Soyinka’s archetypal triad and the dialectics of terror

Abstract

There is doubt that the search for global peace in the world today is receiving attention unprecedented in history. Perhaps, the turning point, which opened up fresh security challenges, was the infamous 9/11 attacks on the United States of America by Al-Qaeda. Since this horrific incidence, similar carnage of the Al-Qaeda has continued with the activities of the ISIS in the Middle East, Al-Shabaab in the eastern corridors Africa, and other groups in the western part of Africa. Rightly or wrongly, ‘terrorism’ is always used as label for the activities of these groups. This paper examines the subjective nature of the term, using selected poems from Wole Soyinka’s Idanre and Other Poems (1967), A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972), Ogun Abibiman (1976), Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems (1989) and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have known (2002), as basis of analysis. The writer, drawing a compelling link between terrorist actions and the interventions of Ogun, Atunda, Shaka and Mandela in the selected poems, establishes, from the perspective of Soyinka, the causes of and antidote to terrorist acts. The conclusion of the paper emphasizes that the easiest route to the much needed global peace lies in mutual respect of boundaries by all.