Week 5, Feb 15: Things Fall Apart
Readings:
1. Achebe, Things Fall Apart.
Week 6, Feb 22: Things Fall Apart (cont’d).
Readings: 1. Achebe, Things Fall Apart.
Week 6, Feb 22: Things Fall Apart (cont’d).
Readings: 1. Achebe, Things Fall Apart.
Week 7, Feb. 29: Challenging Colonialism: Guerillas, Collectivism, Violence.
SCREENING: The Battle of Algiers (dir. Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966. 120 min.)
* Watch in the library or check it out from the dept. office. The dept. office has a better quality print on DVD. As of Jan 18, also here in decent quality (turn subs on): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-7j4WVTgWc Readings:
1. Loomba, 120-28; 160-62;
3. Recommended : Franz Fanon, “On Violence.” (pp. 1-62 in The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 2004. [1963].)
But why do they fall apart??
1. This is the ultimate question we have to wrestle with….. after we read the whole novel. There are a host of reasons/factors for this, which have to do with the internral
dynamics/hierarchies/aspects of Igbo and village cultures/traditions and societies. But also with e.g. Okonkwo’s own character, i.e. his warrior temperament quick temper or capacity for
violence, and his fear and hyper-masculinity. [and the masculinity/sexism of the village cultures]. 2. But of course the main cause: colonialism. The
missionaries and the military/state/British forces behind those ppl.
*so what the novel does is show us a whole world and many people falling apart or coming undone. It
presents this as a story of Okonkwo and his family and friends, as well as of traditions being powerful yet also dangerous or bad for some (esp. women and
non-warrior types). We can also see a conflict between Christianity and native views of the world.
Here is the WB Yeats poem that Achebe uses for the title to this novel. At first glance it seems specifically religious or metaphysical, even Christian. It is that but it is also about modernity or the 20th century and its massive changes (for
the worse, here) in general. The old world is being torn apart and nothing new and nothing good has yet been born to take its place.
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
*******************************
Brief Background: For a bio of Achebe (who died in 2013) go here: http://allafrica.com/stories/201303230075.html This notes:
“Born in Ogidi, Nigeria, the son of Isaiah Okafor Achebe, a teacher in a missionary school, and Janet Ileogbunam. His parents, though they installed in him many of the values of their traditional Igbo culture, were devout evangelical Protestants and christened him Albert after Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria.
In 1944 Achebe attended Government College in Umuahia. Like other major Nigerian writers including Wole Soyinka, Elechi Amadi, John Okigbo, John Pepper Clark, and Kole Omotoso, he was also educated at the University College of Ibadan, where he studied English, History and Theology. ……… As the world mourns the departure of this great literary icon , late Professor Achebe will be fondly
The novel is set in what is now Nigeria. Part of the IMPLIED point of the novel—implied, not stated – is that “Nigeria” is a modern fiction invented by the colonizers and then later the “Nigerians.” Before
then, there was an intricate or complex mix of peoples cultures and traditions.
Nigeria won independence in 1960. Two years after this novel was published in 1958. So it was written in a context of the liberation movement and the beginning of the end of colonialism in Nigeria, which began in the mid-1800s
But on to the novel!
IN a nutshell: Things is about not only Okonkwo ( a heroic/tragic figure in the manner of the Greeks or
Shakespeare…a great figure with great power or virtue as well as accomplishment; but who is simultaneously undone by a great flaw). BUT also a tragedy of the destruction of the Igbo village and people, and by extension of traditional or “native” African villages, cultures, peoples. The effects of colonialism (and missionaries). IN social and cultural terms, and not just personal and economic. But the personal
qualities of Okonkwo et al are also important, as are the economic changes brought by/with the foreigners.
The openness of at least some if not most of the “local” Africans/Nigerians [but what is Nigeria at this time? There is no nation-state here] ironically helps produce their
downfall. No good deed goes unpunished! They do not immediately go to war, for example, and can appreciate the increase in trade, and for some the religion is helpful/liked. The richness of their native culture, their tolerance and values, is in part rooted in tradition, but it is also these traditions and this culture which are incompatible with the whites/missionaries and of colonialism. And East/West or North/South conflict. There are communication gaps and incommensurable ways of seeing, in other words. Culture clashes, as we have seen with Chess Players.
The problem at bottom is that the whites have power and military force, and moreover use this to “pacify” and
conquer and take over. That is the bottom line. But what this process of “clash” or “encounter” or “contact” suggests.
Finally at the outset we also have to note that these are not timeless, primordial, primitive and thus stereotypical
adaptable to change or what the Brits will see as ‘progress”. You can see a certain self-reflexive and self-knowing quality to how they (some of them) think—that is, we and even they seem to know that the "Supreme Court" of the nine
egwugwu/spirits are not really ancestral spirits. In fact, they
are men of the village in disguise. Or perhaps they are able to see them as both. The point is that they are very human and ‘modern’ too, capable of thinking in ambiguous and complex ways, of course.
Quick Recap of an earlier point from prior classes:
1. We’re inquiring into some of the complexities and “interesting things” about colonialism and its aftermaths, by looking at films and texts and
‘theories’ about this fundamental aspect of modern world history. It is rarely analyzed or taught, which makes it both difficult and yet fun or at least ‘new.’
While it is true that colonialism (and imperialism) are by definition morally and politically
objectionable phenomena, it is also true that they are too widespread and too complicated a
phenomenon to simply take a moral stance against them, or to not study them carefully.
colonialism and western powers… : he does not simply condemn the colonizers, even though his critique is powerful and damning He also shows how it works for
some people. Colonialism offers career advancement and upward mobility for some ─ something which
nearly all of us want. The societies that the colonizers “contacted” were complex and some people were on the bottom of the class and status hierarchies. So there was a ready-in-wait audience, so to speak, for the new potential regime. Had Igbo society been truly unified and harmonious, then the colonizers would have had a much more difficult time in taking over.
2. At the same time the effects of colonialism are
devastating on previous, traditional ways of life. Pp 183, 187.
3. Big part of O’s downfall is his “extreme” or warrior-like masculinity. He is too aggressive when he needs not be. He even kills himself this way, though this is very moving and harder to call a flaw. But what makes him so strong ( he is a very hard and smart worker and has a lot of land and food to show for it, and attracts many women/wives) is also what produces his inability to adapt to the new circumstances of the colonial world or British colonialism.
He also refuses to allow himself to show affection towards his son Ikemfuma. He is driven by what he feels are the complete failures of his own father, and thus fears his other son Nwoye will turn out like him.
KNOWLEDGE/POWER. The “District Commissioner” is going to title his work The Pacification of the Primitive
Tribes of the Niger (p. 209).
1. What do you interpret this perception of Okonkwo and the people of Umuofia? How much does he know about Okonkwo and the Ibo people and culture?
2. What is wrong with his title? Are they primitive? What is telling in his way of describing the Ibo and
Okonkwo?
3. Note the connection between colonialism and
knowledge. Key to the practice of colonialism is the generation of knowledge and writings about the colonized Other. But it is not objective or even humanely valuable knowledge., It is knowledge or information in the interests of power and colonial rule.
But even beyond the place of knowledge/info/discourse within colonialism and social reality. Just getting into what makes this novel so memorable. I think if we can
appreciate this last line of the novel we have the key to the whole book and what makes it such a powerful, tragic depiction of colonialism. Who/what is outside of what the Commissioner knows?
CIVILIZING MISSION versus White Man’s Burden…. The two different ideologies/views underpinning colonial
projects. Mr Brown (more kindly/reasonable) versus Rev James Smith (more clearly racist and intolerant).
British empire, the Portugese and all of them. Bringing Western civilization to the non-white races and cultures of the world. Spanish empire used this too, but emphasized the religious/Christian aspects of this mission. In fact
Christianity in its various missionary guises are also a very good example of this. For the French the emphasis was more on the cultural and social and political aspects. It was a belief in the far superior and leading quality of
French civilization (whatever that might actually be). BUT there is an implicit belief that the natives/colonized could
and indeed must become the same as us, the
normal/moderns. It is in that sense a universalism and humanism.
Can compare this to the more racist British version, which believed the colonized were of an inferior race and couldn’t become the same; it was the white man’s burden to
help/protect/control/parent them. Those people were a pain in the ***, a burden that we must nobly carry on
shouldering. Things shows this ideology of the civilizing mission in several passages, including the final two
HEGEMONY, INCL RELIGION AND EDUCATION. See Loomba, 30, 32, 33. A lived system of ideology and belief. H
= common sense of an age/society/group. This is
established in part through institutions like schooling, church, and so on. We see this in Achebe’s villages in
Things.
1. Hegemony or “Hegemonic struggle” = The
battle for ‘hearts and minds”. The ‘hearts
and minds” of a group or whole population or class must be won over to “your” side, i.e. if you seek power or political rule. In other words hegemony is a “system” and “method” of
political rule, or more simply of persuasion and control. In Achebe the missionaries and the Brits succeed in the battle of hegemony over the native Igbo people and the old elites/elders in the villages.
2. MODERNITY? CAPITALIST MODERENITY, INCL CHRISTIANITY, RULE OF LAW,
WESTERN POLITICAL GOVERNANCE. We will emphasize this later on when we turn to
globalization. But colonialism is also about the transition to a type of similar, unified global order—economically and politically if also not ideologically and culturally. Christianity,
markets, representative governments, liberalism, and so on. The world that is
“THINGS FALL APART, THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD…”
1. hegemonic process, whereby in Things the Christian church and their new acolytes as well as the British colonists slowly but surely take over. OR not slowly but relatively quickly. British control starts in
1861. TFA set in later 19th century. Exact
date/setting of novel is deliberately not given.
Different understandings of time and experiences of temporality.
2. the native culture is complex and even varies from village to village. Ibo (or Igbo) culture is not
“African” or “village” culture. It is Ibo culture. It also has its own tensions and contradictions and problems, as Achebe makes perfectly clear because he is writing as a Realist and trying to be truthful. One of these is the strong, even sexist masculinity represented by Okonkwo above all.
3. Repeated emphasis on the feeling and awareness that the worlds is changing. Not just political control but the whole world and the “times” are changing and out of joint. 183 187 193.
4. EGWUGWU: spirit ancestors. They can intervene and decide legal/juridical/personal matters in the village, like a tribal council but in the form of spirits. The men of the village dress up as them. In an
earlier scene in the novel, it is made clear by Achebe that the actual villagers, incl the women, know that the egwugwu are really just the village men/leaders in disguise, so to speak. One is not allowed to
5. Compare this to 205 and the whispers Okonkwo hears. Even the local villagers know the times have changed. They are smarter than they might appear otherwise and know what is going on. A true
warrior like Okonkwo is already being the times, so to speak, even before the white man arrives.
Some other THEMES for later unpacking:
The Struggle between Change and Tradition
Religion—what ius good or bad about Christianity and/or missionary projects…?
