Biodun Jeyifo: Revolutionary Humanist Bows Out

Chidi Amuta

At the grand intellectual festival to celebrate him at 80, on the 5th January, his birthday, I was conspicuously absent. I was billed to be a discussant on the anti- colonial aspects of his writings following a public lecture on the subject. But an unavoidable personal emergency took me out of the country. On the 4th of January, I sent BJ a text to excuse myself but informed him I had written a tribute to him: “I regret my inability to join others at the tribute event in your honour tomorrow… Once again, happy birthday in advance and thanks for all you mean to us your friends and former students…”

He called me in the evening of the 5th of January to express his appreciation for the tribute. He particularly inquired about my memoirs which I had mentioned to him. I assured him he would soon get a copy since the manuscript had gone to the publishers for production.

Barely a month after, specifically this last Wednesday, the 11th of February, a phone call from a mutual friend stunned me to the inevitable news that affirms our common mortality: “BJ passed on some hours ago…!” Silence. Grief. Loss. The cruel Finality of death!

What follows is the main body of my tribute to Professor Biodun Jeyifo, distinguished Emeritus Professor of African Literature and Black Studies at Harvard and Cornell Universities and world- renowned scholar of the humanities on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

This tribute has now become also a fitting farewell to a teacher, mentor and close friend. He had promised to stop by the house to see me and Jane before returning to Boston in a few weeks time. Not anymore!

Here then is the final good bye I could not say to BJ.

On the 5th of January in Lagos, scholars and intellectual expeditioners gathered to honour and celebrate a most unique and outstanding Nigerian intellectual. Prof. Biodun Jeyifo, easily one of Nigeria’s finest and most outstanding humanities intellectuals, turned 80. Jeyifo, fondly called BJ by his colleagues and students alike was concurrently Emeritus professor of English and African literature at Cornell University and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. The roll call of his former students both in Nigeria and in the best universities in virtually every continent reads like a telephone book, an A -list of successful people in diverse fields in Nigeria and around the world.

But by far the most important landmarks in BJ’s career are the early stages of his career as a teacher, intellectual gadfly, trade unionist and socio political catalyst at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University).

With a First Class Honours degree in the literary arts from the University of Ibadan and later a Ph.D from New York University under the supervision of Richard Schechner, BJ came to lead an intellectual and ideological revolution at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in the late 1970s and 1980s. From his station in the Department of Literature in English, BJ’s radical sociological approach to the study and teaching of literature marked a decisive shift in a literature curriculum that was originally informed by the bourgeois liberal formalist tradition of the Ibadan British  classical school. In that school, literature was a self- justifying enterprise that could be created, consumed and taught independent of the society that informs it and gives both the writer and his art life. Literary criticism in turn was literally a closed cult of scholarly devotees.

In contrast, BJ came to Ife with a fierce advocacy of a manifestly radical Marxist approach to the study and teaching of literature. The key axioms of this new catechism included the recognition of literature as social practice, the need for social commitment in the work of the writer and the imperative of ideological commitment in the literary enterprise. These were the canons of a new pedagogy in literary studies and BJ led the charge with full chest .

This radical departure endeared him to the students and frightened older faculty whose careers had been built on decades of idealistic intellection and cultic cocoon. BJ’s radical departure was founded on an existing ferment of political division based on the existing capitalism versus communism divide of the Cold War era. Throughout Africa and parts of the Third World, a certain anti imperialist sentiment was the hallmark of a growing opposition to capitalism and its ideological domination of the economic and intellectual realities of the contemporary world.

I joined the Department of Literature in English in this environment of an ideological ferment and turning point. As an apprentice academic, I was also a graduate student. For my MA thesis on the works of the Ghanaian novelist, Ayi Kwei Armah, BJ was a natural choice of supervisor. His classes were thorough and learned. His sense of work was arduous. He tasked his graduate students not to consider any literary works taxing. He got us to read and analyze texts like James Joyce’s Ulysses and Tolstoy’s War and Peace which are some of the largest creative tomes in world literature. You completed any of BJ’s graduate courses not only informed but better educated and more learned. After course work with BJ, you conquered the fear of hard work.

For me as an apprentice scholar and teacher, BJ’s rigorous teaching and research method had an indirect impact on me in my lectures and tutorials. In the process, the constituency of younger Marxist scholars and radical students continued to expand. The sociological thrust of the new pedagogy resonated directly with our immediate socio economic conditions. Literature and literary criticism were reconnected to our social experience.

When I later enrolled for a Ph.D, again BJ was my supervisor. The course work was grueling, often consisting of marathon 3-hour lectures at a time on Theory of Literature or Research Methods. Through it all, he was a trusted guardian as I ploughed through the vast body of literature inspired by the Nigerian civil war to produce a thesis which both Professors Emmanuel Obiechina and AbIola Irele (now both late) as my External Examiners agreed was an original contribution to African literary scholarship especially a then emerging Nigerian national literature.

I must confess that the theoretical foundations for my book, The Theory of African Literature, were laid as a result of my tutelage under BJ. I owe him a good deal of my knowledge and grounding in radical sociological literary theory. This is partly why it was a privilege to ask BJ, then at Havard,  to write an updated foreword for a new reprint of the book after it had been in circulation and on the reading lists of graduate programs around the world for over three decades.

As a scholar, BJ was naturally combative in defending his intellectual and ideological turf. At a point, Wole Soyinka came to see BJ’s ideological revolt and growing followership as a threat to his gigantic reputation. In his Inaugural Lecture “The Critic and Society: Barthes, Leftocracy and Other Mythologies” ,Soyinka took a consistent hostile swipe at BJ and the devotees of the new Marxist school of literary scholars and critics.  BJ was subsequently to enter several rebuttals in articles and books especially his seminal book, The Truthful Lie.

One major product of BJ’s sociological approach to literature was the unusual insight which he provided to certain axiomatic features of Nigerian and African literature. For instance, in his essay entitled “Igbo Novelists and Yoruba Dramatists”, he provided a sociological explanation of the ecology of genres in Nigerian literature.

The Igbos tend to be natural itinerant traders. Travel breeds stories about strange places and cultural encounters, hence the preference for prose among Igbo writers. On the other hand, Yorubas have kings. Kingship goes with courts and elaborate rituals. The ritual of court life comes with drama and spectacle, hence the flowering of drama among modern Yoruba writers and performers.

As a member of the Ife campus community, BJ was engaged in the affairs of the university. He led many protests for accountability in the administration of the university. He once led an opposition to a frivolous foreign trip by an Ife delegation under then Vice Chancellor, Professor Cyril Onwumechili.

He complemented his deep academic work of research and teaching at Ife  with an active hands-on role as an executive of in the ASUU, the perennial national union of university teachers. In the course of this commitment, BJ traversed the length and breadth of the country in his trade mark weather beaten Volkswagen Beetle car , doubling often as driver and sometimes a minor  faults mechanic.

He was actively involved in all the struggles of ASUU against the military despotisms of the time. It is crucial to point out that he was engaged in these struggles not for personal gains but in the national interest defined as the greatest good of the greatest majority. For BJ, the common good was the egalitarian aspirations of the masses whom he saw as the victims of colonial plunder and post colonial betrayal.

A man of simple taste and unpretentious manners, BJ has remained the quintessential man of honest ways and means and epitome of a disciplined lifestyle. He was content with his old VW Beetle. Not for him the garish materialism and ostentation of the Nigerian elite. Not for him the lavish indulgence in wasteful manners and tastes. Instead, he has always made do with a simple adire outfit or a pair of jeans and green combat khaki top perhaps as tributes to Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. It was from BJ and my experience of harsh adversity during the civil war that I learnt that the most durable pair of sandals you could use for years is made of slices roughly cut from disused motor tyres and thick slices of rubber straps!

There was a certain aesthetic sensibility about BJ’s sense of fashion. It lay in the perception of class struggle as a total war in which the vanguard were persons whose external presentation did not suggest any resemblance of bourgeois opulence. There was an inherent beauty in the profound scholar who was also an embodiment of the simplicity of the masses. It was the beauty of Fidel Castro’s perennial green khaki battle fatigue or Yassir Arafat’s perpetual khaki combat gear. Some Nigerian class rebels and labour union ‘combatants’ like the late Tai Solarin and Adams Oshiomhole were to adopt the simple khaki gear as a perennial sign of revolt against  the values of the oppressors of the masses.

Beneath the ruggedly strict and disciplined socialist academic persona lies hidden what I consider BJ’s enduring virtue. Beyond being my most impactful teacher, I have over the years found BJ an abiding friend and unfailing personal advocate. Underneath his rugged mien lies a very intensely humanistic core. His empathy is spontaneous just as his solidarity is abiding and longstanding.

BJ’s strength as a person is his embodiment of the attributes of humanism in a broadly Renaissance sense by avoiding extremes. He is ideological without being an ideologue, assertive without being a demagogue and a devotee of known political schools while avoiding being doctrinaire. Yet he remained a highly accomplished scholar while remaining modest and unassuming. Neither arrogant nor pompous, BJ never sought to frighten nor intimidate let alone deliberately impress. And coming from a national culture that thrives on empty noise making and bluster by ignorant people, BJ stood out as a humanist in the finest tradition. He retained the essence of humanism even in his scholarship -profound knowledge and self-evident mastery of his discipline with an unfailing commitment to the elevation of the human spirit.

Above all, BJ remained intensely human. Observing his enviable relationship with his family, one was moved to see a certain admirable duality in his personality.

When in the midst of my graduate studies I fell in love and decided to get married, I sought BJ’s counsel. He gave his nod and lent his support. On an epic journey from Ife to Osogbo to seek the consent of my future father in law. BJ volunteered to accompany me along with another colleague from the department. We rode in BJ’s battle -tested VW Beetle. After a difficult meeting we were seen off by our host who, on seeing our mode of transport, cursed us lavishly for bringing him the bad news of future poverty.

Many people attain distinction in their chosen careers. But few are the men and women of distinction who become institutions in their chosen fields by dint of sheer grit and hard work. BJ belongs in that select formation of self -made virtual geniuses.

The world of scholarship in his chosen fields will forever be animated by his trail blazing and forthright intellectual leadership and deeply humanistic essence. Indeed, BJ passed by here and deeply touched all of us who encountered him as a teacher, mentor and friend.