A postcolonial reading of Wole Soyinka’s death and the king’s horseman

Abstract

Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman has been interpreted by critics from different perspectives, particularly cultural conflict, and the sacrificial foundation of modernity. This article, however, is a postcolonial reading of the play, with a slant into the transcendental power of the play as metaphor for Nigerian ethnic nationalities’ resolve to extract their emancipation from the uneven balance of power that manifests in a multicultural post-colonial society. Employing the Postcolonial Theory as a framework, the study discovered that the Eurocentric assumption of cultural superiority by the colonialists is borne out of egotism and ignorance about other people’s culture. The
messianic posturing of self-serving hegemony as represented by the Pilkingses often results in threnodic consequences. The study observed a semblance between the struggle for the emancipation of the cosmology of the Oyo community by Iyaloja and her ilk from the stranglehold of the colonialists and the struggle for self-determination by ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. While the study insists that no culture is inferior so long it is the way of life of a people, because culture must complement culture, it concludes that for the attainment of freedom from any oppressive, coercive and exploitative hegemony, the act ofresistance and self-sacrifice as a counter-hegemony are inevitable, but drama must strive more to project its emancipatory power.