Abstract/Summary

This paper examines the archival evidence of the curious withdrawal of a Biafran anthology titled Resistance: An Anthology of Poetry which was already listed for publication by Heinemann during the Nigeria-Biafran War 1967-1970. Archival sources show that the abandonment was due to its Biafran perspectives of the war. Sadly, these perspectives have remained unexamined to date, resulting in the perpetuation of a limited frame of analysis. This paper argues that the archival materials on the war can function as a research laboratory for reclaiming the abandoned voices and the publisher's ambivalent circumstances. Relying on postcolonial archival-literary methodology, the paper examines the politics of Heinemann’s gate-keeping practices and how they intersect with the Biafran authors’ resistance in the publishing of Biafran perspectives of the war. It surmises that such archival investigation can bring the vanishing memories to the public, contributing broadly to the conversations on the politics of publishing the African postcolonial.