have you noticed the glosses in Things Fall Apart, where he will use an igbo term, and then tell the reader what it means?
the implied reader is the outsider, not only because of those explanations, but because the entire book does the same: it describes something--a set of people, their practices, their surroundings--for the benefit of those who do not know these people, their lives.it is an "insider" writing for the "outsider," even if the outsiders are the children and grandchildren of that generation of umuofia (as was chinua himself).
i do think the decision to submit the ms. for publication in london, where the novel would then be sold to an english, and then a worldwide anglophone audience, as well as to nigerians, was not by chance. he was writing for the next generation as well. his most famous statement on this: "I would be quite satisfied if my novels did no more than teach my readers that their past--with all its imperfections--was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them." what i read this as meaning is that people like me were to read his novels over the shoulders of the african readers for whom this statement is intended. and achebe is so aware of my presence, he is translating for me as he goes along.
so why modernism? not in the sense of avant-gardist, but rather a modernist world-view in which the old world of european high culture, european sensibilities as the center of true civilization and value, was to be contested by another vision of value and of the world. in part, this novel was a response to the horrific images of africa purveyed by joyce cary (grotesqueries of mr. johnson) upon which the europeans could base their sense of superiority. but a new notion of a modern world would be created when the "New Africa" no longer consisted in the "assimilés" or worse, the "évolués."
if the europeans depended on their uncivilized africans in order to know themselves as civilized, and superior, what would they be when the ironic, subtle sensibilities of the narrator of TFA or Arrow of God, were now ironizing their civilizing missions in terms that debunked their own textual assumptions, mocking the colonial administrators' words at the end of TFA. or to take another image, as those all those eyes that joseph conrad described as looking at marlowe the white passengers on the boat as it moved up the congo river were now laughing as they wrote the real story about their trip into the Heart of Darkness. when a darkness is writing back it can no longer be thought a darkness, much less a shadow.
what was that project, to reengage the colonizers so as to restore an equilibrium in the reader's mind, partly to correct the errors of prejudice, but simultaneously to celebrate the dancer who could stand in two places at once so as to see something that the english, capable of standing only above their africans, could not see. the great irony of genet in undoing a racist bourgeois society, or the quieter irony of achebe whose vision was to see a dancing masquerade, publishing in london, writing in lagos. in that sense postcolonialism was undergoing a painful birth, astride the grave of yesterday, with echoes of modernist laughter of beckett in godot.
waiting for godot: 1953
things fall apart: 1958
genet's The Blacks: 1959
who were the audiences? here is what genet wrote:
| This play, written, I repeat, by a white man, is intended for a white audience, but if, which is unlikely, it is ever performed before a black audience, then a white person, male or female, should be invited every evening. The organizer of the show should welcome him formally, dress him in ceremonial costume and lead him to his seat, preferably in the first row of the orchestra. The actors will play for him. A spotlight should be focused upon this symbolic white throughout the performance. But what if no white person accepted? Then let white masks be distributed to the black spectators as they enter the theater. And if the blacks refuse the masks, then let a dummy be used.[1] |
the same with Things Fall Apart, for which i can be seen as the dummy in the audience, the necessary dummy since he was writing for me, as well as all those black children of tomorrow
ken
On 5/30/13 6:29 AM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:
Totally with you there, Kenneth Harrow-
'TFA was a fine novel, but not his best, and for me, not his most complex, most interesting....send me the ARROW, and add an H, and it is perfect)'.
I would like to understand this view better though-
'he was writing on the scale of contemporary modernism in the 1950s, and was addressing a world audience with a world-literature approach.'
Could you elaborate or suggest something I could read?
thanks
toyin
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 6:28 PM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
i agree with toyin. but not simply because the novels were much more than one-dimensional encomia, were not apologetics for african inferiority or anything of the sort. they were critiques, as you indicate, toyin; but also were larger than "regional" or "ethnic" literature, larger in ambition that "minor literature."
he was writing on the scale of contemporary modernism in the 1950s, and was addressing a world audience with a world-literature approach. this became increasingly apparent as his writing grew with the novels and stories after Things Fall Apart.
(am i the only one getting tired of people writing about achebe as if he wrote only ONE novel, the ONE GREAT NOVEL? he wrote many novels,many essays, many stories, poems. for many of us, TFA was a fine novel, but not his best, and for me, not his most complex, most interesting....send me the ARROW, and add an H, and it is perfect)
ken
On 5/29/13 9:17 AM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:
I dont think Achebe's literary works were written to celebrate Igbo supremacy.
The novels, the ones I remember best being Things fall Apart and A Man of the People, are deeply ironic and self critical from within Igbo civilization, rather than simply celebratory, while they project the grandeur of Igbo civilization.
As for Ayinla Mukaiba 's critique, he is spot on in tracing Achebe's trajectory through a series of writings and his uncharitable response to Awolowo's funeral.
Correlate the references from Ayinla with Achebe's unfortunate last essay, which has been wisely removed from its location on the Guardian UK website, where he luxuriated in his uncritical claims of Awo being out to decimate Igbos during the war, how Igbos have not and are not integrated into Nigeria, focusing on impoprtaion of stock fish into Aba after the war, and making no concrete analysis of Igbo life after the war, and the examples given by Ikhide vanish into smoke as less than conclusive.
thanks
toyin
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 10:57 AM, Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:
Prof,
You would have to clamber on to the next pantheon to ask Professor Achebe his nationality, that matter pass me abeg! In terms of the use of tenses, you raise an important question that none of our latter-day reviewers could have asked. Because they were not reviewing the book. What many do not realize is that in my analysis fully 2/3rds of what Achebe wrote in that book can be found in his previous essays. speeches and so on. For example the controversial statement about Chief Obafemi Awolowo he first uttered in thirty years ago in 1983 - to deafening silence because many of our intellectuals no longer read. The only reason they found out is that the quote appeared in an oyinbo newspaper, someone accidentally read it and then came the wailing and carrying on.
So back to your original question, that intriguing statement may have come from an old speech and the editors of the book were too careless to edit it properly. A while back when I was writing a column for Next I complained bitterly about the tendency of Achebe's publishers to recycle his old works into "new" books. Well, this one was a resounding success, especially since not many people I know had read his old works. Go figure. Sometimes you just want to holler!
- IkhideStalk my blog at www.xokigbo.comFollow me on Twitter: @ikhideJoin me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide
From: Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Cc: Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 4:12 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mukaiba: In Dispraise Of Achebe
P.s
Chief Ikhide R. Ikheloa,
I am still slightly puzzled. Could you please decipher this for us : It would appear that Mr. Achebe is writing about the past in the present tense : "I find the Nigerian situation untenable. If I had been a Nigerian, I think I would have been in the same situation as Wole Soyinka is— in prison."
Was/ is he saying that Nigeria is a prison?Did Chinua Achebe pass away as a Nigerian or a Biafran?
On Tuesday, 28 May 2013 23:21:13 UTC+2, Ikhide wrote:"If you read the book very well, you would see his profuse eulogies for the Flora Nwapas, the Christopher Okigbos, the Cyprian Ekwensis and none for any other ethnic national. It was as if only the Igbos existed."
Ayinla Mukaiba
Yet another review by someone who did not read There Was a Country. Not true. Achebe was quite generous in his praises for many. Here is what he said about Wole Soyinka:
"Wole Soyinka was already regarded by this time as Africa's foremost dramatist. He had published The Swamp Dweller, The Lion and the Jewel, and The Trials of Brother Jero as well as collections of poetry. The Road is considered by many to be his greatest play. A Dance of the Forest, a biting criticism of Nigeria's ruling classes, was the first of what was to become his signature role— as one of the most consistent critics of misrule from his generation. His 1964 novel, The Interpreters, as well as ventures into recording, film, and poetry, showcased his versatility. Soyinka's attempts to avert a full-blown civil war by meeting with Colonel Ojukwu and Victor Banjo, as well as with then lieutenant colonel Olusegun Obasanjo, would earn him enemies in the Nigerian federal government and a twenty-two-month imprisonment.
The story I was told about this incident was that Wole, fed up with the federal government's unsuccessful treatment of the Biafra issue, had traveled to secessionist Biafra in an attempt to appeal for a cease-fire to the hostilities. He planned to set up an antiwar delegation made up of intellectuals, artists, and writers from both sides of the conflict— and from around the world— to achieve his aim. When he returned to Nigeria the authorities arrested him and accused him of assisting Biafra in the purchase of weapons of war. 1 There was no evidence to corroborate their case, and Wole was imprisoned without bail. Later, to justify holding him without evidence, the federal government accused Wole of being a Biafran agent or spy, trumped-up charges that he categorically denied. I remember relating my disgust about Soyinka's predicament to the editors of Transition in 1968 during the war: "I have no intention of being placed in a Nigerian situation at all. I find it intolerable. I find the Nigerian situation untenable. If I had been a Nigerian, I think I would have been in the same situation as Wole Soyinka is— in prison." 2 There was great concern for Wole's health and safety as time went on. For many of the months he was in prison he was held in solitary confinement and moved from one prison to another. Most of us in Biafra were appalled. PEN International and many major writers of the time— Norman Mailer comes to mind— led a vigorous protest on his behalf, but he was not released until close to the very end of the war."
Achebe, Chinua (2012-10-11). There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra (Kindle Locations 1741-1759). Penguin Press HC, The. Kindle Edition.
As for the rest of this "dispraise (talk about pompous nonsense) the errors are so glaring it would be beneath me to attempt rebuttals. Life is too rich for that nonsense.
And here is what he said about Chief Obafemi Awolowo (no one of these Yoruba tribal warriors would ever mention this, by the way)
"By the time I became a young adult, Obafemi Awolowo had emerged as one of Nigeria's dominant political figures. He was an erudite and accomplished lawyer who had been educated at the University of London. When he returned to the Nigerian political scene from England in 1947, Awolowo found the once powerful political establishment of western Nigeria in disarray— sidetracked by partisan and intra-ethnic squabbles. Chief Awolowo and close associates reunited his ancient Yoruba people with powerful glue— resuscitated ethnic pride— and created a political party, the Action Group, in 1951, from an amalgamation of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, the Nigerian Produce Traders' Association, and a few other factions. 4
Over the years Awolowo had become increasingly concerned about what he saw as the domination of the NCNC by the Igbo elite, led by Azikiwe. Some cynics believe the formation of the Action Group was not influenced by tribal loyalities but a purely tactical political move to regain regional and southern political power and influence from the dominant NCNC.
Initially Chief Obafemi Awolowo struggled to woo support from the Ibadan-based (and other non-Ijebu) Yoruba leaders who considered him a radical and a bit of an upstart. However, despite some initial difficulty, Awolowo transformed the Action Group into a formidable, highly disciplined political machine that often outperformed the NCNC in regional elections. It did so by meticulously galvanizing political support in Yoruba land and among the riverine and minority groups in the Niger Delta who shared a similar dread of the prospects of Igbo political domination. 5
Achebe, Chinua (2012-10-11). There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra (Kindle Locations 784-797). Penguin Press HC, The. Kindle Edition.
Abo mi re o!
O'dua!
- IkhideStalk my blog at www.xokigbo.comFollow me on Twitter: @ikhideJoin me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide
From: adeyemi bukola oyeniyi <oyen...@gmail.com>
To: usaafric...@ googlegroups.com; Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups. com>
Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2013 6:10 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mukaiba: In Dispraise Of Achebe
Mukaiba: In Dispraise Of AchebeBy Ayinla MukaibaONE of the reasons Africa's growth is stunted is what I call – pardon the bombast – the fetishization of the dead. We turn the dead into so great a fetish and canonize them immediately they breathe their last. Evil men a few seconds ago suddenly assume the garb of angels the moment they die, so cloaked because of the age-long aphorism that cautions against speaking ill of the dead. In a great way, this emboldens evil men of today and has made their evil hydra-headed.This rankles my stomach to no end. What bigoted hypocrisy this is that has become the refrain on the lips of the living! Why can't we progressively shame evil doers in their lifetimes and even at their departure, so as to serve as a disincentive to potential evil doers that whenever they exit, society will reserve the hottest scurrilous tongue against their acts and misacts while alive?Chinua Achebe, great author, literary scholar, poet and storyteller of note comes under reference here. His death has depleted the literary firmament of writers whose works breathed life into the inertia of our intellectual environment. There are seldom as talented writers as Achebe in this part of the world any longer. In the eulogy penned by John Pepper Bekeredemo-Clark and Wole Soyinka, these equally great authors spoke of the near irreplaceability of Chinua in the literary firmament.When you read Things Fall Apart and its suffusion with African proverbs, culture and language, you will almost mythify Chinua as a gnome who hailed from the spirit world but was loaned to humanity by the spirit world; that he took temporary residency on earth. How could a man, born of a woman, aggregate the thinking and culture of his people into such an unputdownable book for posterity as this? How could a man codify the worldviews, thoughts, philosophy and ways of life of his people in such a way that he colonizes other peoples as prisoners of his people's ways of life? For, before Achebe's book, many of us were alien to the persona of the Igbo man. But Achebe opened the book of the lives of his people bare, threw the gate open into their historico-societal lifestyle, their weltachuung and upturned them into the lives of the rest of the world. Knowingly or unknowingly, since the 1950s when Chinua emerged as one of the authors of note on the African continent with his Things Fall Apart, the centre has refused to hold for the rest of the world, as we have transferred our centre to the Igbo cosmology; we have become slaves of his Igbo thinking which we drink in intoxicating suffusion.We can reel into tomes of Achebe's literary scholarship, a shuttle of which Wole Soyinka recently made in an interview with Sahara Reporters. But, after all that and all that about Achebe's literary scholarship, full stop! Chinua was an extremely bigoted man who saw the world only from the prism of his Igbo people. For him, humanity ceases to exist outside the locus of Igbo and indeed, the world could go jump inside the Zambesi River once his Igbo people are sequestered inside the safe haven of a decent existence.For anyone who was alive to witness the 1966 pogrom and the Nigerian civil war, especially if you were Igbo, you already possess in your being cicatrices that will last you through a life time. The reprehensible massacre of the Igbo in the North, the beheading of Akaluka in Kano and the recent extinguishing of several Igbo in a Southbound bus in Kaduna, are some of the callous vilifications of the Igbo and his unfortunate lot in the Nigerian nation.The above could anger anyone and it did gnaw at the pancreas of the great storyteller. But Chinua became so paranoid about these ethnic vilifications of the Igbo and refused to forgive any race he presumed had a hand in the suppression of his people. His vituperations were vivid in virtually all the interface he had with the rest of Nigeria in his literary voyage. He amplified most of the character flaws that the Yoruba noticed in Nnamdi Azikiwe and his West African Pilot. Those who were alive during this period would recollect that The Pilot over-celebrated Igbo who travelled overseas for the golden fleece at their departure and arrival in Nigeria. The converse was the case whenever any other ethnic nationality recorded same achievement. Mbonu Ojike, ace Pilot columnist and Zik, with his Weekend Catechism, did a great job of trumpeting Igbo achievers and relegating any other nationality with same achievement. It was this perceived media projective inequality that led to the establishment of other newspapers and the upturn of Daily Service, the National Youth Movement (NYM) organ, edited by Ernest Sese Okoli, into a converse of Zik's Pilot which also began to fan ethnic agenda the moment editors like Samuel Ladoke Akintola and Bisi Onabanjo took over the editing suite.If the 1966 pogrom bored crevasse of hatred that could never be filled in Chinua's heart, the civil war even dug a greater cesspit of anger in his subconscious. Everyone who contributed to the failure of the Igbo Biafran agenda became object of literary crucifixion and denigration in the hands of Chinua. Odumegwu Ojukuwu, whom many Igbo hated immediately after the war, especially over alleged voyeuristic liaison with Cuban imports inside his bunker in Umuahia while hunger and kwashiokor killed children of war-front soldiers; Chinua upped the ante of his heroism. Conversely, administrators on the side of Nigeria who sought every means to return Nigeria to normalcy, he scurrilously disparaged. The archetype of his disdain and vilification, till death, was Obafemi Awolowo whom he disdained in death and even while alive.Achebe had shown his disdain for Awo when this man of uncommon sagacity passed on May 2, 1987. In the defunct Thisweek magazine of June 15,1987, while Nigerians and African political maestros poured encomiums on Awo, Achebe chose to insult the dead. In a rather insipid piece he entitled The Apotheosis of Awolowo, Chinua wrote, "Chief Awolowo was a great Nigerian leader in so far as he was a Nigerian and a leader. But his contribution to Nigerian public affairs of the last 40 years did not qualify him as a great national leader… to turn the burial of a tribal leader to a state funeral with invitations to foreign countries is both absurd and unacceptable".The novelist and poet was not done yet. His words got more pungent and caustic. "It is in the light of this simple fact that the decision of the federal government to accord the status of a Head of State to him in death should be seen as no less than a national swindle" As a parting shot, the former professor of English at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka summarized the bile in his lacerating cudgel: "Despite the clowning circus of ex-politicians and would –be politicians in Ikenne in recent weeks, there is no doubt that serious minded Nigerians are highly critical or even contemptuous of the expensive hocus-pocus, which is now being staged in their name".Where Achebe got it wrong was that, at the war front, you are to fight and not to preach morals. The moment Ojukwu declared war against Nigeria, he was no longer the Odumegwu that Awolowo and co. visited but an enemy of Nigeria. All his people (unfortunately) became enemies of Nigeria and they could not be treated as friends. Biafrans didn't treat Nigerians as friends as well. That was why Murtala Muhammed faced his waterloo in Asaba where hundreds of Nigerians were killed by Biafran soldiers and the heavy casualty suffered by Nigeria in the Abaagana disaster, amply romanticized by Achebe in There Was a Country. How then did Achebe expect Nigerians and Awolowo to deal with Igbo as friends when Biafrans were killing Nigerians at every available opportunity? Indeed, only a fool feeds and not starve his enemies!Soyinka's recent interview, where he reasoned that Achebe's There Was A Country was a poor reading of the ethnically-biased person that Achebe was, was too patronizing. Perhaps, the laureate also fell into the African mantra of not speaking ill of the dead. Achebe's ethnic irredentism did not just start with his last book. It was merely a continuation of the war against Awolowo and his race. If you read the book very well, you would see his profuse eulogies for the Flora Nwapas, the Christopher Okigbos, the Cyprian Ekwensis and none for any other ethnic national. It was as if only the Igbos existed.As great as Achebe was as a literary icon of note, his global size was terribly diminished by his consuming tribal inclination. What then is the difference between Achebe the tribal warlord and Joseph Conrad whose Heart of Darkness he vilified for his racist inclination? The eulogy penned by John Pepper Clark and Wole Soyinka made a terse reference to how Chinua, an icon the world venerated, was probably killed by the shocking news of the bombing of his Igbo people in a South-bound bus in Kano. Talk of a tumbling down of another Zik of Africa to Zik of Owelle!Dr. Bukola Adeyemi Oyeniyi
Post Doctoral Fellow,
Political Studies and Governance Department, Faculty of Humanities,
University of the Free State.
Room 106, 205 Nelson Mandela Drive, Bloemfontein,
Brandwag, 9301,
South Africa.
Cell Ph. +27 (0) 743556490; +27 (0) 718163974Office Ph. (051) 4019454
Fax. (051) 4019459
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