Editorials
Abstract
I am delighted to announce the publication of Volume 29 (2023) of our esteemed journal, Lagos Notes and Records. The volume contains nine (9) well-researched articles representing contemporary thoughts in various disciplines of the humanities with particular focus on African Studies, Literature, Creative Arts, Language, and Linguistics.
The first article by Akinmayowa Akin-Otiko, “Making a Case for Integrative Medicine in Yoruba and Western Health Care Paradigms” focuses on disease causation, diagnosis, and treatment found in Yoruba Traditional Medicine (YTM) as a framework for integrative healthcare in Africa. The paper argues for a complementary blend of African Traditional Medicine (ATM) and the Western model as integrative healthcare is aimed at providing a holistic approach to diagnosis and treatment of the mind, body, and spirit. It deploys the Yoruba principle of ‘Àgbájọwọ́ la fí n sọ àyà, àjèjé ọwọ́ kan kò gbé ẹrù dé orí’ (one hand is not good enough to lift a heavy load unto one’s head) to make a strong case for the integration of ATM and Western healthcare.
In the second article, “From Historical Fiction to Historiographic Metafiction: Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes as Deviant Literature,” Charles Tolulope Akinsete deploys Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction and Linda Hutcheon’s conception of historiographic metafiction in examining the controversy between history and literature. The paper treats The Book of Negroes as a subversive text predisposed to some postmodern stylistic techniques with its portrayal of obtrusive matters affecting the Black race in contemporary American society. It notes that Hill employs historiographic metafiction to reconceptualise the narrative of African American slave history thereby deconstructing a fixed categorisation of historical hermeneutics of African American slave narratives as limited to the issues of slavery, captivity, racism, oppression, and the like. The paper concludes that historiographic metafiction is substantiated as a counter-discourse against the lopsided criticism that deprecates black history and literary artistry as immaterial.
The third article by Razaq Kalilu and Timothy Ogunfuwa “Spatio-Environmental Conflicts and Artistic Resolution: Case of Three Nigerian Diaspora Artists,” discusses conflict theory by examining spatio-environmental conflicts and their impacts on artistic practices using three Nigerian diaspora painters - Dayo Laoye, Olu Oguibe, and Victor Ekpuk -, as examples. The paper presents morphological analyses of the pre-diaspora and diaspora works, and the spatio-environment of the selected artists with results indicating that intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts from the artists’ spatio-environment - work-space, communities and their socio-political-cultural tendencies, audience and critics, art materials and the artist’s resolution of these conflicts - always influence aspects of their art practices. It concludes that studying art from spatio-environmental dynamics broadens discourse on conflict resolution and aids the understanding of artists’ practice shifts, as they show -practice dynamics that can be linked to spatio-environmental conflicts.
Douglas Kaze in the fourth article, “Twinhood, Allegory and the Ambivalence of the Postcolonial Nation: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun”, interrogates Nigeria’s state of postcolonial nationhood through the depiction of key characters’ experience during the Nigerian Civil War. The paper discusses the interweaving of personal lives and national narrative in Adichie’s novel, arguing that the author’s use of twins and other forms of pairing allegorizes the complex temporalities of the modern postcolonial nation. Depending on Frederic Jameson’s conception of national allegory that “Third World” narrative fiction is inherently representative of the national, and Homi Bhabha’s idea of the ambivalence of the nation which proposes a narrative doubleness combining historicist and everyday temporalities of the nation as a means to understanding modern nationhood, Kaze positions Half of a Yellow Sun as a text that, in spite of its narration of a conflict between two opposing national forces, constructs a postcolonial African nation as a complexity that does not succumb to simple binary interpretation.
In the fifth article, “Yoruba Indigenous Advertising: A Preliminary Report”, Ọladiipọ Ajiboye and Bisoye Eleshin interrogate the Yoruba open market systems which do not use stalls, shops, or malls to carry out trading activities but operate at specific intervals of days at designated market squares where people converge for various forms of trading activities. They focus on the indigenous nature of advertising across Yorubaland in which diverse formats and strategies such as hawking, use of descriptive and deceptive expressions, beckoning, etc., are employed to entice potential buyers to purchase advertised goods. They present various types of goods/products and services that are advertised vis-à-vis the sociological and linguistic features of such products and demonstrates that there is a high degree of interdependence between sellers and buyers in Yoruba Indigenous Advertising where advertisers rely on their communicative competence and the dexterity of their language-use to attract buyers. The paper concludes that trade/goods advertising using the speech forms of the people is key to successful business transactions in Yorubaland.
The sixth article by Bosede Afolayan and Owoicho Odihi, “The Hero as Villain in Armed Resistance: A Comparative Study of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi and Ahmed Yerimah’s Hard Ground”, treats heroism as a Marxist concept in the evaluation of armed struggles by liberation movements. The paper examines the character of the heroes in the two plays against the backdrop of the Mau Mau war in Kenya and the Niger Delta insurgencies in Nigeria. Deploying a Marxist literary theory, the authors investigate the actions of the heroes and the motives that propel their revolts. Given that Dedan and Baba, the protagonists in the selected plays, are innately gentle, committed and caring leaders driven by the quest to liberate their people, they conclude that, rather than uncritically accepting ‘establishment’ or ‘official’ categorisation of leaders of insurgency/armed struggles as devilish, brutal and bloody ogres, a nuanced understanding of their social and political conditions which necessitated their actions must be thoroughly considered.
Azeez and Rafiu’s “Understanding the Effects of L1 Oracy Skill on Phonological Awareness among Yoruba Beginner Readers” is the seventh article. It pushes a deduction that understanding how oracy as a skill interacts with phonological awareness (described as the highest predictor of success in reading) gives useful pedagogical insight on reading in a bilingual context. Using the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis, the paper examines the effects of Yoruba oracy skills on Yoruba phonological awareness among beginner readers with the aim of having an empirical understanding of how oracy skills affect literacy development. The paper discovers that oracy in Yoruba enhances word awareness just as syllable, onset-rime, and phonemic awareness are dormant in Yoruba beginner readers prior to literacy instructions in the language. It recommends investigations of the influences of oracy on other metalinguistic abilities, e.g., morphological and syntactic awareness, in the language.
Kofoworola and Nwodo, in the eighth article “The Lucifer Effect in Kaine Agary's Yellow-Yellow”, explore a critical concept that utilises a novel’s genre as a means of illuminating issues of evil and situations in their examination of Agary's Yellow-Yellow. The paper dissects Agary’s portrayal of the relationship between evil, situations that engender it, and the systems that promote it within the selected context of human experiences. Using the Luciferian approach, the paper substantiates the claim that no one is above mistakes nor intentional in wrongdoing. It concludes by showing how invaluable situations and systemic powers can impact human experiences.
The ninth article by Carol Ohen and Florence Oghiator, “Language as a Tool for National Cohesion and Development in Nigeria”, argues that language is one of the main components in the formation of national identity and that Nigeria, being a multiethnic and multilingual nation, needs an effective policy on usage of language to help her remain united as a nation for the sake of her overall development. The paper examines the role that language plays in the socio-cultural, economic, educational, cultural and political life of a nation and submits that language is a necessary agent for peace, harmony, unity and progress. It recommends the teaching of English as a lingua franca to every Nigerian for better integration of Nigerian communities. The paper concludes that language is a major tool of cohesion and national development for Nigeria.
I sincerely thank and congratulate the Editorial Team and the Advisory Board for their effort and hard work in ensuring the delivery of this volume. I also congratulate the authors for the success of getting their papers published in our journal. I am hopeful that the academic community will find the articles therein interesting and impactful as we continue in the quest to expand the frontiers of knowledge in the humanities and allied disciplines.
Professor Akanbi Mudasiru Ilupeju
Dean, Faculty of Arts
Editor-in-Chief
