Biodun Jeyifo
Biographic Data
| ID | 161148 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Biodun Jeyifo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Biodun |
| FAMILY NAME | Jeyifo |
| SIGNATURE | JEYIFO B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7162-1144 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 47 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Egbon, Teacher and Mentor, Go Gracefully into the Night! For Abiola Irele (1936-2017)
Ritual and theatre at the crossroads of poetics, politics and epistemology
This study returns to the issue in world theatre scholarship of the boundary between theatre and ritual as forms or modes of performance, with reference to modern African drama in general and the dramaturgy of the Nigerian playwright Femi Euba in particular. The central argument hinges on the crossroads at which, for the successful integration of drama and ritual, aesthetic boldness, radical politics, and epistemological daring meet and clash. De…
An "illuminati" and its acolytes
English is an African language - Ka Dupe! [for and against Ngũgĩ]
In a radical departure from the orthodoxies of postcolonial African cultural and linguistic nationalism, the paper calls for acceptance of English as an African language with a central argument that insists that all languages widely used in Africa ought to be classified as either indigenous or non-indigenous. This argument rests on a vigorous critique of what the author identifies as the principle of absolute autochthony as the only determinant o…
African Theatre 16
A collection of playscripts and texts that give an English-reading audience access to key plays as well as less well-known and previously untranslated works - a superb resource for scholars and theatre practitioners.
Forget the Muse, think only of the (Decentered) Subject
This essay involves an exploration of complex and fascinating acts of decentering and re-centering of writers in relation to traditional Muses as institutionalizations or sedimentations of artistic and intellectual inspiration in cultural tradition. Using the specific example of Wole Soyinka’s much discussed appropriation of Ogun, the Yoruba god of war, metallurgy and creativity as a point of departure, the paper gives what is intended as a far m…
First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't
Chinua Achebe is one of the greatest realist writers in world literature in perhaps the last one and half centuries. But the Achebe that appears in There Was a Country is to me entirely a new one. The challenge is how to characterize this other Achebe that is standing beside the old, urbane and subtle writer in this new book
Soyinka, Wole
Oguntoyinbo
An African Cultural Modernity
I start with the contention that if we are to derive much-needed illumination from the literature and critical thought of Africa of the last half a century with regard to the profound crises engend
Wole Soyinka
Conversations with Wole Soyinka
Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka is the most prominent writer from the African continent and one of the greatest living playwrights in the English language. His plays have been produced by the leading professional and repertory companies and stages in the English-speaking world including the National Theatre in Britain and the Lincoln Center in New York. At the same time, Soyinka has been the most consistent campaigner against civil and human rights v…
Conversations with Wole Soyinka
In the Wake of Colonialism and Modernity
Le point de départ de ce texte, qui traite de l’articulation complexe du colonialisme et de la modernité, est la polysémie du mot wake contenue dans le titre : en dehors du sens évident, «dans le sillage », il fait également référence aux veillées funèbres traditionnelles en Irlande et en Afrique et à leur réappropriation littéraire par Joyce dans Finnegan’s Wake et par Soyinka dans Death and the King’s Horseman. La figure de la veillée funèbre, …
Greatness and Cruelty
(2000). Greatness and Cruelty: “Wonders of the African World” and the Reconfiguration of Senghorian Negritude. The Black Scholar: Vol. 30, The Debate on Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s “Wonders of the African World”, pp. 39-44
On Mazrui's “Black Orientalism”
This is a preliminary comment which will later be followed by a more substantial commentary on Skip Gates' Wonders of the African In this initial comment, I wish to take issue with the morality of Professor Ali Mazrui's hatchet job on the series. I am very reasonably assured that the series WILL get the serious, tough-minded but objective criticism which it - and any object or text of cultural production - deserves from scholars in the fields of …
An Interview With Nadine Gordimer
Okonkwo and His Mother
In the oral tradition, we often do not know whether the storyteller who thought up a particular story was a man or a woman. Of course when one examines the recorded texts, one might wonder whether a myth or story doesn't serve particular interests in a given society. -Mineke Schipper The Chielo-Ezinma episode is an important sub-plot of the novel and actually reads like a suppressed larger story circumscribed by the exploration of Okonkwo's/man's…
Wole Soyinka
English is an African language - Ka Dupe! [for and against Ngũgĩ]
In a radical departure from the orthodoxies of postcolonial African cultural and linguistic nationalism, the paper calls for acceptance of English as an African language with a central argument that insists that all languages widely used in Africa ought to be classified as either indigenous or non-indigenous. This argument rests on a vigorous critique of what the author identifies as the principle of absolute autochthony as the only determinant o…
Okonkwo and His Mother
In the oral tradition, we often do not know whether the storyteller who thought up a particular story was a man or a woman. Of course when one examines the recorded texts, one might wonder whether a myth or story doesn't serve particular interests in a given society. -Mineke Schipper The Chielo-Ezinma episode is an important sub-plot of the novel and actually reads like a suppressed larger story circumscribed by the exploration of Okonkwo's/man's…
An African Cultural Modernity
I start with the contention that if we are to derive much-needed illumination from the literature and critical thought of Africa of the last half a century with regard to the profound crises engend
On Mazrui's “Black Orientalism”
This is a preliminary comment which will later be followed by a more substantial commentary on Skip Gates' Wonders of the African In this initial comment, I wish to take issue with the morality of Professor Ali Mazrui's hatchet job on the series. I am very reasonably assured that the series WILL get the serious, tough-minded but objective criticism which it - and any object or text of cultural production - deserves from scholars in the fields of …
Forget the Muse, think only of the (Decentered) Subject
This essay involves an exploration of complex and fascinating acts of decentering and re-centering of writers in relation to traditional Muses as institutionalizations or sedimentations of artistic and intellectual inspiration in cultural tradition. Using the specific example of Wole Soyinka’s much discussed appropriation of Ogun, the Yoruba god of war, metallurgy and creativity as a point of departure, the paper gives what is intended as a far m…
First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't
Chinua Achebe is one of the greatest realist writers in world literature in perhaps the last one and half centuries. But the Achebe that appears in There Was a Country is to me entirely a new one. The challenge is how to characterize this other Achebe that is standing beside the old, urbane and subtle writer in this new book
Oguntoyinbo
Conversations with Wole Soyinka
An Interview With Nadine Gordimer
An Interview With Nadine Gordimer
Okonkwo and His Mother
In the oral tradition, we often do not know whether the storyteller who thought up a particular story was a man or a woman. Of course when one examines the recorded texts, one might wonder whether a myth or story doesn't serve particular interests in a given society. -Mineke Schipper The Chielo-Ezinma episode is an important sub-plot of the novel and actually reads like a suppressed larger story circumscribed by the exploration of Okonkwo's/man's…
In the Wake of Colonialism and Modernity
Le point de départ de ce texte, qui traite de l’articulation complexe du colonialisme et de la modernité, est la polysémie du mot wake contenue dans le titre : en dehors du sens évident, «dans le sillage », il fait également référence aux veillées funèbres traditionnelles en Irlande et en Afrique et à leur réappropriation littéraire par Joyce dans Finnegan’s Wake et par Soyinka dans Death and the King’s Horseman. La figure de la veillée funèbre, …
Greatness and Cruelty
(2000). Greatness and Cruelty: “Wonders of the African World” and the Reconfiguration of Senghorian Negritude. The Black Scholar: Vol. 30, The Debate on Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s “Wonders of the African World”, pp. 39-44
On Mazrui's “Black Orientalism”
This is a preliminary comment which will later be followed by a more substantial commentary on Skip Gates' Wonders of the African In this initial comment, I wish to take issue with the morality of Professor Ali Mazrui's hatchet job on the series. I am very reasonably assured that the series WILL get the serious, tough-minded but objective criticism which it - and any object or text of cultural production - deserves from scholars in the fields of …
Conversations with Wole Soyinka
Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka is the most prominent writer from the African continent and one of the greatest living playwrights in the English language. His plays have been produced by the leading professional and repertory companies and stages in the English-speaking world including the National Theatre in Britain and the Lincoln Center in New York. At the same time, Soyinka has been the most consistent campaigner against civil and human rights v…
Conversations with Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
An African Cultural Modernity
I start with the contention that if we are to derive much-needed illumination from the literature and critical thought of Africa of the last half a century with regard to the profound crises engend
Oguntoyinbo
Soyinka, Wole
First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't
Chinua Achebe is one of the greatest realist writers in world literature in perhaps the last one and half centuries. But the Achebe that appears in There Was a Country is to me entirely a new one. The challenge is how to characterize this other Achebe that is standing beside the old, urbane and subtle writer in this new book
African Theatre 16
A collection of playscripts and texts that give an English-reading audience access to key plays as well as less well-known and previously untranslated works - a superb resource for scholars and theatre practitioners.
Forget the Muse, think only of the (Decentered) Subject
This essay involves an exploration of complex and fascinating acts of decentering and re-centering of writers in relation to traditional Muses as institutionalizations or sedimentations of artistic and intellectual inspiration in cultural tradition. Using the specific example of Wole Soyinka’s much discussed appropriation of Ogun, the Yoruba god of war, metallurgy and creativity as a point of departure, the paper gives what is intended as a far m…
English is an African language - Ka Dupe! [for and against Ngũgĩ]
In a radical departure from the orthodoxies of postcolonial African cultural and linguistic nationalism, the paper calls for acceptance of English as an African language with a central argument that insists that all languages widely used in Africa ought to be classified as either indigenous or non-indigenous. This argument rests on a vigorous critique of what the author identifies as the principle of absolute autochthony as the only determinant o…
Egbon, Teacher and Mentor, Go Gracefully into the Night! For Abiola Irele (1936-2017)
Ritual and theatre at the crossroads of poetics, politics and epistemology
This study returns to the issue in world theatre scholarship of the boundary between theatre and ritual as forms or modes of performance, with reference to modern African drama in general and the dramaturgy of the Nigerian playwright Femi Euba in particular. The central argument hinges on the crossroads at which, for the successful integration of drama and ritual, aesthetic boldness, radical politics, and epistemological daring meet and clash. De…
An "illuminati" and its acolytes
African history and culture studies (9 works) · Art (9 works) · Sociology (8 works) · History (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (6 works) · History (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works)