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. Themessianic 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.
Michael Olanrewaju Agboola (Mon,) studied this question.