JOE USHIE AND THE POETICS OF AFROPESSIMISM

Abstract

This study interrogates the poetry of Joe Ushie along the discourse of Afropessimism. Afropessimism examines Post-colonial Africa across socio-political economic and structural conditions of despair. The study draws upon new perspective bothering on Ushie’s poetics on both the military and civilian governance across four of his poetry anthology that are reflective of the problematics of Post-colonial Africa using Nigeria as case study. This study also examines how language and style are deployed by Ushie to create meaning. To this end, we adopt Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Marxist literary criticism for textual interpretation while using the qualitative research methodology for data collection. Central to Ushie’s oeuvre is the ideology that, the exploitation of the services and the forced labour of the Africa’s working class is not altogether a direct consequence of colonial imperialism but also of internal class oppression of Africans by Africans. The study establishes Ushie as a liberal Afropessimist since his poetry exists within the oxymoronic presence of bleakness and hope. Further finding reveals that; Ushie‘s poetry, like those of his contemporaries, may never record a far-reaching effect of commoners’ sensitization unless, poetic critique of the environment is withdrawn from the site of academic veneration and staged within the confines of a radicalized street education. This way, the masses can sustain their social consciousness and raise questions that bother on leadership paralyses, corruption and oppression and how the solidarity of an organized working class remains the best tool for resisting an oppressed system.