A Cultural Materialist Reading of Selected African Poets

The pluralism of theories has to be put on the agenda of literary studies. We can no longer pretend that we all tacitly accept the same practices in literary studies. Neither is a laissez-faire attitude any longer tenable. Literature departments need to go beyond the mere toleration of theoretical differences: it is not enough to merely agree to differ; they need actually to ¿stage¿ the differences openly. Unlike in other disciplines, there are no finite answers to findings in literary research; there are only contending points of view and a great deal depends on the logic and persuasiveness of the literary argument. Specific interest groups will continue to propose new angles on literary studies.... We have had Marxist, psychoanalytic, lesbian, gay, postcolonial, ethnic, ecocritical perspectives. There is no reason why we should not have more approaches, all of them equally legitimate.