Abstract
This chapter examines Nigerian Nobel laureate playwright Wole Soyinka’s latest nonfiction work, Of Africa (Yale 2012), to argue for his use of traditional Yoruba religion as a conceptual resource for an innovative notion of the secular. In this derivation, the absence of dogma, the possibility of unbelief, stands out as a mark of the secular . I conclude by showing how acts of unbelief were thematized in one of Soyinka’s early plays, The Road (1965), and propose that the secular, thus reimagined, could serve as a critical category for a sustained exploration of much of his writing during his illustrious career.
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Ganguly, A. (2017). The ‘Secular Designs’ of Wole Soyinka. In: Gluhovic, M., Menon, J. (eds) Performing the Secular. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49608-9_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49608-9_5
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