Chinua Achebe Writing Culture: Representations of Gender and Tradition in Things Fall Apart

Abstract

While Achebe's early novels have been popularly received for their representation of an early African nationalist that repudiates imperialist and colonialist ideology, his counter-narratives have only been narrowly discussed for their theoretical speculation on cul? tural and ideological production as mode of resistance within nation? alist that texts so evidendy celebrate. My epigraph not only recognizes that definition of tradition in Achebe's work hinges upon ideological conflict, comments also on varying forms of consciousness that arise within discourses of self-definition within Igbo traditional culture. Moreover, communicates idea of complex rather than simple relationships between individuals and groups in world of Achebe's fictional Igbo communities. This essay intends an appropriation of Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia and dialogism in its exploration of some concerns relevant to question of representation of ideology in Things Fall Apart. Bakhtin's notion of dialogism views narrative discourses as forms of social exchange that locate the very basis of individual and social behaviour within conflicting worldviews and determine very bases of ideologi? cal interrelations in manner similar to that found in Achebe's narrative. Novelistic discourse thus performs longer as [mere] information, directions, rules, models, but enables us to locate dialogue in its more immediate ideological and political context (342). Hayden White implies something of this immediacy of context when he suggests distinguishing between a discourse that openly adopts perspective that looks out on world and reports it and one that make[s] world speak itself and speak itself as story (2). Writing stories that speak for themselves is central to Achebe's novelis? tic agenda. In famous early essay, he wrote: I would be quite satisfied if my novels . . . did no more than teach my readers that their past... was not one long night of savagery from which first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them (Morning Yet 45). Representing an African world? view through narratives that speak for themselves meant that Achebe would draw upon Igbo oral to narrate stories of his communities, while bearing in mind Richard Bauman's exhortations that in utilizing oral to engage canons of elite Western literary traditions and texts, oral narrative must not be taken merely to be the reflection of