No longer is African literature, in its dominant thrust, defined by an apologetic or polemical response to the representation of Africa in the colonial ideology, and African thought generally by an effort of reformulation of the African image, in what Valentin Mudimbe has called, in his work The Invention of Africa (1988), “a discourse of succession.” …This new literature, with the states of consciousness it illuminates, thus marks a break with the effort of elaboration of a counter discourse in relation to the colonial imposition that we associate with the work of an earlier generation of African writers and intellectuals.
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F. ABIOLA IRELE (1936-2017) was one of the most powerful literary and cultural critics of our time. In this final collection, appropriately titled by him as “The African Scholar,” he breaks new ground, pointing at work that will call beyond his own, as few critics can. What he writes applies of course most immediately to Africa, but it applies also to the global situation of understanding culture and cultural production and indeed the rules of cultural appreciation in this new time. This book, therefore, should be read by everyone.
He uses this unusual combination with such grace that the text is never ponderous. Indeed, this is a teaching text with the lightest touch. Irele develops an argument seriously, buoyed by examples of his skillful reading –textual contextual, and post-contextual – until even the canny reader is convinced.
I hope I have been able to fulfill the extraordinary responsibility laid upon me …pointing at the strengths of this last collection beyond the limits of my ignorance of much that Francis Abiola Irele speaks about, and recommending this book not only for African and diasporic audiences, but for all readers, everywhere…