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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | Africanizing 'Antigone': postcolonial discourse and strategies of indigenizing a Western classic |
| Author: | Raji, Wumi |
| Year: | 2005 |
| Periodical: | Research in African Literatures |
| Volume: | 36 |
| Issue: | 4 |
| Pages: | 135-154 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Nigeria South Africa |
| Subjects: | drama literary criticism |
| About persons: | Athol Fugard (1932-) Femi Osofisan (1946-) |
| External link: | http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v036/36.4raji.pdf |
| Abstract: | This essay represents essentially a comparative investigation of Athol Fugard's 'The island' (1974) and Femi Osofisan's 'Tegonni, an African Antigone' (1999), two African adaptations of Sophocles' tragedy 'Antigone'. In his play, Fugard and his co-creators construct a parallel between Robben Island (South Africa) and the cavern in which Antigone is buried alive in the Greek play. Osofisan's principal target in his adaptation is the specific Nigerian crisis of the time and the way in which the West turned away as Nigeria wallowed in turmoil. In the course of exploring the two texts, the author delved into some salient debates in postcolonial theory. While Karen Barber in her essay 'African language literatures and postcolonial criticism' (1995) argued that postcolonial criticism has continued to repress and marginalize works in African language literatures, the present essay pushes that argument further by suggesting that even for literatures of English language expression, the discursive practice of postcolonialism perpetrates an intense politics of selection and exclusion. Whether expressed in indigenous languages or in those of the former colonizers, African literatures occupy a posiiton of marginality in postcolonial studies. Bibliogr., notes, sum. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
