POST – COLONIALITY, TEXTUALITY, AND MEANING IN KOFI AWOONOR’S POETICS: MOREMESSAGES AS PARADIGM
In his poetic engagement spanning almost fifty years, Kofi Awoonor has consistently interrogated postcolonial African condition. Consequently, postcolonial disillusionment and disappointment are subjects that have preoccupied many African writers and are thus extended in Kofi Awoonor’s More Messages. Awoonor reveals that one of the problems in postcolonial African society is the sense of intellectual inadequacy inculcated into the African colonial elite, the chicanery of politics and the betrayal or neglect of poetic heritage. This paper examines Awoonor’s More Messages with the purpose of revealing the predicaments of an emerging postcolonial society so prodigiously blessed by benevolent nature and yet remains so unconsciously accursed by a malevolent and decadent rule. The paper purports this type of leadership in several African societies as a consequence of colonialism and shows how the poem encapsulates the contradictions and frustrations in contemporary Ghana. It highlights various means by which Awoonor mobilizes his art and etches it on a visionary pedestal as a revolutionary imperative for the social transformation of society and the re-humanization of the people. In addition, attention is drawn to the way Awoonor usefully demonstrates the current eagerness among West African writers to sink a taproot into the soil of their own artistic traditions.
Awoonor, More Messages, Poetry,Post-Colonialism, Textuality.