The presentation highlights Post-indiginist Realism, a major concept in the field of language aesthetics of African writing.

1. Post-indiginist Realism in Modern
African Drama
Dr. Isaiah Ilo, Department of Theatre Arts,
University of Abuja

2. Introduction
This paper highlights Post-indiginist Realism
or Post-indiginist Aesthetics.
The concept refers to a literary style in which
African dramatists compose in current
diction and express themselves in a
contemporary mode.

3. Introduction
Post-indiginist Realism is a major concept in
the field of language aesthetics of African
writing.
Language aesthetics studies African writers'
language usage, and the writers are known
to make a choice between three options: 1)
a local language, 2) a conjoined local and
international language, and 3) a standard
usage of an international language.

4. Introduction
Post-indiginist Realism represents a contrast
from a celebrated indiginist method in which
African dramatists privileged their culture or
indigenous traditions in foreign language
plays in the spirit of cultural nationalism.
The main objective of the paper is to explain
the Post-indiginist concept, and thereafter
examine some examples of its application.

5. Introduction
The paper is sub-divided into three parts: Part
one explains the Indiginist concept.
Part two addresses the Post-indiginist
construct.
Finally, the paper provides examples of two
Post-indiginist plays.

6. Indiginist Aesthetics
Till date, the aesthetic norm for African
literature is composition in a colonial
language based on traditional themes, local
symbols, and native expressions.
FESTAC ”77 colloquium provided that five
indiginist criteria should constitute the
African aesthetic benchmark.

7. Indiginist Aesthetics
The criteria are that the writer must: 1) be
African, 2) use traditional themes from oral
literature, 3) use African symbols, 4) use
linguistic expression taken from African
languages, and 5) use local imagery.
All major perspectives on African literature
recognise and promote the indiginist
approach.

8. Indiginist Aesthetics
The Africanist, the Post-colonial, and the Afro-
centric schools, all endorse artistically
applied content of indigenous substance in
adopted foreign languages as canon of
modern African literature.
African orature, including myths, legends, folk
tales, poetry, and proverbs, therefore,
constitute the African brand in creative
writing.

9. Indiginist Aesthetics
African playwrights that used the indiginist
approach in some plays include Wole
Soyinka (Death and the King’s Horseman),
J. P. Clark-Bekederemo (Song of a Goat),
Ola Rotimi (The Gods are not to Blame),
and Sonny Oti (The Old Masters). Others
are Joan Kivanda (Stori Ya), Tololwa Mollel
(Pullyupullus), Austin Buckenya (The Bride),
Francis Imbuga (Aminata), and Patrick
Mangeri (Operation Mulungus).

10. Indiginist Aesthetics
Indiginist aesthetics entails a strategy to
indiginise a foreign language with proverbs,
metaphor, and simile from an African
language.
Other devices include glossing, syntactic
fusion, un-translated words, inter language,
code switching and mother-tongue
transcription.

11. Indiginist Aesthetics
The indiginist style implies “the appropriation
and reconstitution of language of the centre,
the process of capturing and remoulding the
language to new usages” (Ashcroft, et al).
The approach equally implies “literal translation”
- a procedure for introducing tropes and
idioms from an African ethnic language into a
European language through a commutation of
equivalent words.

12. Indiginist Aesthetics
There are two well known indiginist approaches:
Essentialism, which rejects Western
languages totally, and Hybridity, which
conjoins Western and African languages, as
already described.
Both aesthetics privilege indigenised language
and content, and stem from the thought that
the colonial experience should determine
language choice and usage in post-colonial
African literary creativity.

13. Indiginist Aesthetics
However, today there are writers to whom
colonialism does not hold as much
significance as other urgent socio-political
issues.
Thus, the changing context of African writing
demands corresponding alteration in the
current critical and literary aesthetic
practices.

14. Indiginist Aesthetics
An alternative paradigm is desirable, since it
is unsuitable to continue to apply the
literary standards of anti-colonial literature
to writings of post-independence era.
There is now a new generation of writers
who cannot apply the same aesthetics as
the older generation that was closer to the
traditions and faced an obligation to tackle
colonialism.

15. Indiginist Aesthetics
Tanure Ojaide asserts that migration,
globalization, and the related phenomena
of exile, transnationality, and multilocality
have their bearing on the cultural identity,
aesthetics, content, and form of the
literary production of Africans. He also noted
that Africans born in the 1940s and 1950s
write differently from those born after
the 1960s and those Africans born abroad.

16. Indiginist Aesthetics
Ojaide compared the two generations
resident abroad, and explained that those
born in the 1940s and 1950s that grew up
and schooled in Africa have their works
filled with nostalgia and steeped in
folkloric allusions. On the other hand, the
post- 1960-born Africans, sometimes
children of emigrants, have vague
memories of Africa, especially the
traditional environment and
society.

17. Indiginist Aesthetics
Indiginist aesthetics, which is now hailed as
the unique identity of African literature, is
only a passing phase, because the further
a society moves from its pre-literate past
and oral traditions, the less such
background exacts an influence on its
contemporary literature
To continue to cling to the old style in a new
epoch is tantamount to serving old wine in
a new bottle, or being hooked to old wine.

18. Indiginist Aesthetics
A panel of Nigeria Prize for Literature has
observed a general trend among
Nigerian writers “to go back to African
traditional cultures in search of solutions
to modern social problems.”
The panel noted that some writers seem to
assume that patronizing African
traditional cultures inevitably means
digging up forms of traditional worship
with all its rituals and paraphernalia.

19. Indiginist Aesthetics
The panel regretted that modern themes,
especially technology and the modern
religions, did not feature too strongly in the
entries it examined. The panel remarked
that “when some of the playwrights
address contemporary problems, they
attempt to solve such problems by going
back to traditional roots.”

20. Indiginist Aesthetics
The panel regretted that modern themes,
especially technology and the modern
religions, did not feature too strongly in the
entries it examined. The panel remarked
that “when some of the playwrights
address contemporary problems, they
attempt to solve such problems by going
back to traditional roots.”

21. Post-indiginist Aesthetics
I introduced the concept, Post-indiginist
Aesthetics, in a paper, “Language in
Modern African Drama,” published in 2006
in Purdue University's open access journal,
Comparative Literature and
Culture.
In the essay I argued that present reality
rather than past experience should influence
decision about language choice for modern
African drama.
.

22. Post-indiginist Aesthetics
I contended that the ideal language aesthetic
criteria should consist of practical
consideration for audience needs, rather
than a romantic fixation with the colonial
experience.
This is because the indiginist styles require
from writers rare or inaccessible skills in the
use of mother tongue or usage of local lore
to indigenise a foreign tongue.
.

23. Post-indiginist Aesthetics
I have also coined the term “techno-text” to
refer to Post-indiginist work or African
literature arising from the aesthetic
ambiance of modern urban, global,
technological culture, in contrast to “ethno-
text” or creative writing mirroring the
animist, agrarian environment of Africa’s
past echoed in folk tales, myths, praise
songs, epic poetry, riddles and chants.
.

24. Post-indiginist Aesthetics
Post-indiginist literary language is to be
informed by the following five considerations:
1) Language bears the tint of a user's
experience as a medium of subjective
communication;
2) A writer can express self in any preferred
language, and may address any chosen
audience: local or international;
.

25. Post-indiginist Aesthetics
3) The purpose of literature is to express any
subject matter in a contemporary mode;
4) In an environment of cultural diversity, a
writer may use language on the basis of
competence and communicative criteria; and
5) African culture is not in assertion, in a
multicultural context in which the reign of
Western cultural universalism has receded.
.

26. Post-indiginist Aesthetics
These criteria may be summarized as follows
in analyzing Post-indiginist language usage
in African plays: i) Literary language both
betrays and represents the experience or
background of a writer; ii) Writers would
normally use a language in which they are
most competent; iii) Literary language ought
to reflect the contemporary environment and
facilitate communal and cross-cultural
communication.
.

27. Post-indiginist Aesthetics
Some Nigerians that have written plays with
the Post-indiginist approach include Harry
Hagher (Aishatu), and Ahmed Yerima
(Hard Ground). Some notable playwrights
like Wole Soyinka, Ola Rotimi, Femi
Osofisan, and Ahmed Yerima used both
Indiginist hybrid and Post-indiginist
approaches in different works. But the
recent generation of writers mostly
creates in the Post-indiginist style..

28. Two Post-indiginist Plays
In Aishatu, Harry Hagher uses Standard
English plainly, without infusion of his
native Tiv language. With an upbringing
in a mission school and a family that had
early taken to western education and the
church, writing in his Tiv mother tongue
or transliterating it in his English language
works was probably out of Hagher's
immediate reach.

29. Two Post-indiginist Plays
Though Hagher's dialogue is in Standard
English, the situation or experience
presented in Aishatu is typically Nigerian.
Clearly, the socio-geography is that of
Nigeria; the socio-history is the well-
known trend of political corruption in
Nigeria; and the socio-psychology is that
of a corrupt Nigerian businessman (Wali)
and his outspoken critic (Apeh).

30. Two Post-indiginist Plays
Hagher's language is able to convey a
contemporary Nigerian experience to
both local and foreign audience, which
might identify with a representation of the
lavish and wasteful lifestyles associated
with corrupt Africans. He equally evokes
the contemporary environment with
allusion to American cities and reference
to multicultural symbols, such as popular
five star hotels in Nigeria and the United
Kingdom.

31. Two Post-indiginist Plays
However, Hagher's language usage is too
plain, considering that literary language is
normally garnished with figures of
speech, including metaphors, proverbs,
and idioms - devises which should be
imbued with modern flavor in a Post-
indiginist play, in contrast to the
traditional flavour of ethno-texts.

32. Two Post-indiginist Plays
In 2006, Ahmed Yerima's play, Hard
Ground won the prestigious Nigeria Prize
for Literature, essentially due to its
Post- indiginst style. The panel of
judges praised the currency of the
play's theme and its remarkable
handling. This time the commendation did
not go to a content of ethnic culture;
instead the panel decried Nigerian
writers' hangover with traditional
appurtenances.

33. Two Post-indiginist Plays
The implication of the acclaim for Yerima's
Post-indiginist text, Hard Ground, is the
revelation that if a play by an African has
compelling thematic value, and is skilfully
written, it stands a chance of recognition
as worthy literature, though it may not be
imbued with ethnic culture.

34. Two Post-indiginist Plays
Yerima equally writes cultural plays. Yet his
upbringing in the urban setting and his
extended missionary/western education
ought to have ensured his cultural
incapacitation, or a predisposition to write
non-cultural plays from his training in the
mechanics of western drama. But by
means of ethnographic research and
deliberate self acculturation, Yerima
grooms himself as a cultural writer.

35. Two Post-indiginist Plays
In Hard Ground, Yerima did not have to rely
on myth, ritual, legend, or history; nor
use characters, setting or diction from
the past allegorically to address a
contemporary social problem.
Rather than depend exclusively on
accessories from the past to speak to the
present, a playwright ought to be a voice
for his time, speaking with the imagery
and materials from his time.

36. Two Post-indiginist Plays
As contemporary Realism, the materials of
Hard Ground are 1) a current social
problem, 2) typical every-day
characters, 3) an actual setting and 4)
present-day word usage. All of these still
make the text a form of historico-cultural
document that mirrors the
conduct of the resource control agitation of
the people of the Niger Delta.

37. Conclusion
In conclusion, it is not expected that in the
face of present-day realities, Africa's
literary aesthetics will remain
unchanging, frozen as representation of
fossil folklore and traditions in ethno-
texts. The aesthetics, including language,
content, and form of Africa's
contemporary literary production are
bound to reflect the new environment as
Post-indiginist realism or techno-texts.

38. Works Cited
Ashcroft Bill, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin.
The Empire Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures
(Routledge, 2002).
Hagher Iyorwuese. Aishatu and Other Plays
(Jos: Sagamu Publishers, 1996).

39. Works Cited
Ilo Isaiah. “Language in Modern African
Drama,” CLCWeb: Comparative
Literature and Culture, Vol 8: Issue 4,
(2006): 1 <
http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol8/iss4/1
>
Nigeria LNG Limited, “Report of the Panel of
Judges for the Nigeria Literature Prize,
Drama Edition,” 2006: 1 <
http://www.nlng.com/PageEngine.aspx?&id=93
> (accessed 9 February 2013).

40. Works Cited
Ojaide Tanure. “Migration, Globalization,
and Recent African Literature,” World
Literature Today, Vol. 82, No. 2 (2008):
43-46.
Yerima Ahmed. Hard Ground (Ibadan: Kraft
Books Limited, 2006)