Question 3: With detailed reference to at least two African novels, write an informed essay on the subject: “The Tropes of Disability in African Prose Fiction”.

ABSTRACT

This essay examine some African novel’s social vision about the economic, political and material conditions of contemporary African society by centrally representing the trope of disability in some selected novels, to underscore the fact that the current African societies are impoverished and stratified amidst plenty. Emanating from the present social stratification are complications that breed the emergence of a class struggle between the aristocrats represented by the politicians, leaders and the proletariat represented by the disable, hence making disability in the fictional works a signifier of the debauchery and disillusionment in Africa.

The Trope of Disability in African Prose Fiction

Ayo Kehinde (2009) describes disability as a polysemic term that differs from one culture to

another culture. According to him, this claim is in line with that of Susan Whyte and Benedicte

Ingstad (1995) and Ato Quayson (1999) who opine that “any attempt to universalize the category

‘disabled’ runs into conceptual problems of the most fundamental sort” (5). Quayson and

Kehinde emphasize that both Susan Whyte and Benedicte Ingstad, however, categorize disability

into two: manifest physical disability and less manifest forms of disability. Manifest disability

has to do with physical and obvious disability for instance, leprosy and blindness, while less

manifest are virtually not visible and they include; insanity, deafness, and sometimes loss of

“manhood”. Erving Goffman (1963) and Quayson (1999) dwell perceptively on the cultural

dimension to disability which well in line with Whyte and Ingstad Quayson (1999) therefore sees

disability as both a cultural and physical problem, and he attempts a deconstruction of Robert

Murphy (1987) who claimed from personal experience that stereotypes on the disabled impact on

the psyches of the disabled themselves, generating problems with their self-esteem. It is this

same view that Frantz Fanon (1965) holds that the displacement of the people in Africa tends to

results to; “a mass of humanity. People of the shanty town, the horde of starving man, who are

uprooted from their tribe and class”.

By tropes of disability we mean disability used in a figurative way, usually for rhetorical effect.

It may be of interest to establish that in African fiction, according to (Quayson, 1999; Kehinde,

2011) there are three ways by which tropes of disability is presented: The first one is the

Lacanian conceptual apparatus for theorizing what happens in the encounter with the disabled;

the second one is the discursive ways in which the disabled people are figured or depicted or

characterized in Africa fiction; and the third one is the contextualization of disability

Building on the work of literary disability theorists Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Lennard

Davis, and David Mitchell & Sharon Snyder, Quayson argues that disability is unique in that it is

an "excessive sign." It demands interpretation whenever it appears but, at the same time, it often

functions to indicate meaning in other registers - those of race, class, gender, and so forth.

In the course of this book Quayson teaches us to be suspicious of the over-signification that

would ascribe metaphorical meaning to real disabilities, and one surely sees the ethical charge of

this suspicion. But something peculiar seems to happen around disability within the literary text:

the vehicle itself actually does what it is supposed to do and imputes some quality to the tenor.

Like disability (and indeed, like anything else), gender, race, and sexuality can be tropes.

Disability is such a powerful and irreducible signifier, in other words, that it winds up being

constitutive of textual elements at every conceivable turn, even in texts that are not ostensibly

about disability like Okphewo’s The Last Duty. Yet it resists easy interpretation or containment.

As Quayson writes, "we have to understand disability's resonance on a multiplicity of levels

simultaneously: disability acts as a threshold or focal point from which various vectors of the

text may be examined" (28). Fortunately, Quayson's close readings of Beckett's Molloy,

Morrison's Paradise and Sula, Soyinka's The Strong Breed and Madmen and Specialists, and

Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K, clarify and confirm his conceptual arguments.

Therefore, Kehinde (2003) opine that what is often found in postcolonial writings about disabled

people is an uneasy relationship between the disabled and the able-bodied. There are also

attempts to link historical epochs with the conditions of disabled people. Ato Quayson’s

illuminative comments on the importance and status of disabled people in postcolonial literary

works are worth quoting at details at this juncture:

The presence of disabled people in post-colonial writing marks more than just the recognition of their obvious presence in the real

world of postcolonial existence and the fact that, in most cases , national economies woefully fail to take care of them. It means much more than that. It also marks the sense of a major problematic, which is nothing less than the difficult encounter with history itself…What is important to note, however, is that the encounter with the disabled in postcolonial writing is as much a struggle to transcend the nightmare of history (65-66).

However, Kehinde noted that in postcolonial and postmodern texts, thematic foci have shifted

from the centre to the hitherto marginalized plane of discourse (the margin) – the disabled, the

poor, the disempowered, the third world, etc. Thus, disability is no longer conceived in

postmodern/postcolonial texts as a marginal case as we have in the case of Aminata’s The

Beggars’ Strike.

This paper therefore examines the representation of disability in Aminata Sow Fall’s The

Beggars’ Strike, Sembene Ousmane’s Xala and Isidore Okphewo”s The Last Duty with regard to

the dissonant relationship between the archetypal disabled, and the able-bodied people in the

society. Karl Marx’ Marxism, most especially the distinction between the upper class and the

lower class, is very germane to this discourse. The human state of in the neo-colonial Africa is

characterized by antagonism, which results from all levels of alienation (i.e. economic, political,

psychological and physical etc). Sigmund Freud’s analysis of human unconscious is also relevant

as a frame work of this study. Beneath every human skin as Freud posited is the unconscious

which resides in the nervous system of the body. This unconscious is often equated with the

animalistic principle in humans that has wrecked so much havoc in humanity through hubristic

tendencies achieved through selfishness, dehumanization, man inhumanity to man among other

actions that debases the morality of other man. This tendency is articulated in the constant

conflict between the “have” and “have not” in the novels.

Tropes of disability in Aminata Sow Fall’s The Beggars’ Strike, Isidore Okpewho’s The Last

Duty, and Sembene Ousmane’s Xala

As earlier argued disability as employed in African literature could only be understood when it

signify and explain certain situations in which it is use. The trope of disability covers wider and

different socio-cultural context and we tend to show that in this essay. As such, the three texts we

have selected for consideration are well founded on the springboard of disability. Human

disabilities explored in this work are physical, psychological and metaphorical.

Class struggle and dis/ability

This use of disability as metaphorical vehicle for the effects of the capitalist division of labour

characterizes an ethical thread in Marxist thought. In the same thought, Quayson endorsement of

“social model of disability” makes us understand that it is not the person, but rather society

which is disabled. This is a useful dialectical reversal. If we take the social model of disability in

the broadest sense, we might be led, circuitously, to Marx, and to identify capitalism with

disabled society in a new sense. It is only when social being is equated with labour power, with

the ability to perform economically productive work that disability can be understood from the

social angle. Balogun, P O support this view; “Socio-political structure is determined by the

performances of various classes at work and the nature of their relationships in the society”

(2007, 72). Socially, the representation of the beggar in The Beggars’ Strike can be explained

base on their inability to work, i.e. not being a productive member of the society. In the text, the

upper class is represented by the top government officers such as Mour Ndaiye, Keba Dabo and

the minister while the lower class is represented by the beggars. Here, the unproductiveness and

the presume harmful presence of the beggars are met with constant threat by the upper class

which is demonstrated with the policy (to clean-up the capital from the beggars) implemented

through police tactics of harassment, physical abuse, and imprisonment of beggars so as to

promote tourism and ensure public hygiene. This is fully illustrated in the text as presented

below:

You realize, the latter went on, their presence is harmful to the prestige of our country, they are the running score which should be hidden at any rate in the capital (p 2-3)

While on the other hand, the lower class (beggars) see their profession a necessity and that

without them (beggars), the religious injunction cannot be fulfilled. They might not be as

productive as Mour Ndaiye and Keba Dabo, but they believe that begging is; “That’s what

religion says; when we beg, we just claim what is our due (61) it is interesting to note that the

people with explicit physical infirmities beyond doubt, display maverick intelligence and

demonstrate the ability to call the high profile people to order.

In Okpewho’s The Last Duty, Odibo is a cripple and messenger to the honourable Chief Toje.

Often scoffed by his master who flays him with denigrating insults, Odibo conditions his

intellect to accept that ‘he is nothing’. He arrives at this belief about himself in spite of the fact

that he is an active worker at Chief Toje’s rubber plantation and later supplies foodstuffs on

Toje’s behalf to the soldiers during the course of the raging war between the Simbian and

Urukpe forces. He says, ‘I know I am nothing. Iknow I have nothing. But why does he keep

making me feel so bad?’ (6) According to Eustace Palmer (2008), Odibo’s statement “is the

language of the man who is totally lacking in confidence, who is so completely aware of his

inadequacy that he wishes to efface himself. It is the style of the man who feels small because he

has been made to feel small. It is an index of his own sense of "nothingness" (3). In Xala, the

condition persist as business men and politicians like El Hadji Abdou, Kader Beye and the

President of the Chamber of commerce and industry represent the upper men who oppressed the

beggars that constitute the lower class. Hence, the class as shown in the novel leads a privilege

affluent, oppressive, protected and comfortable life. The class lives off the fruits of the labour of

the masses. It derives is wealth by sadistically cheating the common man who because of the

economic disability have been relegated beyond background.

Disability and Post-independence African society

In the novels, disability is also employed to capture the disillusioned and the crippled state of

African society which is often characterized by continued ethnic distrust, religious crisis,

poverty, corruption, low literacy rate, poor infrastructural facilities, intermittent military

incursion, irresponsive and irresponsible leadership that has often been considered as the bane of

most African countries after independence. These poor socio-economic indices therefore have

contributed in no way to subjugating and emasculating the masses. Right from the beginning of

Okpewho’s The Last Duty, the readers are introduced into a world enveloped with war, a

universal as well as a natural constraint on the human rights of a people. As if this is not enough,

a dusk to dawn curfew is imposed on the supposedly free citizens of Urukpe. Hence, the

atmosphere presented in The Last Duty depicts a crippled society where every functioning

faculty of the societal systems is tamped with. Little wonder some privileged individuals like

chief Toje and the sergeant could exhibit their animalistic tendencies just because the system of

the society is malfunctioning. The case in Fall’s The Beggars’ Strike poses no difference as a

society polarized by ‘means’ is presented with each experiencing incapacitation to a desired end.

Therefore, the readers are confronted with a world incapacitated to achieve a desired goal. In The

Beggars' Strike the pressure to remove beggars from the city originates outside the internal

dynamic of the social system in the form of foreign currency and the values of those who bring

it. While the social condition of the beggars is not put into considerations, the change Mour

Ndiaye oversees and his assistant, Keba Dabo, engineers is not a structural change at all, but a

cosmetic change. Their commitment is not to eliminate the institution of begging or probably set

aside skills development and employment packages for them, which would be an alternative

means of survival, but to hide beggars from tourists. Mour Ndiaye argues that the beggars "are a

running sore which must be kept hidden, at any rate in the Capital" (Fall, 1986: 2). As this novel

progress it becomes apparent that as long as beggars are not provided with social economic

opportunities, begging will thus remain a stable feature of post-independence Africa social

system. Sembene presented an unstable economic and political that is prominent in post-

independence Senegal society where the business men and politicians symbolize the priviledge

class against the adverse conditions of the masses. Sembene comments on the socio-psychology

of the national middle class that:

They had come together from different sectors of the business community to form the ‘Business’s Group’ in order to combat the invasion of foreign interests…their anxiety to constitute a social class of their own had increased their combatively, tingeing it with xenophobia” (p.1)

These are the characteristics of the businessmen in the post-independence Senegal and by

extension in the other post-independence African nation-state. Fanon describe the lopsided; or

the rather cripple state of African nations through the gaucheness often display by the middle

class. In his The Wretched of the Earth (1965), Fanon argues that the African middle class is a

mere economic and political stooge. He also opines that it has nothing to contribute to

progressive revolutionary change. Ironically, the likes of El Hadji Beye deem it feet to use the

opportunity to “gain control of the country’s economy” (p, 1) though legitimate but done at the

expense of the lower estate. For this reason, the life of the proletariat does not change for better.

El Hadji’s secretary sales lady (Madam Diouf), Modu and Alasene, his two chauffeur(s),

represent the state of this class. The secretary we are told, has no salary for months. Modu and

Alasene, the drivers work restlessly without pay too.

The beggars and the other destitute also represent the proletariat in the novel. Ousmane’s

juxtaposition of El Hadji Beye’s affluence and the mystic life of the destitute life portray the

post-independence Senegal as a replica of the colonial setting. Though, this is a pun on the

traditional society, there is much to it. The beggar, even with his handicap nature, still suffers

humiliation from the oppressors. El Hadji Beye denies the beggar the right to his heritage. His

hatred for the beggar is overtly and covertly expressed. Even to the point that; “the monotonous

scrape of a beggar’s chanting on the other side of the road got on his nerves” (p.29)

Yay Bineta conventionally known as Badyen also exposes the betrayal of trust that is dominant

in the disabled African society after independence. Her inspiration to become a national

bourgeois is rooted in her clientele role to the upper class. As a matter of fact, she is a pimp in

the novel. She proposes N’Gone to El Hadji for marriage for a price since El Hadji gives “them a

thousand Francs to pay for a taxi home on one thier visits to him.” (p.7) This is the real class

attitude of the privileged post-independence Africans. They sell their fellow blacks for their

selfish ends.

“Manhood” in tropes of dis/ability

Disability has also been used to examine the meaning of manhood in The Last Duty. For most of

the characters manhood is closely associated with male pride or male sexual power and one’s

inability to perform such sexual power is deemed incapacitated: "Otherwise, how can a man

reconcile himself to that title when it seems very clear to him that he no longer possesses, has

completely lost—strange as it may sound to a normal mind—that power which gives the title its

very definition" (24). In Toje's eyes, therefore, Odibo the cripple is doubly deficient in the

quality of manhood; he is physically maimed since he has only one arm, but because of this

deficiency he couldn't possibly be attractive to a woman and so he is apparently automatically

bereft of sexual potency; he is a small and insignificant man. Toje therefore scoffs at Odibo's

manhood. (Palmer, 51) The irony is that in spite of his position and power, essential ingredients

for manhood as far as he is concerned, Toje, by his own definition, is not really a man, since he

has lost his sexual potency. But far from realizing it he continues to insult other men he considers

small and to insist on his former prerogatives as a "big" man. Thus, in spite of Odibo's lowly

status and his loss of an arm, Aku realizes quite early that he is a real man: "As he came nearer

and nearer, I noticed that he was bare to the waist, with his cloth wrapped round his loin. He

came closer and closer to my bed. I could now see him in full view. The stump of what should

have been his left arm. His imposing build. The swell of his shoulders and of the biceps of his

right arm. The taper of his trunk He was every inch a man—his manhood scarcely faulted by the

unfortunate loss of an arm" (162). However, his disability is adequately compensated for by his

ability to mate successfully with Aku. Disability as perceived here there means that the loss of

certain physical parts and powers does not necessarily mean the total erosion of one's manhood.

By surrendering herself to the lowly Odibo, Aku has taught the latter that real manliness has

nothing to do with social status, nor does it have anything to do with physical deformity. This

discovery is liberating for Odibo who now sees the world anew, therefore signals the beginning

of Odibo’s gradual move away from Toje and the discovery is truly liberating:

"How much does it take to be a man, knowing that someone takes good healthy notice of your manhood, and you come out and receive the fresh, beautiful morning air full in your face without fearing that some other man would take you to task for it? . . . After that woman let me into her body, and I experienced a release of my long pent-up passion, I felt my whole body—my whole personality—loosen, and my entire being change. Now when Toje calls me a useless mass I am simply going to swallow his words without a care" (179-180)

But though he has moved significantly away from the effects of Toje's brainwashing and has

shed much of the latter's conception of "manhood," he still shares Toje's notion that manhood has

a lot to do with sexual potency and therefore masculine pride. Similarly, the magnetic correlation

between manhood and the human power through the ability to arouse the appetite for sex and

further expand its elasticity is reflected in the character of Mour Ndiaye, a civil servant The

Beggars’ Strike with a soaring profile who decides to have another wife, Sine (a teenager) due to

his sudden inflated financial and social status. This view is also related to Toje’s conventional

view about “manhood”. For him real manhood has something to do with social importance. The

real man is the big man. When Toje says, "It's a curse to be a small man" (119), he really means

that a man without any social standing cannot really talk of his manhood because no matter what

is his integrity and honesty, he couldn't really earn the respect of the community.

Despite a front of wealth and stability, El Hadji's economic status in Xala crumbles to dust

before his eyes. His close friends and business partners desert him when he poses a threat to their

economic positions, and his wives exhibit similar faithlessness. In the novel, El Hadji's status as

a member of the economic elite, as well as his manhood, is therefore put into question. El Hadji's

affliction, Xala (or impotence) not only present a form of disability that is rooted from his

inability to successfully mate with his new wife, but it also symbolizes his lack of power in both

the economic and social world.

Power and Role Reversal in the tropes of dis/ability

Power is presented in the novels as a tool which everybody possesses irrespective of their

physical challenges. In most cases, the power possessed by the disabled turns out to be the

beginning of their liberation. However, their eventual liberation led to role reversal in the society

thereby heightening their symbolic impotence. The changing relations between Odibo and Toje

are a very interesting feature of Okphewo’s The Last Duty. At the start we see that the abusive

and arrogant Toje is utterly contemptuous of and insensitive toward the suffering Odibo largely

because he considers him to be something less than a man, a mere creature. He because of this

scorns his “manhood” and calls him names in front of Aku. As far as he is concerned Odibo is

little better than a eunuch. Odibo, for his part, almost accepts Toje's judgment about his

manhood, convinces himself that he must be useless, and resigns himself to total subservience to

Toje. This started to change; “Toje, however, continues to speak brusquely to Odibo, not

realizing the full implications of the deflation that is taking place in his personality consequent

on his failure to achieve consummation with Aku, and failing to see that Odibo's perception of

him is gradually changing (Palmer, p.8). The major turning point in relations between the two

men comes after Odibo's successful mating with Aku, something that Toje, the "complete" man,

had failed to achieve. Their positions are now, in a sense, completely reversed due to the sudden

sexual power of Odibo. Thus, Odibo has superlatively demonstrated his manhood where Toje

clearly has not. This epoch of Odibo signifies the reclamation of his self-esteem as he is able to

confidently stand neck-to-neck with Chief Toje. The language in which Odibo narrates his

confrontation with Toje is now a far cry from that of the early Odibo. It is now almost like the

language of the early Toje without the bluster and the pompous self-importance. It is the tough,

hard-hitting, no-nonsense language of a man who is strong and knows it; ‘Toje!’I call threatenly,

drawing him back with a vehement jerk. He whirls around at me with bloodshot eyes and a

frothing mouth. But he can see that I am staring back at him with equal menace. (212).

In The Beggars’ Strike, the unbearable situation prompts the beggars to organize a strike in

which they refuse to return to the city streets to receive donations from the selfish Mour Ndaiye.

Mour who stands as the instrument used by the government to eradicate the beggars from the

city, now opts out due to selfish interest to give sacrifice to the power so as to become the vice

president. The beggars are able to demand their pound of flesh by frustrating the selfish ploys of

Ndiaye to get them back to the streets after he has initially dislodged from their usual location:

“What! It’s out of question. It is completely out of question! Just because he threw his money at

us, we have to give in to his whims! No! if he threw his money about. It’s because he’d got his

pocket full…” (p.97). Their refusal to take heed to Ndiaye’s warning crashes his lofty ambition

and aspiration of becoming the vice-president. Hence, the beggars, in spite of their disabilities

fight back in protest against the draconian policy of the government given forceful

implementation by the top civil servant Mour Ndiaye who coincidentally has to suffer the brunt

of the indignation. The novel portrays the beggars as an integral part of the society's social

structure, and how their removal creates profound disruptions in people's everyday lives.

At the end of Xala, the religious and economic structures upon which El Hadji has built his life

are shown to be flawed. El Hadji's manipulations of the Muslim faith and the tenet of polygamy

eventually result in his undoing. Ousmane reveals the true nature of gender relations in Senegal,

a world in which it is widely assumed (especially by westerners) that women are powerless

(psychologically disabled) under the domination of men. In fact, the female characters in Xala,

most notably El Hadji's wives and the domineering figure of Yay Bineta, exhibit the power that

many women in fact yield over their male counterparts. El Hadji's marriage to a third wife,

N'Gone, occurs not as a result of his own volition, but rather due to the scheming of the Bayden

(Yay Bineta). A headstrong and eloquent woman, Yay Bineta is able to manipulate El Hadji into

accepting a third bride. Playing a game in which she was "well-versed," In her exchanges with El

Hadji, the Bayden alternates from sweet and subtle hints to outrageous accusations in order to

pressure the man. During one encounter she baits him, "You're afraid of women! Your wives

make the decisions; wear the trousers in your house, don't they? Why don't you come and see

us?"(7). N'Gone's mother provides yet another example of the powerful woman. Her husband,

Old Babacar, admits that "his wife's authority was limitless," and Friends of his own age-group

all said that it was Babacar's wife who wore the trousers in the home..."(6) In this way, these men

(Old Babacar and El Hadji) faces a new dimension of feministic archetype, confrontationally

unconventional and eccentric to thier previous orientation to woman submissiveness. Their wives

are embodiment of the new generation of women with disdain for male chauvinism. Thus the

threat of being perceived as feminine and disabled becomes a strong factor in the weakness of

these men and becomes a tool in the hands of others.

A strong delineation of the strength of power and role reversal is also present through the

beggars, who are the blind, the lame, and the generally disabled. Sembene slips them into the

story and tries not to draw attention to them too early, but when he uses the song of the beggars

to further the narration of the story, their presence is amplified. Also, we take solace in their

potential as revolutionary. They now exercise even power as it the beggar’s ritual that purifies El

Hadji. Just like the beggars and Odibo had done in Beggars’ Strike and The Last Duty

respectively, the beggars in Xala insult and tell El Hadji “to be naked before them all. And each

of us will spit three times on you. You have the key to your cure. Make up your mind…” (p.60).

Thus, the beggars who were once relegated became El Hadji’s source of revitalization and

Ousmane’s positive alternative in revolutionary struggles. As their presence is increasingly felt,

we no longer perceive the beggars in asymmetry to the opulence of wealth and power because

they were able to shed their ineptitude and acquire an equality that prepares them for the

impending confrontation with the police.

Conclusion

From the foregoing discussion, it is unequivocal through the reading of The Last Duty, The

Beggars’ Strike and Xala that the dis/ability of a disabled if undermined, tends to trigger

perplexing manifestation. This manifestation is born out of the inordinate ambition of the

bourgeois class to maintain status quo. Though it is a commonplace phenomenon that the

masses are relegated in the post-independence African social stratification, there is hope for their

emancipation. This is contained in thier ability as revealed in their efforts to denounce

oppression as represented in the three novels. Hence, the three narratives relates equation of

power between the mighty and the weak, the master and the servant, man and woman, the

seemingly able and the outrightly disabled among others. Okpewho’s narrative in The Last Duty

is an ingenious task to portray impossibility to arrive at objectivity by everyone—a universal

disease that plague every human. In The Beggars’ Strike and Xala, the undaunted and relentless

collective resistance of the beggars, is exhibited to frustrate the ambition of the powerful ones in

the society.

References

Balogun, Jide. 2007. Class Stratification in Post-Independence African Novels: an example of

Xala. Zaria: ABU Press Limited.

Fanon, F. 1965. The Wretched of the Earth. London: Macgibban.

Goffman, Erving.1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hal.

Kehinde, Ayo (2003). Ability in disability: the empowerment of the disabled in J.M.Coetzee’s

life and times of Michael K. University of Mumbai: Center for African Studies.

Ousmane, Sembene. 1976. Xala. London: Heinemann

Okpewho, Isidore. 1976. The Last Duty. Essex: Longman.

Quayson, Ato, 1999 “Looking Awry: Tropes of Disability in Post-colonial Writing” In: An

Introduction to Contemporary Fiction: International Writing in England Since 1970, ed.

Rod Mengham. Cambridge: Polity Press

Sow Fall, A.1979. The Beggars’ Strike. Darkar-Abidjan-Lome: NEA