Becoming Christopher Okigbo: Aestheticism, Teleology, History

Abstract: Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo, known for his early attachment to aestheticism and modernist poetics and for his apparent late turn to more socially committed poetry, occupies a unique place in the debates about aesthetics and politics in postcolonial Africa. Contrary to frequent attempts to portray Okigbo's development in terms of conversion from an aesthete into a political poet, I demonstrate that even at his most political Okigbo continued to rely on poetic techniques derived from T. S. Eliot and on the doctrine of aesthetic autonomy in order to safeguard his work from the encroachments of Afrocentrism and cultural nationalism.