Where’s the evidence of big literary debates in the 1960s and 70s?

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  • So, where do those who shout in these pages about that intellectually idyllic period hide the evidence of that past’s greatness? What is it they want those living today and those to be born to really learn from them?

Where’s the evidence of big literary debates in the 1960s and 70s?
By tom odhiambo
[email protected]

It is nauseating, this nostalgia, this longing, this desire for things past, this ‘oh, for the days when universities were universities’, these unsubstantiated claims that there was a time when there were cutting edge debates in universities, in the media, at marketplaces, in this country.

Much of this noise, masquerading as intellectual debates in national newspapers is just that: noise. I refer to the recent debates following the death of Prof William Ochieng and questions about his intellectual legacy; the call by David Maillu to Ngugi wa Thiong’o to ‘return’ home, and the consequent ‘insults’ thrown at Maillu camouflaged as responses; and Egara Kabaji’s tirade against the academy in Kenya.

I wish to respond to these so-called debates generally on at least three salient points that they raised: misplaced nostalgia, intellectual dishonesty, and the place of the university in Kenya today and in future.

First, what and who does the intellectual nostalgia that occasionally erupts in the pages of Kenyan newspapers serve? Why is it that even people who were not party to the claimed academic robustness of the 1960s and 1970s are so ready to defend that period, its actors and the supposed debates and pour out bucket loads of tears about ‘those Edenic’ days?

I think this longing for a time and ideas past very much vindicates Frantz Fanon’s claim that the post-colonial intelligentsia was inherently lazy; often too indolent to ask today’s questions, instead living in an irretrievable past. For how else can it be that we are still debating about debates of the past whose material outcomes we can’t see today?

Were there really big, scorching and fulfilling debates in the 1960s and 1970s in this country about the impending tragedy of ethno-nationalism? Did Kenyan scholars scrutinise the education policies of the 1970s that killed a functional system of education only to replace it with a private one; is there evidence that Kenyan policy makers, intellectuals and the public sparred over how to make this country economically viable and fend off the eventual Structural Adjustment Programs of the 1980s that impoverished millions of Kenyans?

Show me the archive.

I haven’t seen much evidence, at least in writing, about the supposed greatness of the departments of literature, history, economics or political science in interrogating Kenya’s problems of the 1960s and 1970s; I leave out the 1980s because of the refrain that Moi had by then driven into exile or into silence Kenya’s great thinkers.

Where is the definitive text on Kenyan history or literature or economics or politics, by Kenyan scholars? Or was this greatness only to be found in bars and lecture halls as oration, with nothing left for posterity?

So, where do those who shout in these pages about that intellectually idyllic period hide the evidence of that past’s greatness? What is it they want those living today and those to be born to really learn from them?

Isn’t this nostalgia really just a camouflage for generations that have added not much to knowledge on Kenya and would wish to be celebrated today? For instance, if you took literature, what conference, after the one in 1974 – organised by Ngugi wa Thiong’o — has redefined the study of subject in this country? None.

So, please save us from the daydreams of Taban, Wanjala, Kabaji etc and their followers. Let these people, if they are professors, to profess and leave their words in writing for us to read.

As for intellectual dishonesty, these pages are inadequate to cover the debate. Why would a deputy vice-chancellor in charge of research indict the academy, in which he has spent years, for non-productiveness?

Was Kabaji saying that he hasn’t been researching, teaching and publishing his findings for all the years he has been at university? No wonder some Kenyan lecturers of business know only one source for teaching: Harvard Business Review!

Was Kabaji serious to proclaim that the ‘Kenyan academy is dead?’ Well, if Kabaji was honest, he would resign his job today.

This also goes for Taban, who keeps claiming that Kenyan critics can’t read books, critique them and publish their findings; maybe Kenyan critics are reading ‘other’ books and actually doing their work seriously.

Does Taban follow the works of Simon Gikandi, James Ogude, Joyce Nyairo, George Ogola, Maina Mutonya, Siboe Makokha, Mbugua wa Mungai, Dan Ojwang, Godwin Siundu, Tom Mboya, Christopher Odhiambo, Jairus Omuteche, Dina Ligaga, Christopher Ouma, Jennifer Muchiri and Ndigirigi Gichingiri, among others, writing especially on literature in English and a host of other cultural products? These are just some of the Kenyan literary critics who are busy at work out there.

I read Wanjala saying that there are a lot of books being written and that what we need now are critics. Did he mean that there are no critics? I thought he has been training critics all these years?

Or is there a trick somewhere that we ordinary souls, who don’t have anything to do with the glorious past of literary criticism, are meant to discover in order to restore it?

So, for the literary scholars of Kenya, why is it that those trained in analysing Shakespeare and company of authors can’t critique a book in Kiswahili, Dholuo or Luhya? It is disturbing intellectual dishonesty for people who have had plenty of opportunities to market literature to the rest of Kenyans to simply go on complaining that Kenyans don’t write or read or publish or bother.

It is your bother, if ever your title is professor of literature, to make Kenyans write, read, publish or bother! Else, just shut up and chase the shilling. Don’t discourage many young Kenyans, who could easily be great writers in future by selling your self-induced despair in these pages.

If young post-graduates can’t write as eloquently as their teachers supposedly do, then the teachers just have themselves to blame. There is hardly much mentoring going on in universities in Kenya today.

What we have are crowds of scared post-graduate students, more worried about whether they will pass a ‘tough’ lecturer’s course than about if they will acquire any knowledge.

As a fresh undergraduate at Moi University, I was duly informed that I shouldn’t dream of getting a first class degree in literature. I have taught several post-graduates supposedly taught by the greats of Kenyan literature who can’t remotely analyse a text.

We easily forget that if we ever succeed in class, it is generally through the efforts of one or two teachers who invested in us. Unfortunately, many of our senior scholars are merely preening themselves and offering endless old ideas in class, thus robbing millions of young people of their futures.    

The writer teaches literature at the University of Nairobi. [email protected]