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2020 things fall apart introductory lecture slides

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Busisiwe Madlala
Busisiwe Madlala

Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist best known for his first novel Things Fall Apart, published in 1958. The novel depicts Nigerian tribal life in the late 19th century and the arrival of British colonialism. Achebe criticized Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for portraying Africa as dark and primitive without human qualities, which helped justify colonialism. In his landmark essay "An Image of Africa," Achebe argued Conrad was a racist and his work dehumanized Africans. Things Fall Apart countered this by portraying a complex African society with its own traditions from an African perspective. Achebe aimed to give voice to colonial subjects and challenge stereotypes about Africa perpetuated in earlier Western works

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Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Dr. T. Tsehloane
Chinua Achebe Born in 1930, in a village called Ogidi in South Eastern Nigeria. Went to University College, Ibadan for undergraduate studies. Worked for Nigerian broadcasting service (NBS) In 1966 his work was interrupted by the Nigerian civil war, when South Eastern region attempted to breakaway to form the independent state of Biafra.
C. Achebe After the war, he was appointed as a Senior Research Fellow at University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Later on he was appointed in several universities abroad. He has received numerous awards and honours throughout the world. He is a recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award In 2007 he won Booker International Prize for Fiction He has written over twenty books: novels, short stories essays and collections of poetry. He died on 21 March 2013 aged 82.
Famous Works Things Fall Apart (1958) No Longer at Ease (1960) Arrow of God (1964) A Man of the People (1966) Girls at War (1972) Anthills of the Savannah (1987)
Chinua Achebe Authors first and most influential novel. Published 1958. It has sold over ten million copies. Has been translated into more than fifty languages. Breakdown of traditional African culture in face of European colonisation in the late nineteenth century. It reflects on this important historical encounter from the point of view of the Africans, the subjects of colonisation.
Challenging the Canon Achebe published Things Fall Apart as a response partly to what he considered to be distortions and fabrications by Eurocentric novels, such as Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness and Joyce Carys Mister Johnson that treat Africa as a primordial and cultureless foil to Europe. As a text, Things Fall Apart is set in the 1890s and portrays a precolonial African society and its subsequent encounter with British colonialism. It shatters the stereotypical notions about Africa and Africans. Achebe depicts a traditional African society as complex with advanced social institutions and traditions prior to its contact with Europeans. He conveys a fuller understanding of African culture and thus giving voice to an underrepresented and previously denigrated colonial subject.
Edward Saids Orientalism Illustrates the manner in which the representations of Europes Others has been institutionalised since the eighteenth century as a feature of its cultural dominance. Europe associated itself with order, rationality and symmetry. Non-Europeans were seen as inferior and associated with disorder, irrationality and primitivism. Myth, opinion, hearsay and prejudice assumed the status of received truth.
Achebe as a writer Believed in the power of literature to create and initiate social change. Influenced other African writers to write stories from the point of view of their own people. Pioneer and advocate of the need for the Africans to tell their own stories from their own perspective.
Achebes mission as a writer I believe in the complexity of the human story, and that there's no way you can tell that story in one way and say, 'this is it.' Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing ... this is the way I think the world's stories should be told: from many different perspectives.
Epigraph Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. WB Yeats
Epigraph The epigraph hints at chaos that arose when an established social and political system collapses. It is a reference to the collapse of the traditional African tribal system in the wake colonial invasion. Challenges the conventional notion of European colonialism as an imposition of order. Colonialism disrupted African history and brought chaos. It can also be an ironic reference to the imminent disintegration of the British colonial empire. The book was published just two years before Nigeria attained its independence in 1960.
Things Fall Apart Counter-Text to Conrads Heart of Darkness Nature and Development of the main character Setting of the novel
Achebe on Eurocentric Depiction of Africa and Africans The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slaveryThis continued until the Africans themselves, in the middle of the twentieth century, took into their own hands the telling of their story
Achebe on Conrads Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as the other world the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilisation, a place where mans vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality. The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked.
Achebe on Conrad Africa as a setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his perilThe real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world.
Achebe on Conrad Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation but was strangely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth. But the victims of racist slander who for centuries have had to live with the inhumanity it makes them heir to have always known better than any casual visitor even when he comes loaded with the gifts of a Conrad. (Chinua Achebe, An Image of Africa)
Timeline of the Debate 1899 Heart of Darkness 1958 Things Fall Apart 1975 Image of Africa
Achebe on Conrad Achebes criticism of Conrad focuses on three main points 1. Through his narrator Marlow, Conrad portrays Africa as a blank space He does so not because the land was uninhabited, but because such inhabitation was of no consequence to Europe 2. The Africans in the novel are depicted as virtually without language 3. Achebe argues that the predominant modernist readings of the text render Africans absent In such interpretations Africans serve as substitutes for a European indisposition
Achebe on Conrad For Achebe Africa and Africans in the novella are mere metaphors for the break-up of one petty European mind Africas darkness stands for the animality lurking in the civilised European heart Africas darkness therefore comes to symbolise Europes fears of evolutionary reversion Forever tied to this symbolism, Africans no longer exist as (independent) human beings They are reduced to representatives of a long past era in evolutionary history possessing primordial human traits
Achebe on Conrad Does Achebe sufficiently take into account the historical context in which the novella was written? Does he analyse the contradictions in the novella? Does he differentiate between narrator/author? Is this a necessary distinction? What did Achebe want to achieve by criticising Conrad in this deliberately provocative manner?
2020 things fall apart introductory lecture slides
2020 things fall apart introductory lecture slides
2020 things fall apart introductory lecture slides
2020 things fall apart introductory lecture slides
2020 things fall apart introductory lecture slides
2020 things fall apart introductory lecture slides
2020 things fall apart introductory lecture slides
2020 things fall apart introductory lecture slides
2020 things fall apart introductory lecture slides

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2020 things fall apart introductory lecture slides

  • 1. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Dr. T. Tsehloane
  • 2. Chinua Achebe Born in 1930, in a village called Ogidi in South Eastern Nigeria. Went to University College, Ibadan for undergraduate studies. Worked for Nigerian broadcasting service (NBS) In 1966 his work was interrupted by the Nigerian civil war, when South Eastern region attempted to breakaway to form the independent state of Biafra.
  • 3. C. Achebe After the war, he was appointed as a Senior Research Fellow at University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Later on he was appointed in several universities abroad. He has received numerous awards and honours throughout the world. He is a recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award In 2007 he won Booker International Prize for Fiction He has written over twenty books: novels, short stories essays and collections of poetry. He died on 21 March 2013 aged 82.
  • 4. Famous Works Things Fall Apart (1958) No Longer at Ease (1960) Arrow of God (1964) A Man of the People (1966) Girls at War (1972) Anthills of the Savannah (1987)
  • 5. Chinua Achebe Authors first and most influential novel. Published 1958. It has sold over ten million copies. Has been translated into more than fifty languages. Breakdown of traditional African culture in face of European colonisation in the late nineteenth century. It reflects on this important historical encounter from the point of view of the Africans, the subjects of colonisation.
  • 6. Challenging the Canon Achebe published Things Fall Apart as a response partly to what he considered to be distortions and fabrications by Eurocentric novels, such as Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness and Joyce Carys Mister Johnson that treat Africa as a primordial and cultureless foil to Europe. As a text, Things Fall Apart is set in the 1890s and portrays a precolonial African society and its subsequent encounter with British colonialism. It shatters the stereotypical notions about Africa and Africans. Achebe depicts a traditional African society as complex with advanced social institutions and traditions prior to its contact with Europeans. He conveys a fuller understanding of African culture and thus giving voice to an underrepresented and previously denigrated colonial subject.
  • 7. Edward Saids Orientalism Illustrates the manner in which the representations of Europes Others has been institutionalised since the eighteenth century as a feature of its cultural dominance. Europe associated itself with order, rationality and symmetry. Non-Europeans were seen as inferior and associated with disorder, irrationality and primitivism. Myth, opinion, hearsay and prejudice assumed the status of received truth.
  • 8. Achebe as a writer Believed in the power of literature to create and initiate social change. Influenced other African writers to write stories from the point of view of their own people. Pioneer and advocate of the need for the Africans to tell their own stories from their own perspective.
  • 9. Achebes mission as a writer I believe in the complexity of the human story, and that there's no way you can tell that story in one way and say, 'this is it.' Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing ... this is the way I think the world's stories should be told: from many different perspectives.
  • 10. Epigraph Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. WB Yeats
  • 11. Epigraph The epigraph hints at chaos that arose when an established social and political system collapses. It is a reference to the collapse of the traditional African tribal system in the wake colonial invasion. Challenges the conventional notion of European colonialism as an imposition of order. Colonialism disrupted African history and brought chaos. It can also be an ironic reference to the imminent disintegration of the British colonial empire. The book was published just two years before Nigeria attained its independence in 1960.
  • 12. Things Fall Apart Counter-Text to Conrads Heart of Darkness Nature and Development of the main character Setting of the novel
  • 13. Achebe on Eurocentric Depiction of Africa and Africans The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slaveryThis continued until the Africans themselves, in the middle of the twentieth century, took into their own hands the telling of their story
  • 14. Achebe on Conrads Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as the other world the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilisation, a place where mans vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality. The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked.
  • 15. Achebe on Conrad Africa as a setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his perilThe real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world.
  • 16. Achebe on Conrad Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation but was strangely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth. But the victims of racist slander who for centuries have had to live with the inhumanity it makes them heir to have always known better than any casual visitor even when he comes loaded with the gifts of a Conrad. (Chinua Achebe, An Image of Africa)
  • 17. Timeline of the Debate 1899 Heart of Darkness 1958 Things Fall Apart 1975 Image of Africa
  • 18. Achebe on Conrad Achebes criticism of Conrad focuses on three main points 1. Through his narrator Marlow, Conrad portrays Africa as a blank space He does so not because the land was uninhabited, but because such inhabitation was of no consequence to Europe 2. The Africans in the novel are depicted as virtually without language 3. Achebe argues that the predominant modernist readings of the text render Africans absent In such interpretations Africans serve as substitutes for a European indisposition
  • 19. Achebe on Conrad For Achebe Africa and Africans in the novella are mere metaphors for the break-up of one petty European mind Africas darkness stands for the animality lurking in the civilised European heart Africas darkness therefore comes to symbolise Europes fears of evolutionary reversion Forever tied to this symbolism, Africans no longer exist as (independent) human beings They are reduced to representatives of a long past era in evolutionary history possessing primordial human traits
  • 20. Achebe on Conrad Does Achebe sufficiently take into account the historical context in which the novella was written? Does he analyse the contradictions in the novella? Does he differentiate between narrator/author? Is this a necessary distinction? What did Achebe want to achieve by criticising Conrad in this deliberately provocative manner?