Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T04:50:55.392Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Emmanuel N. Ngwang & Kenneth Usongo, Art & Political Thought in Bole Butake

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2020

Get access

Summary

The creative ingenuity of the Cameroonian dramatist Bole Butake has inspired a quantity of critical material on African theatre and drama. Selected researches on Bole Butake include John Tiku Takem's Theatre and Environmental Education in Cameroon (2005), Hilarious Ambe's Change Aesthetics in Anglophone Drama and Theatre (2007), Pepetual Mforbe Chiangong's Rituals in Cameroon Drama: A Semiological Interpretation of the Plays of Gilbert Doho, Bole Butake and Hansel Ndumbe Eyoh (2011), and several articles by Christopher Odhiambo. The research insights of the listed works concur with Emmanuel N. Ngwang and Kenneth Usongo's book as they respond to Butake's employment of aesthetic imageries and indigenous knowledge to confront and deconstruct the politics of the state and indicate how the application of that politics restrict resourceful metaphors to a few individuals of a community. Unflinchingly, Ngwang and Usongo pursue a political stance in Art and Political Thought in Bole Butake which suggests that the imaginary Fondoms and Chiefdoms in which Butake sets most of his plays are indeed metaphorical presentations of postcolonial African status quo in general, and Cameroon specifically.

It is within this political frame that Ngwang and Usongo examine Butake's collection of plays entitled Lake God and Other plays which contains Lake God, The Survivors, And Palm Wine Will Flow, The Rape of Michelle, Dance of the Vampires, and Shoes and Four Men in Arms. Both authors investigate Butake's thematic universe and aesthetic framework in a bid to capture Cameroon's postcolonial canvas which they argue is ‘saddled with numerous political and social abuses’ akin not only to the concerns of the Anglophones of that nation but also to other marginalized groups. However, it is worthy of mention that Ngwang and Usongo's interest in analysing the works of Bole Butake is to make a critical commentary on the ‘Anglophone Problem’ in Cameroon, a situation which has always pitted the English-speaking regions against the authority of the French-speaking leadership in the country, and which restricts development and political participation, and encourages persecution of the Englishspeaking regions. Therefore, Art and Political Thought in Bole Butake consists of ten chapters that critically explore the different subjects of Butake's drama.

Type
Chapter
Information
African Theatre 18 , pp. 186 - 189
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×