The Politics of Myth in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments

Abstract

IN AN ESSAY ON THE POSTCOLONIAL AFRICAN NOVEL, WOLE OGUNDELE makes some very thoughtful remarks about dearth of of factual precolonial past, which should and give reality to fictions. The main thrust of Ogundele's essay is that novelists and critics have simply not given enough attention to recuperation of Africa's precolonial despite early professions of this need by some of Africa's most influential writers. I agree with Ogundele about fundamental importance of retrieving as much as possible of historical reality of African past. I disagree, however, with Ogundele's assumption that myth is a device of evasion literature, used by writers to deflect attention from historical realities and national priorities. Ogundele's concern about homogenizing ideology of nation-statism and its substitution of myths and folklore for actual events1 may be justified, but while I agree that there is a need to record particular histories Africa, I do not think that representation of myth precludes an historical thrust literary writing. Moreover, Ogundele's call for of factual precolonial past to complement and give reality to fictions fails to indicate how narratives are to be distinguished from fictions.2The Opposition of myth to history and to realism goes back a long way. 'Myth' implies falsehood, although it also suggests a higher truth. Richard Priebe defines myth thus:a narrative that explains, explores or attempts to resolve primary ontofogical, psychological and physical contradictions that man has recurrently faced. The essential characteristic of any myth is that one or more ways we are led outside of a time referent.3Priebe uses this definition to create a binary distinction between two kinds of African writers, those encompassed by idea of a mythic consciousness such as Ayi Kwei Armah, Kofi Awoonor, Wole Soyinka and Amos Tutuola, and others, like Chinua Achebe, whose ethical consciousness he defines in contradistinction, or opposition to previous group whose sensibility is mythic.4 Interestingly, while Priebe selects Achebe for his study of an ethical consciousness, and explores Things Fall Apart as a novel which Igbo life proceeds a realistic, linear and historical manner,5 Ogundele discusses same novel as an example of how the African novelist wishing to recover moments distant precolonial has been substituting myth, folklore, etc. for what really happened.6I think a re-examination of myth and history West African novel has become important because readings built on assumption of a dichotomy between myth and history, or myth and reality, such as we find Priebe and Ogundele, preclude possibility of a writer's re-construction of traditional myth for purpose of social direction. Studies of myth from late 1960s have shown that myth does not necessarily lead beyond a temporal referent but can actual and current socio-political purposes. In their study of genealogies of Tiv and Gonja of West Africa, Jack Goody and Ian Watt show that tales serve same function that Malinowski claimed for myth; they act as 'charters' of present social institutions rather than as faithfully historical records of times past.7 Myth, therefore, can be concerned with here and now, used to validate contemporary culture and to promote social cohesion. Although Ayi Kwei Armah's handling of myth is more complex than Achebe's, both writers aim to retrieve of their communities from debris left by colonialism. This is not nostalgic retrospection or a romantic hunting-out of an idyllic to flaunt before non- African readers but a search through history for retrieval of modes of thought and action that would take continent into future.My focus here is on Armah's second novel, Fragments (1969), and I would like to show that Armah's use of myth this novel is politically structured to combat neocolonialism contemporary Ghana. …