The crisis of post-colonial intellectual thought and knowledge production: Examining Jared Angira’s African revolutionary egalitarianism

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Joyce Wanjiku Wachira
Nicholas Kamau Goro
Stephen Muthoka Mutie

Abstract

This paper critiques Jared Angira’s poetry, and the ideology it manifests with a view to interrogating the “Marxist” label scholars attach to him. Although justifications abound for the prevailing perspectives on Angira’s ideology as “Marxist”, they are limited in their subconscious reinforcement of the traditional white-supremacist image-branding of Africa in terms of deficiency and inferiority. In further contributing to the decolonisation of knowledge generation and consumption in the Global South, the paper interprets these views as theoretically misleading and ideologically incorrect. It adopts the contrary position that Angira is an African Revolutionary Egalitarian, thus paving way for the appreciation of his uniquely African contribution to endogenous knowledge production and the intellectual armoury of African political ideas. Though African Revolutionary Egalitarianism, a term we coin to try and apprehend the ideology we read in Angira’s poetry, has Marxist inclinations, in contexture, it is not Marxism. Angira’s poems are the primary data. Besides critical evaluations on the primary texts, knowledge situated around the general context of contemporary African ideological paradigms and knowledge systems constitutes secondary data. Knowledge on the broad range of historical factors, experiences and contours which shape Angira’s worldview, personality and writing also constitute an essential category of secondary data.

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How to Cite
Wachira, J. W., Goro, N. K., & Mutie, S. M. (2021). The crisis of post-colonial intellectual thought and knowledge production: Examining Jared Angira’s African revolutionary egalitarianism. Hybrid Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.58256/hjlcs.v3i1.526
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Author Biographies

Joyce Wanjiku Wachira, Department of Literary and Communication Studies, Laikipia University, Kenya

Joyce Wanjiku Wachira is a post-graduate student at the Department of Literary and Communication Studies, Laikipia University, Kenya. Her research interests include poetry, African poetry and the interphase between African poetry and European poetry.

Nicholas Kamau Goro, Department of Literary and Communication Studies, Laikipia University, Kenya

Nicholas Kamau Goro is Associate Professor of Literature at the Department of Literary and Communication Studies, Laikipia University, Kenya. His areas of interest include Literary Theory, postcolonialism, Teaching the African Novel.

Stephen Muthoka Mutie, Department of Literature, Linguistics and Foreign Languages, Kenyatta University, Kenya

Stephen Muthoka Mutie is a lecturer and a researcher based at Literature, Linguistics and Foreign Languages Department, Kenyatta University, Kenya. His research interests straddle at the intersection of autobiographical self-definition, literary theory and African feminism(s).

How to Cite

Wachira, J. W., Goro, N. K., & Mutie, S. M. (2021). The crisis of post-colonial intellectual thought and knowledge production: Examining Jared Angira’s African revolutionary egalitarianism. Hybrid Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.58256/hjlcs.v3i1.526

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