Of deadwood critics and the death of literary criticism in varsities

There were days when I looked forward to reading the Literary Discourse in the Saturday Nation, because there was always something exciting. I found pieces by Flora Veit-Wild quite interesting, as a few from the likes of Ben Okri and Simon Gikandi.

Alas, the editors at the Saturday Nation have decided that such scholars and their ilk do not write any more or, if they do, that they are not worth publishing. Now, we are condemned to wait for two, sometimes three, months before we read anything nearly informative in an exciting way.

In between, we subsist on some messy gibberish by deadwood professors from the University of Nairobi — whose claims to glory and to their professorial titles are based on what they wrote over 40 years ago, or with their association with Kanu in the late 1980s. Occasionally, we read some shallow, arrogantly-toned pieces by young and not-so-young so-called critics, whose claim to scholarly status is that they benefited from Black Empowerment Programmes to earn doctorates from some mediocre universities in South Africa.

Sometimes, I think out of desperation, the ‘Literary Discourse’ carries pieces by copy editors in Kenya’s fledgling publishing outfits — politely called ‘firms’ and collectively as ‘industry’ — who peddle all sorts of hogwash about how to write award winning novels and so on. Never mind that no one else outside this country knows anything about these so-called awards, or that their “winners” are selected by the same University of Nairobi lecturers whose creative or critical output is best left unsaid.

IGNORE THE PRETENDERS

Surely, the Saturday Nation should spare us the agony of ploughing through pages of hair-brained balderdash in the name of a discourse!

Take, for instance, the palaver that was initiated by Joyce Nyairo, former university teacher-turned NGO activist. Nyairo is under the illusion that her pieces, like ‘An elegy on the death of Kenyan fiction’, stir ‘debate.’

What amuses me is not so much that Nyairo’s ideas are hopelessly archaic, because they retell the literary barrenness nonsense, but that people, some of them university professors, think that she says profound things worthy of their responses. She has this interest in jua kali autobiographies that, I think, fulfil her strange interest in other people’s lives, but we can leave that out for now.

I will ignore the pretenders to literary scholarship who earn their living in publishing outfits like Longhorn, whose key concern is primary and secondary school text books rather than university level literary works. In this category, too, I think Joyce Nyairo fits quite well because, perhaps being unable to soak in the tensions of the academy, she sought refuge in the NGO world where preconceptions and all forms of prejudices find home.

Indeed, her writings on literary and other topical issues in Kenya speak for themselves; they are not worth our while for now, we can ignore her.

I am also ignoring the rank and file commentators and apprentice ‘writers’ like Collins Odhiambo, whose penny-worth of opinions are appropriately accommodated in the ‘Readers Corner’ (I belong here, too, so let’s laugh!). All these are read with the full knowledge that they are beginner critics and amateur writers who cannot be measured by any reasonable standards. I am more keen on the professors of literature who indulge and dabble in the kinds of juvenile ‘debates’ published in the Saturday Nation.

The most notorious ones are from the University of Nairobi’s Department of Literature, who think that they are the fathers and mothers of literary scholarship and criticism in Kenya, when they have really nothing to show for all the talk. Even when they write to defend their positions, they do not convince.

For instance, Dr Tom Odhiambo’s ‘Stop the criticism and do some actual literary work’ rejoinder to Nyairo’s ‘elegy’ piece was circumlocutory and diversionary, as was his response to Dr Evan Mwangi’s well-thought-out dismissal of writer Tony Mochama’s trash.

And what does one make of the rumbling that Prof Chris Wanjala makes? I was last week blessed with patience to read ‘Kisii tour and how Ngugi rekindled past experiences’ and, when I finished reading the fellow, I asked myself, “what is this man saying?”

I find Wanjala a disorganised writer who has no mastery whatsoever of the biographical and the anecdotal as a writing strategy. And yet, he attracts admirers and praise singers who lavish glorious adjectives on him – ‘foremost critic,’ ‘Wanjala’s seminal Season of Harvest,’ blah blah blah! Wanjala’s piece on his reunion with Ngugi and many others, including his literary essays, are pitiable, to say the least.

How does he still attract praises from other scholars like Evan Mwangi (Kenyan writing is not just dead; it never even existed) who, out of desperation, perhaps, go back to 1978 to find sense in The Season of Harvest? Yet, it amuses me further whenever I hear that he is the most senior critic in the country!

That the Department of Literature at the (note the article) University of Nairobi is dead can be seen in the charlatanry of Wanjala, Odhiambo and their praise singers. The rest in the department are worse off because they have nothing to show for all the years and their big titles.

When you look up Prof Henry Indangasi on JSTOR, for instance, he has one article (Ngugi’s Ideal Reader and the Postcolonial Reality) published in 1997.

NEW REVOLUTION

Yet, he has been around for ages and was for very long the chairman of the department where now, almost everyone is a professor (reminds me of a certain army where everyone was a general this or that!).

What have all these professors of literature from the University of Nairobi done for the discipline? Is this the same department in which the famous Ngugi-Anyumba-Taban triumvirate stoked a revolution so long ago? Do the likes of Wanjala, Odhiambo and Indangasi portend the dead end of Kenya’s criticism? For how long shall we cite Season of Harvest and the oral narratives collected by Ciarunji Chesaina and Wanjiku Kabira (they are waiting for others to study and theorise their collections!)?

We need to shift our gaze from the University of Nairobi if we are to get our bearing in literary criticism, and look elsewhere for the same.

A department that has been reduced to answering back and defending itself against casual opinions by NGO activists and publishing copy editors should have no claim absolutely to intellectual leadership. It is a department that cries out for a new and real revolution, not the cosmetic gesture that we keep reading about.

As for the editors at the Saturday Nation, I don’t care whether you publish this or not. You shall have read it. There are some Evan Mwangis and Simon Gikandis and James Ogudes and Garnette Oluochs out there. Get pieces from them and stop irritating us with the mediocre and poorly written pieces by the Kanu professors at UoN!

The writer is an independent scholar living in Kilifi