Magical Realism in West African Fiction: Seeing with a Third Eye (Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures, 1)

259 Pages·1998·2.7 MB·English

by  Brenda Cooper

MAGICAL REALISM IN
WEST AFRICAN FICTION
Magical Realism in West African Fiction provides a far-reaching examination of the
cultural politics of this exciting genre, as exemplified in the fiction of three of its
West African pioneers, Syl Cheney-Coker of Sierra Leone, Ben Okri of Nigeria
and Kojo Laing of Ghana.
Brenda Cooper argues that magical realism arises out of postcolonial, unevenly
developed societies, where modern and ancient, and scientific and magical, views
of the world co-exist. She examines the plots, themes and narrative techniques of
novels that mingle these dimensions of magic, myth and historical reality.
This study contextualizes the art of magical realism within current debates and
theories of postcoloniality. Cooper explores the distinct elements of this fictional
genre in a West African context, and in relation to

• a range of global expressions of magical realism, from the work of Gabriel
Garcia Marquez to that of Salman Rushdie;
(cid:127) wider contemporary trends in African writing, with particular attention to
how the ‘realism’ of authors such as Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka have
been connected with nationalist agendas.

Magical Realism in West African Fiction is an invaluable introduction to an increasingly
important and popular genre, as well as presenting an engaging and in-depth
look at the fictions of three of its most brilliant practitioners. It will be of interest
to anyone wanting to expand their knowledge of magical realism, African fiction,
and themes of postcoloniality more generally.
Brenda Cooper is Associate Professor in the Centre for African Studies at the
University of Cape Town. Her previous book, To Lay These Secrets Open (1992),
debates the criteria for the evaluation of African fiction. She has produced resources
for teaching African literature in schools and colleges, including Modern African
Writing (1984), Debates, Dilemmas and Dreams (1992), and Nations: Stones of the World
for Africa (1995).
ROUTLEDGE RESEARCH IN
POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES
In collaboration with the Centre for Colonial and
Postcolonial Studies at University of Kent at Canterbury
This series aims to present a wide range of scholarly and innovative research into
postcolonial literatures by specialists in the field. Volumes in the series will
concentrate on writers and writing originating in previously (or presently) colonised
areas, and will include material from non-anglophone as well as anglophone
colonies and literatures. The series also aims to include collections of important
essays from older journals, and re-issues of classic texts on postcolonial subjects.
1. MAGICAL REALISM IN WEST AFRICAN FICTION
Seeing with a third eye
Brenda Cooper
2. THE AESTHETICS OF POSTCOLONIAL EMANCIPATION
Luis Madureira
MAGICAL REALISM
I N WEST AFRICAN
FICTION
Seeing with a third eye
Brenda Cooper

London and New York
First published 1998
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.

© 1998 Brenda Cooper
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request

ISBN 0-203-45139-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-75963-X (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-18239-5 (Print Edition)
FOR DANIEL
MY ABIKU

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
1 Seeing with a third eye 1
2 ‘Sacred names into profane spaces’: magical realism 15
3 An endless forest of terrible creatures: magical realism
in West Africa 37
4 ‘Out of the centre of my forehead, an eye opened’:
Ben Okri’s The Famished Road 67
5 ‘The plantation blood in his veins’: Syl Cheney-Coker and
The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar 115
6 Intermediate magic and the fiction of B.Kojo Laing 156
7 ‘Old Gods, New Worlds’: some conclusions 216
Notes 227
Bibliography 237
Index 247
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Martin Hall read, commented upon, believed in and edited the book. For his
astute scholarly insights, sweat and love, I give thanks.
Rustum Kozain was a one in a million research assistant. He collected, ordered,
searched, photocopied and discussed the ideas.
My appreciation to Biodun Jeyifo, Lokangaka Losambe and Clive Wake for
their support.
To Ros and Saul Teukolsky for flying me over to the bookshops, for the
flowers and for being my family and best friends.
The institutional support of the University of Cape Town and the staff of the
Centre for African Studies enabled the research.
The author wishes to thank Wasafiri for permission to reproduce a version of
her paper ‘Liberated Repressions’ as Chapter One.
The financial assistance of the Centre for Science Development (Human
Sciences Research Council, South Africa) towards this research is acknowledged.
The opinions and conclusions are the author’s.
As always, Adam and Sara Cooper are present.
viii
1

SEEING WITH A THIRD EYE

In this book I focus on three magical realist writers of West Africa: Syl Cheney-
Coker (Sierra Leone), Ben Okri (Nigeria) and Kojo Laing (Ghana). I argue that
their fictions are characterized by the powerful, restless reincarnations of myth
into magic and history into the universal. They are writers on the margins,
inhabiting borders.
Why ‘seeing with a third eye’?
Magical realism strives, with greater or lesser success, to capture the paradox of
the unity of opposites; it contests polarities such as history versus magic, the
precolonial past versus the post-industrial present and life versus death. Capturing
such boundaries between spaces is to exist in a third space, in the fertile interstices
between these extremes of time or space:

And then suddenly, out of the centre of my forehead, an eye opened, and
I saw this light to be the brightest, most beautiful thing in the world.
(Ben Okri, The Famished Road)1

But there is also a third space of another kind, a theoretical position that might be
called a ‘reconstituted Marxism’; a middle ground, between Marxism and
postmodernist theory. This is a space that retains the central recognition that
power relations underlie texts, and from which one can continue to ask materialist
questions such as ‘who benefits?’; ‘In whose interests does this tale work or this
device operate?’ But it is also a space in which the problem of reducing everything
to class issues is acknowledged; it accepts that metaphors such as ‘base’ and
‘superstructure’ are too rigid when attempting to construct the complex and global
cultural networks into which we are all woven. This approach re-examines the
concept of humanism and its relationship to power and oppression. It is a position
that recognizes individuals as gendered, racially constituted, unevenly privileged
subjects, playing out many-layered lives that are both structurally determined
and also idiosyncratically forged. Such a project can ‘reintegrate’ the postmodern
1