Gaza Lecture 2: Chinua Achebe

Introduction

  • Last week provided an overview of the historical development of the field of Postcolonial Studies and its increasing range of practices, methods and strategies. Amongst theseI suggested that analysis and promotion of the lit emerging from former European coloniesamongst most important goals of PC Lit Studies
  • So today look at classic example of early stage of development of pc lit in form of TFA (1958) by Chinua Achebe, one of the most important non-western writers to have emerged in second half of 20C.

Achebe Bio

  • CA, now 81 years old, born in eastern Nigeria in 1930, a member of the Igbo ethnic group predominant in that part of the country (more than 250 ethnic groups and 527 languages / dialects in modern Nigeria); Igbo one of 3 major ethnic groups; mounted failed attempted breakaway from N inBiafran civil war 1967-70
  • CA parents converts to Protestant Christianity and CA brought up as Christian; however, many relatives, including an uncle he was particularly close to, remained faithful to local animist traditions. In one sense, a text like TFA can be understood as an attempt to negotiate between these two major cultural influences; or, more broadly understood, to construct a cross-roadsbetween the culture imposed by western colonialism and indigenous cultural tradition
  • Achebe studied at western-curriculum primary schools, where his teachers quickly recognised him as a gifted pupil; and later underwent secondary education at the elite GovernmentCollege in Umuahia; here the language medium was English, in and out of the class-room; here, too, he began to read widely in British literature, including the popular literature of empire. Disturbed by the latter’s rep of non-western, especially African peoples, egH Rider Haggard and John Buchan, which later became a major motivation in his own attempts to provide an alternative vision of Africa in his fiction
  • CA amongst first intake to the new UniversityCollege, Ibadan, set up by British in 1948 to provide N with graduates. Initially enrolled to study medicine, but switched to English history and theology after a year; at uni, he began to publish articles and fiction (short stories) and became further dismayed by the negative way that Africa was represented in British literature of empire, notably by serious writers like Joseph Conrad and Joyce Cary
  • After graduation in 1953, CA taught for a short period in a secondary school before joining the Nigerian Broadcasting Service, moving to the capital Lagos to do so. He began work on a novel and went abroad for the first time in 1956, on a training course with the BBC in London.
  • In 1957 Achebe sent this novel, now called TFA, to a London agent - and it was published by Heinemann the following year, becoming the first text in what was to become the company’s prestigious African Writers Series; this series one of first to bring the rapidly-developing field of what would become known as postcolonial literature to the world’s attention
  • TFA critically well-received in Britain; encouraged CA to continue writing and a succession of novels followed, from No Longer at Ease (1960) to Anthills of the Savannah (1987), together with many volumes of essays, children’s books, poetry and short stories.
  • Described by South African Nobel-prize winner Nadine Gordimer as ‘the father of African literature’[1], Achebe’s stature today is further marked by the award in 2007 of the Mann Booker International Prize for life-time achievement.

History of Nigeria

  • In pre-colonial times, the area now known as Nigeria a complex of local kingdoms, known to Europe from 15th c;amongst the most famous of these were Songhai and Benin, sophisticated cultures with a high level of political and economic integration and artistic activity. Ever-increasing pattern of trade (including slaves) and of exploration of coast and Niger riverby Europeans for next 400 years
  • history of modern Nigeria really begins with 1885 Berlin conference [explain: carve-up to avoid war over colonial territories between rival Euro powers] when European powers recognised what is now southern Nigeria as being within British sphere of influence; various previous trading companies consolidated into Royal Niger Company in 1886 which began to exert increasing influence, political as well as economic, over the region; in 1901 N became a Protectorate within the British Empire and in 1914 a Colony and Protectorate, divided into northern and southern provinces, the latter including CA’s area, Igboland
  • after World War II, nationalist agitation became increasingly widespread and, having decided to surrender India, the ‘jewel in the crown,’ in 1947, the rationale for retaining the rest of the British empire undermined; thus the British government began to respond positively to demands for self-government in N and a variety of other African possessions – and elsewhere. In 1954, the country became the (internally) self-governing Federation of Nigeria; and in 1958, the year of publication of TFA, full independence was promised for 1960; that granted, N becoming a republic within the Commonwealth in 1963
  • unlike some other parts of the British empire, for example Kenya and South Africa, Nigeria was not a settler colony. European immigration was very strictly regulated and there was a negligible population of white traders and administrators in the 1950s. This meant that the decolonization struggle in N was swift, largelyconsensual and peaceful, with none of the bloodshed which characterised the protracted struggles in Kenya or South Africa, where the large settler population was extremely reluctant to give up its privileges, both material and political.
  • Later pc history of N, which doesn’t concern us so much in relation to TFA, very mixed. In mid-1960s democratic civilian rule overthrown by succession of military dictators until 1999, withone or two brief interludes of civilian rule; dreadful civil war over Biafran secession 1967-70; N remains volatile; ethnic / religious divisions between Muslims in North and Christians / animists in South and East; long history of corruption and squandering of huge oil reserves; not helped by western complicity / interference; potential remains but many problems.
  • Most of Achebe’s fiction after TFA engages with the troubled history of postcolonial N; his scathing indictments of its corrupt elites got him into trouble with military leaderships and he’s had to spend a large part of his life abroad, notably teaching at universities in the USA, though has recently been able to return freely. 1068

CA’s representation of the colonial encounter: negatives

  • I mentioned earlier Achebe’s increasing distaste for the way that Africa has traditionally been represented in European culture. This is part of his larger critique of colonialism, which is one of the distinguishing features of both CA’s work and of early postcolonial literature more broadly. Indeed, CA sees this as a characteristic of Black writing from its inception, citing the example of the 18c ex-slave Olaudah Equiano, whose autobiography Achebe cites as ‘an attempt to counteract the lies and slander invented by some Europeans to justify the slave trade.’
  • TFA can be understood in several ways as a critique of colonialism and of colonial representation more specifically. In 1975 Achebe wrote an essay on Joseph Conrad’s famous novella, Heart of Darkness (1902; explain set in Congo). This essay called ‘An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,’ (1975); crystallises ways of thinking about the problems of European representation of Africa which had been bubbling away since CA first encountered such texts at school three decades earlier; more specificallyAchebe complains about a number of aspects of Conrad’s text which help us understand what TFA attempting to do
  • First of all, Achebe sees the lit of emp about Africa, rep by HoD, as being primarily concerned not with Africa, but with Europeans; it’s narcissistic, inother words, relegating the continent and its inhabitants to a marginal role or exotic backdrop in the narrative so that characteristically Eurocentric concerns can be explored;
  • by contrast TFA reverses this optic; this is a text in which Africa and its inhabitants take centre stage. Thus Europeans are not mentioned until p. 67 of the text, more than a third of the way through; and although their later role is obviously crucial in bringing about the decline of traditional Igboland, discursively they remain on the text’s margins.
  • Secondly, CA rejects Conrad’s stereotyping of Africa’s inhabitants; Acc ‘AIOF,’ Conrad uses the age-old stereotype that Africans are cannibals tosignifythat they are primitive, even less than human, as one further infers from the fact that the Congolese who join Marlow’s boat grunt and gibber rather than speak
  • Achebe addresses this problem in several ways. For example, he uses reverse stereotype; thus the English missionaries are called Smith and Brown, two of the commonest British names, making them types rather than individuals. Equally, the District Commissioner who appears at the end has no name but is simply a type of colonial administrator without any individuality or interiority.
  • Equally, CA constructs an African protagonist who is a richly-developed, three-dimensional, intensely human character. Okwonkwo belongs to the realm of tragedy, being both intensely admirable yet deeply flawed, with an array of motivations governing his behaviour. He thus differs radically from the simplistic representations of Africans in colonial writers like JC and JC
  • Third, CA associates violence as much, if not more, with the coloniser as with the colonised. Although, as will be seen, he provides a critique of Okwonkwo’s violence, Achebe symbolically compares African violence with European violence to the detriment of the latter. Thus while the villages of eastern N are prone to petty inter-ethnic conflicts, these are nothing compared with the violence visited on Africa by Europe in the name, ironically, of ‘pacification’(cf title of DC’s work at end). Thus the British completely destroy the village of Abama (124-7) when its inhabitants kill a single white man, a grossly excessive reaction which also appears to suggest that white life is infinitely more precious than black. Compare the productive negotiations over compensation between Umuofia and Mbanto on pp. 11-2 which leads to Ikemefuna’s arrival in U
  • Above all, perhaps, CA represents a vision of African life not as chaotic and primitive as in the literature of empire, but as a civilisation of a highly-developed kind. For example, tremendous emphasis is laid on the rituals of hospitality and visiting, even conversation can only begin after the exchange of courtesies and pleasantries; note how even a poor man like Unoka offers kola nut and alligator pepper when a neighbour comes visiting (p. 5) a ceremony which is the necessary preliminary to any form of negotiation.
  • Early in the text we are told that ‘among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.’ (p. 6) Note how the metaphor ‘palm-oil’ again establishes the difference of the world CA is describing. And note how the text is fullof proverbs drawn from the distilled experience of local life-patterns eg p. 5 ‘He who brings kola brings life.’
  • More broadly speaking, there is a clearly established legal system with penalties for the kind of transgressions which Okwonkwo commits during Peace Week; the economic system is co-operative and not particularly exploitative; the political system is consensual and democratic and egalitarian; p. 7 ‘a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father’ [but ref ‘kings’ 8]; even if it is patriarchal, it is neither despotic nor even authoritarian, though elders or ndichie dominant; cultural activities are manifold and participated in by all, whether the traditions of music embraced by Okwonkwo’s father, sport (wrestling) oral story-telling or the masquerades, which resemble drama combined with dancing and mime; there is a complex system of religious beliefs, involving Gods, prophecy and moral injunction governing the behaviour of the people.
  • To this extent, Achebe’s detailed portrayal of so many of these different aspects of the daily lifeof Okwonkwo’s people might be considered to make his text not so much a novel as a mode of anthropology. However, it is anthropology with a radical twist. Anthropology is identified by Edward Said and others as something the West performs on the non-West, as part of its quest to acquire knowledge about subject peoples inorder to be better able to control them in the name of the imperial mission. We have a good example of such historical anthropology in the form of the book that the DC is writing at the end of CA’s text. Entitled, symptomatically, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger, it confines the richly detailed story of Okwonkwo to a single paragraph. What CA does is to expand this single paragraph in colonial discourse to a text of nearly 200 pages, emphasising the enormous amount which gets left out when outsiders, particularly ignorant and unsympathetic ones, seek to tell the story of one’s community. To this extent, CA’s text could be described as ‘counter-anthropology’ or ‘auto-ethnography’; taking one of the coloniser’s standard forms of knowledge and appropriating it for new ends which differ markedly in their political significance from the original. 1059

CA’s representation of the colonial encounter: positives

  • Having considered aspects of Achebe’s critique of colonialism, I now want to complicate the argument. I said earlier in my lecture that Achebe was raised in a Christian household and Christianity was, of course, something which arrived in Nigeria in the wake of colonialism. Thus to some extent, it can be considered from the point of view of the author as one of the positive consequences of colonialism; despite his negative representation of one of the missionaries, Mr Brown, mentioned earlier.
  • CA’s critique of traditional culture is one way in which the positives of colonial encounter are implied. Nationalist discourse is sometimes liable to fall intothe trap of nostalgia for a tradition interrupted by colonialism, even a kind of ‘golden ageism.’ CA, by contrast, values trad cult but does not idealise it. Let’s look at three issues in particular. First of all, CA provides an implicit critique of the patriarchy of traditional Igbo culture and the lowly position of women within it. Note how O’s wives do not all have names; in other words, they lack the individuality available to male characters like O. Instead the emphasis within traditional culture is on women’s social functions, for example, first, second or third wife, or as mothers. They are always seen in relation to men or children. O’s patriarchy is further implicitly criticised in the violence he offers his wives, notably during Peace Week. While O suffers sanctions for this breach of decorum, there is a sense that violence against wives is nonetheless tolerated for the other 51 weeks of the year.
  • O’s excessive masculinism is also implicitly criticised by other means. It leads him to fear any sort of emotional weakness, which in turn explains his willingness to kill Ikemefuna, his adoptive son. While O is not necessarily representative of his culture in this respect – some of his friends are shocked by what happens – he represents a tendency within traditional culture which CA counterposes with the Christian emphasis on love, forgiveness and reconciliation; these are values which attract O’s son Nwoye, a fictional representation of CA’s own father as a boy, away from his culture of origin
  • Consider, too, CA’s treatment of certain ‘Savage practices’ in trad soc: first there are the efulefu or outcasts from village who live a marginal existence in the forest on the outskirts of the village; second, we might think of the twins thrown into forest to die. In the first instance, CA also points to damaging divisions within trad soc which European colonialism is able to exploit. The first converts to Christianity come from precisely this constituency of outcasts, driving a wedge into traditional society and preventing it offering a united front against the invaders. This internal division is exacerbated by the larger conflicts represented by ‘inter-tribal wars’ (p. 7) which prevent the different peoples living in N putting up a united front against colonial invasion and allowing the imperialists to ‘divide and rule.’
  • Econ development
  • Two further positivegifts of colonialism to consider are nationalism andlanguage. CA is certainly a nationalist and as such appreciates the construct of the nation state which is introduced by colonialism. The key essay here is ‘The African Writer and the English Language’(1965) where he argues: ‘Let us give the devil his due: colonialism in Africa disrupted many things, but it did create big political units where there were small, scattered ones before.’ Remember what I said at the beginning of my lecture. Modern N composed of more than 250 ethnic groups and 527 languages / dialects
  • How can one create a single, more or less unified nation out of so much disparate material? For CA, the crucial issue is not a common religion, ethnicity or ideology but a common language.
  • He states: ‘There are not many countries in Africa today where you could abolish the language of the erstwhile colonial powers and still retain the faculty for mutual communication.’ The new African state needs such a common language to work effectively, law, education etc. So while CA recogs that Eng was an imposition of colon he argues: ‘let us not in rejecting the evil throw out the good with it.’
  • CA accepts proposition that new nat lits for the newly-independent Af countries are desirable; however, he insists that ‘A national literature is one … that is written in the national language.’ By contrast: ‘An ethnic literature is one which is available only to one ethnic group within the nation.’
  • Acc CA, English is the only true national language of Nigeria and of most other former British Af colons; all the others in Nig, like Hausa, Ibo (his own mother-tongue) are, however big the groups speaking them, simply sub-national or ethnic ones, so any literature they are written in is ethnic, not national lit; the reality is that Eng is the only common lang of all these diff groups; to promote an ethnic lang to status of national lang by implic an oppress polit act.
  • Thus, in order to create both an African lit and African nat lits, have to have common means of communic. CA illustrates with two examples of meetings with other Af poets a) Joseph Kariuki of Kenya; diff ethnic lang, mother-tongue; but successful inter-action cos share English b) Shabaan Robert, swahili poet of Tanganyika; unsuccessful cos SR didn’t know English
  • Thus CA defends writers like himself from the charge that writers like himself are ‘unpatriotic smart-alecs with an eye on the main chance – outside their own countries.’ In other words, perfectly legitimate to write in English as an act of nationalist self-assertion
  • Note that CA doesn’t insist that Af writers write only in English; refers to half-a-dozen Nig langs which can sustain a lit; but argues that lits in ‘These languages will just have to develop as tributaries to feed the one central language enjoying nationwide currency.’ Consequently praises Chief Fagunwa ‘who will choose to write in their native tongue and insure that out ethnic literature will flourish side by side with the national ones.’
  • Eng also approp in other ways; because it is a ‘world language,’ it can reach a multiplicity of audiences; local African ones within a given nation-space, other African ones in diff nations; and the rest of the world; contrast position of Brazilian writers; Eng especially useful to re-educ former colonisers about realities of Af life; challenge its representations, esp those of col disc;
  • Address supposed liabilities of use of Eng in creative writing; denies that imposs write effectively in second lang; eg Conrad the Pole; Af examples, eg Equiano, mentioned earlier to contemporary N writers like Christopher Okigbo and John Pepper Clark 1127

Hybridity