'Die, Die, Die': Witchcraft, Authorial, and Identity in Postcolonial Nigeri

This dissertation unveils the undercurrents of scriptures. While the study is not about ancient texts that point to extraterrestrial powers, it presents an opportunity for investigating human practices as cultural phenomena. With a forground in Samuel A. Crowther's A Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language (1852), the study focuses on the ramifications of the translation of Esu, a local deity in his Yoruba pantheon, as equivalent to the Satan or devil in the Christianity of the colonizing British Empire, resulting in re-ordered meaning-making and constructions of identity in postcolonial Nigeria. This research does not seek to authenticate---or disavow---witch existence; nor would it authenticate any scriptural tradition as being appropriate within a chaotic space of contesting narratives. Rather, the entire dissertation provides material that deals with how dominant power worlds shape discursivities of meanings, beliefs, and practices in the emergent peripheries of the postcolony.