The body unbound: ritual scarification and autobiographical forms in Wole Soyinka�s Ak�: the years of childhood

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dc.contributor.authorMoolla, Fiona F.
dc.date.accessioned08/05/2013 14:11
dc.date.available08/05/2013 14:11
dc.date.issued2012
dc.description.abstractThe scarification in Ak� is invested with major significance apropos Soyinka�s ideas on African subjectivity. Scarification among the Yoruba is one of the rites of passage associated with personal development. Scarification literally and metaphorically �opens� the person up socially and cosmically. Personal formation and self-realization are enabled by the Yoruba social code brought into being by its mythology. The meaning of the scarification incident in Ak� is profoundly different. Determined by the form of autobiography which creates a self-constituting subject, the enabling Yoruba sociocultural context is elided. The story of Soyinka�s personal development is allegorical of the story of the development of the modern African subject. For Soyinka, the African subject is a rational subject whose constitution precludes the splitting of the scientific and spiritual which is a consequence of the Cartesian rupture. The African subject should be open to other subjects and the object world. Subjectivity constituted by the autobiographical mode closes off the opening up symbolically signalled by scarification.en_US
dc.description.accreditationWeb of Scienceen_US
dc.identifier.citationMoolla, F.F. (2012). The body unbound: ritual scarification and autobiographical forms in Wole Soyinka�s Ak�: the years of childhood. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 47(1): 27-46en_US
dc.identifier.issn0021-9894
dc.identifier.issn1741-6442
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10566/604
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.privacy.showsubmitterFALSE
dc.publisherSage Publicationsen_US
dc.rightsThis is the author's final draft following peer review. It may be displayed and circulated, subject to full acknowledgement of author and source. The published item is copyright Sage Publications.
dc.source.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021989411432518
dc.status.ispeerreviewedTRUE
dc.subjectSoyinkaen_US
dc.subjectautobiographyen_US
dc.subjectBildungsromanen_US
dc.subjectRites of passageen_US
dc.subjectThe subjecten_US
dc.subjectModernityen_US
dc.titleThe body unbound: ritual scarification and autobiographical forms in Wole Soyinka�s Ak�: the years of childhooden_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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