Conscientisation and Political Liberation in Anglophone Cameroonian Poetry: The Poetic Vision of Emmanuel Fru Doh, Bate Besong and Mathew Takwi
The main thrust of the argument of this paper is that Emmanuel Doh, Bate Besong and Mathew Takwi have used their poetry as a veritable weapon of conscientisation and political liberation in Cameroon. Thus, the three poets blend literature and reality to advance the cause of Anglophone National Liberation in Cameroon. From a clearly Marxist literary perspective, the ideo-aesthetic position of Emmanuel Doh in Wading the Tide (1998), Bate Besong in Just Above Cameroon (1998) and Mathew Takwi in Messing Manners (2014) is very clear, though subtle: these poets view the emancipation and welfare of Anglophones in Cameroon as an index of socio-political growth. In the light of the above assertions, the paper argues that Doh, Besong and Takwi are deeply sensitive and responsive to the realities and moods of moments of collective experience, especially crisis moments. Their poetry is , in fact, a summation of their political and ideological commitments. These poets have endeared themselves to the Anglophone, especially those who are dissatisfied with the present day political dispensation in Cameroon in their attempts to write and be involved with what has become known as “literature of conscientisation and commitment”.
The Metaphor of Gastrocentrism and the National Dilemma in Anglophone Cameroonian Poetry: The Examples of the Poetry of Mathew Takwi, Emmanuel Doh and Nol Alembong
The perception of the nation’s wealth as “a national cake” by both the rulers and the ruled has placed many African countries in a dilemma and this poses a challenge to nation-building. The nation is conceived and perceived by both the superstructure and the base in the diadic image of a perishable cake that if not eaten, will get bad. The cake as a metaphorical symbol is reminiscent of the Lacanian concept of lack and desire. As an absent centre around which major conflictual actions are enacted, the cake, like the nation is not respected, worshipped, served or maintained, but it is delicious, fragile, edible and appetizing.  Analyzing Mathew Takwi’s People Be Not Fooled (2004) , Doh’s Not Yet Damascus (2007) and Alembong’s Forest Echoes (2012) using Jacques Lacan’s concepts of lack and desire, this paper contends that the gastrocentric metaphor of the nation’s wealth as ‘cake’ which dominates the three collections places the Cameroonian/African nations in a dilemma and poses a challenge to nation-building. The rulers have, and the masses who lack, desire what the rulers have. These contradictions and conflicts are poeticized in the ideological formulations which find aesthetic expression in the poetic vision of Takwi, Doh and Alembong. The paper proposes a move toward a socialist nation where the nation’s wealth which encompasses socio-political and economic powers is linked to equity, nation-building and patriotism.
The Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Renewal of Critical Social Theory
Gerard Delanty provides a comprehensive assessment of the idea of cosmopolitanism in social and political thought which links cosmopolitan theory with critical social theory. He argues that cosmopolitanism has a critical dimension which offers a solution to one of the weaknesses in the critical theory tradition: failure to respond to the challenges of globalization and intercultural communication. Critical cosmopolitanism, he proposes, is an approach that is not only relevant to social scientific analysis but also normatively grounded in a critical attitude. Delanty's argument for a critical, sociologically oriented cosmopolitanism aims to avoid, on the one hand, purely normative conceptions of cosmopolitanism and, on the other, approaches that reduce cosmopolitanism to the empirical expression of diversity. He attempts to take cosmopolitan theory beyond the largely Western context with which it has generally been associated, claiming that cosmopolitan analysis must now take into account non-Western expressions of cosmopolitanism.