Wole Soyinka and Autobiography as Political Unconscious*
Susan Friedman launches a useful critique of general theories of auto/ biography that postulate it as having to do solely with a growth of individualism. She is right in arguing, counter to Gusdorf and others, that the form depends on identification, interdependence and community as means of enablement. For Friedman, &dquo;individualistic paradigms of the self ignore the role of collective and relational identities in the individuation process of women and minorities&dquo;, and she shows how particularly relevant relationality is in assessing the process of women’s self-individuation.’ Though her critique is raised mainly in the context of women’s auto/biography, she offers an interesting way of considering questions of auto/biographies in general. Yet her propositions, though useful, require qualification. In my view, the site of the development of selfhood or individualism is not an interface solely of individual selves with other selves. It is important to take account also of the fact that selfhood or individualism cannot be fully understood without reference to social and other institutions with which
The Yoruba image of the witch.
Witchcraft, the extra-natural interference in the welfare of the community by women, has long since ceased to be a source of major concern in Western society. In many other areas of the world, however, the witch remains a very active and vital image in the consciousness of the people, This is certainly true for the Yoruba * —a negro group occupying large areas of Nigeria, Dahomey and Togoland along the north-west coast of Africa. With the Yoruba (irrespective of his social level, religion or education), belief in the witch and in her powers is all but universal.
Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938-1948
The World War II era represented the golden age of radio as a broadcast medium in the United States; it also witnessed a rise in African-American activism against racial segregation and discrimination, especially as they were practised by the federal government itself. In this study, the author links these cultural and political forces by showing how African-American activists, public officials, intellectuals, and artists sought to access and use radio to influence a national debate about racial inequality. Drawing on a body of national public affairs programming about African-Americans and race relations, the author uses these radio shows to demonstrate the emergence of a new national discourse about race and ethnicity, racial hatred and injustice, and the contribution of racial and immigrant populations to the development of the United States. These programmes, Savage contends, challenged the nation to reconcile its professed egalitarian ideals with its unjust treatment of black Americans and other minorities. This examination of radio's treatment of race as a national political issue also provides important evidence that the campaigns for racial justice in the 1940s served as an essential, and still overlooked, precursor to the civil rights campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s, Savage argues. The next battleground would be in the South, and on television.