Abstract

Most African nation states continue to be beset with a many problems resulting from years of colonial misrule and neo-colonial capitalist exploitations. African literary artists continue to respond to their people's dire quality of life - quality shaped by the vicious circle of colonial experience. It is no wonder then that African literary works continue to be placed within the framework of postcolonial criticism. This study will show how, in responding to the influences of the socio-political conditions on the continent, African literature has found itself continually susceptible to literary postcolonialism. We examine the various ramifications of the relationship between the colonial experience and literary production, and draws the conclusion that postcolonial theory will continue to be relevant in the study of African literature for as long as present socio-political conditions continue to maintain a link, no matter how tenuous, to the continent's colonial experience. We use selected works of Nigerian-born British author, Ben Okri to show the concerns of postcolonialism with the hegemonic practices of the West has become an overlap from the beginnings of these hegemonic practices during colonisation, to the contemporary world. In this contemporary world, colonial and postcolonial independence ideological formations in their political and cultural manifestations continue to play a pivotal role in maintaining the power structures that differentiate the North from the South, the rich from the poor, the Centre from the Empire.