Book Review
Once upon a Kingdom:
Myth, Hegemony, and Identity
Once upon a Kingdom: Myth, Hegemony, and Identity. By Isidore Okpewho (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1998) 252 pp. $39.95 cloth $19.95 paper
Historians of African states have largely used the oral traditions generated by those in power to reconstruct precolonial histories. In Once upon a Kingdom, Okpewho considers the narratives of peoples forcibly incorporated into expansionist polities, looking for patterns in the ways that [End Page 145] they maintained separate identities, even as they accepted and reworked the myths of their overlords. The kingdom in the title is the precolonial West African empire of Benin; its periphery is represented by Benin's eastern frontier--the area occupied by Igbo peoples west of the Niger River.
The book contains little of what scholars commonly call history, including the history of an empire's relationships with its periphery. Rather, it is an eloquent meditation on a series of topics: the relationship of oral expression to written history, the methodology of working with oral traditions, the ways that the visual arts reflect power relations between peoples, the connections between historical interpretation and contemporary politics, and the meanings of gender patterns in myth. Okpewho is best known as a prolific creative writer and literary critic who has written frequently on topics related to oral narrative. He strives to sensitize readers to questions of form and its relationship to meaning.
The initial chapter deals most directly with the relations of the western Igbo with imperial Benin. After providing cultural background on this area of southern Nigeria, Okpewho analyzes a series of stories, showing how the same Benin historical and mythical figures become increasingly less heroic as the distance from the center increases, and how the experiences of the local people are always portrayed in the best possible light.
Chapters 2 and 3 are the richest, most complex, and most creative of the book. In Chapter 2, which discusses the heroic hunter figure, Okpewho's concerns with the relationship of the present to the past become central. He shows how contemporary tellings of historical myths include commentary on the present and specifically reflect resentment about the Nigerian military dictatorship that was in power when he was collecting his narratives. The "presentism" of oral narrative is illustrated by close analysis of a recorded session in which a disruptive group of young men affected a storyteller's choice of form and content, allowing Okpewho to reflect on the multiple levels of meaning conveyed through performance. Okpewho also considers attributes of the mythic hero with attention to African models. He stresses two characteristics: heroes as individualists who ultimately must "put their exceptional powers at the service more of collective security than of self-gratification" (48)--a pointed comment on the contemporary period--and heroes as wild individualists tamed and integrated into society by women--a foreshadowing of later discussions of gender.
Chapter 3 explores cultural beliefs about destiny and individual achievement, suggesting some of the fundamental considerations that must underlie historians' analyses of individual motives and actions. A comparison of Igbo cosmology with Bini (Benin) beliefs ends, as do similar discussions in other chapters, with the Igbo being shown to be more republican and democratic than the centralist Bini.
The remaining three chapters are less satisfying. Chapter 4 includes a story so universal that it demands a broad interpretive framework: An [End Page 146] old woman finds and raises the cast-off infant son of an important person, in this case the Oba of Benin. Okpewho, however, insists that she represents "irrepressible Igbo womanhood" (134). Chapter 5 explores a fascinating question--how the gender of a storyteller affects the style and substance of the telling. Unfortunately, Okpewho's detailed analysis of a woman narrator indulges in pop psychology (she "projects some psychological anxieties . . . about polygynous relations of the sort in which she is involved" [151]), and attributes specific personal meanings to elements that could equally be interpreted as the storyteller's imaginative color.
The final chapter returns to contemporary issues in Nigerian historiography and politics, as Okpewho raises the legitimate question of the direction of cultural influences--whether from center to periphery or the reverse. Unfortunately, he seems to assume that cultural influences pass only from the more powerful to the less. After writing five chapters as an eloquent defender of the perspective of the conquered, Okpewho switches positions, arguing that archaeological findings in eastern Nigeria suggest that the Igbo were in fact a major political player, effectively making his marginalized people fallen hegemonists and raising a contemporary Nigerian historiographical debate. The book's final pages argue for the importance of ethnicity in governance, and he ends with a set of specific recommendations for the decentralization of power in Nigeria.
Edna G. Bay
Emory University
