The body unbound
Ritual scarification and autobiographical forms in Wole Soyinka’s Aké: The Years of Childhood
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9002122 |
|---|---|
| Authors | F Fiona Moolla (0000-0001-7809-2222, The University of the Western Cape, South Africa, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 27-46 |
| Publication date | 2012-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0021989411432518 |
| OpenAlex | W2020623654 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 18 |
The scarification in Aké is invested with major significance apropos Soyinka’s ideas on African subjectivity. Scarification among the Yoruba is one of the rites of passage associated with personal development. Scarification literally and metaphorically “opens” the person up socially and cosmically. Personal formation and self-realization are enabled by the Yoruba social code brought into being by its mythology. The meaning of the scarification incident in Aké is profoundly different. Determined by the form of autobiography which creates a self-constituting subject, the enabling Yoruba socio-cultural context is elided. The story of Soyinka’s personal development is allegorical of the story of the development of the modern African subject. For Soyinka, the African subject is a rational subject whose constitution precludes the splitting of the scientific and spiritual which is a consequence of the Cartesian rupture. The African subject should be open to other subjects and the object world. Subjectivity constituted by the autobiographical mode closes off the opening up symbolically signalled by scarification
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Subject (documents · Subjectivity · Yoruba · History · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
Myth, literature and the African world
Wole Soyinka
Symbolic wounds
Postcolonial Life-Writing
I Could Speak Until Tomorrow
Enabling Fictions and Novel Subjects
Conversations with Wole Soyinka
Conversations with Wole Soyinka
The Writing of Wole Soyinka
Africa's Ogun
Sources of the self
The Yoruba Artist
Symbolic Wounds
The Rites of Passage
| Citations per year | 0.14 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2025 (14) |
| Highly cited | No |