Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

colonizers', but they can also manipulate the languag e to con vey the message even of
a counter-culture. As Bakh tin suggests in 1M Dialogic tmaginasion: Four Essays. they
can "populate the word with their own intentions. their own accents. appropriating and
adapting the word , " by placin g their own value on the meaning s (293-294 ).
Abrogation and appropriation of language is quite evident in modem West
African drama which co mbines the classical heritage of western theatre with African
dramatic art forms. Since drama is an ideal medium for political and cultural
expression, through the revising of Greek: tragedies and the usc of Greek myths
legends and motifs , Afri can playwrights project their image of Africa . For exam ple . I .
P. Clark, Wale Soyinka and Ola Rotimi incorpo rate Afri can myths, rituals and
languag es into the plays they inheri ted from the co lonial infl uence on meir education .
By using the En glish language and maldng it their own . the postcolonial wri ters
can resist the colonialist labe lling and re-presentations. Unfortunately, the use of the
English language in postCOlonialist literature bas been described as non-standard and
referred to, at least in The Empire Wrila Back, with a lower case "e." This practice,
which categorizes their l iterature under -englisbes. · imp lies inferiority and continues
the marginalization of their texts . Can the term. postcolonial literature , eliminate: such
binaries as centre/ margin? In The Post- Colonial Cri tic, Spivak suggests a re-inventing
of the term margin as "net opposed to the centre, but as an accomplice of the centre:"
[I]n the old days . marginaliawere , in fact, rather impo rtant. Textual
cri ticism in the pre- modem period is much interested in marginalia. In
the early print culture in the West it wasin the margins that the so-
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