Keywords

Postcolonialism, Intellectuals, Lorraine Hansberry, Wole Soyinka, Death and the King's Horseman, Les Blancs

Abstract

Among the many similarities between Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs, the similar storylines surrounding the black intellectual figures is among the most important, because the shared narrative allows each text to engage in a larger conversation concerning the role of intellectuals in the black community. Soyinka and Hansberry initially highlight the in-betweenness of black intellectuals as a seemingly positive mediatory role that allow for cultural translation and negotiation. Despite this initially positive perspective, Soyinka and Hansberry’s exploration of the mediatory role’s advantages is ultimately used to add weight the authors’ dramatization of the inadequacies of mediation and their advocacy for black intellectuals’ full commitment to their community. By acknowledging the advantages in the intellectual’s liminal role and then highlighting the cultural break, the climax of these stories, both authors dramatize the ways in which negotiations will ultimately fail without violence.