{"id":219,"date":"2017-02-18T11:15:04","date_gmt":"2017-02-18T11:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christine-madden.com\/?p=219"},"modified":"2017-02-22T13:03:44","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T13:03:44","slug":"the-cassandras-in-the-world-are-never-asleep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/the-cassandras-in-the-world-are-never-asleep\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Cassandras in the world are never asleep’"},"content":{"rendered":"
Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka \u2013 playwright, poet, ‘anatomist of the workings of power’ \u2013 shows a Munich audience he is still well able to pounce<\/h5>\n
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Wole Soyinka, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, 17 February 2017. Photograph: Christine Madden<\/p><\/div>\n

THE BUZZ in the lecture hall in the Literaturhaus M\u00fcnchen<\/a> becomes more subdued as the minutes tick by \u2013 Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka<\/a>, scheduled to speak as part of the Munich Security Conference<\/a>, is late. The audience were told yesterday that he was flying in from Los Angeles. Is the flight delayed? Or \u2013 in this age, one can\u2019t help leaping to drastic worst-case scenarios \u2013 had something more sinister happened?<\/p>\n

He arrives then, to enthusiastic applause, flanked by the deputy director of the MSC. It appears that Soyinka\u2019s arrival occurred at the same time as \u201cour chancellor\u2019s\u201d and in the worldwide political pecking order, her security took precedence. (It is, after all, a security \u2013 not a literary \u2013 conference.)<\/p>\n

Literally an \u00e9minence grise with his eye-catching shock of white hair, Nobel laureate<\/a> Soyinka explains what sets Cassandra and her heirs apart: \u201clistening to the quiet, hearing the sounds of danger\u201d. Soyinka has been speaking and writing with her voice for decades \u2013 he was imprisoned for using it in the 1960s when the government interrogated then imprisoned him for almost two years. He also criticised the 20th<\/sup>-century concept of \u201cn\u00e9gritude\u201d, current among intellectuals using it to oppose a mentality of colonial racism. Being deliberately outspoken about their ethnicity did not give Africans power but put them on the defensive. \u201cA tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces,\u201d he stated. Most recently in Africa, Soyinka says, \u201cthe voice of Cassandra was heeded\u201d when former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh<\/a> was finally forced to step down after repudiating the results of an election he did not win.<\/p>\n

Again he used that voice \u2013 the result of experience, of human knowledge, the practice of integrity \u2013 in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He relates how then French president Mitterrand convoked a conference of Nobel prize laureates. Asked for his opinion, Soyinka said that one of the few scientific principles he had retained from his schooling was that nature abhors a vacuum. The eastern bloc had crumbled. Had the rest of the world thought about what would take its place? \u201cI think,\u201d he told them, presciently, \u201cit will be religious fundamentalism.\u201d Only a few weeks later, the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran issued the fatwa against writer Salmon Rushdie<\/a> for the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses<\/em>. It was, as he explained, the first act to show the militancy, the disregard for humanity and lack of conscience of a movement that has now ascended to be the issue of our era.<\/p>\n

‘What you call an enemy is very important’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cPeople say there was no warning,\u201d Soyinka challenges, \u201cbut there is always a warning. The Cassandras in the world are never asleep.\u201d He cites two examples in 20th<\/sup>-century literature in which her voice was loud and clear. Max Frisch\u2019s The Fire-Raisers<\/em><\/a> (also known as The Arsonists<\/em>) describes how a normal, seemingly innocent lodger takes over the house of a bourgeois family until he and his cohorts have taken it over turned it catastrophically upside down. In Eug\u00e8ne Ionesco\u2019s The Rhinoceros<\/em><\/a>, we see the effect of \u201cpeer pressure, wanting to conform\u201d, says Soyinka. \u201cDo I want to stand out? Oh, my neighbour, his children are already grow their horn,\u201d he quips. You wouldn\u2019t want to cause a disruption or make them feel bad. These plays offer a stark depiction of how easily the moral framework of society is disrupted to a point at which it can\u2019t be reversed without cataclysmic struggle. \u201cWhat greater warning do we want from literature?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n

To do that, you have to oppose power with freedom, not bow before it in submission. \u201cAnd what you call an enemy is very important,\u201d he warns. He mentions the western use of the names Isis or Isil to describe the Islamic fundamentalist movement in the Middle East with scorn. They are not a state, he insists; to give them that name gives them a status, credibility. In the Middle East, in Africa, they are called Daesh. The Cassandras of this world refuse to show deference to those who control with force, with submission, with domination. \u201cYou have to show them your contempt,\u201d he says. \u201cIf we listen to Cassandra, we can escape becoming rhinoceroses.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka \u2013 playwright, poet, ‘anatomist of the workings of power’ \u2013 shows a Munich audience he is still well able to pounce THE BUZZ in the lecture hall in the Literaturhaus M\u00fcnchen becomes more subdued as the minutes tick by \u2013 Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, scheduled to speak as part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[27,25,24,6,23,26,22],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-cassandra","tag-literature","tag-literaturhaus-munchen","tag-munich","tag-munich-security-conference","tag-politics","tag-wole-soyinka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christine-madden.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}