Ekphrastic Faces: Images of the Predator State in Falz's This Is Nigeria (original) (raw)

AESTHETICS OR IDEOLOGY IN CONTEMPORARY NIGERIA PLAY AN ANALYSIS OF “THE STAIN”AFRICA UKOH

The concept of aesthetics and ideology is a great philosophical construct that has informed the society in its spheres. Literature, which embodies the application of this concept, can be applied to mean constructive and critical analysis of the challenges as experienced and expressed in literary works. The Stain, a drama x-rays the challenges which a society is faced due to infections that eventually if not managed properly, will leave life cold, which on aesthetically realised works can so much express and explore. But amidst this ideology will impinge on the creativity of such works dues to over reliance, over dominance, over consciousness of class struggles, and issues of relevance. Hence, there is the need to soft-pedal on application of the concept of ideology especially as it relates to critical examination of works. This adherence can lead a society to a pure philosophical ethos.

A Cross Examination of African Aesthetics: Nigerian Popular Music as Case Study

2019

<br> This study examines aesthetics in the African context. Nigerian popular music is used as a template to pilot the study. Effort is made to investigate Nigerian popular music by grouping it into two eras based on genres and time-popular music in the colonial era to the early post-colonial era (1940s–1980s) and the contemporary Nigerian popular music (late 1980s–till date). Elements that define African music as good and pleasant to the senses are established vis-a-vis the disparity between a good music and music that is pleasant both in content and context. The research employs content analysis and literary methodologies. This study reveals that what is considered as beautiful is relative across cultures. The paper concludes that both the tangible and intangible aspects of an object must be carefully considered in defining African aesthetics.<br> Résumé <br> Cet article examine l'esthétique dans le contexte africain. La musique populaire nigériane est le modè...

Political Critique in Nigerian Video Films

Video films have established themselves as the dominant form of Nigerian popular culture, with more than 1,000 titles being released every year. They arose during politically tumultuous times but have had a reputation for being studiously commercial and avoiding political subjects. This essay attempts to revise this conventional wisdom by exploring three video genres that embody forms of political critique: the hardy genre of films about traditional rulership; the crime thriller, with several variants; and family melodrama, which tends to infiltrate all other genres. It then surveys some films with directly political subjects made since the end of military rule in 1999.

Of Elephants and Blind men: Cyprian Ekwensi and the Development of Modern Criticism of Nigerian literature

Ihafa: A Journal of African studies, 2012

ABSTRACT In the early parts of the 1960s till the middle of the 70s, controversial issues dominated discussions in the then evolving field of Nigerian literature and its criticism, helping to give it some of its present timbre and structure. The issues ranged from an appropriate poetics for the nation’s literature, the language or medium for expressing an authentic Nigerian or African literature, and whose opinion- between the indigenous and the foreign critic- carried more weight in any assessment of a Nigerian or African’s creative work. In a period of relative general calm such as we arguably have today, it is easy to forget the roles which the debates, rancour, provocations and controversies of that era played in instituting a formal culture of literary scholarship in the nation. This essay, divided into three parts, examines the third of the issues identified above as it involved the popular writer, Cyprian Ekwensi. The first argues that the criticism of the nation’s literature was framed to identifying ‘good’ and ‘bad’ writing and so attempted systematically to process Ekwensi from the evolving canon of the national literature mainly on account of his difference of style and perception of social issues. The second part demonstrates that Ekwensi was responding in his writing to changing socio-cosmic and artistic conditions that were barely understood by his interlocutors. In the third, Ekwensi’s 1962 novel, Burning Grass, is used to define and illustrate this creative impulse as being largely ‘pro-colonial’, a reactionary perception of social relations in a predominantly anti-colonial atmosphere. The conclusion is that much of the infelicity located in the works of Ekwensi derived largely from the use of yardsticks associated with a fading modernist perception of literature. At this transition period, it was not so easy to come to terms with the postmodern form and content of the novel he was writing.

Music & Social Criticism in Nigeria

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti used Yabis, his style of music and the Pidgin English to address the political, economic, and social conditions of the common man, the black race and the world. To him, music serves the multidimensional purposes of entertaining as well as educating the masses on the shortcomings in the society; and healing the state – ultimately, the world. The song, Beast of no nation (Anikulapo-Kuti, 1989), analysed in the paper, describes a state of betrayal of the innocent citizens by officers of the state and government of the day. It also takes a swipe at the United Nations. As a social commentator, Fela employed the medium of satire through the means of parody to ridicule the Nigerian judicial system; the government and comment on the vanity of the United Nations. Using the discourse analytical tool of conversation analysis, the paper adopted the concepts of adjacency pairs, turn taking and turn switch in analysing the sequencing of turns in the Beast of no nation as an interaction and as a real language element that communicates meaning to the intended audience. The paper discovered the song used different interaction devices, among which are: discourse markers (46, of 5 types, 2 universal and 3 localised), silence or short pauses (10), turns (150), adjacency pairs (54) as well as turn switches other transitional devices. The most significant finding of the paper is the extent to which Fela has used the Pidgin English to effectively communicate his message to his audience using the discourse elements of the pidgin.

Art and the Artist in the Nigerian Novel

Ideally what precisely constitutes art and who the artist is do not depend on where the literary work was done or published, although there are some who speak of African and Nigerian literatures as if they belonged to a class apart and are characterized by nationality or cultural heritage. What art consists of and the identity of the artist are the very reason for the existence of the discipline of literary theory; and what one takes literary art to be is essentially a function of the theory that governs one's reading. In this paper, the image of the artist is derived from the art; and it is found that art is more easily recognizable where there is distantiation from actuality and from the artist himself. The artist is accordingly much less central, but at the same time so much more an artist.

The masquerade of death macabre in the North: strange revolutionary aesthetics in Nigeria

Tydskrif vir letterkunde, 2013

The masquerade of death macabre in the North: strange revolutionary aesthetics in Nigeria In the late 1960s, all manner of assaults were directed between the Biafran secessionists and their Nigerian counterparts. As a result, unresolved ethnic, economic and socio-political lines exposed the "harvest" of the 1966-70 revolution. This harvest of corruption and military rule spilled into the 1980s and 90s creating resistant groups until the millennium age which ushered in new revolutionary tactics. Between 1970 when the revolution was officially declared ended till date, Nigerians have been made to harvest "proceeds" of both the colonial and postcolonial "legacies" which many critics pin down on bad leadership. For instance, while the steaming smoke from the battle nozzles of the Niger Delta revolutionaries is yet to fade away, the Northern region, under the violence of Boko Haram (Western Education is forbidden/sinful) has caused panic in the political arena. Against the backdrop of the current "global awakening," this paper, through some critical works and Nigerian fictional artefacts, takes a careful examination of one particular aspect of this "harvest," particularly the disillusionment and subsequent reactions of the people in various revolutionary garbs. The paper concludes that the amnesty antidote offered by the Nigerian leadership is simply a toothless escapist remedy. The position of this exploration is that the current militants or revolutionaries in any of the Nigerian geopolitical zones are reactive hydra-monsters created by a failing system where the national wealth has been hijacked by a few. Until this wealth is justly distributed, more chameleonic colours of revolutionaries are bound to emerge from the same system.

Beyond the Lens: Kemi Adetiba's King of Boys as A Metaphor for Power and Order in Democratic Nigeria

The Journal of Society and Media, 2020

This study examines the symbolic representations of Nigerian social reality in the movie "King of Boys". Social reality in this instance is examined from the perspective of official and unofficial political and economic power, influence and coercion. Based on the framework of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics and semiology theory, the study aims to examines the symbolic relationship between characters, scenes, and institutions in the Kemi Adetiba's "King of Boys" and the realities in the Nigerian political and security sectors. Using the methodological approach of Critical Discourse Analysis, the study found that the movie is a bold attempt at representing the intricate power relations that exists within Nigerian political circles as well as that which exists between the Nigerian political class and organized crime. Abstrak Studi ini meneliti representasi simbolik dari realitas sosial Nigeria dalam film "King of Boys". Realitas sosial dalam hal ini dikaji dari perspektif kekuatan politik, pengaruh dan paksaan politik dan ekonomi baik secara resmi maupun tidak resmi. Berdasarkan kerangka kerja semiotika dan semiologi teori Ferdinand de Saussure dan Charles Sanders Peirce, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguji hubungan simbolik antara karakter, adegan, dan institusi di film "King of Boys" Kemi Adetiba dan realitas politik dan sektor keamanan Nigeria. Dengan menggunakan pendekatan metodologis dari Analisis Wacana Kritis, penelitian ini menemukan bahwa film tersebut merupakan upaya berani untuk mewakili hubungan kekuasaan yang rumit yang ada dalam lingkaran politik Nigeria serta yang ada antara kelas politik Nigeria dan kejahatan terorganisir. Kata kunci: politik Nigeria, nollywood, semiotika, korupsi. 32 | T h e J o u r n a l o f S o c i e t y and M e d i a 4 (1)

Contemporary Discourse and the Oblique Narrative of Avant-gardism in Twentieth-Century Nigerian Art

International Journal of Culture and Art Studies, 2020

The history of Twentieth Century Nigerian art is characterized by ambiguities that impede understanding of the underlying modernist philosophies that inspired modern art from the 1900s. In the past five decades, scholars have framed the discourse of Contemporary Nigerian Art to analyze art created during that period in Africa starting with Nigeria in order to differentiate it from that of Europe and America. However, this quest for differentiation has led to a mono-narrative which only partially analyze modernist tendencies in modern Nigerian art, thus, reducing its impact locally and globally. Adopting Content Analysis and Modernism as methodologies, this research subjected literature on Twentieth Century Nigerian art to critical analysis to reveal its grey areas, as well as draw upon recent theories by Chika Okeke-Agulu, Sylvester Ogbechie, Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor to articulate the occurrence of a unique Nigerian avant-gardism blurred by the widely acclaimed discourse of cont...