The African sense of self with special reference to Chinua Achebe (Nigeria) [microform]
- Bib ID:
- 3287226
- Format:
- Book and Microform
- Author:
- Palangyo, Peter Kishili
- Description:
- 182 p.
- Summary:
-
The first portion of this study attempts to look at how Africans define and judge themselves, the position of the person and his function in his community, and how African perspectives have been affected by colonialism and its aftermath. The second part is concerned with showing how selected novels of Chinua Achebe reflect this complex African sense of self. The study begins by identifying the group of people most affected by colonialism, defining their origins and relationship with others in the main society. The author especially examines their role in first internalizing the contradictions of the colonial system and later acting as agents through whom these contradictions were passed on to the masses of the people. Taking into account the differences between the cultural assumptions made by British and French colonialsim, the author shows how they elicited specific reactions from the colonized people.
The singular result of this colonial myopia was to create non-existent distinctions between the African peoples, the better to divide and rule them. Africans did not really believe these differences, however, nor did the new political leaders of pre-independence. The author shows how these supposed differences cropped up again in post-independence Africa as well, mostly because independence had not in most cases destroyed the main tenents of colonialism. Independence had mostly changed into neocolonialism. In spite of this, there is a striking similarity among the majority of the African peoples in terms of what they think and feel, in terms of their views of good and bad. Life is seen as a complete and dynamic whole, like ever-extending concentric circles with man and present time at the centre--at the centre of everything.
Man causes all to happen, and without him there is nothing. This concentric and circular totality includes the past, present and the future, the mundane and the divine, the human and non-human. The study emphasizes that the concept of man at the centre of all this is man in the collective sense, man in the community--not an individual or individuals but man in his relationship with other men. The individual created by colonialism is looked at as an abomination. The Arts function as an expression of the collective will of society, suppressing individualism and exalting collective experience, sharing, and group participation. This means that the novel which came to Africa essentially as a colonial imposition creates serious problems both for the writer and the reader. Much of any traditional Western novel deals with individuals wrestling with reality, the way they see that reality and the way it affects them.
Another individual reads the novel alone. The form is therefore decidedly non-African, and the study consequently suggests that when talking about African fiction, critical judgment must concentrate not on form but on the function of the novel. The second part of the dissertation relates this complex cultural background to Chinua Achebe's first three novels, which the author interprets and assesses in terms of the African world view presented in the first part of the study. We find that Achebe's work succeeds most when derived from African psychology and theology, testing human experience by the totality and wholeness of the community, even when under assault by the individual values imposed through colonialism.
We find that he succeeds the least when dealing with the moral and emotional uncertainties in peoples' lives that followed the success of colonialism. This is so largely because the new Westernized African is in such flux and lacks traditional standards by which to measure his experience. Indeed, the writer himself feels a certain discomfort with this world. The study ultimately asserts that appropriate critical judgment, because of the non-Western origin, nature and development of the effective African novel, must remain for a long time extra-literary and extra-textual.
- Notes:
-
- (UnM)AAI8016226
- Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-04, Section: A, page: 1589.
- Thesis (Ph.D.)--State University of New York at Buffalo, 1980.
- Reproduction:
- Microfiche. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International.
- Subject:
- Literature, African
- Other authors/contributors:
- State University of New York at Buffalo
- Copyright:
-
In Copyright
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Copyright status was determined using the following information:
- Material type:
- Literary Dramatic Musical
- Published status:
- Unpublished
- Creation date:
- 1980
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