately enough, he and I met again in Ohio for the African Literature Association conference, just about seven weeks after he turned sixty. Teju began as an assistant professor at the University of Virginia before he joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was Louise Durham Mead Professor of English and African Cultural Studies. Shortly before his death at the age of sixty, he was named Wole Soyinka Professor of the Humanities. He had many roles in the Department of African Cultural Studies, including as chair. His thoughts and scholarship provided much inspiration, as well as provocations [End Page 215] and debates among both students and colleagues, whose respect and confidence he earned, largely. It was my habit to visit his office and discuss my intellectual findings with him. Via emails, physical conversations, panel presentations, and other avenues, I would engage him in discussions on intellectual matters and issues I encountered in his works that I read. On virtually every Thanksgiving, Teju opened his house to his colleagues and graduate students, including myself. Intellectual giant that he was, Teju died with dozens of laurels on his forehead, like an Olympic athlete who was decorated with multiple gold medals. Teju died a champion. He died an achiever. When he turned sixty, his teacher and mentor Biodun Jeyifo wrote a tribute to celebrate Teju's accomplishments. I never anticipated having to write my own so soon after. Till the moment of his death, Teju was the editor in chief of the Journal of the African Literature Association (JALA). Teju was the president of the African Literature Association between 2014 and 2015 and was a visible presence in the African Studies Association. A gregarious man with a great sense of humor, tall and lanky with a deep and unmistakable voice, Teju was brilliant and thorough, calculative and strategic. He was ambitious and enthusiastic. Well-composed and dynamic, Teju was full of confidence and courage. He was innovative. He will be greatly missed—great scholar that he was. May his soul rest in peace. [End Page 216] Copyright © 2020 The Trustees of Indiana University

Religious and cultural syncretism in FELA!: reading the Broadway adaptation of the life of Fela Anikulapo Kuti through Bill T. Jones and Tejumola Olaniyan

ABSTRACTSince its debut in 2008 at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in New York City, the Broadway musical FELA! has met critical acclaim. Critics, enthusiasts, and scholars alike, have read it as an ingenious blend of Greek tragedy, Yoruba mythology, and numerous other genres. This article adds yet another dimension to the musical: Christianity. Read alongside Bill T. Jones’s Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land, a play which is replete with Christian motifs, and Tejumola Olaniyan’s Arrest the Music!: Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics, which delineates Fela’s Yoruba religious and cultural life, the main character of the musical, Fela, emerges as a Christ figure who proselytizes something other than Christianity. I demonstrate that, in FELA! the frenzied and tumultuous religious and spiritual life of Fela is eclipsed by a Christianized version of it in order to deify the musician in the minds and hearts of viewers, and to frame his Shrine not merely as a space of music and entertainment, but as a platform for proselytization into a new religion.

Audible empire: Music, global politics, critique. Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan. Duke University Press: 2016, 432 pp.

Journal of Popular Music StudiesVolume 29, Issue 3 e12228 BOOK REVIEW Audible empire: Music, global politics, critique. Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan. Duke University Press: 2016, 432 pp. Joseph Schloss, Joseph Schloss Baruch College, CUNYSearch for more papers by this author Joseph Schloss, Joseph Schloss Baruch College, CUNYSearch for more papers by this author First published: 27 September 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/jpms.12228Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume29, Issue3September 2017e12228 RelatedInformation

Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique, edited by Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan

"Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique, edited by Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan." Canadian Journal of History, 52(1), pp. 191–192

Africa in What Age: Post-Global or Post-Rwanda?

AbstractIn “African Literature in the Post-Global Age” Tejumola Olaniyan is to be found asking: Where is the world at—and Africa with it? And for Olaniyan, the contemporary world is most ideally mapped as “post-global.” The purview of the post-global—its “field commonsense”—yields a world of humanity beyond the boundaries of nation, race, and territory, joined in commonalities of global need and planetary responsibility. What are the implications of the world thus known for Africanist literary practice? Can it rightly continue to be a particularist practice dedicated in restricted humanist service to Africa known in racialist, nationalist, and nativist particularity? Or ought Africanist practice to direct its humanism expansively to the service of a world in transnational and cosmopolitan linkage? Olaniyan wants Africanist literary practice to be post-global—and therefore universalist. But is Africanist literary practice well served in discarding the particular? This essay is guided in answer by Aimé Césaire’s caveat: “There are two ways to lose oneself: by segregation in the particular or by dilution in the universal.”

“Yes, but . . .” : On Reforming African Literary Scholarship

Abstract“Yes, but . . .” subscribes fully to the arguments on the basis of which Tejumola Olaniyan refutes the often unspoken axioms such as the “corporeal” test by which what counts as genuinely “African” in African literary scholarship is determined. In those arguments, which appear in “African Literature in the Post-Global Age: Provocations on Field Commonsense” (PLI 3.3 [2016]: 387–96), he outlines very explicitly the views about the objects of study, methodologies, and critical theories that have implicitly guided the most powerful scholarship on African literature at least since the 1990s. It expresses some concern, however, that, in calling for a reformation of the “ideological test” that appears to tether African Marxist criticism to the critic’s identity, Olaniyan may have inadvertently left open a back door through which the corporeal axiom could sneak back into African literary criticism. To preempt this, it questions the narrative of globalization on the basis of which he posits the category of the “Post-Global Age.” More specifically, it argues that the temporal scheme represented in the “post” in the “post-global” on which his understanding of globalization rests is flawed. Finally, substituting “late capitalism” for globalization, it argues that “If what late capitalism/globalization longs for is to render capitalism as ineluctable ‘as fate,’ then African literary criticism is obliged ‘to consider the possibility that, to the question, “Are “post,” “trans,” and globalist/neo-universalist propositions now (more than ever) definitionally viable for African literature’ ” that Olaniyan poses, “the answer could be a qualified interrogative rather than a simple affirmative: ‘Yes, but . . . ?’ not ‘Yes.’ ”

An Intellectual History of African Literary Studies?

AbstractTwenty-first-century African literary production has generated a number of conundrums for scholars invested in African literary studies as one recognizable field of study. Some of these conundrums drive Tejumola Olaniyan’s declaration of a post-global condition in African literary studies in “African Literature in the Post-Global Age.” Understanding that essay demands a detour through an intellectual history of African literary studies from about 1990 to 2010.

From Post-Global to Post-Truth: African Literature beyond Commonsense

AbstractThis article discusses Tejumola Olaniyan’s submissions in his essay “African Literature in the Post-Global Age: Provocations on Field Commonsense” by problematizing some of his submissions on the temporalities, especially the global and the post-global, that have inflected the field of African literary discourse since the second half of the twentieth century. In doing this, the essay queries the idea that the category of the nation-state has been exhausted or overwhelmed by the global and the post-global. The essay suggests instead that the nation-state has been retooled and rearmed by a nascent temporality, the post-truth, in ways that have significant consequences for African literatures.

Re-Narrating the Post-Global

AbstractThis essay is a brief response to Tejumola Olaniyan’s article titled “African Literature in the Post-Global Age: Provocations on Field Commonsense.” Taking up the concept of the “post-global” advanced in Olaniyan’s article, this essay argues for the continued relevance of the concept of postcoloniality as it emerged in literary and cultural criticism in the 1990s.

The Ethics of African Studies in the Age of Oga Politics: A Response to Tejumola Olaniyan’s “African Literature in the Post-Global Age”

AbstractIn response to Olaniyan’s article “African Literature in the Post-Global Age: Provocations on Field Commonsense,” this paper suggests that Olaniyan’s conception of the “planetary” provides a metaphor for imagining a politics of responsibility in the post-global and anti-globalization age. The urgency for planetary thinking is framed within the current ascendancy of big man or “oga” politics represented by the rise of neoliberal populism around the world and in Huntingtonian “clash of civilizations” logic espoused by both elite nativists such as Donald Trump and grassroots ethnonationalists such as Boko Haram. The paper suggests that African studies continues to play a crucial and increasingly urgent role in amplifying, translating, and supporting various African ways of being and knowing that have long served as critiques of the disenfranchisement of those in global south.