Abstract:
Femi Osofisan’s plays have attracted diverse interpretations from scholars and critics across the world owing to his commitment to contemporary social realities. When most scholars and critics engage in critical exegeses of Osofisan’s plays, they posit that he champions the cause of the underclass urging them to revolt against a decadent social order that oppresses them. While this kind of Marxist dialectic interpretation may have been suitable over the years, in the 21st century it presents a peripheral understanding of the rich potential of Osofisan’s dramatic engagement. This is due in part to deconstruction which lays bare a literary text divesting it of any hitherto meanings which tend to diminish its creative and aesthetic possibilities. My interpretation of the two plays selected for this essay prescribes a new perspective different from the emblem of Marxist dialectics. The new perspective here is the Hegelian dialectics which emphasizes the unity of opposite. Variously interpreted through the Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis triad, the
Hegelian dialectics upholds a platform where opposites continually find relevance in the existence of their counterparts. Although we recognize Osofisan’s commitment to the problems of the society with special emphasis to class stratification, I submit that his engagement with social interplay reveals a compulsory relationship between the various opposites that constitute a society. In this paper, I examine how opposites that populate the two plays share an inevitable unity along the distinctive lines of Hegelian dialectics.
