14th August, 2012
Professor Robert Elliot Fox, a United States of America citizen who taught in Nigeria for seven years and considers it as his second country after the US, was in Nigeria recently to deliver the Wole Soyinka birthday lecture titled “From Tigritude to Transcendence: The Conscience and Consciousness of Wole Soyinka”. In this interview with NEHRU ODEH and NKRUMAH BANKONG-OBI, the professor of English and African Literature at the Southern Illinois University, USA, X-rays Professor Soyinka’s creative output, global inter-cultural relations, problems of Nigeria’s political development and other issues
Having been away from Nigeria for so long, what memories do you still have of the country?
I have not forgotten much about the country. I was reflecting seriously on my time in Nigeria. When I got to the University of Ife in 1978, one of the persons I met was Professor Wole Soyinka. He was a professor in the Department of Theatre Arts. I already admired his work and within a month of my stay I was used to him. One evening there was a literary gathering; there was Kole Omotoso, whom I understand is in South Africa, there was Okot P’tek from Uganda. It was a very interesting evening, I was the only non-African and I was very welcomed. I didn’t realise that I was the only white person among black people because they didn’t treat me differently. One thing I noticed about Soyinka when I was working with him is that his house was full of African sculptures. I was trying to connect in my mind his writing to what I saw in the audio-visual laboratory. Definitely there was some connection with his writing with other African art forms. It’s something I have never fully tried, but I just thought about now and will fully look into. I also remember I left Nigeria in 1985. I returned for about a month in 1985, that was when I got married to my wife who is Yoruba and I was staying with a former colleague of mine, Prof. Funso Ayejina; he has been in Trinidad for many years. And I was invited one day to the Department of Theatre Arts because they were doing something. There were many African writers whom I had read but whom I had not met. I went to meet him (Soyinka), I was asking him about his ideas.
Several years ago, a gentleman walked into my office. He said, ‘I’m a director in the University of Wisconsin Theatre.’ I told him the story I just told you of the evening at Ife. And he said, ‘I was one of the people you were talking to.’ That kind of thing has been happening. Since I came back people have been calling me to say ‘I was your student’ or something. Someone even called me and was thanking me for having been his teacher. It makes you feel like you have actually done something worthwhile. If you work, you get some kind of feedback. When I first came [to Nigeria], because of the way things work in America, I thought I was staying for a year or two but I stayed for more. I am actually glad that I did because I had some life-long relationships, people liking me, they have not forgotten me and I haven’t forgotten them.
What are the noticeable differences between when you were here and now?
I have not visited any school since I have been here. I did go to both Ibadan and Ife in 2004 but neither one of those universities can compare to that time. There was difficulty knowing people… I met a journalist who interviewed me. She told me that her generation of students is less-engaged than the older one. I don’t think that is true but one thing I do know is that discussing with Wole Ogundele, who was a former colleague of mine, led me to know the difficulty in languages. There are some people who are Yoruba but can’t speak Yoruba. We understand that people do not understand the extent to which language use ultimately is a problem. Whatever be their level of intellect, they might take and pass their courses well but if they are not informed about their own culture as they should be, it is a problem. I see the kind of things that they are watching on television – American rap videos – their re-orientation is directed towards America. I will say it is very gratifying though, that a large number of people who attended my lecture last week were students. I hadn’t expected that.
Where do we lay the blame for the young people going culturally astray? Is it on the government or the older people who did not pass their culture on?
I don’t know. I don’t think I blame the older people. But I partly blame the government. When I see the extent of the cultural activities that I was invited to in 1978, people were interested in that and I believe some state governments actually are concerned about promoting culture even now. The media, I don’t mean only the Nigerian media, certain aspects of certain cultures, like the American one being commodified and spread all over the world, and people are trying to imitate it. And it is not something that, except in a very selective way, has anything to do with them. Given the fact of the African-American experience, involving people being transported from Africa to America, there is ultimately some kind of connection back here. This is not to say we are going to blame Nigeria for the kind of things that people are doing with rap videos in the United States. I cannot say there is one form of music I do not like. However, I think it portrays a very unfortunate image. But it seems to be the accepted one because I go to India, I see videos, not from the United States, they are produced indigenously imitating America. And it makes people think, even though there is nothing wrong with thinking internationally, that a foreign culture should be on top of your own rather than a substitute for it.
Is Professor Wole Soyinka, in your view, an obscure writer?
I don’t think Wole Soyinka is necessarily an obscure writer, although he is an African and he writes about African things. He could be obscure in that sense, say to somebody from the United States who does not know about Africa. I think Soyinka is difficult; that is different from being obscure. Nevertheless, the difficulty is an issue which teachers complain of every day. I teach his poetry. Students complain it’s too hard. Indeed, a young woman from the University of Lagos got up at the end of my lecture I just delivered here to mark Soyinka’s birthday and said, “I’m only reading Soyinka because I’m required to. Why can’t he write at the level that most people can understand?” Some of my colleagues were irritated by her comment even though everyone was told “You are free to talk.” I did respond to it by saying what I say to my students, and that is: “If you get to the university, whoever told you things are going to be easy? You need to stretch yourself rather than trying to challenge issues. If you are not going to undertake the stretch, that is one thing. I do think, as I said in my lecture, the difference between being obscure and difficult is that Soyinka thinks about a lot of things. He is thinking about possibilities not the solutions. He has the tendency to provide a kind of violent solution. It is not his job to solve our problem, his job is to make us think about it and try to come up with our own solution.
Young people appear to understand his play, The Beautification of Area Boy, for instance…
That one I haven’t read, unfortunately. But there is a difference between reading plays and watching them being performed. In my Literature classes in my university, I say to them, “We are reading these as text, they were meant to be performed. If we are doing this in the Performing Arts department, I think it could be different. So I think people who are trying to read Soyinka’s plays and saw them performed will understand and appreciate them rather than reading. Although I have not read the play, the title, Beatification of Area Boy, think about that; an area boy is an ordinary person. Beatification is a fancy word. How many people might relate to that play, the use of that word, even in the title, you get a mixture between the high and the low, the sophisticated and the ordinary. Soyinka is capable of speaking the rhetoric he did many years ago. Like the play they performed on Friday, they were using music, he was speaking to the people. He has a way of using different forms in communicating more broadly. He is a man of extra-ordinary gift. I understand he is writing more prose than he is writing poetry or drama. He has got his hands on his biography, essays and though he is driven by different kinds of impulse, he is kind of working at global level, rather than, let us say, a Nigeria-level conversation.
As somebody who follows Nigerian literature closely, how do you feel when some Nigerian critics try to pitch Chinua Achebe against Soyinka?
There is a well known essay in which somebody is asking, “Achebe or Soyinka?” Why do we have to choose one over the other? I mean they are both very good writers, both interesting writers. One thing I will acknowledge is that Achebe is probably more widely read, more widely understood than Soyinka. But I wouldn’t call Achebe a simple writer either. It is just the nature of his language and the kinds of things he is writing about, especially teaching them to American students. These are the kinds of things I tease out of them, especially with the African-American experience, like his probably most read book, Things Fall Apart, relating to the African colonial experience. I won’t make a choice, I study them both. I don’t value one over another.
You referred to Professor Femi Osofisan as anti-Soyinka…
Not anti-Soyinka in the sense that he opposes him. He just practises the opposite. He himself has acknowledged it because he said, “Soyinka is my teacher, Soyinka inspired me but he didn’t seem to go in the direction that I want to go, so my theatre practice is going to be different from his.” Doing something in the opposite direction does not necessarily mean that he is rejecting Soyinka. But he does in a way reject him. He likes to do what his critics want him to do. But why should you do what your critics say anyway?
You also talked about Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s activism and the difference to Soyinka’s even though they were cousins.
Actually, I have my own thoughts about Fela but I was using him while working on the Soyinka lecture. I wanted to distinguish between different kinds of activism. And when I was reading Soyinka’s You Must Set Forth At Dawn, he made me see something. Here are two guys, they are both artists, they are activists but there was a difference. This will enable me make the sort of argument that Soyinka is operating. Fela’s music, if you listen you want to get up and dance to it. But there are also lyrics associated with his themes. Although he wanted people to think about things, as an intellectual, I often feel compelled to think about things. Some of the things he was saying were wild. My wife warned me before I came for the lecture. She said, “Watch out for Fela’s fans.” I’m not necessarily a fan of Fela. I mean, I saw him in person, I have a lot of his music, I even met him, I had an evening with him. That was quite interesting but I had reservations because to be frank, he could talk and you could dialogue with him. If you think you never agreed with him, you might as well keep quiet. There were people who were able to connect with him. There was a certain set of mind that Fela had about political issues that even Soyinka talked about: the difference between Idi Amin and Kwame Nkrumah. Soyinka’s politics is black and white but Fela’s is not. Soyinka seems to be more broad-minded, he sees everything. Those are the kind of people that inspire us, those who are true to others. Fela can make you get up and do something because he takes everything seriously. That was what I was trying to get through in my lecture.
Soyinka had said he was retiring as an activist at 49. But at 78, he is still doing it
We are all glad he didn’t retire.
What essentially do you think has kept him on the field for so long?
The higher you go, the broader your view. He sees more problems. The fact that you have some of the improvement we were talking about doesn’t mean it is finished; there are things at the local level for him to be concerned about. Soyinka, because of his world stature, is in a position to see so much. He probably can see things that concern him that we are not even aware of even if these things are localised. Although I’m in Nigeria, this is the first time that I have done a lot of travel at all. And it is not like I don’t feel like knowing what is going on in the world, but if you are meeting people who are really connected with issues in various parts of the world, sitting down like now we are, you are going to get a greater depth and perspective. And if you are the kind of person he is – creative, compassionate – you are going to talk about those things and do something about them. I don’t think he likes being a public figure. I have seen some interviews with him in which he says, “I basically don’t want to speak if everybody was doing things correctly.” He would have devoted that time…he has not stopped creating but I wonder what kind of things he would have been creating if he had not been a human rights spokesperson.
You linked Soyinka to the Tigritude and Negritude. What do you mean?
It was in furtherance of the analysis of Negritude. It occurred to me that a lot of people had dismissed it until I went back and re-read some of those things he said. You can’t dismiss Negritude. That means he was critical of that philosophy. The other thing that was interesting was, as I talked about in my lecture, Fela, I’m sure, never used the word Negritude but was in a sense a proponent of Negritude because he made white as everything in the face of white supremacy. In that sense he was doing what Soyinka was concerned about, which is finding out what the central problems was, to take the things that were negative and turn them upside down. Soyinka is more complicated than that. Abiola Irele, who is one of Africa’s greatest critics, in one of his books said there is no other figure in body, who is better in Negritude than Soyinka, which is why he is complicated. If you are dealing with a complex writer, you have to approach the writer in a complicated way.
What do you love about Nigeria that you coming again and again?
I don’t know what right word to use, whether it is that I’m acclimatised or whatever. I didn’t know much about Africa before I came here. [But] I knew a few Africans, I had read the works of a few Africans. Being in one country was not the same thing as living in one’s country as at that time. So I began to associate more and more with different kinds of people. I had a lot of expatriate friends whom I spent a lot of my time with. I was so impressed with a lot of people that I met, impressed with their intellect, with their ability to function in a society that I found difficult to function in because so many things were done completely different from the way that they were done in the US. If I had gone to Great Britain maybe it would have been more familiar. So the cultural aspect, too, I loved it, the drumming and the pageantry that surrounded that, I knew more about American Literature, I understood more about African-American culture because I could see so many things. It was a human experience. It was not like the purely intellectual work that brought me here; after that it became a human experience. I wasn’t treated as a stranger and I appreciated that. Even sometimes when I went home, I felt like I was a stranger in a way. It helped me to see things in a different light and that made me a bit more critical too. So as I move back and forth now, I can see things that I didn’t see. Being too critical of Nigeria will be a lot difficult.
To what extent has colonisation and globalisation aided the interaction or, perhaps, destroyed the mutual marriage of different cultures across the continents?
I don’t like those concepts because that meant that the countries were artificial reactions, not natural creations. You have countries evolve on the basis of not only a particular geographic level, but on cultural and linguistic ones. Look at Nigeria, what a big place it is and the multiplie languages. And this was before people started moving back and forth. The British and other European powers in 1880 came to take Africa, but you were born through the village. I had a colleague in Ife who said in the West you have Benin, in the North you have got Niger as neighbouring countries. These things were artificial, they created difficulties. As I told someone not too long ago, we in America were able to establish our own country. But you started up with a kind of difficulty because the system was imposed on you.
-Published on TheNEWS magazine