Interrogating Notions of Nationhood, Nation and Globalization in Postcolonial Africa: A Textual Analysis of Four African Novels (original) (raw)
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|| Through the analysis of Pepetela's Mayombe, Ngugi's Petals of Blood, Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah and A Man of the People, this article interrogates concepts of nationhood and nation in postcolonial Africa within the framework of the postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory defies grand narratives such as the nation and nationhood, hence deconstructs such narratives as they are problematic. This study shows problems associated with definitions of a nation in which some members are sidelined. Also explored is the idea of nationalism and its importance in forming the nation. It is revealed that nationhood is problematic in post independent Africa even though nationalism served a critical role during decolonisation because variations are noted as differences in gender and ethnicity disturb nation building. Globalisation is also threatening, challenging and undermining the existence of nations.
Nationhood and Women in Postcolonial African Literature
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What is Globalization to Post-colonialism? An Apologia for African Literature
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Globalization is easily understood as part of the continuing history of imperialism, indeed, of capitalist development and expansion. Have the imperial structures really been dismantled, even though the empire, free as they politically seem after independence, still writes back to the (imperial) center? This paper probes into the angelic posture that globalization seems to assume in its tackling of these complexities of identities. In this age of the clamor for national literatures and criticism, which is a fundamental principle of postcolonial literatures, will globalization automatically erode the idea of a postcolonial world and literatures? Is post-colonialism in its present phase and posture able to cater for the heterogeneous national literatures that it seeks to foreground or canonize? These constitute the frontline unease that this paper sets out to unravel; hence, the need to redefine the whole concept of globalization.
Post-Colonial Literature in Africa A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe
2015
The present study seeks for investigating the manifestations of colonialism and post-colonialism movements in the African societies, and how literary works dealt with these movements either by defending and rationalizing, or by criticizing and refuting them. The first part starts with colonialism movement, and it briefly discusses the different reasons of the emergence of this movement in Europe, and how it moved to the African continent, whereas the next section addresses the legitimacy of colonialism in literary works about Africa, and mainly about Morocco and Algeria. The following part deals with the negative impacts of the colonial countries in the colonized territories, and how some writers censured this movement, and resisted against its notions. Finally, this entry draws more attention to the Africans’ reaction against colonialism, and their disillusionment after gaining the independence. The second part focuses on post-colonialism and the literary works that appeared at that time, and it starts with a brief introduction about this movement, and then, examines some post-colonial literary works that had negative perspectives towards this movement. Also, this entry addresses the post-colonial African books that view colonialism in the same negative way. The final section deals with a post-colonial novel which is A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe, and it includes a brief summary about the novel as well as it reviews the significance of its title, and finally it discusses the theme of corruption in the same book.
Thematic changes in postcolonial African literature: From colonialism to neocolonialism
Postcolonial African literature emerged as a reaction to colonialism as theory and practice. It comes under the banner of postcolonialism-a theory of oppositionality that encapsulates the totality of practices which characterize the third world nations, especially in Africa, from the inception of colonialism to the present day. The main thrust of the paper is to examine the thematic changes associated with the development of African literature. To do this, the definitional problem with postcolonialism is resolved to have an operational definition. Foundational issues in postcolonialism are considered. These issues-history, universalism and difference, and language-recur in every phase of postcolonial African literature. It is ascertained that history has been a site for racial tension. The European ethnocentric concept insists that Africans have no history or culture, while Africans are subverting the European centralist notion of history and re-inscribing African history. European universalism suggests that European culture is the standard culture, while postcolonial writers insist on pluralism of culture, emphasizing the beauty and virility of African culture. Apart from the use of African languages in writing, postcolonial writers are domesticating the European languages to express African experience. The paper analyses the thematic changes in postcolonial African literature which are found to be dictated by the prevailing circumstances during each phase. The paper concludes with suggestions on how to make postcolonial African literature more effective and responsive for the good of Africans and Africa.
FORGING AFRICAN UNITY IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD: A CHALLENGE FOR POSTCOLONIAL NATION-BUILDING
The paper examines the dilemma of African unity against the background of the multiplicity of political interests and agenda. It examines this in the contest of the African Union and it sub-regional groupings and in relation to external political interests such as donors, multi-laterals and bilaterals. It argues that the ongoing unity efforts have been simplified and enmeshed in a return to a tradition that from the onset had not understood the complexities of the continent and its history. It shows that issues of statism, ethnicity, linguistics and colonialism, which confront modern African states today, can only be understood within the context of history and the lived realities of the peoples caught in its tracks. Hence, such political talk needs to be informed and shaped by the radical ideological framings of the nationalist, early post-colonial era and the projects of Conscienticization, Ujaama and Harambee. Such efforts, in West and East Africa, blended African traditionalism with modernism to rebuild the fragmented and distorted communities that Africa's colonization had created. It concludes on a critical pan-africanist stance that unless, the current crop of African leaders extricate themselves of their colonial binds ushered in through globalization and embrace a critical postcolonial framework in ongoing nation-building efforts, the unity talks would be in vain.
Postcolonialism in Africa Based on Colonialism Analysis in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
Diglossia: Jurnal Kajian Ilmiah Kebahasaan dan Kesusastraan, 2017
Adi YusufUniversitas Pesantren Tinggi Darul Ulum Jombangadiyusuf@fbs.unipdu.ac.id One of the interesting things in the study of literary works is to explore the representation of a literary work itself to the culture of real life. More specifically, when it is related to the history – in this case, the condition of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial times. This article discusses postcolonialism analysis on Things fall Apart by Achebe. The method used in this study is descriptive qualitative. It is found that the novel represents “precolonial tribal” life in Africa: earning a living by farming land and keeping the cattle, diverse cultural backgrounds including belief of traditional religion. Then, the things lost as a result of colonial contact are “religious practice and government”. Then, Colonizers’ strategies in indoctrinating the native population to their way of thinking include building a school, convincing the society of the importance of education for the future genera...
Nation, Nationness in The African Novel: A Fanonian Interpretation of Ben Okri'sFlowers And Shadows
In this era of postmodernism and globalization, it has become increasingly important to pay attention to how individuals, communities, interest groups and nations redefine and rename what is unique to them vis-à-vis an abstract humanity. This calls for a shift from all forms of intellectual essentialism to the basic differences and diversities in any given nation. For African literary scholarship, it implies a concomitant shift from the conception of Africa as a unitary entity to the internal struggles and challenges faced by individuals, groups and communities in the different nations of Africa. This inevitable shift is dramatized in the scholarship of the novel in Africa. Here, there is a new interest in how the novel tells of issues that affect the nation as an imaginedcommunity of people with equal rights and entitlements. Thus, in this study, we have adopted the qualitative research methodology, as well as the theoretical strand of Franz Fanon's third stage in the development of literature of the colonized in examining how Ben Okri has married both form and content in order to interrogate existing unequal juxtapositions in the experiential quality of lives of citizens in his Nigerian nation many years after decolonization. We have argued thatin Flowers and Shadows, Ben Okri has dramatized the realities in his nation, particularlythe insensitivity of the privileged class, the criminalneglect, as well as the numerous injustices suffered by those at the lower rung of thesociopolitical hierarchy in the imagined community of his Nigerian nation.
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A study in African intellectual nationalism
Things fall apart on two levels in Chinua Achebe's classic novel of the same name. As the narrative unfolds, things progressively fall apart for Okonkwo, whose fatal flaw is that he is afraid of being thought weak like his father Unoka; and things progressively fall apart for the Igbo as they are confronted and befuddled by their encounter first with European missionaries and then by the emergent colonial state. The two narratives are closely intertwined, but they are clearly distinct. Through Okonkwo's tragic story, Achebe tells the story of what Igbo society was like at the moment of the colonial encounter and how the intrusion of a foreign religious and political culture hastened a process of social change that was already underway, but that took unexpectedly drastic turns.