THE IMPLICATIONS OF WOLE SOYINKA’S SEASON OF ANOMY FOR CONFLICT STUDIES IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Season of Anomy mirrors a Nigeria in Turmoil in the sixties. It captures the ethnic violence of those years that took place in the Northern part of Nigeria. It is a description or representation of Nigerian life and could, therefore, help to visualize ethnic conflicts, which most often cannot be directly observed. It is able to help in visualizing ethnic conflicts because it is a representation of reality and details, perceptively, in the reader’s mind, why ethnic conflicts occur. In its informative engagement with the reader, the reader identifies barriers to settlement, and may indicate procedures to manage or resolve the disputes. This paper, therefore, examined the wider implications of the work for conflict studies in Nigeria. The paper problematized the functionality of the text by arguing that the text alone could not achieve functionality without the pragmatic involvement of the reader or scholar. Most formalists have insisted that the text has no business with anything outside of it. They, however, agree that texts can humanize us or make us better persons; but they have not told us what to do with the state of being humanized or being better persons. The paper demonstrated to a very large extent that the scholar of the text, Season of Anomy, could mediate in Nigeria’s ethnic conflicts through textual experience.