니이 오순다레의 탈-식민, “대체-토착” 시론: 새로운 세계문학의 가능성에 관한 단상

Niyi Osundare’s De-Colonizing, “Alter-Native” Theory of Poetry: A Note on a Possibility of a New World Literature

This paper problematizes Westcentrism still remaining in the recent push toward a seemingly de-Westernized globalization of literary studies and world literature in the American academia by introducing the representative second-generation Nigerian poet, Niyi Osundare (1947- ) who proposes the de-colonizing, “alter-native” theory of poetry. Osundare, who appears on a vague, abstract stage of third edition of The Norton Anthology of World Literature, has developed the “alter-native” theory of poetry in the concrete historical context of Nigeria from the British colonialism beginning In the early 19th century, through its official independence in 1960, to its aftermath including military dictatorship and neo-colonialism. He defines poetry as the “song of the marketplace,” accessible to the people, denouncing the “difficult poems” of Western modernist poets and the first-generation Nigerian poets who followed them. In referring to the “poet” or “the writer as righter” and even “warrior” as one who believes that poetry can change the world for the oppressed, Osundare criticizes the contemporary Western notion of “the death of the author” as well as the first-generation Nigerian poets who did not believe in the revolutionary function of poetry. Furthermore, he recommends the maintenance of ethnic languages against the “conquering” English and the tentative stay in a “bilingual situation” until Nigerian writers find ways to communicate through their ethnic languages, refusing the idea of English as the only possible communicative or literary language, a position which he terms “Caliban syndrome” and “Achebe syndrome.” Osundare, recognizing the universality of this type of “alter-native” literature or literary theory, particularly in post- or neo-colonial countries, argues for the possibility of a new world literature through cross-national solidarity with the oppressed.