Ideologising revolutionary egalitarianism in Jared Angira’s and John Clare’s poetry

Accruing knowledge, critical to understanding societal systems and structures constitutes a basal philosophical problematic to the human intellect. Notably, as disciplines that revolve around aspects of human society and culture, imaginative writing and literary studies rank among the major branches of inquiry invoked to generate ideas, solutions and initiatives for the betterment of human life. Comparatively scrutinising the ideological kinship between the poetry of Jared Angira and John Clare, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that these poems constitute latent grounds for reflection on and critical engagement with the nature of existence and articulation of social thought and ideologies. Thus, this paper is a nominal effort in appreciating their commonality as an ideological catalytic agency of changing and transforming the social and cultural fabric of life in their societies. Drawing from the critical insights of New Historicism theory, the paper employs textual analysis and historical context study towards illuminating how both poets prescribe a common ideological guiding pattern that it designates Revolutionary Egalitarianism

The crisis of post-colonial intellectual thought and knowledge production: Examining Jared Angira’s African revolutionary egalitarianism

This paper critiques Jared Angira’s poetry, and the ideology it manifests with a view to interrogating the “Marxist” label scholars attach to him. Although justifications abound for the prevailing perspectives on Angira’s ideology as “Marxist”, they are limited in their subconscious reinforcement of the traditional white-supremacist image-branding of Africa in terms of deficiency and inferiority. In further contributing to the decolonisation of knowledge generation and consumption in the Global South, the paper interprets these views as theoretically misleading and ideologically incorrect. It adopts the contrary position that Angira is an African Revolutionary Egalitarian, thus paving way for the appreciation of his uniquely African contribution to endogenous knowledge production and the intellectual armoury of African political ideas. Though African Revolutionary Egalitarianism, a term we coin to try and apprehend the ideology we read in Angira’s poetry, has Marxist inclinations, in contexture, it is not Marxism. Angira’s poems are the primary data. Besides critical evaluations on the primary texts, knowledge situated around the general context of contemporary African ideological paradigms and knowledge systems constitutes secondary data. Knowledge on the broad range of historical factors, experiences and contours which shape Angira’s worldview, personality and writing also constitute an essential category of secondary data