Violent Rhetoric as Response to Global Hegemonies in the Poetry of Amiri Baraka and Peter Onwudinjo

This paper on “Violent Rhetoric as Response to Global Hegemonies in the Poetry of Amiri Baraka and Peter Onwudinjo” gives an insight on the incessant oppression, victimization, exploitation and terrorism perpetuated in Africa and African-America. The appropriation of this heinous crime by the capitalists and the attendant revolution of the masses in different climes necessitated this paper. The paper adopts post-colonial theory as the basic theoretical framework. This theory aims at re-examining history from the perspective of the colonized by decolonizing the minds of the subalterns and blacks in Africa and in the Diaspora. The protest tone deployed by the poet astutely unmasks the vengeance of the people against the ruling class and white hegemony. Relevant aspects of style will be analyzed to strengthen the literary oeuvre of the writers and provoke the complacent masses to challenge the status quo. It has also been observed that Baraka and Onwudinjo are angry generation of poets who are not only in a hurry to touch the lives of the people but also to correct certain abnormalities in our debased society. The paper finds out that Onwudinjo and Baraka’s poems make use of allusion, proverb, riddle and aphorism to interrogate this entrenched rottenness in the society. The study recommends that more research be carried out on poets from different continents of the world to consolidate scholarship on comparative study in African and African-American poetry.

Keywords: Vengeance Rhetoric Post-Colonial Theory Global Hegemonies Capitalists

Authors

• Patrick Odey Ogar
  Department of English and Literary Studies
  University of Calabar
  patrickogar@unical.edu.ng, patrickogar245@gmail.com
• Josephat Adoga Odey
  Department of English and Literary Studies
  University of Calabar
  josephatodeys@gmail.com, josephatodes@unical.edu.ng