THE DRAMATIC PORTRAYAL OF IBIBIO DUAL COSMOS AND CULTURAL EPISTEME OF RETRIBUTION IN UWEMEDIMO ATAKPO’S EDISUA
Abstract
The existence of spiritual polarity is an inherent reality in African cultural cosmology, and this partly informs the people’s strong attachment to spiritual institutions or beliefs including the church, witchcraft, necromancy, oracle, juju and others which play all roles in the African universe. This ideals manifest in Uwemedimo Atakpo’s plays and reflects the cultural sensibility that there is a physical world with its physical property existing side by side with the spiritual one which gives credence to human wholeness. This paper thus discusses the existence of spiritual and material universe in the Ibibio cosmology as portrayed in Edisua. It employs qualitative research method and the analysis is based on the argument explicated in Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology which postulates that the world is a dual cosmos; that man is both a material and spiritual being regulated by the epistemicpull of both realms of reality. The spiritual elements influence the physical factors from the unconscious to the conscious, and most decisions taken in the spiritual world are motivated by human interplays with supernatural forces around. The paper concludes that the human universe is governed through consent and conscience to enhance existential progress while the spiritual world is governed by strict laws to enhance perfection. A dual cosmos is a binary universe and caution must be taken to avoid transgressing them. Evil can be made to function for good when man realizes it is the human world and that he needs fellow man to perpetuate existence and realize existential harmony.
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