Hybridity and Post Colonial Poetic Realities in Okot p’Bitek's Song of Lawino

Résumé

 This essay focuses on p’Bitek's embrace of forms of African oral traditions in Song of Lawino through a blend of African and non-African linguistic expressions underscoring his hybridity as a postcolonial subject. The efforts of p'Bitek in locating the critical interface between orality and literacy in the poetic DNA composition of postcolonial African poetry is recognised and foregrounded. A postcolonial interpretative approach is favoured in this essay because of the theory's anti-imperialism position especially with regards to its advocacy for a return to indigenous literary traditions, and also on the strength of its concerns with the overall socio-cultural and psychological effects of imperialism on postcolonial being/identity. Content analysis method is employed in the examination of p’Bitek's inconspicuous portrayal of poetic expressions rich in African lore, oral forms and phraseology in Song of Lawino. The essay concludes that by promoting orality through literacy in his poetry, p'Bitek succeeds in showing a clear understanding that despite the overbearing influence of western imperialism which manifests in linguistic domination, African cultural expressions would only survive when African writers make conscious efforts to preserve them regardless of the linguistic vehicle of conveyance. In this this regard, p'Bitek holds a special place in African literature for his insistence that African cultural identities and poetic expressions must not be swept away by the vagaries of imperialism which manifest in formalised foreign poetic forms and linguistic expressions.