Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn’t: Reflections On Achebe’s New Book (2)

You are correct, Kenneth Harrow,  in discussing in  the same context,   the larger theoretical question of the relationship between writing and reality and the question of self representation as opposed to perception by others.

These two subjects meet in the questions about Achebe's efforts to render an account of the Nigerian Civil War and related developments.

The entire crisis being discussed may also be describes as framed by issues of self-representation and mutual perception. 

Self Representation in Speech and Self Representation through Action :Problematics 

Noted-'it is how he represented himself, and how he was taken by others.'

But in this issue, self representation is problematic.

The coup actors claimed to be nationalists but killed

Yoruba and Northern Nigerian politicians

Yoruba and Northern Nigerian high ranking military officers 

and spared 

The Igbos in related  positions. They killed one Igbo person- an officer who was not of high rank.

This contradiction between self representation and action in a coup led mainly by Igbos, was central to the notion that the coup was an Igbo plot or, as I would put it, a coup that served Igbo interests, as demonstrated in its execution as different from the verbal claims about  its vision. 

Some analysts claim that Nzeogwu, the most prominent leader of the coup, was betrayed by the other coup actors who ethnicised the coup.

Ironsi, the most senior army officer, presented himself as working for national interests by passing a unification decree after the coup, concentrating power in his hands at the national centre, but , coupled with the time it was taking him to bring the coup murderers to justice, and the fact that he was Igbo, contributed to his actions being   seen as a continuation of the Igbo favoured strategy created by the coup.

These disjunctions between self representation and action in the eyes of many torched off the counter coup and pogroms that followed.

Realism as Fidelity to Reality or as Ideological Construction of Reality

On realist writing, even if one argues that realist writing is also an ideological construct, a point of view I think needs to be qualified, Jeyifo's point could still hold. 

I think your description of realist writing is one view and Jeyifo's  another. 

You are arguing for a reflexive relationship with the very concept of realism. 

I think, though, that you overstretch the possibilities of that perspective  in arguing that realism, with particular reference to the phrase I highlight,  " is a genre, a construct, like all others; no closer to "real facts" than other genres, but ideologically presented to the reader as if it were an imitation of reality. in that regard, it is more immersed in ideology than other genres that make more obvious their constructions of "reality."

Jeyifo is describing his understanding of a vision represented by realism as fidelity to reality. Some  writers  such as Emile Zola are described as aspiring towards that goal. 

We may contextualise their efforts by describing them as representing another ideological position but that will not detract  from the fact that a writer pursuing such an ideal is operating  on a different  point of the continuum dramatising the relationship between art and lived experience than a magical realist/fantasy writer, for example.

In the light of such an ideal as demonstrated  by the writer's work, one may expect certain possibilities from that writer as different from other possibilities more in keeping with other  kinds of writing that writer  is not known for.  

Perhaps Jeyifo ought to have qualified his understanding of realism in art against the background of the understanding of all constructed forms as ideological constructs mediating the perspectives of reality that they privilege as opposed to other possibilities they downplay or exclude. 

Even then, Jeyifo could be understood as describing realism as an artistic ideal that tries, within the form of the transformative  character  of art, to demonstrate historical  actuality. 

Between Achebe and the Plane or Trick Mirror 

One may argue that the point of departure between the view of realism you present and that of Jeyifo's is the crux of the disappointment  many have with Achebe's stance on this subject- he conveniently  hones in on perspectives that ignore the complexity of the subject he deals with. 

People looking up to him as the equivalent of a  statesman were expecting a more robust treatment of the subject, yet, in the essay that previewed  the book, he was content to make grave allegations without trying to justify them, or  when making such justifications, employing shallow ahistorical justifications,  a disturbing act on account of the weight of his reputation and the consequent carrying power of his words. 

  People are arguing that his book continues  a similar trend by ignoring the various strands of the issues he addresses, while focusing on those strands that suit his problematic "Nigeria is anti-Igbo" vision. 

So, Jeyifo expected a thorough Achebe but perhaps he has encountered what some have described as the parochial storyteller  Achebe, whose  interest is not in an effort to arrive at reality but to construct a view of reality  he finds convenient for his narrow purpose. 

Thanks

toyin 

On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 3:42 AM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

this is probably not the place to argue this, but i feel my friend bj is not correct in his definition of realism. it is a genre, a construct, like all others; no closer to "real facts" than other genres, but ideologically presented to the reader as if it were an imitation of reality. in that regard, it is more immersed in ideology than other genres that make more obvious their constructions of "reality."
achebe's title as the greatest realist in the past 150 years is overblown, in my view, regardless of the definition of realism employed.
further, the issue of ethnicity here should take into account not simply the politics of the coup plotters or the leadership of the regions, but how the events were presented by the population to themselves: did people say, "those igbos in biafra want to secede"? did the biafrans, like achebe, say the same?
it isn't a question of whether this or that individual came from the north or spoke hausa or wore robes: it is how he represented himself, and how he was taken by others.
ken

On 12/29/12 9:43 PM, Chido Onumah wrote:

First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)

By Biodun Jeyifo

Superficially, it was understandable to conclude that this was indeed "an Igbo coup". However, scratch a little deeper and complicating factors are discovered: One of the majors was Yoruba, and Nzeogwu himself was Igbo in name only…he was widely known as someone who saw himself as a Northerner, spoke fluent Hausa and little Igbo, and wore the traditional Northern dress when not in uniform.

Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country

In the end, I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like.

Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile

If in There Was A Country "a Nigerian ruling class" only appears in the narratives and reflections of the author in the final fourth part of the book, this is only the most stunning aspect of the general intellectual and discursive architecture of the book. This "architecture", this "grammar" is none other than the fact that for nearly all other parts of the book with the exception of that concluding fourth part, all of Achebe's "explanations", all of his speculations in the book are relentlessly driven by ethnicity, and a very curious conception of ethnicity for that matter. Logically, inevitably, the corollary to this is that "explanations" and speculations based on class, and more specifically on intra-class and inter-class factors, are either completely ignored or even deliberately excluded. As I shall presently demonstrate, this is a remarkable departure from virtually all of Achebe's writings prior to this recently published book. For now, let me illustrate this startling matter of the complete subsumption of class into ethnicity in There Was A Country with two particularly telling examples out of innumerable other instances in the book.

The first of our two selected examples pertains to nothing less than the January 15, 1966 coup itself, arguably the "opening shot" in the chain of events and crises that led to the Nigeria-Biafra war, the central subject of Achebe's book. It so happens that there is quite a significant body of both general and academic writings and discourses on this signal event. And indeed, Achebe's long citation of his sources in the bibliographic section of his book mentions many of these writings and discourses on the January 15, 1966 coup. It is therefore baffling that of the variety of "motives" or "interests" that have been ascribed to the coup plotters, the single one that Achebe addresses in his book is ethnicity, "tribe": Was it, or was it not, "an Igbo coup".

There have been suggestions, there have been speculations that it was a "southern coup", this in light of the fact that most of the political and military leaders assassinated or inadvertently killed were, overwhelmingly, either northerners or southerners in alliance with northern leaders. More pertinent to the present discussion, there has also been an even more plausible speculation that class and ideological interests were significant in the motives of influential members of the coup plotters like Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and Wale Ademoyega. Of the two alliances of the ruling class parties of the First Republic, the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA) and the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA), with the exception of Festus Okotie-Eboh, the Finance Minister, all those assassinated belonged to the NNA. S.L. Akintola, the Premier of the Western Region, was a diehard NNA chieftain; there is compelling evidence that this was why he was assassinated while Michael Okpara, the Premier of the Eastern Region, was spared because he was a major figure in the UPGA alliance. As a matter of fact, there is clear evidence that some of the coup plotters had the intension of making or "forcing" Chief Awolowo to assume the office of Prime Minister in the belief that the progressive northern allies of UPGA were far more regionally and nationally popular and credible than the southern and conservative allies of the NNA.

Achebe's book pays not the slightest attention to these other probable factors in assessing the motives of the January 15 coup plotters. Was it, or was it not, "an Igbo coup"? That is all Achebe is interested in exploring - and disproving – in There Was A Country. Of the many threads that form the complex fabric of that fateful coup d'état, this single thread of ethnicity or "tribe" is all that Achebe strenuously tries to unravel in his book. This may be because by the time of the terrible pogroms of May 1966 against Igbos in the North, all other plausible motives for the coup had been almost completely erased by assertions, indeed pronouncements that the coup had incontrovertibly been an Igbo coup. But Achebe's book was written more than forty years after the event and it had the advantage of both historical hindsight and a vast body of accumulated research and discourses. For this reason, there is no other conclusion left for us other than a finding that Achebe almost certainly has a driving rationale for sticking exclusively to ethnicity or "tribalism" while simultaneously ignoring or excluding all other plausible, and in some cases factual, factors.

At any rate, this is precisely what Achebe repeats in the second of our two examples. This pertains to the period of regional and nation-wide crises between 1964 to 1966 that preceded the January 15 coup and the Nigeria-Biafra war. Here, in Achebe's own words, is the particular case: "By the time the government of the Western region also published a white paper outlining the dominance of the ethnic Igbo in key government positions in the Nigerian Railway Corporation and the Nigerian Ports Authority, the situation for ethnic Igbos working in Western Nigeria in particular and all over Nigeria in general had become untenable" (p. 77). This is indeed a fact, but it is a partial fact, one aspect of a complex of facts and realities many of which Achebe chooses to ignore or obscure. It is useful to carefully state what these other facts and realities were.

First, the government of the Western region that Achebe alludes to here was that of Chief S.L. Akintola and his party, the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP). Arguably, these were the most perniciously right-wing government and party in southern Nigeria in the entirety of our post-independence political history. Achebe completely ignores this fact and fixes exclusively on this government's anti-Igbo programs and diatribes. Secondly, Akintola's government and party were not only virulently anti-Igbo, they were also scurrilously anti-welfarist and anti-socialist. A brilliant orator and a master of Yoruba rhetorical arts, Akintola tirelessly satirized a range of targets and issues of which Igbos were only one composite group. He was particularly fond of spewing out twisted, parodic visions of welfarism and socialism in which everything would be shared – wives, children, family heirlooms and personal belongings. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that Achebe had to have been aware of these facts and realities; but he ignores them completely. Thirdly and lastly, Akintola and his party quite deliberately stoked the fires of intra-ethnic tensions and resentments within Yoruba sub-groups and they took this as far as founding a rival Pan-Yoruba organization to the Egbe Omo Oduduwa which they called "Egbe Omo Olofin". And for good measure, they tried, unsuccessfully, to instigate the late Duro Ladipo to write and produce a play to counter Hubert Ogunde's famous pro-Awolowo and pro-UPGA play, Yoruba Ronu.

It must be emphasized that all these intra-class and intra-ethnic facts and realities were so well-known at the time that Achebe could not have been ignorant of them. We are left with no other conclusion than that Achebe simply had no place in his book for any factors, any realities beyond a pristine, autochthonous conception of ethnic identity and belonging in which no other aspects of social identification are allowed to "contaminate" the singularity of ethnicity . This, I suggest, is what we see in its quintessence in the argument expressed in the first of the two epigraphs to this essay to the effect that Nzeogwu being Igbo "in name only", the January 15 coup could not have been "an Igbo coup".

In last week's beginning essay in this series, I made the assertion that Achebe is one of the greatest realist writers in world literature in the last century and half. I now wish to clarify the relevance of that assertion to the present discussion. One of the most compelling claims of realism is that it is the mode or genre in which the chain of representation in a work of literature or, more broadly, an intellectual treatise, comes closest to the chain of causality in nature, history or society. In a layman's formulation of this "big grammar", this means that above all other modes, forms and genres, it is in realism that what is presented in a work of art or a treatise is as close as you can possibly get to how things actually happened. Another way of putting this across is to suggest that typically and unavoidably, there being always and forever a big gap between how things actually happen and how they are (re)presented in writing, it is only the most gifted and talented realist writers that come close to bridging that gap.

In all of Achebe's books on our pre-colonial and postcolonial experience, he had come closer than perhaps any other writer to this conception and practice of realism. More specifically, ethnicity, class and individuality had been superbly interwoven and productively explored in such titles as No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, The Trouble with Nigeria and Home and Exile. Thus, in my opinion, There Was A Country marks a radical rupture in Achebe's writings on our country, a rupture in which the realist rigour of his previous writings gives way to, or is considerably modified by a mystique, an apologia, an uncompromising defense of Igbo ethno-nationalism. I do not think that Achebe took this path in a fit of absent-mindedness; to the contrary, I think it is a decision, a choice he made in this new book quite deliberately and purposively. In next week's continuation of this series, I shall deal extensively even if only speculatively with this choice, with particular reference to what I personally regard as one of the most controversial aspects of There Was A Country, this being the link that Achebe makes in the book between what he deems the endemic ethnic scapegoating of Igbos in our country and the utter collapse of meritocracy in post-civil war Nigeria.

Concluded.

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

 

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--   kenneth w. harrow   faculty excellence advocate  distinguished professor of english  michigan state university  department of english  619 red cedar road  room C-614 wells hall  east lansing, mi 48824  ph. 517 803 8839  harrow@msu.edu

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