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Abstract
Cultural nationalism has been a prevalent concern in some works of African writers. Some African writers have devoted themselves and their work to reconstructing the debased image of African culture – “Cultural Nationalism” depicts the “instrument” by which the authenticity and integrity of African culture can be revitalized. This long essay is an attempt to show the repeated issue of cultural nationalism in Achebe’s Arrow of God and Ngugi wa Thiong’o The River Between. African is a continent with culture, tradition, belief systems, norms and practices which make Africa distinct from other continents. Achebe’s Arrow of God and Ngugi’s The River Between reveal to us the true Africa and put the European critics’ views in a waste bin. In conclusion, the formalist theory is appropriate for this study.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
It is interesting to acknowledge the fact that, before now, African continent has been constantly attacked and ridiculed by European critics as a dark land, a continent without light (definite play, culture, development or purpose) a conglomeration of people lost and cast off from the developmental and cultural trace of humanity; from all ethnological and anthropological stances and observation. The white colonial masters claimed that they brought culture and development to the African people to extricate them from their primitive shackles. This particular claim triggered various literary works from European critics such as: The work of Joseph Conrad titled Heart of Darkness. In this work, Joseph mocked the African continent as a continent of evil and black monkeys, a place where nothing good could come out – a land and people without any trace of cultural practices.
In reaction and response to the above claim, Chinua Achebe wrote Arrow of God and Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The River Between. The two novels are novels of cultural nationalism to put the whites and their criticism to the waste bin.
This novel is written against the perception of white about Africans. This research work is written to the fact that before the coming of the white men into Africa, Africans already possess an existing cultural background and practice. The aim of this work is to further put into the right perspective the fact that Africa has a culture.
Culture is the social behaviour and norms found in human societies. Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. Some aspect of human behaviour, social practices such as culture, expressive forms such as art, music, dance, ritual and religion and technologies such as cooking, tool usage, shelter and clothing are said to be cultural universals, found in all human societies.
Cultural nationalism is a form of nationalism in which the nation is defined by a shared culture. It is intermediate position between ethnic nationalism on one hand and civic nationalism on the other.
1.2 Scope of the Work
This study examines cultural nationalism as related to the African continent and her people. However, its analysis and examination revolve around two prominent works by two African novelists. The discussion is restricted to Achebe’s Arrow of God and Ngugi’s The River Between.
1.3 Methodology
In this study, two methods of data analysis were employed to collect relevant data for its analysis. In other words, data were collected from the primary and secondary sources of data collection.
The primary source of data comprises of the opinion obtained from personal interview, personal experience, ideas obtained from interaction with some lecturers in the discipline of literature and literary discourse, while the secondary sources include textbooks, newspapers, internet printout and past projects.
1.4 Author’s Background
Biography of Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe was born on November 16, 1930 at Ogidi. His full name is Albert Chinualumogu Achebe. Achebe grew up in the Igbo town of Ogidi, Nigeria. He studied English and Literature at University College (now the University of Ibadan). Achebe taught for a short time and later joined Nigerian Staff Broadcasting Cooperation in Lagos, where he served as Director of External Broadcasting in 1961 – 1966. In 1967, he founded a publishing company at Enugu with the poet, Christopher Okigbo who died shortly after the Nigerian Civil War for Biafran Independence. In 1969, Achebe toured the United States with yellow writers lecturing universities.
In 1976, he was appointed research fellow at the University of Nigeria and became a professor emeritus from 1981 – 1985.
The following works are credited to Achebe (prize-winning author of) Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), Anthills of the Savannah (1987), How the Christ in Biafra (1973), Beware, Soul Brother (1975), Hopes and Impediments (1985), Home and Exile (2000), The Education of a British-Protected Child (2004), and There Was A Country: A Personal History Biafra (2012).
Some of the prizes and awards he won include: Manbooker International Prize (2007).
Biography of Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s original name is James Thiongo Ngugi. He was born on January 6, 1938. Limuru, Kenya, East Africa’s leading novelist, whose popular Weep Not, Child (1964) was the first major novel in English by an East African. He became sensitized to the effects of colonialism in Africa, he adopted his traditional name and wrote in the Bantu language of Kenya’s Kikuyu people.
Ngugi received Bachelor’s Degree from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, in 1963 and from Leeds University, Yorkshire, England, in 1964. After doing graduate work at Leeds, he served as a lecturer in English at University College, Nairobi, Kenya, and as a visiting professor of English at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, U.S. From 1972 to 1977 he was a senior lecturer and chairman of the Department of Literature at the University of Nairobi.
The prize winning Weep Not, Child is the story of Kikuyu family drawn into the struggle for Kenyan independence during the state of emergence and the Mau-mau rebellion. A Grain of Wheat (1967), generally held to be artistically more mature focuses on the many social, moral and racial issues of the struggle for independence and its aftermath. A third novel, The River Between (1965), which was actually written before the others, tells of lovers kept apart by the conflict between Christianity and the beliefs and suggests that efforts to reunite a culturally divided community by means of western education are doomed failure. Petals of Blood (1977), deals with social and economic problems in East Africa after independence particularly they continued exploitation of peasants and workers by foreign business interests and a greedy indigenous bourgeoisie. In a novel written in Kikuyu and English versions, Caitaani Mutharaba-ini (1980), Devil on the Cross, Ngugi presented these ideas in an allegorical form. Written in manner meant to recall traditional ballad singers, the novel is a realistic, partly fantastical account of a meeting between the Devil and various villains who exploit the poor. Murogi was Kagogo (2004; Wizard of the Crow) brings the dual lenses of fantasy and satire to bear upon the legacy of colonialism not only as it is perpetuated by a native dictatorship but also as it is ingrained in an ostensibly decolonized culture itself.
The Black Hermit (1968; produced 1962) was the first of several plays of which the Trial of Dedan of Kimathi (1976; produced 1974) co-written with Micere Githae Mugo, is considered by some critics to be his best. He was also co-author, with Ngugi wa Mini of a play first written in Kikuyu, Ngaabi Ki Neleenda (1977; I Will Marry when I Want). The performance of which led to his detention for a year without trial by the Kenyan government. His books detailed: A writer’s prison Diary which was published in 1981, describes his ordeals. The play attacks capitalism, religious hypocrisy and corruption among the new economic elite of Kenya. Matigari ma Njiruungi (1986; Matigari) is a novel in the same vein.
Ngugi presented his ideas on literature, culture and politics in numerous essays and lectures, which were collected in Homecoming (1972), Writers in Politics (1981), Barrel of a Pen (1983) and Moving the Center (1993), Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams (1998) In decolonizing the mind: The Politics of Language Literature (1986), Ngugi argued for African-language Literature as the only authentic voice for African and stated his own intention of writing only in Kikuyu or Kiswahili. From that point on such works earned him a reputation as one of Africa’s most articulate social critics. After a long exile from Kenya, Ngugi returned in 2004 with his wife to promote Murogi was Kagogo. Several weeks later they were brutally assaulted in their home; the attack was believed by some to be politically motivated. After their recovery, the couple continued to publicize the book abroad. In 2010 Ngugi published Dreams in a Time of Water, a memoir of his childhood in Kenya.
1.5 Theoretical Framework – Formalist Criticism
The two novels that are being studied are analyzed using the formalist approach. Thus, formalism is a school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text. It is the study of a text without taking into account any outside influence. Formalism rejects (or sometimes simply “brackets” i.e. ignores for the purpose of analysis) notions of culture or societal influence and instead focuses on mocks, genres, discourse and forms.
In literary theory, formalism refers to critical approaches that analyze, interpret or evaluate the inherent features of a test. This feature includes grammar and syntax but also literary devices such as meter and tropes. The formalistic approach reduces the importance of a text’s historical, biographical and cultural context.
Formalism rose to a prominence in the early twenty century as a reaction against Romanticist theories of literature which centered on artist and individual creative genius and instead placed the text itself back into the spotlight to show how the text was dictated to form and other works that has preceded it. Two schools of formalist literary criticism developed: Russian Formalism, and soon after Anglo-American New Criticism. Formalism was the dominant mode of academic literary study in the US at least form the end of the Second World War through the 1970s, especially as embodied in Rene Wellek and Austin Warren’s Theory of Literature (1948, 1955, 1962).
Beginning in the late 1970s, formalism was substantially displaced by various approaches (often with political aims or assumptions) that were suspicious of the idea that a literary work could be separated from its origins or uses. Proponents of the formalist approach include Boris Elechenbaum, Victor Shklovsky, Roman Jokobson, Jan Mukarovsky among others.
According to Ikechi (2005:57) in his critical technique “The Formalistic Approach to Literary Criticism” recognizes the following elements in describing and analyzing the various strata of the work of art: the sound stratum, euphony, rhythm, and in etetre; its style and stylistics, images, metaphor, symbol, myth, the nature and modes of narrative fiction.
In conclusion, formalist criticism emphasized the form of a literary work to determine its meaning, focusing on literary elements. It is an approach that looks of the part and whole of a work of art to determine its meanings.