Chinua Achebe’s Early Anti-Imperialism in the Court of Postcolonial Theory

Abstract

Chinua Achebe is well known for his trenchantly anti-imperialist literary positions. In his critical interventions, he excoriates the unrepentant Conradian eye of imperialistically minded foreign critics of Africa’s artistic works. However the current postcolonial turn in both critical practice and cross-cultural sensibilities has brought about some drastic redescriptions of both imperialism and anti-imperialism. This paper returns to some of the earliest construction sites of Achebe’s anti-colonial discourse in order to examine, in the light of postcolonial theory, the strengths and aporias of Achebe’s double-edged policy of unconditional cultural protectionism towards Africa and unmitigated critique of imperialism.