Cultural studies, power and the idea of the hegemonic in Wole Soyinka's works

Msiska, Mpalive-Hangson (2013) Cultural studies, power and the idea of the hegemonic in Wole Soyinka's works. In: Lindfors, B. and Davis, G.V. (eds.) African Literatures and Beyond: A Florilegium. Cross/Cultures: Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English 168. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, pp. 1-28. ISBN 9789042037380.

Abstract

I have been thinking of the particular ways in which over the years Wole Soyinka has dealt with the question of power in both his creative and critical works. I have come to the conclusion that what emerges from his oeuvre is the representation of power as fundamentally adaptive, even as it is driven to absolutism. However, this ‘will to power’ as totality, though having a real and significant impact on both its perpetrators and its victims, is presented as incapable of saturating the whole political and social formation, as there are always countervailing forces beyond the ‘hegemonic power-formation’. These forces, whether conceived of in terms of class or other configurations of communal marginalization, do not have a pure autonomous existence outside the determination of the real exercise and experience of power.

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