Authors: Eyoh Etim
Email: eyohetim29@gmail.com
Phone: +2348027898705
Abstract
In this paper, I study two selected poems in Martin Akpan's Ripples of Rebirth from the theoretical positionality of postcolonial semiotics, which is the hybridisation of two fields of theoretical knowledge, postcolonialism and semiotics. The study is informed by the need to centralise discussions on Akwa Ibom indigenous literature as an emerging literary discourse in our time. The reading of the selected poems, 'Dialogue with Naija' and 'Bigheaded Town Boy', reveals the robust semantic possibilities gained through the eclectic approach, especially through harvesting meaning at once at the level of form and content. Akpan's utilisation of language is marked by linguistic hybridity as exemplified in the use of abrogation and appropriation, glossing and untranslatability, among other postcolonial linguistic figures and tropes. At the level of content, the study unravels the postcolonial issues that plague the poet's society, including cultural dislocation, poor leadership and its attendant consequences to the postcolony, all which are accounted for through postcolonial themes like Otherness, hybridity, alterity, neocolonialism and ambivalence. All these are read as constituting the symbolism for the understanding of the postcolonial realities in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria and Africa. From the findings, the research concludes that Akpan's poetics are rich in form and content, packed with tropes that are drawn from the oral tradition of the Akwa Ibom milieu.
Keywords
Akwa Ibom Poetry, Postcolonial semiotics, Nigerian poetry, Ripples of Rebirth, Martin Akpan
Introduction
The field of postcolonial studies is at once diverse and complex, involving different disciplines, methods and approaches. Being an interdisciplinary field predisposes the field to collaborate with other disciplines and theories in order to yield useful semantic harvests beyond its primary hermeneutical nuances. Existing interdisciplinary studies involving postcolonialism are linked with fields such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, linguistics and literature. In this paper, I assemble critical tools drawn from postcolonialism and semiotics in order to carryout a postcolonial semiotic reading of the poems in Martin Akpan's Ripples of Rebirth. Postcolonialism is a theory which studies the literature of formerly colonised peoples, paying attention to themes and concepts such as hegemony and resistance, neocolonialism, hybridity, unhomeliness, alterity or Otherness, subalternity, metropolis and province, ambivalence, liminality, alienation, double consciousness, marginality, linguistic oppression, abrogation and appropriation, mimicry, identity and identity crisis, metanarrative versus small narrative, globalisation, migration and the diaspora, among others.
Content
Hegemony in postcolonial studies plays out not only in the power relations between the former colonisers and the formerly colonised peoples, but also, most importantly, in the power dynamics between postcolonial leaders and their subjects in the postcolony, whereby these leaders still act the ideological and structural script laid by the former colonial masters, leading to the sustenance of the structures of oppression and underdevelopment due to unbalanced power relations in society. The unbalanced power relations between the postcolonial African leaders and their subjects have been the subject of many scholarly discourses, ranging from how neocolonial African leaders perpetrate colonialist oppression to how the agency of these leaders has evolved over time to assume autonomous and independent actantiality. Randolph Persaud (2021) discusses the problematics of hegemonic power relations in postcolonial African societies, noting how hegemony is sustained through the mix of consent and coercion by the elite class. According to Persaud (2021), 'The consent/coercion equation is understood to be some kind of balance whereby the historic bloc that underwrites the hegemonic project is able to manage stable reproduction of the structures of accumulation, and to do so without a preponderance of violence' (p. 3).
Conclusion
In this paper, I have attempted a postcolonial semiotic analysis of 'Dialogue with Naija' and 'Bigheaded Town Boy' in Martin Akpan's Ripples of Rebirth, deploying the concepts of isotopy, actantial model and the semiotic square drawn from Greimas' semiotic model. The analysis of the selected poems reveals the presence of isotopies linked to neocolonialism, metropolis and province, among others. As the poems tell stories about their postcolonial spaces, their narrative structures have been interrogated to yield their actants and their roles, as well as their binary schemes based on Greimas' semiotic square. It is seen that Akpan's poems in the collection are rich in signifiers that point to the state of Africa in the postcolonial era, necessitating a study in postcolonial semiotics and other related fields.
References
References
Akpan, M. (2019). Ripples of Rebirth. XceLMart. Amina, S. & Ilhem, S. (2019).
'Hybridity, Ambivalence and Mimicry in Postcolonial Algerian Novel'. Global Scientific Journals. 7 (4), 698-708. Ashcroft, B., G. Griffiths & H. Tiffin. (1989). The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Literatures. Routledge. Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of Culture.
Routledge. Eco, U. (1986). Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Indiana Press University.
Fadakinte, M. (2017). 'Hegemony and Crisis of State in Postcolonial Societies: A Theoretical Exploration.' Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa. 19 (1), 118-136. Farahbakhsh, A. &
Ranjbar, R. (2016). 'Bhabha's Notion of Unhomeliness in J. M. Coetzee's Foe: A Postcolonial Reading'. International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature (IJSELL). 4 (7), 105-112. Feldner, M. (2018). 'Representing the Neocolonial Destruction of the Niger Delta: Helon
Habila's Oil on Water'. Journal of Postcolonial Writing. DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2018.1451358.
Hassan, H. & Lee, T. (2020). 'Depiction of Postcolonialism in South Asian Cinema: A Semiotical Analysis of Bollywood's Film Pinjar'. International Journal of Applied and Creative Arts. 3 (1), 43-53. Herbert, L. (2006). 'Elements of Semiotics'. Singo. Accessed: 2nd September, 2025, at h p://www.Signosemio.com/elements-of-semiotics.asp. Kourdis, E. (2012). 'Semantic Isotopies in Interlingual Translation: Towards a Cultural Approach'. Researchgate. Accessed: 2 September, 2025, at h ps://www.researchgate.net/publica on/262685667, 105-116. Odia, C. (2025). 'Alterity in the Poetry of Sophia Obi and Mabel Evwierhoma: A Postcolonial Critique'. Scholars: Journal of Arts and Humanities. 7 (1), 48-60. Persaud, R. (2021). 'Hegemony and the Postcolonial State'. The Forum: International Political Reviews. pp. 1-11, DOI: h ps://doi.org/10.1057/s41312-021-00106 0.
Raj, P. (2014). 'Postcolonial Literature, Hybridity and Culture'. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Studies (IJHSSS). 1 (11), 125-128. Reyes, A. (2021). 'Postcolonial Semiotics'. Annual Review of Anthropology. 50, 291-302. Spivak, G.& Young, R. (1991). 'Neocolonialism and the Secret Agent of Knowledge'.
Oxford Literary Review. 13 (1/2), 220-251. Spivak, G. (1988). 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' Eds: Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. MacMillan, 24-28. Uysal, Y. (2022). 'Analysis of Postcolonial Signs and Their Translastions in Children's Literature from Semiotics of Translation Perspective'. Journal of Academic Studies in World Languages, Literatures and Translation (WOLLT). 3 (1), 96 117.
