5/2/25
Race, Writing and Decolonization - Lecture 3 - Dr Sam Durrant.
Things Fall Apart
Realist Representation - Pre Colonial Ibo culture and the colonisation of Iboland. Positive
representation of Africa in response to the racist colonia; depiction of Africa as the savage,
primitive like Conrad’s, Heart of Darkness.
Tragic Ritual - allows contemporary Africans to come to terms with the trauma of
colonisation and to reconnect with their ancestors.
● Double act of representation and identification.
● Representation and identification are two translations of Greek word ‘mimesis’ - 2
ideas about what art does.
What is the goal of art?
● Potolsky, Mimesis - ‘Few cultures outside the West have regarded realism as an
important goal. Art in [non-Western] cultures is closely intertwined with ritual and
daily life’.
● Plato rationalises mimesis as a representation. Art to be accurate, the realistic
representation of an object in the world.
● Aristotle was interested in tragedy. Representation of an experience across time.
Art is successful if it is:
1. Probable: logic of causation OR 2. Cathartic: if we identify with the hero.
● Aristotle recovers a pre-Platonic, pre-rational, affective understanding of art as a
communal rite of identification.
● Realism - Things Fall Apart seeks to be rational: to prove that the African past not
‘one long night of savergy’.
● As a tragedy, Things Fall Apart is a ritual, uncovering the African community via
our mimetic identification with (empathy for) Okonkwo (art as emotional and
subjective).
● Catharsis - cleansing and purgation.
● ‘It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offence against the earth.
And a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansman’.
● Achebe is trying to ancestralise an unancestralised thing - done something
unidentifiable.
Decolonising Africa
● ‘It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know,
that was the worst of it—the suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come
slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what
thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your
remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough;
, but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just
the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion
of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages
—could comprehend. And why not?’ (Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1899)
● ‘The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph
Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in
criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a
normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked.’ (Chinua
Achebe, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” 1975).
● ‘Here then is an adequate revolution for me to espouse--to help my society regain
belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self-
denigration . . . [to] teach my readers that that their past was not one long night of
savagery from which the first Europeans, acting on God's behalf, delivered them.’
Achebe “The novelist as teacher” (U of Leeds, 1964). Hopes and Impediments
p. 44-45)
● Darwinian idea that Africans are less civilised than Europeans - unhistorical beings
who are not fully being. The black body does not contain a soul.
● Africa is the opposite of civilization and seen as more primitive.
● Heart of Darkness is colonialism itself.
● Act of decolonisation that corrects the racist view of Africa, as an act of historical
and quasi-anthropological realism.
● Needs art - mode of realism - documentary to decolonise the minds of the
readership.
Historical Realism in Things Fall Apart
● Story of colonisation rather than decolonisation.
● Published in 1958 - 2 years before Nigerian independence in 1960.
● Novel is part of the push for independence, part of the moment of decolonisation.
● Set in the colonial period, from establishment of a British protectorate in 1885 to full
colonial rule in 1915.
● Act of decolonisation, performed at the moment of decolonisation, but tells the story
of the colonisation of Iboland.
● Novel records the coming of missionaries (Mr Brown and Mr Smith) and then the
colonial administration (District Commissioner at the end).
● Novel records the imprisonment of the elders (Chapter 10). A direct assault on Ibo
cosmology as the elders are the egwugwu (ancestral spirits).
● Massacre at Mbaino (Chapter 15). This actually occurred in Abame in 1905. Dr
Stuart was killed on a bicycle trip. A month later, a British expeditionary force
massacred the village.
● 1912 Collective Punishment Ordinance - legalises British right to use
disproportionate violence in retribution - stipulated punishment against an entire
village or community for crimes committed by one or more persons against the
British.
Race, Writing and Decolonization - Lecture 3 - Dr Sam Durrant.
Things Fall Apart
Realist Representation - Pre Colonial Ibo culture and the colonisation of Iboland. Positive
representation of Africa in response to the racist colonia; depiction of Africa as the savage,
primitive like Conrad’s, Heart of Darkness.
Tragic Ritual - allows contemporary Africans to come to terms with the trauma of
colonisation and to reconnect with their ancestors.
● Double act of representation and identification.
● Representation and identification are two translations of Greek word ‘mimesis’ - 2
ideas about what art does.
What is the goal of art?
● Potolsky, Mimesis - ‘Few cultures outside the West have regarded realism as an
important goal. Art in [non-Western] cultures is closely intertwined with ritual and
daily life’.
● Plato rationalises mimesis as a representation. Art to be accurate, the realistic
representation of an object in the world.
● Aristotle was interested in tragedy. Representation of an experience across time.
Art is successful if it is:
1. Probable: logic of causation OR 2. Cathartic: if we identify with the hero.
● Aristotle recovers a pre-Platonic, pre-rational, affective understanding of art as a
communal rite of identification.
● Realism - Things Fall Apart seeks to be rational: to prove that the African past not
‘one long night of savergy’.
● As a tragedy, Things Fall Apart is a ritual, uncovering the African community via
our mimetic identification with (empathy for) Okonkwo (art as emotional and
subjective).
● Catharsis - cleansing and purgation.
● ‘It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offence against the earth.
And a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansman’.
● Achebe is trying to ancestralise an unancestralised thing - done something
unidentifiable.
Decolonising Africa
● ‘It was unearthly, and the men were—No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know,
that was the worst of it—the suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come
slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what
thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought of your
remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough;
, but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just
the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion
of there being a meaning in it which you—you so remote from the night of first ages
—could comprehend. And why not?’ (Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1899)
● ‘The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph
Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in
criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a
normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked.’ (Chinua
Achebe, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” 1975).
● ‘Here then is an adequate revolution for me to espouse--to help my society regain
belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self-
denigration . . . [to] teach my readers that that their past was not one long night of
savagery from which the first Europeans, acting on God's behalf, delivered them.’
Achebe “The novelist as teacher” (U of Leeds, 1964). Hopes and Impediments
p. 44-45)
● Darwinian idea that Africans are less civilised than Europeans - unhistorical beings
who are not fully being. The black body does not contain a soul.
● Africa is the opposite of civilization and seen as more primitive.
● Heart of Darkness is colonialism itself.
● Act of decolonisation that corrects the racist view of Africa, as an act of historical
and quasi-anthropological realism.
● Needs art - mode of realism - documentary to decolonise the minds of the
readership.
Historical Realism in Things Fall Apart
● Story of colonisation rather than decolonisation.
● Published in 1958 - 2 years before Nigerian independence in 1960.
● Novel is part of the push for independence, part of the moment of decolonisation.
● Set in the colonial period, from establishment of a British protectorate in 1885 to full
colonial rule in 1915.
● Act of decolonisation, performed at the moment of decolonisation, but tells the story
of the colonisation of Iboland.
● Novel records the coming of missionaries (Mr Brown and Mr Smith) and then the
colonial administration (District Commissioner at the end).
● Novel records the imprisonment of the elders (Chapter 10). A direct assault on Ibo
cosmology as the elders are the egwugwu (ancestral spirits).
● Massacre at Mbaino (Chapter 15). This actually occurred in Abame in 1905. Dr
Stuart was killed on a bicycle trip. A month later, a British expeditionary force
massacred the village.
● 1912 Collective Punishment Ordinance - legalises British right to use
disproportionate violence in retribution - stipulated punishment against an entire
village or community for crimes committed by one or more persons against the
British.
