Conceited writer courted cheap publicity in attack on professors

University of Nairobi Administration block. Harry Mulama does not deserve praise for making unfounded claims against University of Nairobi literature professors. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • The cheap tactic Mulama has employed is that of star-bashing. The UoN professors, Chris Wanjala, Henry Indangasi, Wanjiku Kabiru and Ciarunji Chesaina, Dr Tom Odhiambo and Dr Joyce Nyairo, writer Collins Odhiambo, publishing editors, literary awards and award winners – these entities he places on the receiving end of his angry pen.   
  • The words “As for the editors at Saturday Nation, I don’t care whether you publish this or not” (in the ultimate paragraph of his piece) give him away as a shaky mind. Scarcity of scholarly esteem is self-evident therein.
  • To jump from obscurity to infamy, without going through fame, is a misstep, a tragedy, in fact. The indiscriminate ad hominem he has committed renders him a pariah even before he begins.

To stroke the ego of writer Harry Mulama is not the aim of this piece. Rather, my overall objective is to demonstrate that constructive criticism is possible on these pages. I shall proceed in a scholarly fashion, employing deconstructionist, structuralist and psychoanalytic critical tools.

Harry Mulama’s piece titled, ‘Of deadwood critics and the death of literary criticism’ basically communicated two things. First, that the Saturday Nation publishes certain writings just because these have been done by University of Nairobi professors, when there are better pieces out there. Secondly, that certain writers, and their opinions, ought to be ignored.

I seek not to interrogate the merit or otherwise of the claims. My concern is the mind of the communicator.

On psychoanalytical grounds, I declare the “independent scholar living in Kilifi” a deprived attention seeker who, luckily now, has got that  which he has always badly craved.

The cheap tactic Mulama has employed is that of star-bashing. The UoN professors, Chris Wanjala, Henry Indangasi, Wanjiku Kabiru and Ciarunji Chesaina, Dr Tom Odhiambo and Dr Joyce Nyairo, writer Collins Odhiambo, publishing editors, literary awards and award winners – these entities he places on the receiving end of his angry pen.   

SHAKY MIND

He characterises a dedicated analyst of biographies and autobiographies, components of a legitimate literary genre, as someone fulfilling her “strange interest in other people’s lives”. He dismisses an individual empowered with a doctorate as being from “mediocre universities in South Africa”.

Well, where I come from, it is not uncommon for a man to be accused of being “empty trousers” (expressed in the local tongue as long’ lilo). This accusation is meant to elicit in the accused an all-pervading feeling that he has to act to prove the accuser wrong.

The words “As for the editors at Saturday Nation, I don’t care whether you publish this or not” (in the ultimate paragraph of his piece) give him away as a shaky mind. Scarcity of scholarly esteem is self-evident therein.

The small matter of whether the Saturday Nation should publish Collins Odhiambo’s work, and probably his, compounds the attention seeking complex. The parenthetical chuckle in the tenth paragraph of the piece acknowledges the pettiness of this — but the wish stands communicated, anyway.

Whereas the desire for attention is easily forgivable, the habit of name dropping must be firmly discouraged.

He goes on to name Season of Harvest, oral literature collections and articles done by the very individuals from whom he demands more and greater output. What does he have to say, specifically, about the content of these existing materials besides merely mentioning them? What has he himself done for literature? Has he ever contributed in The Nairobi Literature Journal, a platform established and run by the very department he bashes and trashes?  Which is this university of his that is beyond mediocrity? 

The “independent scholar” lectures us on debate while putting across scandalously absurd thoughts. First, he must understand that there is nothing wrong with stirring debate. His own “deadwood” piece, I dare say, was intended to stir debate, and nothing much besides. Hence to fault Dr Nyairo’s “elegy” for seeking to stir debate is to be unbelievably insincere or, worse, simply naïve. 

Second, it is outrageous to dismiss as unworthy the discourse that has been going on in these pages. The fact that you disapprove of many of the things you read here demonstrates the need for such and more to be published. That, in fact, is when we get to know of “balderdash” from professors, passed off as literary discourse.

That is when we get to know of ‘Kanu professors’ in the academy. Indeed, only then do we get to know of young and not-so-young beginners, amateurs as well as those with penny-worthy opinions.

ALREADY A PARIAH

So, spare the Saturday Nation the vitriol; it is merely a platform. The responsibility to write substance, and in fine language, rests with the contributors.

Mulama’s conceit is truly overwhelming. To him, it is juvenile to debate on the Great Kenyan Novel, a book by a local writer (whether the author says nothing or something in it), queer literature, literary form and content, the state of oral literature, poor language use, the writer’s voice amidst national challenges, creative writing skills and so on. How I long to see the superior debates initiated by him!

Structurally, his piece of writing has sacrificed cogency on the altar of apparent rancour. If his thesis is that certain writings are published just because they are by University of Nairobi professors, he has a duty to demonstrate the ‘just because’ element. 

Moving forward, I would personally wish to see the standards of discourse on this wonderful platform go up. Let us, at all times, be objective. If someone claims that standards of fiction writing in Kenya today are low, and you think otherwise, the only scholarly thing to do is to review a particular published work that proves the claim wrong. This is better than beginning never ending noise here, in which everything is shouted about except the true substance of the challenge as posed.

Finally, as the “independent scholar” now revels in national attention, which he has so successfully courted, it must not be lost on him that his tactical success is also a terrible blunder in strategy. To jump from obscurity to infamy, without going through fame, is a misstep, a tragedy, in fact. The indiscriminate ad hominem he has committed renders him a pariah even before he begins.

The question everywhere now is: Who is Harry Mulama? From which cave in Kilifi has he emerged? 

 

The writer is the president of Alyp Writers Organisation and author of ‘The Bell Ringer’ and ‘Miss Pheromone’