REVOLUTIONARY AESTHETICS IN SEMBENE OUSMANE’S GOD’S BITS OF WOOD (Published)
Literature is not just a piece of writing, which only entertains. It also performs some other functions such as teaching moral lessons and healing souls. Literature has turned out to be a medium of appending contemporary or conventional realities through the exposition of the socio-cultural and political experiences of a given society; since it (literature) is a product of a particular human society. A creative art is designed to x-ray life, with a view to display human experiences, feelings, imaginations, observations, predictions and suggestions for realistic purposes. Literature is one of the major weapons for class and/or societal struggles. This paper focuses on societal issues raised in Sembène Ousmane’s God’s bits of wood Marxist theory of violence is our theoretical framework in evaluating the writer’s preoccupations. As its purpose, the paper makes it bold to validate the fact that art and society are two interlocking entities. It is obvious that the oppressed in Sembène Ousmane’s God’s bits of wood are well mobilized and they behave as true agents of positive social transformation. They are very effective in the reconstruction agenda demonstrated in the novel. The paper ends by identifying the fundamental systemic challenges, which confront African societies during the colonial period and even now in the perceived global village and the writer is seen as one who embraces his environment and time very religiously in his artistic creation with a view to solving some common societal problems. Literature, therefore, is capable of activating and promoting the expected development in human societies.
Keywords: Art, Capitalism, Colonialism, Development, Protest