Bate Besong

The Enchantments of Kangsen Feka Wakai’s Poetic Pantheon

By Bate Besong (Published in The Herald, No. 1784, Wednesday, 26-27 April, 2006)

“The poet speaks not for himself only but for his fellowmen. His cry is their cry, which only he can utter. That is what gives it its depth. But if he is to speak for them, he must suffer with them, rejoice with them, work with them, fight with them.” George Thomson (Marxism and Poetry. New York: International Publishers, 1946, p.65)

It was the Hungarian theoretician, Georg Lukacs, who, in the previous century, revived the full thrust of the Aristotelian concept of mimesis according to which the literary artifact is regarded as pushing beyond the world of surface appearances to capture, crystallize and reflect “the essence of things.”

A Critique of Churchill Ewumbue-Monono's "Men of Courage"

By Bate Besong

Churchill Ewumbue Monono. MEN OF COURAGE: The Participation of Independent and Civil Society Candidates in the Electoral Process in Cameroon. A Historical Perspective, 1945-2004. Limbe; Design House, 2006. 237 pages.

Churchill Ewumbue Monono’s MEN OF COURAGE has attracted my current analytical exploratory exercise, because the author’s quest, I am convinced, is to show that MINAT’s goal under Andre Tschoungui and subsequently Marafa Hamidou Yaya has been, to install, the medieval monster named ELECAM, a nervous condition of megalomania that would eventually efface a democratic culture, in Cameroon, with Paul Biya  as Life President and “God.”

Anne Tanyi Tang as Playwright

By BATE BESONG, Ph.D - Dept of English, University of Buea
[Paper Presented at the Hilton Hotel, Yaounde, on the 6th of December 2006]

Anne Tanyi Tang's repertory conveys a consistent message that harmony in thought and action is a sine qua non for progress and communality. A pervasive sense of contemporary history is a marked gradient in her theatrical topography.

Historical incidents provide at a conscious level the material from which her artistic periscope is fashioned. In Chief Ayito(2006), the playwright explores the possibility of the Cameroonian rich, walking in terror of the poor marginalized whose property they have stolen.

Tanyi Tang's thesis is that neo-colonial despotic rule; the political and economic struggle assumes its class character despite any and every attempt at ethnic mystification.

Enoh Tanjong, Global Scholar

By BATE BESONG
 
ENOH TANJONG has brought new insights into campus relationships while challenging the unspoken temptation that the tribal gaze was a distinctly University of Buea phenomenon.

His national and trans-tribal outlook and commitment has no parallel in the Cameroon University system.

It is scholars like Professor Tanjong who have de-mythologized the atavistic, clannish gorgon, on campus.

Francis B. Nyamnjoh's Polemical Fiction

By Bate Besong

Francis B. Nyamnjoh's A Nose for Money (EAPH, 2006) is a uniquely detailed presentation of the causes and consequences of political instability in Mimboland (Cameroonian) society since Re-Unification. The society that is depicted is one that can only breed diseased and demented leaders.

In his message to the youths of Africa, Fanon states that, "the future will have no pity for those of us who, possessing the exceptional ability to speak words of truth to the oppressor, have instead taken refuge in an attitude of passitivity, mute indifference and sometimes of cold complicity."

Popo Ton Mandat N'est Pas Fini: The Making of Bole Butake's Psaul Roi in Dance of the Vampires and Family Saga

By  Bate Besong (Published in The Post Friday, July 21, 2006, No.0783)

BOLE BUTAKE is a philosophical, ironic humanist, deeply committed to the democratic ideals of a new nation. His sarcastic wit, his creative use of contemporary slang and intertextual references to dramatic codes makes his plays particularly appealing to victims on the periphery of the CNU-CPDM dinosaurs.

Andrew Sankie Maimo’s Manichean Ontology: A Review of The Mask

By Bate Besong

Published in Epasa Moto: Journal of Letters, Arts, and Culture, University of Buea (2006: Abridged)

Andrew Sankie Maimo’s The Mask (1980) as a supreme expression of the situation of modern man like much of its absurd, Beckethian or Adamovean genealogy derives its theatrical alloy from its mosaic construct which entails a penetration through a cluster of images and symbolic landscape.

New Fiction from the Cameroonian Necropolis

By Bate Besong

Alobwed' Epie. The Death Certificate. Yaounde: Editions CLE, 2004. 308p [ISBN 9956090050]

Writing is very much a political activity. Any kind of writing, any novel, especially in our situation, becomes very much a political action. And I do not buy the idea that there is a separation between politics, public life, public themes, public concerns, and an individual’s artistic concern. I do not see the difference.
CHINUA ACHEBE (Africa Notes, September/October 2005)

Abstract: Dramaturgical Art as Social Commentary: Bole Butake’s The Rape of Michelle; Notes and Queries

[Paper submitted to: Publications du Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches du Monde Anglophone (CERMA), Université Omar Bongo - Gabon].

ABSTRACT
Bole Butake’s The Rape of Michelle (1984) in its form, aesthetics and subject matter would be described in Brechtian terms as bourgeois theatre method.  The realistic nature of the play is seen in the way post-colonial contradictions are brought to the fore.  The playwright makes use of adequate dramatic devices to communicate historical experiences. Unfortunately his solutions to political corruption are individualist bourgeois, and thus, miss the larger social quest of the community. 

Postcolonial Alterity in Fiction:Towards a Definition of Alobwed’Epie’s 'The Death Certificate'

By Bate Besong, Ph.D (Dept. of English, University of Buea

Although Western intellectuals such as Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt have explored the connections between the intellectual production of the colonial world and its growing global domination (Williams and Chrisman 1994:71), it is Frantz Fanon, described by his comrade and critic, Albert Memmi, “as a prophet of the Third World, a romantic hero of decolonization” (1973:39) who has emphasized the dehumanizing aspects of colonialism, thus pushing its analysis into the realm of the psyche and the subjectivity of colonized peoples, as well as their imperial masters.