Gender in Achebe´s Literary World and the Francophone African Literary Touch E-Book
Ikechukwu Aloysius Orjinta
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- Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011
Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2011 in the subject Literature - Africa, , course: AFRICAN LITERATURE/ AFRICAN STUDIES, language: English, abstract: Feminism takes different dimensions: the men haters who are the extremists and the moderates who seek for dialogue between the genders for mutual benefits. Among the extremists are Julia Kristera. She calls for a non-sexist language. Jucie lrigaray’s thesis was her medium of launching attacks against freud’s light/darkness imagery. This work titled speculum de l’autre femme (speculum of the other woman) brought her expulsion from Lacan’s Ecole Freudienne at Vincennes. Helene Cixous took men on the sexist binary opposition. [...]
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GENDER IN ACHEBE’S LITERARY WORLD AND THE FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN LITERARY TOUCH. A BEYOND- FEMINIST AND WOMANISTIC APPROACH.
- Ikechukwu Aloysius Orjinta.PhD
1. Introduction.
Feminism takes different dimensions: the men haters who are the extremists and the moderates who seek for dialogue between the genders for mutual benefits. Among the extremists are Julia Kristera. She calls for a non-sexist language. Jucie lrigaray’s thesis was her medium of launching attacks against freud’s light/darkness imagery. This work titledspeculum de l’autre femme(speculum of the other woman) brought her expulsion from Lacan’sEcole Freudienneat Vincennes. Helene Cixous took men on the sexist binary opposition.
The extremists whose goal is to push men out of the centre stage and replace them hardly win any admiration or sympathy from the male gender. On the other hand the moderates easily win sympathy and solidarity even from the men. Reasons being that they are considerate, and understanding
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and subtle in their critique of the excesses of the male gender. They believe that men and women share mutual weaknesses as well as mutual efforts. Buchi Emecheta used to be among the extremists inThe Second-Class CitizenandThe Bride Price.Later she sheated her sword and noted that“we need our men”.The idea that women need their men just as men need their women and children for the good of the micro- and macro- society forms part of the kernel of womanism.Feminism has long crossed the threshhold of menhating and complaint-commission and has entered the realm of Gender-Complementality(cf. Orjinta:,,Womanismusals Methode der Interpretation Literarischer Texte. Zur Religioesen Struktur Moderner Frauenbilder in Ausgewaehlten Werken Heinrich Boells, 2010”).Simone de Beauvoir:The second sex(trans 1976); Sembene Ousmane:Guelwaar,novel and film; Alice Walker:The Colour Purple;Mariama Ba:So long a letter;Camara Laye:L’enfant Noir;China Achebe:Things fall Apartand Aminata sow fall:L’ex pere de la Nation;fall within this group. Indeed, everybody should be concerned about justice and harmony. Issues about justice cuts across religion, culture, race and gender. No wonder then we observe a section of the men writers highlighting womens efforts, frowning at their weaknesses, and sarcastically challenging their fellow men to eschew chauvinism, segregation and violence in their relationship with women. As we study
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women in the artistic world of Achebe we shall corroborate his views with instances drawn from the literary creations of Sembene Ousmane, Camara Laye, Aminata sow Fall and other selected writers. For better appreciation of our study we shall arrange our findings under the following headings: women’s participation in Religion. Women’s roles in cultural Nationalism, Leadership roles and experiences of women and economic contribution of women.
2.BACKGROUND TO CHINUA ACHEBE’S LITERARY WORLD. 2.1 Genesis of African Literature
It is indeed difficult to divorce creativity from historicity in any literary canon. A creative writer is essentially a historian in his capacity to recreate the world in a historical mode. In the vein of a porter, she/he can embark on an imaginative reconstruction of history or even in a flash of artistry, attempt at altering the past…(Adebayo2000:278)
Chioma Opara attempts to make a reference to the idea of the realistic novel as alluded to by Stendhal inLe rouge et le noirnamely that‘un roman, c’est un mirroir qu’ on promene le long d’ un chemin’- a novel is a mirror that one takes along the road. The mirror image of the novel means that the novel faithfully reflects the realities of the societies to which it refers. The French fiction and literary works from the 18thto the 19thcenturies purported to make realistic
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presentations about Africa. These presentations were however full of distortions and prejudices. The African fiction written in French and English by Africans effectively attempted to correct these negative image. Unfortunately many of these pioneer African writers, most of whom were men ended up re-enacting similar stereotypes and prejudices, this time against African women. The African woman personality, which has been portrayed in francophone African writing by these male writers, failed to match the true nature of African women. Therefore the novel as a mirror or glass that reflects the truth does not hold for the African woman looking at her image as painted by the male writers. Hence these male champions who purportedly claimed that they were correcting and re-reading the literary history of Africa ended up marginalizing women, who form a majority of African people. InAu Coeur des Tenebres(Trans:Heart of Darkness),Joseph Conrad created images of Africans leaping and howling in the bush. He portrayed Kiertz, one of the characters as someone once civilized but who on coming to Africa degenerates mentally and physically. By so doing Conrad endorsed a stereotypical vision and image of Africa. The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe refers to Joseph Conrad as a bloody racist’. Joseph Conrad was even considerate in his literary presentations of Africa.
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What do we say of the French colonial writer Pierre Loti (the psendonym of Julien Viaud)? His work on Africa has received critical studies from Leon Fanoudh-Sieffer and Martine Astier-Loutfi. Alex Hargreaves points to the intellectual and artistic shallowness of Loti’s works. In his appraisal of French colonialist literature, Fanoudh-Siefer stresses Loti’s role in creating the distorted myth about Africa. Although Loti saw just a small part of Africa, residing in Dakar from 1873 to May 1874, he generalized his particular experience:
Africa is a hostile inferno in which the sun, heat, and fever destroy the Europeans taking part in the colonial work.
Fanoudh Siefer notes that Loti( 1965:79) meant:
Une Afrique noire, desolee, epouvantable, etrange, mysterieuse, infernale; une terre de cham, une terre maudite et ubliee de DieuIn other words Loti’s Europeans transported to the African continent are not only menaced by a hostile climate, they are threatened by Africans themselves. Jean Peyral; the protagonist of Loti’s novelLe Roman d’un spanipublished in 1981 was a courageous and upright youth from rural France. In Africa, he was seduced by the sensual and primitive Fatou-Gaye. Fatou Gaye’s lack of character formation and morality was further manifested when she repeatedly stole Jean’s money and belongings.
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As a result of the above distortions in French literature, the African pioneer writers threw to the winds the idea if‘l’art pour l’art’that is literature solely for the esthetics of language, the beauty of language and literature for pleasure. They insisted that literature without socio-political struggle should wait for then(Fatunde 2001):
Les Romans Africains, C’est un temoignage historiques de leur people, ecrit en langue etrangere dans une situation ou la majorite ne s’expriment pas dans cette langue. Malgre ca leurs ecrits etaient un instrument de mobilization pan-africanists parmi les intellectuels Africains.
The African novels are historic witnessing of the African people,
written in foreign language in a context where the majority could not express themselves in this language. Inspite of this, these writings became an instrument of pan African mass mobilization among African intellectuals.
The context is a situation of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism which have sapped Africa of every natural and cultural values. Hence literature becomes both an intellectual exercise as well as a historic witnessing by the writer to the experiences of his people. Literature becomes a personal artistic creation of the writer. The artist gives a subjective interpretation in fiction of his experiences and witnessing. Of all the continents, none has undergone the
