Globalectics is Ngũgĩ's combination of globalism and dialectics. In this book, a collection of the talks he gave for the Wellek Library Lectures at the University of California at Irvine, he discusses the fight to convert the English literature department at the University of Nairobi into a Literature department, and world literature generally, and the fight to give orature (a coinage to avoid the oxymoron of "oral literature") an equal place with the written word in the academic world. These are the interesting parts of the book. Unfortunately, at least for me, because perhaps I am theory-challenged, a lot of the book involves putting his theses into the theoretical formats of Hegelian dialectics and what he describes, in an introduction, as "poor theory," which seems to mean doing a lot with a little, or perhaps just using the simplest idea that will work. I found these sections added to the length of this slim volume, but didn't necessarily add to my appreciation of his ideas.

And his ideas are interesting, if not entirely novel. Initially, he focuses on the relationship between the "English master" and the "colonial bondsman," and makes the point that the "bondsman" always knows a lot about the "master," while the "master" knows next to nothing about the "bondsman." More interesting, perhaps, is his discussion of the education of the "bondsman" and how African and other writers educated in the European system have been able both to view some of the European classics in different ways (e.g., Shakespeare not just as an example of the height of English culture but also as a writer whose works depicted people in different relationships with power) and to take aspects of European literature and use them in their own works (e.g., titles of books such as Achebe's Things Fall Apart or his own Weep Not Child, or styles or themes; he cites Ousmane's God's Bits of Wood, which I've read, having "affinities" with Zola's Germinal, which I hope to read soon).

In the later lectures, he discusses how we define and understand the term "postcolonial" as different cultures can be postcolonial at different times and in different ways, and more generally how we can read literature from a variety of perspectives as well as from the perspective of the writer and his or her times, and he focuses on the vitality and significance of orature, which includes not just story-telling but song, and he adds in dance and music. In one section I found particularly interesting, he talks about how orature reflects a world view that "assumes the normality of the connection between nature, nurture, supernatural, and supernurtural" and that this derives in some cases from the language itself, giving the example of some words in Gĩkũyũ. I certainly felt when I read Matigari that Ngũgĩ was using the tradition of story-telling, with each version of the tale a little different, in this work.

All in all, I found some interesting ideas in this book, in between the theoretical parts. It was marred, shockingly for a book published by Columbia University Press, by some outrageous typos: "Virgina Wolfe," "As You Like" instead of "As You Like It" for the Shakespearean play, etc.