Why Lessing’s Nobel Prize Is A Cause of Concern

The decision of the Nobel Literature Prize committee to name Doris Lessing as this year’s laureate should raise red flags in the minds of those concerned with the integrity and cultural autonomy of African literature, writes Wandia Njoya.

The fact that Lessing has finally received one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the Western hemisphere comes as no surprise, since she has been proposed for this award before but has been bypassed by previous laureates. What should raise eyebrows, however, is the historical and political context within which the committee finally decided to recognize the octogenarian.

The prize awarded to a writer who lived in Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe, comes barely a week after President Mugabe gallantly castigated the United States for being a global bully. While Mugabe is no angel, the position he is in merits a careful consideration from Africans. The United States and its European allies have turned him into a scapegoat to deflect attention from their waning moral credibility and the quagmire that the invasion of Iraq represents. Implicit in their condemnation of Mugabe is the hope that their maligning of Africa as a breeding ground for conflict, hunger, disease and dictatorship should discourage most people from paying attention to the fact that the most notorious African dictators were funded and politically supported by the Western world, or that the hoo haa surrounding Mugabe is conspicuously absent surrounding Gabon’s Omar Bongo, who is dubbed in many circles as one of the world’s longest ruling dictators.

In this context, a Nobel Prize for Doris Lessing becomes significant. Following the announcement of her award, major Western newspapers dubbed her as a critic of colonial rule brutality in Rhodesia where she spent a rather modest childhood. Much capital has been made of the fact that she was exiled from her “homeland” of Rhodesia for criticizing colonial rule. Her book African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe (1992) has been described as a memoir of her return “home” and of her laments about the failure of independence to live up to its promise – a theme which should soundly resonate among Mugabe’s detractors. It is not surprising that few Western journalists have noticed that by juxtaposing laughter with the unfulfilled promises of independence, the book propels the stereotype of blacks as perpetually smiling and of good humor. Moreover, the memoir is not lacking in angelic presence of Lessing who, apparently, inspires Africans to express to their discontent with the Mugabe regime.

Evidently, the press and Lessing’s fans have seized the prize as an opportunity to present yet another European who was supposedly troubled by colonialism, racism and apartheid. The logic behind this subtle message is that if Lessing, a European, is concerned about colonialism, then the West’s dislike for Mugabe is largely informed by a benevolent concern for black Zimbabweans rather than outrage at Mugabe’s efforts to repossess land stolen and given to white farmers during colonial rule. Lessing’s prize also boosts the ignorant arrogance of mushy liberals and Hollywood stars who feel that whites who hold pity parties for Africans are more righteous and selfless than the crucified Christ himself, since, it would appear, Africans are so wretched that even his holy blood was unable save them.

One may argue that the Lessing prize is a mere historical coincidence, or that Nobel Prize committee does not consciously deliberate a writer’s political inclinations or award prizes on the basis of political significance. Some have even argued that Lessing is the first in a series of writers that the Nobel committee has honoured for her work rather than her political stand. While this may indeed be true, it would be naïve to consider the Nobel Prize committee as a politically neutral body that awards prizes based on the merit of the author’s work alone. No such prize exists, because prizes are awarded by human beings with interests and biases, not by the gods. The Nobel Prize for Literature reveals the Swedish Academy’s inclinations and its interpretation of Alfred Nobel’s dying wishes. Nobel was a Swedish industrialist who became rich from manufacturing dynamite used for weapons, and he later sought to salvage his deadly reputation by promoting peace. Since the substantial monetary award that accompanies the prize is funded by Nobel’s estate, it is only natural that then the primary concern of the Swedish Academy is to award writers who reflect Nobel’s values of idealism more than to reward artistic prowess.

There is nothing wrong with or new about this situation. Before commercialised art gained momentum, the greatest art, from the epics performed by African griots to Shakespearean plays, was commissioned by the royalty and aristocracy. There is no doubt that kings and emperors sponsored artists whose work they liked, not just artists who fulfilled the romantic notion of an art valued on its own merit, a notion that has become a credo since the 19^th century. Therefore, the issue at stake is not the literary award in and of itself, but who funds it and what interests they represent. That is not to say that the recipients of the award are not worthy. However, there are millions of writers who deserve recognition, and so the choice of a single laureate each year has to be based on extra-literary considerations or influences.

Fortunately, the sympathies of the Nobel literature prize committees are not hard to detect, especially when it comes to Africa. The committees have historically been inclined to European writers residing in the colonies and who, symbolically or overtly, offer reconciliation as an ideal solution to colonialism or who make a-political, sentimental criticisms of isolated cases of racism. Albert Camus, a French writer born in the then French settler colony, is a Nobel laureate known for his advocacy of reconciliation rather than independence as the solution to the Algerian crisis. His most famous book is the short novel L’Etranger (The Stranger), in which a dispassionate and emotionally disconnected French national kills a nameless Arab man. Over the last ten years, the Nobel committee has also recognized two white South Africans, Gordimer and Coetzee. Lessing fits a similar messianic profile of the European writer who descends from glory of racial privilege to speak “against” African oppression.

For anyone familiar with the dynamics of African literature written in colonial languages, the idea that Western literary prizes are based on purely literary merit and that the political significance is sheer coincidence is largely wishful thinking. In his book La malédiction africaine (The Francophone Curse), Ambroise Kom, who teaches at College of the Holy Cross, details the way in which French literary prizes are awarded to African writers who seem sympathetic to, or at least do not challenge, France’s continued quest for cultural hegemony in its former colonies. In my view, the Nobel prizes to Gordimer, Coetzee, Lessing trio are a parallel of this phenomenon. For how else could one explain the fact that of the five Nobel literature laureates from Africa, three are of European descent, and worse still, two do not even live on the continent? That the Swedish Academy would have the world believe that members of the invading class deserve accolades for assumedly criticizing oppression better than the people who endure it is not an exercise in idealism. It is at best naivete, and at worst, a denial of reality.

What is even more striking about the Gordimer-Coetzee-Lessing trio is that they are writers from countries ruled by unapologetically racist regimes that did not follow the route of the United States of decimating indigenous peoples and enslaving Africans while proclaiming itself a bastion of democracy and constitutional rule. As I have intimated in a different contribution to this website, the Western world is desperate to block out slavery and apartheid from Africans’ memory, if not from history. What better way to do so than rewrite the history of African resistance to oppression as a rainbow coalition in which Europeans and Africans together, in solidarity, fought for freedom? As evidence of this solidarity, it therefore presents us with writers such as Lessing who suffered under colonialism and forsook the inherent advantages offered by racism.

Another reason why Lessing’s award should be treated with caution is the fact that her works are not as critical of colonialism or as untainted by racism as the press would have us believe. In her first book, The Grass is Singing, Mary, a white woman in a passionless marriage, is intrigued by an African worker named Moses. Her interest does not go unnoticed by the male white settlers, but before they can carry out any measures to redress the situation, she is murdered by Moses. What is disturbing about this book is that Moses remains a placid character from beginning to end, and the book offers no insight into his character, temperament or observations. Even though the murder is attributed to him, it appears to have been driven by pure instinct without any motivation or reflection. Lessing’s novel thus depicts Africans in the same manner as several colonial writers have done: as people who are clueless and lethargic but who occasionally, inexplicably and dangerously erupt. In this framework, Africans are seen as less predictable than animals and people who must be dealt with more brutality than most Westerns are willing to accept for animals.

The third reason for caution, and probably the most worrying to me as an academic, is the fact that the Western academy is already inclined to writers who fit Lessing’s profile. I am always disturbed to find at conferences dedicated to African studies, panels on Coetzee’s work when the writer apparently could not survive in an African-ruled South Africa! At these venues, one often finds book publishers who market Coetzee’s work as African literature, which leads me to wonder what Coetzee would think in the unlikely event that he should attend such a conference. At one panel I attended some years ago, his work and that of Gordimer were read against the backdrop of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that, not coincidentally, has been the focus of most attention of recent studies on South Africa published in the United States. A search in any of the academic engines for South African literature will yield little, if any, research on literary work by Black South Africans, and almost no studies carried out by scholars with African surnames.

This scenario is not unique to South Africa. The most studied Kenyan author in the United States, besides Ngugi wa Thiong’o and probably Meja Mwangi, is Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, a British-born writer married to a Kenyan. In many scholarly articles, her work is presented as Kenyan, and it is easy for the uninformed observer to miss her identity since the phenomenon of English first names and African surnames is not uncommon. While her work carries an unmistakable Kenyan flavor, there is something to be said about the fact that no other Kenyan woman, even Grace Ogot, has been able to attract such attention from Western academics.

Another European fiction writer who has gained notoriety for his work on Africa is, unfortunately, Joseph Conrad. His racist book Heart of Darkness has received much scholarly attention in the form of dissertations, scholarly and edited books as well as articles. The famous attack on the book by Chinua Achebe in his 1975 lecture at the University of Massachusetts sent the academy into overdrive and generated an upsurge of articles defending the book on its literary merits and its oh-so-difficult-to-spot criticism of colonialism.

I am not against the propensity of the Nobel Prize committee or Western academics for European writers who supposedly empathize with Africans – a concept which is inherently racist despite its strapping of benevolence. To paraphrase the American expression, it’s a free world, and so Euro-Americans are free to heap accolades on and study whichever writer they like. Consequently, the fundamental question facing Africans is whether or not we are aware of the political and cultural issues at stake when writers such as Lessing are honored. We must avoid accepting these accolades as universal but instead see them as profoundly Western and not immune to racist minimization of African humanity.

My reservations about the Nobel Prize do not minimize the great accomplishments of the African recipients Wole Soyinka, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and Wangari Maathai. These people were already revered in the continent and its diaspora long before the Nobel committee recognized their contributions to humanity. Besides, the Western world has a knack for identifying important African individuals in order to, in my opinion, sap the moral credibility of these figures for its own political goals. The African laureates do deserve the prizes since their contributions impact humanity as a whole. However, the honors also place a wedge between African societies and the hero whom they supported as well as minimize the collective achievements embodied by outstanding African individuals. Western accolades have this negative effect because Euro-America has never been humble enough to recognize African contributions to humanity without branding them as influenced by Western education or ideas or without simply usurping them altogether.

If, and when, African writers with strong literary credentials are rewarded by the West, we need to distinguish between what we take from their literature and what the Western world takes from it. Trudier Harris, a scholar at University of North Carolina, admirably distinguishes the appreciation of African American literature by African Americans from that of white Americans. One of the most memorable of pieces is a chapter in her book Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature, in which she notes that Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun was warmly received by blacks and whites alike, but the values that the play affirmed for both audiences was distinctly different. A similar scenario is arguably present in the criticism of Chinua Achebe’s literature. Some Western readers limit his works to anthropological texts, and some  meticulous ones read No Longer At Ease, for example, as evidence of the much vaunted identity conflict experienced by African graduates returning from Europe (read the inability of Africans to adapt to the modern world despite immersion in Western education). Meanwhile Africans are more inclined to read the novel as a tragedy of Obi Okonkwo whose miseducation in Europe negatively impacts his ability to tackle the challenges of the real world and of relationships with real people.

The lesson for Africans in such discrepancies is that we should appreciate the importance of recognizing Lessing’s award as a milestone not of African literary history, but of Western literary history. And that history is not just Western; it is also implicitly anti-African by virtue of Europe and America’s historical and institutional foundations rather than the writer’s ethnicity. If we recognize this distinction, we will be able to see that as the Western world fashions its canon, we continue to fashion our own and to honor African writers according to our values and aspirations.