The International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Invention Volume 3 issue 11 2016 page no. 2943-2952 ISSN: 2349-2031 Available Online At: http://valleyinternational.net/index.php/our-jou/theijsshi Living and Narrating the Tensions of the Postcolonial Situation: Chinua Achebe Between Ambiguity and Ambivalence. Klohinlwélé Koné University Félix Houphouët-Boigny Abidjan (République de Côte d‟Ivoire) Abstract: If Chinua Achebe has sometimes been presented as “the father of modern African literature” it is because by many of the characteristics of his personality and artistic practices, he embodies most of the traits of the postcolonial African writer. He sums up the tensions, contradictions and paradoxes that most African intellectuals and artists have been through with their dual educational identities in their artistic and intellectual developments. The objective of this paper is to show that Chinua Achebe, not only by his positions on social and political issues in his country but also in his fiction works, has embodied in his lifestyle and narrated in his artistic works, the tensions and paradoxes that have been synthetized by theoreticians of postcolonial studies as the traits of the postcolonial situation. Key words: Postcolonial – tensions – rhizome – ambivalence - paradox. Introduction claim is generally based on the content of his In the constellation of modern African literature, works of fiction. This study will submit to that Chinua Achebe is one of the stars to reckon with. claim but will focus even more on the personality For many readers and analysts, if he is not the of the Nigerian writer. This personality is father of that modernist trend, he is one of the developed by his education, his life choices and pioneers of a generation of excellence who wrote social convictions. This article will show that the history of African literature in golden words. Achebe, by many facets of his personality and If he is considered as one of the founding fathers artistic practice, falls into the literary category of of that literature, it is because his works have what is referred to as postcolonial literature.3 inspired so many writers whose first contact with Robert Young‟s concept of “cultural nomadism”, African postcolonial literature can be traced back otherness/alterity and national identity were used to his celebrated Things Fall Apart. In that sense to qualify the reality of the postcolonial situation. he can be considered, according to French As for Homi Bhabha, he popularized concepts sociologist P. Bourdieu‟s phrase, as the such as hybridity, mimicry, ambivalence which "nomothete"1, that pioneering figure, of a true are used to describe the ways colonized people African literature asserted against colonial resisted the power of the colonizer. It is important, literature. from the outset, to clearly define "postcolonial Many a theoretician or literary critics agree that literature." If post followed with a hyphen (post- Achebe‟s writing is postcolonial literature.2 This colonial) generally has a temporal understanding, postcolonial with no hyphen cannot be reduced to 1 P. Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art : genèse et structure du Appropriation”, Tejumola Olaniyan’s Chinua Achebe and an champ littéraire, Paris, Seuil, 1992, p. 95 Archaeology of the Postcolonial African State”, etc. 2 refer to articles by Simon Gikandi’s Chinua Achebe and the 3 These definitions summarize Homi Bhaba and Robert Postcolonial Esthetic: Writing, Identity and the National Young’s field’s terminologies and neologisms. Homi Formation” , Abiola Irele’s “The Crisis Memory in Chinua Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (Routledge 1994) and Achebe’s Things Fall Apart », Emmanuel Chukuwudi Eze, Nations and Narration (ed) (Routledge 1990) and Robert “Language and Time in Postcolonial Experience”, Jacob Young’s Postcolonialism: a Very Short Introduction, Oxford Fuchs’ Postcolonial Mock-Epic: Abrogation and University Press, 2003. 2943 DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i11.3 cite as : Living and Narrating the Tensions of the Postcolonial Situation: Chinua Achebe 2016 Between Ambiguity and Ambivalence;Vol.3|Issue 10|Pg:2943-2956 the period after colonial era.4 Even with a hyphen, complex, conflicted and produces no easy it still cannot be reduced to temporality with some reconciliation between past and present, his thinkers. For Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins, people‟s worldview and that of the (post)colonial its main features are to be found elsewhere: world. The study will be conducted with the theoretical tools systematized by postcolonial The term post-colonialism is according to a too- scholars like Homi Bhabha, R.Young, Anthony rigid etymology – is frequently misunderstood as Appiah, Ashcroft et al,. Achebe‟s life and his a temporal concept, meaning the time after works will be analyzed in the light of that colonialism has ceased, or the time following the postcolonial reality. His postcolonial identity will politically determined Independence Day on be revealed through the context of his education, which a country breaks away from its governance his actions and reactions faced with the realities of by another state. Not a naïve teleological independent Africa. sequence, which supersedes colonialism, post- colonialism is, rather, an engagement with and I- A writer and his identity: the tensions of contestation of, colonialism‟s discourses, power a dual educational process. structures, and social hierarchies … A theory of post-colonialism must, then, respond to more than Education is one of the key concepts on which merely chronological construction of post- postcolonial theory is based. In fact, most of the independence and to more than just the discursive traits of the postcolonial situation mentioned experience of imperialism. (Gilbert&Tompkins above are the consequence and results of the 1996:78) educational system of the former colonial power. The tensions between the colonial system of It is not simply the literature that was produced education and the traditional education of the after the colonial era. It is more an issue of colonial subject resulted in educated hybrids and aesthetic than of time, of spatial considerations dislocated migrants. (centre vs periphery), etc. It is about discourses and their agents and representations of subjects 1. The education of an African child and knowledges. The postcolonial situation is during colonial era. about the present but a present which is not to be As the son of a schoolmaster, an early convert to taken for a static moment or condition but as a Christianity and catechist, Achebe‟s father saw in dynamic reality that crosses borders of time, the British formal education the prospect of a space, and aesthetics. In its literary understanding bright future for his son. Sending his children to the postcolonial situation stretches beyond the the British modern school system was a token of colonial era, portrays precolonial times, depicts his allegiance to new values, to Christianity, and the colonial context, and then focuses on the to western cultural norms in general. Indeed, by period of independences. It presents as reality the time Achebe went to the British modern tension between the past, the present, and the school, all new values adopted by the colonial future. It also represents the tension between two subjects were understood to be Western and worlds: the imperial center that the colonial world Christian. Western, civilization, Christianity, was and the periphery that is struggling to modern education, etc. invariably referred to one decenter that former centre. another and meant the same thing. The aim of this paper is to analyze the specifics Postcolonial identity tries to reconcile two or that can serve to establish the postcolonial identity various identities, at minimum that of the colonial of Achebe. This will be done by analyzing not power whose prints are indelible on the colonial only his artistic creations but also his life through subject‟s mind and the indigenous presence which his social and political commitments, the positions cannot be rejected because it is part of the he takes on burning issues of his time. The postcolonial identity's intimate being. To put it in postcolonial identity that we ascribe to Achebe is simple terms, we can argue that the postcolonial identity is a conflicted state of mind, no matter 4 Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Is the Post- in Postmodern the how serene that identity presents itself. Post- in Postcolonial?” Critical Inquiry, Vol 17, N°2 (Winter 1991), p. 14. 2944 DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i11.3 cite as : Living and Narrating the Tensions of the Postcolonial Situation: Chinua Achebe 2016 Between Ambiguity and Ambivalence;Vol.3|Issue 10|Pg:2943-2956 In Achebe‟s childhood, the offspring of a thousands of events and names of that early schoolmaster, of a catechist or a civil servant or period. any educated African, could be regarded as a fine The least one can say about that early period is specimen of the British colonial policy. In the that Achebe was fascinated by the colonial British system there was no class of “évolué” like educational system, its actors and methods. He in the French Direct System policy, which molded recalls with some nostalgia the sense of an African personality into a French one, but the commitment and mission of its actors. He reality was almost the same. The educated provides a record of his pride in being part of that Nigerian was no ordinary African. Such a colonial educational system. Achebe confesses that “[his] subject was different from his fellow natives and professors were excellent people and excellent was most respected if not feared by the latter. He teachers” (TWC: 34) This pride is even more indeed shared with the colonial master some of the striking when he juxtaposes it with his indignation latter‟s privileges and his closeness in attitudes to at the way things have developed in post-colonial that white master singled him out. Some white Nigeria after the colonial master left. There is no agents of that system disliked such educated controversy in arguing that Achebe uses an Africans but their own people generally envied anglophile tone to speak about his appreciation of them or singled them out as their future leaders the institutions and the teachers he met in these when the white master would leave. By his early years of his life. The teachers he familiarizes progress within the framework of the British his readers with are men of faith, committed to the educational system, Achebe proved his worth and high sense of the mission they were vested with. was an excellent student going successfully When they left, all their hard won achievements, through each colonial “rite of passage.” (Van particularly the educational system, collapsed. Gennep 1981) Those who took after them did have the training In There Was a Country5, Achebe shows his and education required to do the job but lacked the awareness of being a child of two worlds. His colonial master‟s sense of commitment. Things father, who was born in the last third of the 20th therefore fall apart in their hands. In a few words, century, was a pioneer “of a new frontier”. This Achebe was rather surprised that the leaders who period the writer recalls as an “era of great took over after the colonial master failed in the cultural, economic and religious upheaval in Igbo management of their countries. He considers that land”(TWC:7) As for himself, Achebe was born they had been well prepared by the British on November 16, 1930 in Nnobi, near Ogidi and educational and administrative system to do the recalls the world of “cultural crossroads” in which job but quite surprisingly failed to match the he was born. “By then,” Achebe contends, “a long challenge. standing clash of Western and African Achebe was fascinated by leaders of the colonial civilizations had generated deep conversations and empire's educational system because its struggles between their respective languages, administrators were doing their best to prepare religions and cultures.” (TWC: 8) Africans to lead. Achebe writes that this period When the Nigerian writer recalls his schooldays, was marked by “a strong culture of meritocracy he appears to be proud of his achievements within and a very high quality of instruction at the system, the excellence of the education he got Umuahia”. (24) Several decades after there and the relationships he established with independences, some people of the age or time of those figures who were later to be the elite of Achebe almost regret this colonial period and its independent Nigeria. Achebe seems to be main actors who were white agents of the colonial claiming he belongs to that elite. His last adventure. Some of these actors of the colonial era publication, There Was a Country, amply proves are A.P.Slater, R.H.Stone, Rev.Robert Fisher and that claim. In this book, he recalls with precision W.C.Simpson to list a few. (TWC: 25) Their contributions were important. For example, Fisher 5 Titles of Achebe’s works will be abbreviated in the and Simpson's initiation of a “textbook act” following way: There Was a Country (TWC), Anthills of the encouraging students to put away textbooks and Savannah (AS), No Longer At Ease (NLE), Things Fall Apart read novels between 4 and 6 pm influenced many (TFA), etc. 2945 DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i11.3 cite as : Living and Narrating the Tensions of the Postcolonial Situation: Chinua Achebe 2016 Between Ambiguity and Ambivalence;Vol.3|Issue 10|Pg:2943-2956 of the pioneers of modern African literature: civilization. The artist and intellectual who Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike, Christopher Okigbo, lambasts in his fiction and essays the colonial Elechi Amadi, Chike Momah, Gabriel Okara and system is the same man who celebrates in essays Ken Saro-Wiwa. To these must be added leaders and personal notes that same system. This best in the fine arts such as Ben Enwonwu, some summarizes the postcolonial identity we defined political figures and many other renowned African in earlier paragraphs. As the very embodiment of intellectuals. He recalls that he was a close friend that postcolonial identity, Achebe was therefore of Benjamin Uzochukwu wo became the Director no easy or Manichean mind because he was led to of the Federal Department of Public Works in acknowledge the qualities and importance of the Lagos, a school mate Jaja Wachukwu, Nigeria‟s subject of his attacks (the colonial master) and First Speaker of the House of Representatives and also to highlight the flaws and weaknesses of his later ambassador to the United Nations, Chu own society he defends against western Okongwu, a Minister of Finance , J.O.J.Okezie, a prejudices. He was able to see in any man some famous physician and First Republic Minister of positive qualities and in any culture some Health. (TWC: 24-26) invaluable contribution to man‟s well-being. The This colonial educational system celebrated hard celebratory tone about aspects of the colonial work and high achievement. Parents like the sort system and its criticism reveals the paradoxes of a Achebe had were aware of the prospects of postcolonial thinker. His attitude shows the investing in education and encouraged their blindspots of his thinking system, even his naivety descendants on the way to these educational about the colonial system. He seems to have achievements. In the case of the Igbo, the whole identified some good in the bad system of community seemed to foresee the gains of colonization. The actors of the colonial enterprise investing in education. All through the first seemed to wish well though it is clear they were seventy- two pages of the book TWC, Achebe for their own interests. Achebe‟s tone shows recalls his performance in the national entrance clearly that the goal of putting the local elite on examination. (27; 34; etc.) Achebe demonstrates their side of that system has been attained. The his acknowledgement and appreciation of how openness of mind could also be a legacy of his well the British managed their colonies when he ethnic wisdom and background: the Igbo‟s sense explains their competence, experience of of openness to new values, their cultures‟ sense of governing, and high sense of duty: modernity which makes them welcome any value or cultural practice that brings something positive The British governed their colony of Nigeria with to them. Achebe who criticizes the colonial considerable care. There was a very highly master‟s sense of “Euro-centrism” and shows the competent cadre of government officials imbued ideology lurking behind any said truth about dark with a high level of knowledge of how to run a Africa was the same Achebe who openly country. This was not something that the British celebrates some figures of that colonial achieved only in Nigeria; they were able to educational system. That paradoxical relationship manage this on a bigger scale in India and the artist had with the colonial educational system Australia. The British had the experience of was similar to the one he had with his indigenous governing and doing it competently. I am not cultural heritage. justifying colonialism. But it is important to face the fact that British colonies, more or less, were 2. A hybrid religious education for an expertly run. (43) ambivalent personality: Achebe between This anglophile feeling is one of the main Christianity and the traditional religious paradoxes of the Nigerian writer, one he shares system. with other intellectuals in post-colonial countries. Achebe wondered in “The Writer and His Though he was one of the best supporters and Community” who his community was? (Achebe, defenders of indigenous values, Achebe was also HI 1988: 59-60) It would also have been useful fascinated by a colonial educational system which for readers if he had asked himself “Who am I?” denied that Africans made any contribution to for Achebe is rarely confined within categories anything of worth in world history and 2946 DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i11.3 cite as : Living and Narrating the Tensions of the Postcolonial Situation: Chinua Achebe 2016 Between Ambiguity and Ambivalence;Vol.3|Issue 10|Pg:2943-2956 already set. All through his life, Achebe remained ambivalent conception of historicity and culture. a practicing Christian, a religion he embraced (H.Bhabha 1994) For the Igbo hero, the values of since childhood as his parents were both early his people are beyond history; they are eternal and converts and devout believers. This conversion are neither to be questioned nor adapted to any did not prevent him from remaining deeply rooted new context. The final impression that readers are to his ancestral cultural paradigms. The burial left with about Okonkwo is that of the hero who ceremonies organized in his honor proved he had refuses to question the existing norms and remains a personality that claimed two cultures. He recalls trapped by his own illusions and phantasms. The in his notes that he owes this hybrid personality to tragic end of Ikemefuna, who is killed to abide by the dual education he received from his father and the decree of the gods, ends up alienating readers mother and an uncle who related him to his and even some characters in the diegesis, such as indigenous roots: Okonkwo‟s own friends and family members. This episode and the narrative turn it takes suggest The bible played an important role in my that the writer‟s opinion does not go along with education. My parents often read passages out that of the hard-liner hero of the village of loud to us during prayer time and encouraged us, Umuofia. It is more likely that Nwoye‟s when we were all able, to read and memorized ambiguous feelings about the twins thrown away several passages. (TWC: 10) into the evil forest resonate with Achebe's feelings The Christianity to which Achebe adhered was about some practices in his own traditional one that had room for the cultural values of Igbo community. people. Even his father was not the type of Achebe may have been keen on showing that his catechist who would turn his back on anything people were not a savage and barbaric community non-Christian. This tolerant Christianity is the one who emerged from a long night of savagery Achebe defended and practiced. TFA shows thanks to the colonial adventure, but he would not clearly that among early missionaries who came do so by trying to show that everything about into contact with the Igbo land, some succeeded in them was perfect. In several episodes of his establishing sound relationships with the local fictions, we have scenes where he casts a critical people, enlisting both their sympathy and respect. look at traditions and their practices. Irony is one Achebe‟s relationship both to Christianity and of his favorite devices used to achieve that goal. traditional beliefs is no blind adherence to these TFA narrates a community that practices systems. For instance, the way he rejects the infanticide, gender discrimination, and narrow-mindedness of Reverend James Smith for phallocracy but has women and procreation at the the latter‟s excess of zeal and lack of compromise, heart of its core beliefs. Why should the child turn the same way he takes distances with hard liners to his maternal family when in trouble but would of the traditional world like Okonkwo who wish belong to his father‟s in happier times? “Nneka”, to keep their traditions pure and inviolable. Both Okonkwo‟s maternal uncle explains, means that systems of belief are analyzed critically from a “mother is supreme.” (TFA: 134) The community historical perspective. Achebe clearly takes a of Umuofia recognizes or establishes the primacy stand with Mr. Brown whose policy of of the female principle but practices phallocracy compromise and accommodation with native in its everyday life. By the stylistic device of customs is the exact opposite of Smith. The tragic irony, Achebe casts a critical look at some fate of TFA‟s hero, Okonkwo, or to a lesser extent traditional beliefs and practices. By so doing he Ezeulu from AG, shows clearly that the questions their relevance for the present society. sympathies of the writer go to Obierika and the other open minded characters of his fictions. The postcolonial situation is the site of two Indeed Obierika is the exact opposite of Okonkwo conflicting values: an imperial dominating despite their friendship. Obierika reproaches his Discourse and Counter-discourses, a Knowledge age-mate for taking part in the ritual sacrifice of and alternative knowledges, of a Culture and the lad Ikemefuna. Okonkwo has an essentialist counter cultures. (G.Spivak in Nelson & and un-historical conception of the values of his Grossberg 1988:271) Against the colonizers' community which is opposed by the postcolonial pretension or claim of a hegemonic knowledge, 2947 DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i11.3 cite as : Living and Narrating the Tensions of the Postcolonial Situation: Chinua Achebe 2016 Between Ambiguity and Ambivalence;Vol.3|Issue 10|Pg:2943-2956 the postcolonial subject maintains the marginal religion of my ancestors, which fortunately for me knowledges of his people. Achebe presents in his was still active outside my home. I still had access fictions the Culture of the imperial power to which to a number of relatives who had not converted to is juxtaposed the cultures of the local peoples in a Christianity and were called heathens by the new bid for existence and acknowledgement. An converts… (11) example of the postcolonial conflict Achebe The Nigerian thinker and artist claimed the presents is the interplay of the colonial cultural “dialectics” that he inherited from a father who educational system and Christianity. To these two was a teacher and an early evangelist and the main components of colonial culture, he opposes "dialectics" that he learned from a grand uncle the traditional education he received. Such an who was the very embodiment of traditional option of faithfulness to both cultures in what he beliefs. The rich childhood experiences he had in considered positive in them produced a both cultures taught him to water down his personality with a cosmopolitan mind but who childhood‟s enthusiasm about Christianity: remained deeply rooted into ancestral cultural norms. He is no blind follower of any religious Now it‟s impossible to grow up having the same system and is fully aware of the link between faith, belief and attitude toward religion that I had Christianity, the slave trade, and colonialism: as a child. Of course, I did have long periods of doubt and uncertainty, and had a period where I My father had a lot of praise for the missionaries objected strongly to the certitude of Christianity - and their message, and so do I. I am a prime I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. When I was beneficiary of the education that the missionaries little, that didn‟t mean anything to me, but later on made a major component of their enterprise. But I I was able to compare it with the rather careful have also learned a little more skepticism about and far more humble attitude of my indigenous them than my father had any need for. Does it religion in which because they recognized matter, I ask myself, that centuries before different gods they also recognized that you might European Christians sailed down to us in ships to be friendly with this god and fall out with the deliver the Gospel and save us from darkness, other one. You might worship Udo to perfection other European Christians, also sailing in ships, and still be killed by Ogwugwu. Such sayings and delivered us to the transatlantic slave trade and proverbs are far more valuable to me as a human unleashed darkness in our world? (TWC: 14) being in understanding the complexity of the world than the narrow, doctrinaire, self-righteous Achebe expressed appreciation for his Christian attitude of the Christian faith. This other religion, upbringing and colonial education as well as which is ambivalent, is far more artistically gratefulness to his great-uncle, Udoh Osinyi, for satisfying to me. (12) the latter‟s enormous value and “example of The world Achebe inherited was one of fidelity” (TWC: 14) to the local traditions. In his “dialectics” and “ambivalence”. Words like essay “Named for Victoria, Queen of England,” “dichotomy”, “oscillating faith”, “a period doubt”, Achebe recalls both his early education in “skepticism”, to “bestride both worlds” are part of Christianity and participating in his uncle‟s the thinker‟s familiar rhetoric. heathen festival meals. These two religions, therefore, both shaped his personality. He sees The interplay of opposing social voices in AS himself as one of a “lucky generation … planted shows the social link the author longs for and at a crossroads at a time when the meeting of two which reflects his education and personality: a cultures produced something worth.” (TWC:14) western educated intellectual voice brought into The tension between these two systems of faith, to contact with that of the wisdom of Ibo traditional Achebe, sparked off his imagination and therefore peasantry and urban lumpen proletariat. In The his artistic career: Trouble With Nigeria, he attributes Nigeria‟s problem with the lack of communication between I can say that my whole artistic career was the urban elite and farmers from outlying districts probably sparked by this tension between the of the country. In his last fiction, (i.e. Anthills of Christian religion of my parents, which we the Savannah), this lack of solidarity and followed in our home, and the retreating, older 2948 DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i11.3 cite as : Living and Narrating the Tensions of the Postcolonial Situation: Chinua Achebe 2016 Between Ambiguity and Ambivalence;Vol.3|Issue 10|Pg:2943-2956 prevailing division is addressed and ways are postcolonial subject who is the product of the suggested in the fiction to solve the problem. ambivalent nature of the postcolonial situation. The term is opposed to the principle of foundation Achebe‟s world rejects some aspects of colonial and origins as embodied in the figure of the tree Christianity and also some cultural practices of his which is hierarchical and centralized. The rhizome people. But he is able, like poet president is rather “proliferating and serial, functioning by Senghor‟s Manatees who will drink from the fount means of the principles of connection and of Simal, to draw from both sources invaluable heterogeneity.” (J.Marks in Wolfram 2004) The resources for a life of harmony for the hybrid rhizome symbolizes connections, multiplicity as postcolonial situation. The best illustration of that these are opposed to binary subject/object allegiance to the hybrid world of postcolonial structure of modern western thinking system. “A Africa is the uncle of Elewa and the whole rhizome”, the French thinkers contend, “has no ecumenical ceremony around the naming ritual of beginning or end; it is always in the middle, Elewa‟s baby in Anthills of the Savannah. In this between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree same novel, characters like Chris Oriko, Ikem, and is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely Beatrice are not the products of a single and pure alliance.” (1987: 25) Applied to our study, it religion, culture and education. They belong to a implies a personality that does rank into cosmopolitan and open world which finds its mainstreams but tries to assert its marginal values not in essences but in margins or narrow identity. In the traditional context, such a person interstices, that is a cultural in-between. They would cast a critical look at some aspects of belong to varying cultures, educational traditional life. In the modern contest, as fostered backgrounds, political ideologies, artistic by colonialism, he would question some of the conceptions and intellectual circles. These basic assumptions of that modern society. characters are not beings of one single chapel. Ikem ridicules ideologies of liberalism and the 1. From fascination to revolt against easy rhetoric of socialism through discourses that colonial structures. are parroted by students and half-backed Albert Chinualumogu went through an professors of the University of Kangan. The only educational process that took him from fascination thing he believes university education should with the British educational system as analyzed provide young people is a sharp critical sense and earlier to a period of unease which ended in a rejection of ready-made systems of thought and exasperation and open revolt against a system he belief. Beatrice loathes the patriarchal system that saw as dehumanizing for his people. His career as has prevailed since her childhood but does not a writer and an intellectual was a reaction to the accept wholly the ready-made theories of picture drawn by British colonial literature about feminism as expounded by some western feminist his people. activists or theoreticians. Ikem, Chris and Mad Medico make a joke of so-called serious issues of As a schoolboy at Government College in established systems like Christianity, nationalist Umuahia in South–eastern Nigeria, Achebe is rhetorics and other moral issues often deemed remembered as a regular visitor of the college sacred. Like the real Achebe, his characters will library who loved reading so much that friends not be entrapped in any codified system that limit nicknamed him “Dictionary.” (27) He was their freedom. The consequences of this hybrid familiar with works by famous writers like identity in such an ambivalent situation are a w.Shakespeare, John Milton, Daniel Defoe, and subject characterized by the postcolonial traits of Jonathan Swift. As a mere schoolboy, he would „rhizome‟ and paradoxes. devour fiction books by R.L.Stevenson, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Wordsworth, Coleridge, II- The paradoxes of a “rhizomatic” Keats, and Tennyson. personality. The concept of rhizome which was developed by Achebe was particularly interested in some of the French philosophers G.Deleuze and F.Guattary is English writers because of their disdain for a concept borrowed from biology which can be provincialism, an attitude that seems to be in used fruitfully to analyze the identity of the agreement with Bakhtin‟s theories of the novel. 2949 DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i11.3 cite as : Living and Narrating the Tensions of the Postcolonial Situation: Chinua Achebe 2016 Between Ambiguity and Ambivalence;Vol.3|Issue 10|Pg:2943-2956 For the Russian theoretician, the novelistic and kills his Nigerian docile servant. Reviewers in discourse dismisses established rules to be the western press saw in this work a masterpiece followed blindly by novelists. The novel is an that they praised as “the best book ever written experimental artistic experience. What Achebe about Africa.” (HI) Achebe had a different likes in a Henry Fielding‟s Tom Jones or Laurence reaction and described with some exasperation the Sterne‟s Tristram Shandy is their disruption of hero as a “bumbling idiot of a character.” (Ibid) rules, their often unexpected or even outrageous The picture that was drawn of his country, its stylistic experimentations which extend formal inhabitants, and their values was to him too possibilities. In that, these novels provided great simplistic, naïve, and racist. The then unknown inspiration to the postcolonial literary experience Nigerian writer, like many other African writers6 which was contesting the universalist pretensions decided to “write back”7 to tell stories removed of colonial or imperial literature. We must add to from the framework of the colonial perspective. that list, as it is revealed in an interview with Thus, borrowing from the wisdom of his people Bradford Morrow, as a token of Achebe's who have it that until animals tell their own openness to world culture and literature, books by stories, the history of the hunt will always glorify Russian writers, writers from the Arabic world the hunter, Achebe decided to write his own story, like Mahfouz, women writers like Alifa Rifaat, El the stories of his people. “If you don‟t like Saadawi, from easter Africa like Nuruddin Farah someone‟s story, you write your own” he said in (Somalia) and who all endeavor to understand and an interview. (The Art of Fiction, N° 139) The explain the world in which they live(d). Nigerian novelist confesses that stories told from (www.conjunctions.com com/archives/c17- the perspective of the winner or dominator, as is ca.htm) Achebe‟s interest for the marginal the case of Joyce, Defoe, Conrad, etc., had a great discourses, rebel voices can be seen through these impact on him as a school boy. Far from being writers who have in various ways transformed troubled by the stories told, for instance, by John literatures in their own countries. Bunchan which described heroic white men battling and killing repulsive natives, he was As it can be seen, Achebe has always been rather excited to read these adventures. Later on, fascinated by English literature. It can be assumed he would recall these readings as “wonderful that his sensitive mind brought him close to that preparation” for maturity when he started reading literature which was the only literature available between the lines and asking questions. to him during his schooldays. His British professors had only that corpus in store for him. In The Nigerian writer was certainly fascinated by his later development, Achebe would never deny this literature which he would later criticize with that fascination for the writers and heroes of this acerbity. Like western writers Sterne, Eliot or prime initiation to the literary world. These writers Yeats, Achebe understood his role at that time as and their heroes have remained his heroes lurking one of questioning the values and norms of the behind his local heroes even in the most colonial world. As a postcolonial writer, his art, in “indigenous” works he would publish later on. agreement with Edward Said‟s Orientalism also The title of his first novel is found in an epigraph shares A.Mbembe‟s definition of the postcolonial borrowed from a verse of W.B.Yeats‟ “The art: Second Coming.” In a similar epigraph, he paid “[It] deconstructs colonial prose, that is to say the tribute to British poet T.S.Eliot in No Longer at mental set-up, the symbolic forms and Ease, a title inspired by a verse of that famous representations of underpinning the imperial poet. project. It also unmasks the potential of this prose Joyce Cary‟s Mister Johnson turned out to be a for falsification – in a world, the stock of turning point in Achebe's career. It is the reading falsehoods and the weight of fantasizing functions of that novel that persuaded him that if he had without which colonialism as a historical power- anything worthwhile to do in his life and career, it would be to right the wrongs this prejudiced book about the local people was putting forward. In this 6 Like Ayi Kwei Armah, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, G;Okara. 7 In reference to Ascroft &al, The Empire Writes Back, novel, the hero, a British colonial master shoots, Routledge 1989 2950 DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i11.3 cite as : Living and Narrating the Tensions of the Postcolonial Situation: Chinua Achebe 2016 Between Ambiguity and Ambivalence;Vol.3|Issue 10|Pg:2943-2956 system could not have worked. In this way it violemment ou pas, au statut de sujet historique reveals how what passed for European humanism (…) Globalement, il s‟agit pour ces écrivains de manifested itself in the colonies as duplicity, ressaisir leur passé, d‟en contrôler l‟expression et double-talk and a travesty of reality. (Interview in de lui donner forme, c‟est-à-dire, de traiter de la Esprit, 31-47 March 2016) négation et de l‟aliénation que l‟ordre colonial les avait amenés à intérioriser. (1997:62) The overall goal, for Achebe and his African counterparts, was to bring to the fore an Achebe has been prepared for his literary career indigenous literature. Against the “literature under by his extensive reading of English writers whose tutelage” in which native writers of the first works were made available at the colonial school generation were miming their colonial masters and system. This system was more or less a faithful patrons in styles and themes, sought patrons, copy of the metropolitan English educational editors among agents of the colonial empire, system found in schools and universities in the Achebe and writers of his generation endeavored British Empire. The styles of the writers found in to write against this colonial literary tradition. books of the colonial school libraries greatly African literary Renaissance was therefore the influenced him: “When I saw a good sentence, ultimate goal. This goal could be attained only by saw a good phrase from the western canon, of writing their own stories to counter the negative course I was influenced by it. But the story itself – clichés conveyed by a colonial literature: “a major there weren‟t any models.” (TWC: 54) If he found objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and their stories uninspiring if not blatantly the image of ourselves and our continent, and to antagonistic toward his native culture, their style recast them through stories – prose, poetry, essays, was a source of influence for him. In a word, and books for our children.” (53) After dismissing Achebe was interested in British writers' art, their Mister Johnson as a set of simplistic colonial techniques, but not their ideas. clichés, Achebe lambasted in an essay Polish- The later generations would see in Achebe's effort British writer Joseph Conrad‟s Heart of Darkness to write an African story from the perspective of whose fiction he tagged as “thoroughgoing racist” Africans a pioneer work that opened the literary (“An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad „Heart of career to them. The best known literary protégé of Darkness‟” in HI). Achebe is the highly acclaimed Nigerian novelist After Achebe equated Conrad with Joyce and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In a testimony she accused both of racism, his criticisms against made in tribute to her literary god father in 2008, these western icons were met with hostility from Adichie recalled her own experience as a child. In some American academics. “The real question” the books available to her, "all characters were the essayist argued, “is the dehumanization of white and ate fruits found in Britain and played in Africa and Africans which [an] age-long attitude the snow and had dogs called Socks.” has fostered and continues to foster in the world.” (www.pen.org/.../) When she started writing her (ibid) Achebe admitted he was forced to see own stories, as early as when she was 7, Adichie himself as one of Conrad's threatening savages tried to recreate the world she could read in jumping naked on the river bank, those “dogs English novels. She is quoted saying that she standing on their hind legs” and he contended that wrote exactly the kinds of stories [she] was it was “terribly, terribly wrong” to portray his reading, i.e., “all characters were white and blue people or any people from that superior stance. eyed – played in the snow [and ] ate apples.” This stance illustrates J.M.Moura‟s definition of Although she lived in Nigeria where there was no the postcolonial situation. The postcolonial snow, no apples but rather mangoes … she wrote situation is the one in which the colonized people, such stories as a consequence of her early contact that is, its leaders and intellectuals are trying by with british literature. It is thanks to writers like violence or negotiation to attain to the status of Camara Laye and particularly Chinua Achebe that historical agents that write their own stories and she went through a mental shift in her perception manage their societies: of literature and started writing about things she recognized. La postcolonialité se définit comme la condition par laquelle les peuples colonisés à accéder 2951 DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i11.3 cite as : Living and Narrating the Tensions of the Postcolonial Situation: Chinua Achebe 2016 Between Ambiguity and Ambivalence;Vol.3|Issue 10|Pg:2943-2956 (https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_ the postcolonial subjects, Achebe does not spare the_danger_of_a_single_story_/) Africans and their leaders of their responsibilities I didn‟t know that people like me could exist in in the mess in which he and his people live. books … I had assumed that books, by their very Achebe's postcolonial discourse is not wholly nature, had to have English people in them. And anti-colonial nor is it afrocentrist which would then I read “Things Fall Apart” […] I realized that consist in celebrating the independent nations and people like me, girls with skin the colour of discharging them of their responsibilities. chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form pony The writer grew up in the context of a growing tails, could also exist in literature. ( African nationalism. Through his essays and sunnewonline.com www.pen.org.org/.../) fiction, it can be seen that he always opted for a Such is the postcolonial identity of the Nigerian broadly panafrican view akin to that held by writer. The earlier fascination for the colonial leaders like Nandi Azikiwe, Nkrumah, etc. For his educational system in which he was educated desire to rewrite the history of precolonial Africa turned into a revolt when he was in an age to read and colonialism from an African perspective, between the lines and ask questions about the very Achebe is rightly regarded as a pan-africanist. His system that had earlier seduced him so much. works are deeply rooted in his Igbo, Nigerian and Achebe loved British literature but did not African culture. Many generations of Africans sacrifice the love he had for his own people and from various parts of the continent and even from their stories on the altar of that first love. This the Diaspora have seen in these literary works the situation best summarized the postcolonial living embodiment of their proud indigenous condition of intellectuals and artists. As fine identity. products of a system that ensures the success in The question “who is my community?” that their careers, postcolonial writers like Achebe Achebe asked in an essay shows that he was came to revolt against the colonial system. But concerned and conscious of the open and diverse this revolt does not imply denial of their former nature of his personal identity and the identities allegiances and interests. They have remained that made up the audience for which he writes his fascinated by a system they criticized and go on stories. If the ideal of pan-africanism is generally criticizing. Such a paradoxical attitude is revealed to be cherished, Achebe seems to warn against in the social and political stances of the Nigerian claims of exclusive and pure identities into which writer where the values he celebrated in fictions human communities often lock themselves. It is and essays gave way to contrary stances in real the writer‟s conviction that there is no room for political life during the Biafra crisis. racial or ethnic purity. The people to whom he has 2- From panafricanism to secession or the addressed his stories are Christians, Muslims, or ambiguities of a postcolonial intellectual adherents of traditional religions. They are Nigerians from the North, the South, the East, or If Achebe is a postcolonial writer, it is because in the West. Although the option of writing in his essays and fiction he makes not only a critical English excludes many illiterate Africans from analysis of the colonial situation but also a critical enjoying his stories, they are always present in his analysis of the independent societies of Nigeria. narratives. The stories are about this hybrid Achille Mbembe defines the postcolonial community and fragmented identities. The discourse as “ a way of reflecting on the fractures Minister stays with the taxi driver, the university on what remains of the promise of life when the graduate civil servant (Okoh) is friend with the enemy is no longer the colonist in a strict sense, market seller (Elewa). All social classes, ethnic but the brother. It is a critique of the African groups, illiterate and graduates, are represented in discourse on the community and fraternity.” Achebe‟s fictions. AS, NLAE, AMOP show all (Esprit n°330, 2006) The gist of Mbembe‟s these social classes and fragmented identities, critical stance is about his own society, the each with its characteristics, hopes, failures, and inability of the political and intellectual elite to weaknesses. The writer seems to have made sure address its responsibilities. Even though he holds that all these components of the society identify the colonial masters responsible for the ordeal of with some characters in his novels. 2952 DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v3i11.3