Temporal Conditions, Permanent Values: Africa and Literary Idea

ABSTRACT The dilemma of postcolonial Africa, her writers and peoples is the problem of having to develop under two conflicting traditions: the African tradition and western culture. This dilemma obviously is occasioned by Africa’s colonial and neocolonial experiences, which tend to deprive literary production in the continent spirituality and transcendental value.The colonial and neocolonial realities represent the temporal conditions from which the postcolonial African writer seeks to liberate, while his relegated African cultural heritage represent the missing absent order that is needed to give a meaning and salutary value to his essence. This paper therefore explicates the extent to which the postcolonial African writers attempt to recover the absent traditional insights and difference in postcolonial African literature in order to give it a transcendental value