Creative Pursuits: Fording Globalism's Cross-Currents.

Wole Soyinka
Nigeria Writer

Some can only conceive of Africa, her literature and Arts as being defined by borders of salt waters – the Atlantic Ocean to the West, the Indian to the East and South, the Mediterranean Sea to the North, with the Red Sea demarcating the Arab world from the African. But how can that be sustained, when the sensibilities that govern creativity within vast areas outside that continent are still preserved and expressed, despite hostile encounters, in far-flung places, far removed from the continent of origin? Obviously there are works in those same exterior lands that bear no relation to that continental space. The linkage has frayed over time and space, and such descendants of that continent – largely products of the slave era in the Diaspora - have little interest in acknowledging, much less hanging on to the umbilical cord of cultural retentions. Our concern today is not with all such, which belong – quite legitimately - to a wholly transformed nexus of cultural relatedness. Globalisation does however have its insidious way of reducing distances and blurring divisions, most especially within the rather specialized purlieu of artistic creativity.

It is an ancient agenda by the way, globalization, not quite the novel phenomenon that it is often claimed to be. The history of cultures and their arts has always been one of contact, resistance, accommodation and/or assimilation and of course–even outright suppression in numerous circumstances. Isolationism has however, always encountered short shrift - a fate from which even the invading culture is never spared.  The contentious question for us therefore was ever this: what elements of one culture predominate or prove resilient in that process of exchange? Are those elements from the superficial, tinsel aspects, or from the deeper reaches of culture, drawn from the more integrative functions, and sometimes even universalist potential of such cultures? 

创造性的追寻——涉过全球主义的交汇之流

沃尔•索因卡
尼日利亚作家

对某些人而言，海岸线界定了非洲及她的文学与艺术——向西是大西洋，东 面和南面是印度洋，地中海在她的北面，而红海则使她与阿拉伯世界相分隔。但是，尽管在这块大陆之外的广阔地域中有着敌对冲突，并远离人类发源之地，但在那 些遥远的地方，统治创造力的情感仍然得到了保存与表达。因此，前述看法如何能够得以维系？很显然，同样在这块大陆之外的国度，也产生了同这块大陆毫不相干 的文学作品。随着时空的变化，这块大陆与那些国度之间的联系变得紧张；而且，这块大陆的后代所创作的作品大多是流散群体在奴隶时期的产物，但却鲜有兴趣承 认、更不要说继续从这块大陆的文化中汲取养分。我们今天所关注的对象不仅仅只涉及这些，理所当然地，它属于文化关联性这个已被完全改变的纽带。但是，全球 化的确在以自己的方式暗中缩短距离、模糊界限，尤其是在艺术创造力这个相当特殊的领域内。

顺便提一下，虽然人们经常认为全球化是一个新现象，但它其实是一个古老 的日程。不同文化及其艺术的历史，一直是一个接触、抗拒、容纳及/或吸收的历史，当然在无数情况下，这个历史甚至也包括了赤裸裸的镇压。但是，孤立主义总 是遭遇漠视，这个命运即便是入侵文化也永远不能幸免。因此，对我们而言，引发争议的问题总是：在这个交流过程中，一种文化的哪些元素占据主导地位或表现出 很强的适应力？这些元素究竟是来自那些肤浅的、华而不实的侧面，还是来自文化更深的层面，即取自那些文化更为综合的功能，以及时而颇具普世性的潜能？