Affective Inheritance: Traumatic Memory in Nigeria-Biafra War Novels (Critical Introduction) and Circumtrauma (Poetry Collection)

• Author / Creator

  Verissimo, Comfort Olajumoke

• This dissertation represents the culmination of five years of study on the Nigeria-Biafra
  War (1967-1970). Circumtrauma is a creative dissertation that explores, through poetry, how
  narratives of the war are held together by an underlying emotional valence which characterizes
  and transforms how we relate with others. My dissertation employs the cut-up poetry technique
  and a structure influenced by the binary arrangement of the Ifá divination system. I study the
  War not only in terms of the three years of protracted violence that consumed the country, but
  also as an ongoing process that fractured Nigeria’s social, political, and cultural life. This
  doctoral project is broken into two sections, a proem on the basic structural technique employed
  in the writing process, and Circumtrauma, the book-length collection of poems developed from
  cut-ups of four Nigeria-Biafra War novels: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Flora Nwapa’s Never Again, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy, and Kole Omotoso’s The Combat. This
  doctoral project draws on Indigenous African aesthetics, conceptual poetry and critical theories
  that grow from both my research and my experience as a creative writer. The disciplines and the
  conceptual, creative and critical approaches that characterize my poetics include African literary
  studies, trauma theory, memory studies, affect studies, postcolonial literature and literary studies,
  and Indigenous African ways of thinking about violence and community. These disciplines also
  allow me to develop a methodology that complements my artistic practice. I mobilize this
  disciplinary scope to ultimately propose a more attentive investigation of post-war negative
  emotions. My dissertation draws on select war novels to develop a singular argument for attention to the war’s emotional legacy in contemporary social relations among Nigerians.
  Circumtrauma is framed by an introductory essay that examines the material context of the war
  and relates it to the production of Nigerian-Biafra War literature and its ongoing capacity to
  affect social relations. This dissertation concludes with a Coda that reflects on my project as research creation and a brief biographical sketch. Overall, my doctoral project makes a
  compelling case, through conceptual poetry, for focusing on the affective dimensions of the war
  and the potential that invigorates the social relations of ordinary lives in its aftermath.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Creative Writing
  • Nigeria-Biafra War
  • Poetry
  • Research-Creation

• Graduation date

  Fall 2022

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-7mb3-8g42

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Library with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.