Othering, Racism, and Stereotyping: A Postcolonial Analysis of Wole Soyinka's Telephone Conversation

Abstract

The research analyzes Wole Soyinka's poem "Telephone Conversation" using the Postcolonial framework as a tool of analysis. Wole Soyinka's writings germinate the concerns of Postcolonial African identity from the rigid Western world lens. The Postcolonial approach views racism and colonialism as discursive practices. After years of freedom and racial struggle, African people are still far from realizing their individuality as a stable superior self. Racism is persistent in Postcolonial individual identity. African poetry has been influential in speaking out the heart of Africans in reclaiming their identity and self. The current research culminated and explored the relationship between Orient and the Occident; the relation between the black renter and the white landlady. The study has interpreted Soyinka's poem through the Postcolonial view of Othering, Stereotyping, and Racism, which threatens black identity in the poem's context. The analysis yields that prejudice towards the non-Western community prevails in social contact between the colonizer and the colonized.