Making Meaning of the Colonial Experience: Reading Things Falling Apart through the Prism of Alfred Schutz’s Phenomenology

Abstract

This essay offers a Schutzian reading of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, arguing that the so-called critical ambivalence in Chinua Achebe’s hermeneutic of the colonial experience makes sense if situated within his lived experiences in colonial Nigeria. Grounding its interpretation of Achebe’s meaning-making of the colonial experience in Schutz’s phenomenology, the essay begins with a close reading of the novel itself, highlighting significant areas of ambivalence. Next, it explicates Schutz’s (1967) constructs of intersubjectivity and phenomenology of literature. In the next section in which Achebe’s biography is examined, an attempt is made to show how a Schutzian reading of Achebe’s social relationships can help us understand his account of the colonial experience as represented in his first novel. Ultimately, the paper concludes by noting that the ambivalence that charactterizes Things Fall Apart reflects the author’s realism and investment in both the African and European cultures he sought to critique.