Commitment and Hu(Wo)man rights activism: a study of the language and message of select poems in Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo's Heart Songs
Godwin I. N. Emezue, Ph.D
Senior Lecturer
Department of English Language & Literature
Abia State University, Uturu
Nigeria
Department of English Language & Literature
Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences
Abia State University
PMB 2000
Uturu - Nigeria
Abstract
The spate of social, political and economic woes round and about the African world has encouraged the emergence of many creative writers who use their arts as a medium for social crusading. Among these writers is Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo. Through her poetry characterized by a distinctive employment of the language at her disposal, Adimora-Ezeigbo gives expression to her brand of social crusading and human (especially, woman) rights activism. Her putsch for positive social change is stridently voiced in her award winning collection of poems, Heart Songs. The paper highlights the dialogic affinity between literature, the creative writer’s social milieu and her linguistic choices. Analysis is done using insights from systemic functional linguistics, lexico-semantics and the Marxist critical theory. My thesis is that Adimora-Ezeigbo’s poetry is informed by her sensitivity to the sociopolitical and cultural structures of the world around her as well as by her feminist ideology.
Key words: language, literature, commitment, feminism
1.0 Introduction
The African social, political and economic environment is still bedeviled with inequitable distribution of the people’s collective wealth and imbalance in the occupation of leadership positions. The average poor and the average woman are often second-rated and sentenced to perpetual servitude. Weak-kneed protests against injustice are staggered and oftentimes compromised. This explains why multi-faceted protests, with creative writers playing the lead role, have become imperative.
The spate of social and cultural injustice disequilibrium in the African society is such that many creative writers are now uncompromisingly committed to crusading for justice and equity. Writers who engage themselves in self-censorship are adjudged mere story-tellers who still bask in the lie inherent in the idealism of art for art’s sake. The committed poet appreciates the truism in the assertion by the Russian communist theorist Georgy Plekhanov that the belief in art for art’s sake “arises when artists and people keenly interested in art are hopelessly out of harmony with their social environment”(Gaither Stewart, http://www.southerncrossreview.org/20/stewartessay.htm).
The need for the African writer to be involved and committed, according to Chinua Achebe, is a self-imposed responsibility foisted on the writer by the realities of her existence. In his own words:
… any African [writer] who tries to avoid the big social and political issues of contemporary Africa will end up being completely irrelevant like that absurd man in the proverb who leaves his house burning to pursue a rat fleeing from the flames (78).
One of the notable committed writers in Africa is Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo. She is one poet who writes not only to voice her angst against the social and cultural degradation of the woman and the impoverishment of the masses but also to project her vision of the ideal society. Adimora-Ezeigbo’s poetic style is, inevitably, shaped by her sensitivity to the social, political and cultural condition of the ordinary people of her Nigerian geopolitical environment. The word ‘ordinary’ does is not only inclusive of the emasculated poor, the half-educated or totally uneducated, it is also inclusive of the educated and the rich who, either by volition or by compulsion, are excluded from the decision-making process in matters concerning their wellbeing: comfort, health, wealth, security, etc.
Conspicuously evident in her poetry is an addictive quest to challenge and dislodge those socio-cultural and political structures that have been erected and fortified to demean, deform and denigrate the woman. Adimora-Ezeigbo’s worry over sundry manifestations of social injustice and fight for positive change is stridently voiced in the poems - ‘Ram syndrome’, ‘Chicken gizzard’ and ‘Violated ogoni women’ – I have chosen to study. This paper is, therefore, set to underscore the dialogic affinity between literature, the poet’s social milieu and her linguistic choices.
2.0 Theoretical approach
My approach is eclectic in character. Interpretation of the poems is both textual and contextual with M. A. K. Halliday’s systemic functional grammar (SFG) as one of my analytic tools. Halliday’s SFG serves my purpose because it recognizes that language shapes and is shaped by happenings in the society. SFG sees language as a social phenomenon, a tool for 'doing' or accomplishing things. According to Halliday, a grammar is functional when it is designed to account for how language is used. His main thesis is that “every text - that is, everything that is said or written - unfolds in some context of use” (xiii). The functions the grammar of any language can perform are reflected in three broad fields called metafunctions. These are the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunctions.
The ideational metafunction is concerned with the clause as a carrier of message. It answers the question: ‘Who does what to whom’ or ‘What is the relationship between Who and the other description of Who?’ The ideational metafunction operates in the transitivity system which construes the world of experience into process types (Halliday 106). The main types of process in English transitivity system are the material processes, mental process and relational process.
The interpersonal function is the function of the grammar as a revealer of the writer’s personality and attitude to what she writes. According to Halliday (in Downing 4), the basic unit for the expression of interpersonal meaning is the independent clause, equivalent to the traditional simple sentence.
The textual function organizes the ideational and interpersonal components as a message or text.
But for the purposes of the interpretations made of the poems under study, only the ideational metafunction is considered. Generally, the questions that need answers are: ‘Why has the poet structured her language in the way it is and not in some other way? What context or situation constrains and informs the writer’s diction? As T. Bloor and M. Bloor explain:
since a speaker’s or writer’s choice of words is constrained by the situation of utterance, and since words and groups of words take on special significance in particular contexts, the grammar must be able to account for the way in which the language is used in social situation (4).
Definitely, SFG is quite equipped to account for the analysis done in this paper. Thematic concerns, social conditions, history and the poet’s ideology have all combined to inform not only the contents of the poems but also the forms of expression. The SFG is complemented by insights from lexico-semantics and the Marxist critical theory.
Lexico-semantics, it should be noted, is a subfield of semantics that is concerned with the study of words and their meanings. Examining the wordings of the poems is necessary because words constitute the major units of language that bear the burden of referential meaning, description of states and ascription of qualities. From a lexico-semantic perspective, therefore, the focus is on content word meaning as opposed to the meaning of grammatical words.
Marxist criticism, which is a sub-theory of the sociological theory, is appropriate because it is equipped to account for how historical, political, and social/cultural conditions inspire literary creativity and inform the writer’s thematic preoccupation. Even though some critics have questioned the reliability of Marxist criticism, arguing that its deficiency lies in its tendency to approach the analysis of literature, first, from the perspective of the critic’s knowledge of the writer before giving attention to the text when, in the view of these critics, the text should be the point of departure. But for the purposes of the analysis made in this paper, this deficiency argument is puerile because it does not really matter from where one beings one’s analysis.
Unarguably, the analyst’s knowledge of Adimora-Ezeigbo as a (human) woman right activist and crusader for social justice has exerted some influence in the interpretations made of the poems. But it must be understood that even though a poet’s person and personality, ideological leaning, etc. may be ‘present’ in her poetry, she is neither the poems nor does she represent the poetic texts. So, K. Griffith’s advice that the critic should “avoid equating the work’s contents with the author’s life” (115) is apt and worthy of adherence.
3.0 Analysis
As I have earlier noted, one of the approaches for the analysis done here is the ideational metafunction of the SFG. This metafunction sees the clause as a means of representing patterns of experience. Here, the main consideration is the “system of transitivity”, which is premised on the understanding that the interpretation of a happening is based on the understanding of the presence of a doer, a doing and a location where the doing takes place. Ideationally, therefore, the clause is interpreted as embodying any of these processes: material [the processes of ‘doing’], mental [the process of experiencing or sensing] and relational [the processes of being or becoming in which participant is characterized, or identified, or situated circumstantially] (Halliday 107-109). The main terms associated with the ideational metafunction as used in this paper are Actor, Goal, Range (for Material process); Token/Identified, Value/Identifier (Relational process) and Behaver, Range/Circumstance (for Behavioural process).
In the analysis, the participant elements of the clause are underlined and labeled in bold typeset. Single slant (/) is used to indicate line boundary and Double slants (//) are used to represent clause boundary.
Ram syndrome
(to victim of naked power)
from the Ancients
wise word:
he who consumes
the testicles of a ram
owes ibi a debt – 5
scrotum disease;
penis pilfering
prohibited:
penalty?
ram albatross 10
early symptom:
loss of favour
and patronage
the risk is all yours
to your peril 15
a scourge.
the rhythm of
igba dance
once tasted 20
disqualifies
a performer from digging
Odogwu dance
dance of the basket 25
separates chaff from grain
one does not face two directions
simultaneously
you cannot be tortoise
as well as 30
turtle:
as former Russian muscle man
Alexander Litvinenko
Bold direction
Bought him 35
One way ticket
To the land of no return
fly does not
play near spider’s web: 40
as Russian gadfly
Anna Politkoskya
grasshopper keeps
some distance 45
when it hears
the raucous music
of okpoko bird:
ask Dele Giwa
as also race victim 50
Ahmadou Diallo
antelope does not leap
into lion’s den:
ask Ken Saro-Wiwa 55
lizard does not
visit a hedge
where cat
takes a nap: 60
as Bola Ige
Who does not know that jackal does not
Forgive an affront?
Ask freedom choirmaster
Moshood Abiola 65
and his faithful consort to
martyrdom: Kudirat;
as also that colourful
politician, Chuba Okadigbo
it has not always been 70
like this
the end is different
from the beginning
the end
justifies the outcome 75
the means
justifies the beginning
when an ally acts
as accuser 80
when adviser becomes
critic
murky murder
mounts by the minute
clouds each concern 85
promotes unaccountable
uncontrollable
police state
in the guise of
democracy- 90
demon-cracy-
spearheading
relentless attacks
on individual liberty
on genuine freedom
“Ram syndrome” discusses the assassination of men and women who, because of their outspokenness and/or opposition to the government of the day, incur the wrath of the government. But these murdered individuals are not part of the ordinary people; they are, one way or another, part the ruling class. It is when they begin to speak and write against the very government, whose patronage they have hitherto enjoyed, that they are eliminated. consider (lines 79-84) of the poem:
when an ally / acts as accuser // (Rel)
subordinator Identified process Identifier/Value
Token
when adviser / becomes critic// (Rel)
sub- Identified/ process Identifier/Value
ordinator Token
murky murder/ mounts by the minute// (Beh)
clouds each concern// (Beh)
promotes unaccountable
uncontrollable police state in the guise of democracy-//(Beh)
Behaver process Range/Circumstance(manner)
The two dominant processes are Relational and Behavioural. Relational process is the process of being or becoming. The individual who is ‘an ally” and “adviser” is also the “accuser” and “critic”. The Identified/Token (“an ally”/“adviser”) is the entity that stands to be defined and Identifier/Value (“accuser”/”critic”) defines Token by giving it (Token) meaning, referent, function, status or role. “Murky murder” is the Behaver; that is, the conscious being that performs the action (murder) depicted. But “murder” – an inanimate and non-human entity – is placed in a nominal position and given human qualities, thereby projecting the action of murdering the actor. In other words, it is murder that has committed murder; the action (murder) propels itself to act. This is a reflection of the lethargic acceptance of the facelessness of the killers (of “Dele Giwa…Bola Ige… Chuba Okadigbo”) who are never caught.
Circumstance is defined in the expression of time, place, manner, means, cause, condition, and concession. It can, however, be inherent to the situation and is then described as functioning as the traditional grammarian’s complement. Range, according to Halliday’s postulation, is the element that specifies the scope of the process; it defines the co-ordinates of the process. Thus, in “murky murder mounts…, clouds…, promotes …”, the question is not What does “murky murder” do to “the minutes”, “each concern”, “… police in the guise of democracy-?”, but What is the scope, extent or degree of the mounting, clouding and promoting? In other words, the adjective, “murky”, which pre-modifies the noun, “murder”, is definitive of the precautions the instigators and perpetrators of the action always take to ensure that they remain unidentified and unidentifiable.
But these killings happened because the victims were perceived to have played the Judas. In accusing and criticizing the government from an insider’s vantage position, they became marked as personalities that were best celebrated in death. They had acted at variance with the time-tested (“from the Ancients/wise word”) aphorism which states that:
he who consumes
the testicles of a ram
owes ibi a debt –
scrotum disease (lines 3-6) .
Rewritten:
He who consumes / the testicles of a ram// (Beh)
Behaver Process Range
[He] owes ibi a debt –// (Beh)