The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness (The ^AW.E.B. Du Bois Institute Series) - Hardcover

Soyinka, Wole

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195122054 ISBN 13: 9780195122053

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998

Synopsis

When Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka's The Open Sore of a Continent appeared in 1996, it received rave reviews in the national media. Now comes Soyinka's powerful sequel to that fearless and passionate book, The Burden of Memory.
Where Open Sore offered a critique of African nationhood and a searing indictment of the Nigerian military and its repression of human and civil rights, The Burden of Memory considers all of Africa--indeed, all the world--as it poses the next logical question: Once repression stops, is reconciliation between oppressor and victim possible? In the face of centuries long devastations wrought on the African continent and her Diaspora by slavery, colonialism, Apartheid and the manifold faces of racism what form of recompense could possibly be adequate? In a voice as eloquent and humane as it is forceful, Soyinka examines this fundamental question as he illuminates the principle duty and "near intolerable burden" of memory to bear the record of injustice. In so doing, he challenges notions of simple forgiveness, of confession and absolution, as strategies for social healing. Ultimately, he turns to art--poetry, music, painting--as one source that may nourish the seed of reconciliation, art as the generous vessel that can hold together the burden of memory and the hope of forgiveness.
Based on Soyinka's Stewart-McMillan lectures delivered at the Du Bois Institute at Harvard, The Burden of Memory speaks not only to those concerned specifically with African politics, but also to anyone seeking the path to social justice through some of history's most inhospitable terrain.

About this title

About the Author

Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. He is Woodruff Professor of the Arts at Emory University, in Atlanta, and a Fellow of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard.

Reviews

In three essays, Nobel laureate Soyinka examines Africa's recent history and the ways African and other countries have dealt with horrendous crimes against humanity. Like his Open Sore of a Continent (1996), this work is based on lectures at Harvard University's W. E. B. DuBois Institute. The first essay, "Reparations, Truth, and Reconciliation," deals most directly with the issues Tina Rosenberg addressed in her prizewinning study of post-Communist Eastern Europe, The Haunted Land: "How on earth does one reconcile reparations, or recompense, with reconciliation, or remission of wrongs?" Although Soyinka respects the generosity of spirit behind South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he points out that failure to demand restitution may build an expectation of impunity that can only encourage further crimes. In the essays "L. S. Senghor and Negritude" and "Negritude and the Gods of Equity," Soyinka examines the response of writers with African roots to the effects of slavery and colonialism as well as to the cruelties imposed on Africans by many of their own postcolonial leaders. Mary Carroll

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195122054
• ISBN 13: 9780195122053
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224