At the crossroads: culture and cultural identity in the novels of Achebe

Abstract

This article examines culture and cultural identity in the novels of the African writer Chinua Achebe (1930–). Culture may be studied from the viewpoint of Weber and Durkheim as an analysis of cultural patterns in a society or from Rosaldo's postmodernist perspective as an exploration of cultural borderlands. In Things fall apart and Arrow of God, novels set in the period before colonisation, Achebe sketches cultural patterns in social institutions to counter stereotypes of Africa. However, even as he traces these patterns, he reveals schisms in Igbo society that foreshadow change in the existing social order. Colonialism fractures the society further, accelerating change. While delineating the processes of change, Achebe outlines the complex nature of cultural identity, a result of both the intrinsic nature of Igbo society and the advent of colonialism. In the postcolonial novels, No longer at ease, A man of the people and Anthills of savannah, cultural identity becomes problematic since the margins between the centre and the periphery become indistinct and social institutions collapse. Dominant Weberian patterns now yield to Rosaldo's cultural borderlands where cultural hybrids, equally sceptical about African and western values, struggle for identity. Stationed at the crossroads of history, these characters embrace the complexities of cultural change, demonstrating the vibrancy of Igbo society as they adapt to move on.