Mythologizing Post (Coloniality) in Cameroon Poetry :

The Case Study of Bate Besong’s Disgrace, Autobiographical Narcisus and The Emanya-Nkpe’s Collected Poems

Abstract

This paper argues that Bate Besong’s poetry is a recollection of world mythology and the past, a past which continues to haunt the present. The paper equally introduces the binaries between the ruled and the rulers, the oppressed and the oppressor, the good and the evil, the genuine and pseudo intellectual vis a vis nation building, and how the frontiers between these opposing camps can be redressed. The paper equally articulates that the Obasinjom culti or / and Emanya Nkpeii are alternative fraternities for the intellectual and political guilds in postcolonial Cameroon. Thus, these cults, as he rightly points out, have been enmeshed in a plethora of mythologies, orchestrated by the colonial encounter. However, the indigenisation of the political and intellectual guilds is the leeway for Cameroonians in particular and Africans in general to come to terms with their own values, hence identity.