Stepping into the mid-Winter Season of the octogenarians is certainly a tough hill to climb in this troublous times in our country, when life expectancy is put, inaccurately, at between 45 and 50. Professor Francis Abiola Irele, one of the proponents and patriarchs of critical scholarship in Africa, is not one to ‘sneak’, unsung, into such ripe times in our rough climes—not only among the literati, but in the national, international and global communities. So, when on Monday, May 30, Professor AbdulRasheedNa’Allah, the dynamic, energetic frighteningly versatile Vice-Chancellorone of the emerging most internationalized state universities of our country, hosted the Valedictory Lecture by the Valedictorian, Abiola Irele, it was an unwitting double bill-to also celebrate his entry into the age of the octogenarians.
It is apposite to recall that, in a way characteristic of him, Professor Abiola Irele left the comfort and prestige of Harvard, to take up appointment as pioneer Provost of the Humanities College in the year 2010, at the new Kwara State University, where he had recorded monumental influence in its building as an emerging centre of intellectual excellence and scholarly ferment within a bewilderingly short duration of half a decade. Professor Irele has been like a metaphorical puller of the moth to a lamp. No intellectual called to work in that institutionsince Irele had put his stamp by his assured presence and participation had had any excuse not to come—and they came in drones, literally, to help fulfill Na’Allah’s dream of building ‘a world class university.’ By the time of his leaving,he has firmly establishedhis imprint indelibly, with a School of Theory and Criticism named after him and a huge section of the library devoted to his work and collections donated, most generously, by him, to the young university.
Yet, it is, to say the least, a matter for great pity, that this important occasion of Irele’s80thbirthday, almost went without a loud notice in our country, where Professor Abiola has paid more than his dues in the crafting and nurturing of the essential Nigerian literary tradition—its canon, philosophy, theory, aesthetics and ideology. He had to, at the beginning of his Lecture, on “What is Negritude?” quietly announced that he turned 80 Saturday, May 22, to shock and utter embarrassment to the cream of scholars and intellectuals in attendance, that the man aptly described across the world, variously, as ‘the most authoritative voice in African Literature” (Femi Osofisan), the “doyen of African literary scholarship and scholars globally”, a “fundamental figure in Francophone African and Caribbean Studies” and among his peers and close associates, led by Africa’s first Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, as Olohuniyo—variously captured as one with the velvet voice of salt, with regard to his legendary verbal eloquence, the redolence and fragrance of his speech pitch, what the French would describe as ‘aromatique or/and deodoran’. These translations of Olohuniyo captures more and in advance of the drinkability of his voice in delivery; to the thoughts and articulation of the essential African philosophy, ideology and theory, with its ramifying impact on the entire African, Caribbean, Diaspora and world consciousness.
A member of the first generation of African critical tradition, establishing the evaluative criteria for the evolving African literature and philosophy of both Anglophone and Francophone expressions from the sixties, Irele’sbio-data is commonplace on the internet and on the pages of the media. Born May 22, 1936, he studied French in the University College, Ibadan, graduating in 1960. He took his PhD in French at the University of Paris, Sobourne in 1960 writing his dissertation on the work of the Martiniqan coiner of the concept of Negritude, Aime Cesaire. Negritude is a literary and ideological phenomenon which Irele has given, unarguably, the most comprehensive attention in his numerous works. Professor Irele, a global teacher, scholar and inimitable intellectual, has taught in the universities of Ife, Ghana, Ohio State University, and the University of Harvard, berthing almost finally on the virgin land of Malete, Kwara State as Provost and Director of the Press of theKwara State University where he has churned out a number of seminal publications including the highly rated Savannah.Besides his full-length studies, is a reputed editor of journals, reviews and critical anthologies,on African, African-American, Caribbean literature among which are Transition Magazine, Africa in the World,& and the World in Africa, African Literature: An Overview and Bibliography, The Cambridge Companion to the African Novel, Economic History of Africa (with BiodunJeyifo), Benin Review,Research in African Literatures, and so on…
In establishing and affirming the truism of Irele’s stature in African literature as a critical and distinctive celebrated and cerebral African and Africanist scholar and as doyen and undisputable authority, it is important to contextualize his essential contribution to literary theory, ideology and philosophy in which Negritude is only a landmark contribution, the study and dissemination of which he stands out like a colossus. Of his numerous and diversified publications, the following selected works have become the signposts of his scholarly gifts to the Humanities: The African Experience in Literature and Ideology: Studies in African Literature (1981, 1990), The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Diaspora (2001), Dimensions of African Discourse (1992), Order, Pedagogy and the ‘Postcolonial’ (1995), Negritude, Literature and Ideology in the African Philosophy Reader, The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature? (With Simon Gikandi, 2004), What is Africa to Me? Africa in the Diaspora Imagination, Negritude et Condition Africaine (2009), Negritude—Postcolonial and Post-Imperial Literature, European Language Writing: Sub-Saharan Africa (1986), The Negritude Moment: Expectations in Francophone and Caribbean Literature and Thought (2010, and numerous others!
What is of critical import is not the numerical strength of his publications but the quality and value of his seminal writings in lending penetrative insight to essential soul and mind of Africa (what he has graphically captured and conceptualized as the African experience and imagination, the humiliation and subjection of the African personality through centuries of the inhuman slave traffic, colonialism, imperialism and neo-imperialism and the valiant struggle of Africans, since as far back as the Haitian revolt of 1918-19.Irele informs us that the revolt provides an early signal of Negritude in the black man’s consciousness, before its coinage by AimeCesaire and its popularization by Sedar Senghor. Critical education and elucidation of the Negritude phenomenon emerging from his over five decades of encyclopedic discourse and critical narrative must include, Negritude as a ‘movement of emotion and ideas’; Negritude defined further as a ‘psychological response/reaction to the social and cultural conditions of the colonial situation, and the rigorous quest for a new and original orientation and self-reinvention as established by creative writers, scholars and intellectuals such as Senghor, Cesaire, the Diops, Oyono, Laye, Beti, and so on.Irele further draws an ideological parallel between Negritude and Pan-Africanism, beyond sheer propaganda and as the ‘progression from subordination, to independence and identity retrieval through ‘revolt and affirmation.’
It is important to highlight what seems to me to be the highpoint of Irele’s ideological and philosophical submission on Negritude, as earlier established and here referenced by Prof. Dominic Thomas, one that began to manifest in his earlier study of Cesaire’s works on Negritude. We find this, most unmistakably in Irele’s comprehensive study, TheNegritudeMoment: Expectations in Francophone and Caribbean Literature and Thoughtsfrom which matters of historical salience on the subject emerged, namely a re-visitation of the history and origin of Negritude, a concept, ideology and movement thathas become one of the most influential cultural and political theories beyond the twentieth century.
If Irele has not been adequately rewarded in terms of recognition and endowment (as he has not been), his many awards and laurels such as the Fellowship of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and the Nigerian National Order of Merit are critical palliatives for a man whose works and name occupy a covetable and enviable place in the un-etched Hall or House of Fame of Nigeria, Africa and the Globe. Happy Birthday to a worthy, frontline African and Africanist Humanist, legendary thinker and indomitable world scholar and intellectual—Francis AbiolaIrele at 80 well-lived years on earth.
