ARMAH’S LINGUISTIC MYTHOPOEISIS

Abstract

Ayi Kwei Armah is one of Africa’s most ideologically committed writers. His writings, which consist of a bitter attack on all colonial institutions and activities, reveal a social vision for Af- rica. Through his diatribe, he shows how Africa could set herself on the path of renaissance and development. This paper, based on Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons and Osiris Rising with oc- casional references to The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, examines one of Armah’s tools for the construction of this social vision: mythopoeisis. Two Thousand Seasons is based on the myth of Anoa through which Armah tells the story of Africa’s continued resistance to colonial oppres- sion, exploitation and the slave trade. Osiris Rising is a complete transposition of the events of the myth of Osiris from its Ancient Egyptian setting to modern Africa. It is a story of Africa’s dismemberment and its eventual re-memberment and resurrection. An aspect of Armah’s myth- making is the conscious effort to give new semantic denotations and connotations to the word pairs black/white and way/road. Armah gives positive attributes to the colour black and pejora- tive significations to white. He also opposes ‘way’ to ‘road’. Armah points Africa back to ‘the way’, a set of principles, which according to Armah, made Ancient Egypt, a great African civili- zation. The paper concludes that the solution to Africa’s problems lies not in demonizing every- thing white and accepting everything black but in carefully selecting what is good in both cul- tures.