| Title: | Transcending the Trajectory of Cyclical Impasse: in Search of a New Beginning in Esiaba Irobi’s Nwokedi |
| Author: | Niyi Akingbe |
| Publication: | Diversité et identité culturelle en Europe, X (2), p. 265 |
| p-ISSN: | 2067-0931 |
| Publisher: | Editura Muzeul Literaturii Române |
| Place: | București |
| Year: | 2013 |
| Abstract: | Arguably, Nigeria’s transition from the military regime to the democratic rule in 1999 only marginally altered its political context dramatically. Nevertheless, corruption and mismanagement of her economic potential portentously remain her abiding nightmare. Far from undermining and obscuring the debilitating effect of this negative trend, contemporary Nigerian novelists, poets and playwrights have cultivated and sustained in their literary works, an articulation of a plausible political panacea that demands a complete overhaul of the menace of corruption in the country. This concern arises from the need by the writers, to prevent the masses from reacting against a monumental corruption,that could become a catalyst for political implosion. The desirability of Nigeria’s radical political change is posited by Irobi’s dramatic fermentation of the Igbo mythopoesis and modern theatre appurtenances. This is an experimentation underlined in Nwokedi, a play which legitimizes the inauguration of a violent cleansing of the Nigeria’s rotten political system, through a traditional ritualistic process. This could be taken as a positive model for the appropriation of the African tradition as an alternative political approach, for initiating a radical social change in postcolonial Africa. This paper intends to highlight how Irobi’s play has engaged the Igbo ritual festival, Ekpe as a weapon, for the campaign for a new beginning, which will rid Nigeria of its pervasive corruption and decadence. |
| Key words: | Trajectory of cyclical impasse, search, transcending, violent cleansing, new beginning, Esiaba Irobi, Nwokedi |
| Language: | English |
| Links: |  pdf  html |
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