THE HISTORIC, HISTRIONIC AND REVOLUTIONARY IDEALS AS CONFLICTING IDEOLOGIES IN SALAMI-AGUNLOYE’S IDIA, THE WARRIOR QUEEN OF BENIN

Elisha Dareng Rwang (PhD)
Department of Theatre and Film Arts
University of Jos
rwangd@unijos.edu.ngrwangelisha@gmail.com
08068129904

&

Monijesu Ebube
Department of Theatre and Film Arts
University of Jos
ebubem@unijos.edu.ngasikomonijesu@gmail.com
08033670664

Abstract

This paper sets out to expose three conflicting ideologies in Salami-Agunloye’s play Idia the Warrior Queen of Benin. There is no doubt that the recourse to history and the deployment of the historical material have been a major source of aesthetic and ideological strategy aimed at reconstructing contemporary in-equilibrium that affects the woman in all African society and by a token of extension, to all societies of the world. In her attempt to demystify patriarchal constructs within the Benin culture, Salami-Agunloye falls back to a historical incident to make a case for “power sharing” with the women in a “constitutional” sense. However, while trying to find justification in a historic material, the historic character in the personality of Idia is transposed to a “Promethean” quality, hence the histrionic misadventure in the ideo-aesthetic vitality of the play. This paper, therefore, argues that in spite of the playwright’s attempt to infuse a revolutionary ideology and praxis in this play, the historic, the histrionic and the revolutionary ideals, form an aporia that explains the conflicting ideologies. This paper, thus, aims at a critical analysis of the play Idia, the Warrior Queen of Benin to unravel the aesthetic, the historic and the ideological dimensions, which represent these areas of conflict in the play text. The methodology employed is qualitative and the research design is content analysis. In this process, the textual content of the play combined with the historical incidents around the story portrayed, form part of the primary source. The secondary source draws from other literatures and research sources that provide additional information to the issues under discourse. The paper uses New historicism as its theoretical framework. In this theorizing, history is used to validate the assumption of the literary or artistic material. This paper concludes in the final analysis that there are areas of conflict that are identified given the historic, aesthetic and the ideological mix in the play.

Key Words: Historic, Histrionics, Revolutionary Ideal, Conflicting Ideologies