Rhythms of the Sublime
Artistic Arrhythmia and the Narrative Geometry of Beauty in Esiaba Irobi’s Dramaturgy
Keywords:
Artistic Arrhythmia, Beauty, Narrative Rhythm, Commitment, The SublimeAbstract
This article theorises artistic arrhythmia as a collapse of rhythm between form and social commitment in African drama. Using the critical discourse analysis of Irobi’s The Other Side of the Mask and Nwokedi, and drawing on the aesthetics of the sublime and committed art, this argues that beauty arises when ethical urgency and artistic craft pulse together, offering a new lens for postcolonial theatre.
References
Adesokan, Akin (2011), Postcolonial Artists and Global Aesthetics, Indiana University Press: Bloomington.
Adorno, Theodor (1990), Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton, Routledge: London. (Original work published 1966)
Agbasiere, Julie (2000), ‘African Literature and Social Commitment’, [in:] D. Opata, A. Ohaegbu (eds.), Major Themes in African Literature, AP Express Publishers: Enugu, pp. 71–83.
Bakare, Ojo Rasaki (2000), Once Upon a Tower, Afahaide Publishing Company: Uyo.
Banerjee, Subhankar (2020), Aesthetics and Ethics in Contemporary Art, Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Chinyowa, Kennedy (2024), ‘Manifestations of Play as Aesthetic in African Theatre for Development’ [Doctoral thesis, Griffith University], Griffith University Research Repository, [online] https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstreams/0dc02efb-eed0-5b0e-8be7-6fdfece8f65c/download [accessed: 14 May 2025].
Egya, Sule (2007), ‘Beyond Social Commitment, Meaning and Audience: Towards the Soyinkanisation of Nigerian Literature’, [in:] African Writer Magazine, [online] https://africanwriter.com/beyond-social-commitment-meaning-and-audience-towards-the-soyinkanisation-of-nigerian-literature/ [accessed: 21 May 2025].
Farah, Dalia (2025), ‘Performing Arts as Cultural Decolonial Praxis in MENA: Applied Models from Egypt’, [in:] African-Decolonial Interculturalities, Taylor & Francis, [online] https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003620204-3 [accessed: 12 September 2025].
Ghemawat, Pankaj (1991), Commitment: The Dynamic of Strategy, Free Press: New York.
Irobi, Esiaba (1991), Nwokedi, ABIC Books: Enugu.
Irobi, Esiaba (1999), The Other Side of the Mask, ABIC Books: Enugu.
Longinus (1974), ‘On the Sublime’, [in:] B. F. Dukore (ed.), Dramatic Theory and Criticism: Greeks to Grotowski, Holt, Rinehart and Winston: New York, pp. 76–82.
Mbembe, Achille (2020), Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization, Columbia University Press: New York.
McGregor, Sue (2010), Critical Discourse Analysis: A Primer, Mount Saint Vincent University: Halifax.
Mogashoa, Tebogo (2014), ‘Understanding Critical Discourse Analysis in Qualitative Research’, International Journal of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, 1(7), pp. 104–113.
Nehamas, Alexander (2007), Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art, Princeton University Press: Princeton.
Ngai, Sianne (2020), Ugly Feelings, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.
Nyamnjoh, Francis (2015), ‘Incompleteness: Frontier Africa and the Currency of Conviviality’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 52(3), pp. 253-270, [online] https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909615580867 [accessed: 09 September 2025].
Obiechina, Emmanuel (1968), ‘Cultural Nationalism in Modern African Creative Literature’, African Literature Today, 1(2), pp. 24–35.
Pather, Vasintha (2025), ‘Beautiful Justice: The Role of Aesthetic Beauty in Restoring Transcendent Connection’, South African Journal of Arts Therapies, 3(1), pp. 48–68, [online] https://doi.org/10.36615/p4qmrt46 [accessed: 09 September 2025].
Rabkin, Gerald. (1964), Drama and Commitment:Politics in the American Theatre of the Thirties, Indiana University Press: Bloomington.
Ravengai, Samuel (2024), ‘A History of the Decolonised African Theatre Aesthetic: Projections of an Emergent African Theatre Practice - Afroscenology’, [in:] K. Igweonu (ed.), Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance (1st ed.), Routledge: London, pp. 452-465, [online] https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003176060 [accessed: 07 September 2025].
Shaw, Philip. (2017), The Sublime, Routledge: London.
Sidogi, Pfunzo., & Ndou, Hulisani. (2021), ‘Ubuntu Aesthetics in African Theatre of the South’, South African Theatre Journal, 34(1), pp. 15–33, [online] https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2021.2020157 [accessed: 07 September 2025].
Skorin-Kapov, Jadranka. (2016), The Intertwining of Aesthetics and Ethics: Exceeding of Expectations, Ecstasy, Sublimity, Lexington Books: Lanham, MD.
Solanke, Stephen & Bernard, Anthony (2025), ‘The Aesthetics of Community Theatre and Gender Construction in Selected Post-Apartheid South African Dramas’, Beyond Babel: BU Journal of Language, Literature and Humanities, 9(1), pp. 341–351, [online] https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16269530 [accessed: 08 September 2025].
Tatarkiewicz, Władysław (1972), ‘The Great Theory of Beauty and Its Decline’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 31(2), pp. 165–180, [online] https://doi.org/10.2307/429630 [accessed: 07 September 2025].
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 The Polish Journal of Aesthetics
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
