WEST AFRICA REVIEW ISSN: 1525-4488

Suzanne Gauch

In Relocating Agency, Olakunle George presents an elegantly written, meticulously argued, and innovative study of what he terms the “agency-in-motion” of African letters. Framed as a reply to the issue of subjectivity that continues to vex the work of such postcolonial theorists as Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak, as well as poststructuralist theory in general, George’s study proposes that, “[…] positive agency can result from discursive or political acts that are otherwise conceptually limited” (x). Thus implicitly challenging the hegemony of poststructuralist postcolonial theory, George analyzes the particular instance of African letters from the period spanning approximately from the late 1950s to the early 1980s in order to test the conclusions of this Anglo-American theory. As a result of its insistence on the dialectical nature of the relationship between them, George’s unique study transforms our understanding of both the limitations and possibilities of Anglo-American theory and African letters.

The first half of Relocating Agency examines the internal limitations of contemporary European and Anglo-American theories of modern subjectivity and shows how those limitations define the signifying role of African letters. While he explains that African letters engages the same “adventure of the mind”—albeit from an African perspective—as does Anglo-American theory, George highlights their distinct approach to cultural and epistemological difference. If the critical thinkers of the first world challenge the logic that supports binarisms, he explains, African thinkers seem to insist on those same binarisms, “in order to underscore the different knowledge of the colonized—the knowledge that had to be suppressed so that the West can understand itself and ratify its sense of human potential and epochal advance” (8). Whereas these divergent approaches to combating the logic that informs imperialism at first seem to preclude a dialogue of equals between Anglo-American poststructuralist theory and African letters, George argues that African letters offers not just a theory, but rather a specific example of the agency whereby such binarisms are surmounted. Turning to Althusser’s theory of ideology, George elaborates its usefulness for the understanding of agency-in-action that he proposes, an agency that exists despite—or because of—the absence of intention.

Subsequently, George sets aside explicit references to Althusser’s theory of ideology in order to trace how western formulations of agency continue to rely on Africa’s exclusion as Other. George shifts the usual terms of contestation, aptly pointing out that to reduce the non-West to a “ghostly” presence—as do Habermas and Lyotard’s otherwise divergent theories of modernity—is to conflate “modernity as objective reality” with “modernity as the philosophical concept that seeks to grasp that reality” (48). If, by contrast, postcolonial theory has shown how “natives” everywhere participate in modernity, its poststructuralist approach nonetheless foregrounds the subversion of colonial discourses rather than the specificities of “native” experiences of colonialism or anti-colonial struggles. Because it is lacking in specific examples, poststructuralist postcolonial theory, George asserts, leaves itself vulnerable to summary dismissal on the grounds that its theoretical claims of agency have no basis in any objective reality.

The next chapter marks the beginning of the second half of Relocating Agency as George transitions to a study of the particular instances of agency that emerge in African critical thought. By insisting on the materiality of colonial history, George reveals how agency exceeds intention, with the consequence that African thinkers indeed often challenge the approaches to, and models of, modernity that they profess to espouse. George observes that despite a “will to catch up” to Western modernity, African letters also insists on a prior epistemological decolonization as well as the revelation of an authentic African self. Drawing attention to the fact that African cultural critics, regardless of their ideological orientation, often derive their methods from western discourses, George argues that they nonetheless still accomplish a great deal. Not only do African thinkers counter colonialist discourse by placing Africa at the center “of the adventure of human minds,” they also mirror Anglo-American thought in such a way that their “copy” reflects the “conceptual problems inherent to traditional Anglo-Saxon literary criticism” (101). George’s conclusion, that the blindness of African critical practices to their debts indeed enabled them to function and to establish a “discursive and material practice” (102), attributes, in the last instance, greater agency to African critical thought than to postcolonial theory. At the same time, this formulation of agency-in-motion, George acknowledges, remains open to charges that it justifies all manner of nativist discursive and political practices, even the least positive. He responds to these reservations, then, by insisting on the materialist orientation of his critique and urging meticulous attention to context.

The two final chapters of Relocating Agency exemplify the precise relevance of context to George’s theory of agency-in-motion. In these chapters, the study analyzes what are now canonical works of Nigerian literature, specifically those of D. O. Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka, and Chinua Achebe. Comparing Fagunwa and Soyinka’s distinct approaches to modernity, each chapter first isolates the contradictions in each author’s work as the source of his agency. George then goes further, showing how this “blind” agency furnishes the conditions of possibility for future Nigerian writers to develop, and even, oppose, their predecessor’s ideas. George’s reading of each work is sustained, subtle, and yet persuasive, emphasizing that each literary work also critically complicates the tradition/modernity binarism that critics have sometimes reinforced by placing it at the center of their readings of African literature. In spite of his claims regarding the agency-in-motion of African letters, then, George’s study skillfully avoids the pitfalls of Anglo-American postructuralist theory that he earlier identified. Relocating Agency concludes with the warning that—and I paraphrase—even the material practice that is literature ultimately remains just language, a linguistic text that must not be conflated with the social text. By refusing to present African literature as a simple reflection of objective reality and insisting on its complex dialectical relation with Western thought, George’s study engages and challenges a dual audience of Western academics and African critics to reexamine the terms of their dialogue from new perspectives.

Copyright © 2004 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

West Africa Review: Issue 5, 2004