The Nation Writ Small: African Fictions and Feminisms, 1958-1988

135 Pages·2011·11.66 MB·English

by  Susan Z. Andrade

SUSAN Z. ANDRADE
The Nation Writ Small
African Fictions and Feminisms,
1958-1988
Duke University Press DURHAM AND LONDON 2011
Contents
© 2011 DukeU niverPsrietsys ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
Allr ighrtess erved
Printientd h eU niteSdt atoefAs m erica Introduction 1
ona cid-frpeaep ecor 1. The Joys ofDaughterhood: Achebe, Nwapa, Emecheta 44
DesignbeydC .H . Westmoreland
TypesientA mo Prob yK eystoTnyep esettIinncg., 2. The Loved and the Left: Sembene, Ba, Sow Fall 71
LibraorfCy o ngreCsast aloging-in-PDuabtlai cation
3· Bildung in Formation andD eformation:
appeaornt hel asptr intpeadg oef t hibso ok.
Dangarembga and Farah
114
4· Bildung at Its Boundaries: Djeba� Two Ways 165
Conclusion 202
SELECTED CHRONOLOGY OF AFRICAN NOVELS 209
NOTES 213
REFERENCES 239
INDEX 253
Acknowledgments
�
Books are rarely written without financial support, as Virginia
�
Woolfhas crisply pointed out. I thank The University of Michi­
gan for a fellowship, the University of Pittsburgh for two summer
Hewlett grants, and, in particular, Mbye Cham and the Rockefeller
Foundation for a year's leave which afforded me time to Jead and
rethink this project. Money is not everything. The intellectual begin­
nings of this book stem from dialogue with GregD iamond, in years of
discussions about the interrelation between culture and politics, fact
and fiction. His example and encouragement allowed me to take the
leap into the graduate study of comparative literature with the belief
that I could indeed make a living at it. At the University of Pittsburgh,
Jim Knapp, Marianne Novy, Phil Smith, Steve Carr, and especially,
Dave Bartholomae, helped me negotiate institutional hurdles; I am
grateful to them for their support. As directors of women's studies,
Kathy Blee and Jean Ferguson Carr welcomed me and encouraged
my interdisciplinary teaching. For a brief but very important moment
in my life, in the two years before they left for Chicago, Iris Marion
Young and David Alexander fed me dinners and, especially, their
conversation; I was sorely in need of both. The writing that emerged
viii Acknowledgments Acknowledgments ix
from those conversations about African women's rebellions and the Esonwanne's essay on Mariama Ba provoked my thinking about liber­
relation of public protest to literary writing and the Habermasian alism and the public sphere, and his initial argument with chapter 2
public sphere has since been published elsewhere, but was originally sharpened my thinking. Conversations in Dakar with Ken Harrow
imagined as part of this book's conclusion. Before her untimely death, about Senegalese politics and his own essay on Xala encouraged me
Iris saw some of that work. to broaden my interpretive scope. Charlie Sugnet's essay on Nervous
For discussions both convivial and pointed, at conferences, in cor­ Conditions and his later comments on the section of chapter 3 about
ridors, in cafes, and by e-mail, for inviting me to share and test my Tsitsi Dangarembga stimulated mej however, I needed the prodding
work publicly, I thank Koffi Anyinefa, Jane Bryce, Bella Brodzki, of Elizabeth Ann (aka Beth) Willey to complete the work. Patricia
Odile Cazenave, Brenda Cooper, Eleni Coundouriotis, Hester Eisen­ Alden gave me helpful editorial comments on the section about Nu­
stein, Ken Harrow, Isabel Hofmeyr, Judy Miller, Tony O'Brien, Chik­ ruddin Farah, and Charlie insisted that first and foremost I see Farah
wenye Ogunyemi, Teju Olaniyan, Sarah Nuttall, Reinhard Sander, as a critic of all nationalism. I finally took his advice. Reading Anne
and Barbara Webb. Years ago, Madhu Dubey argued vigorously with Donadey's book on Assia Djebar and Leila Sebbar meant that I began
me about gender, genre, cultural nationalism, and Marxismj the crit­ my thinking about Djebar's fiction at a more complex level than I
ical edge of those conversations has left their mark on these chapters. might have otherwise. Anne carefully read an early draft of chapter 41
Odile was and remains my best source for the latest in literary de­ and her comments helped me find my own reading of the relation
velopments in francophone writing, for which I am grateful. David between two novels. Thanks to Ken Wissoker for his confidence in
Shumway generously invited me to organize with him a year's worth the project, and to Mark Mastromarino for his help in turning the
of speakers on Realism for the Carnegie Mellon University Human­ manuscript into a book.
ities Center in 2oo8-2009j I doubt he knows how much good that Jonathan Arac began his presence in my mind's life as an enigma
did. It allowed me to recover a project I had put aside, and it provided and became a complexity. Overcoming the initial awkwardness has
me pleasurable and serious conversation with him, our speakers, and taken us both time, and that itself has taught me about the inexorable
the group who met over the year. In different spheres of my life and force of the dialectic. Through our conversations, I have learned yet
from different parts of the country, Eileen Julien and Janet Skupien more about the ways intellectual history informs literary history, as
have been unwavering in their encouragement even through their well as that the imagination is not always constrained by history. Over
very difcfi ult times. Abiola Irele scrutinized the introduction, shared the years, I have come to better appreciate his generosity in reading
his erudition, and saved me from some gaffes. Years earlier, Richard and in talking, and I hope to know and love it and him yet more.
Bjornson, then the new editor of Research in African Literatures, en­ My love of reading can be traced directly to my father especially
couraged me to submit my first essay to the journalj it turned into the since he bought me my first books. As a girl in Dar es Salaam,
germ of chapter 1 and made an impact in African literary history, Tanzania, I was proud of my own small shelf, which stood next to his
especially feminist studies. I remain grateful for his confidence and several shelves of American novels and magazines. When my father
know how much was lost when we lost him. Through their own died a few years ago and I delivered his eulogy, I confronted the fact
writing, Julie Hakim Azzam, Susan Hallstead, Aarti Madan, Tiffany that fully one third of his life had been determined by his blindness.
Magnolia, Raji Vallury, and Brenda Whitney have taught me about In the spirit of narratives known and remembered though not always
relations between literature and politics. retold, I dedicate this book to his memory, as well as to my mother.
Some of my friends took their pens to my paper, and I am delighted
to thank them for their bracing comments on individual chapters.
Deidre Lynch vigorously edited an earlier draft of chapter 1. Uzo
Introduction
•
Readers of novels continue to experience and interpret the
public and private realms of human life as separate, despite the
fact that feminism and Marxism have taught us that they are linked.
By focusing on the interconnected nature-indeed, the interpenetra­
tion-of the private and public spheres of life (in this case, the do­
mestic and national spheres), I redefine the terms of conversation
about politics and gender in Africa. I focus on how collectivity is
understood and how novels represent the individual's relation to the
collective. For the first generation of postcolonial African novelists,
who published between 1958 and 1988, the most obvious manifesta­
tion of political commitment took the form of anticolonial resistance
and agitation for national sovereignty. Thematizing colonialism in
public terms is not the only way to tell a political tale, however. I
argue that reading allegorically allows one to elucidate new meanings
in the domestic sphere of life and in intimate relations between
people. The domestic, where women historically have set their nov­
els, offers as sharp an analytic perspective on collectivity and national
politics as does the arena of public political action. As readers of
African literature, we must learn to read this realm more carefully.
Introduction 3
Introduction
2
South Africans (1994). The 1970s and especially the 1980s were both
The novel has a complex relation to Africa and cultural national­
politically active and literarily rich.3 Northern African writing, in
ism, first, because unlike poetry and drama, it is the genre commonly
rough terms, is either Maghrebi, in which French cultural influences
believed to have originated outside the continent and therefore to
are strong, and writers, especially those of the independence period
have become African only as part of the colonial enterprise. Second,
and earlier, expressed themselves primarily in French, or in Arabo­
although the novelistic tradition in indigenous languages such as
African, for writers came from nations such as Libya, Sudan, and
Kiswahili, Wolof, Yoruba, and Xhosa has mushroomed in the twen­
Egypt, whose literary language has always been Arabic.
tieth century, the African literature that is most significant to the
Appropriating the language and narrative form of the colonizers,
world is written in European languages.1 Moreover, at least one so­
African novelists as diverse as Camara Laye, Chinua Achebe, Ferdi­
ciologist of literature has claimed of Nigeria, for example, that the
nand Oyono, Mongo Beti, Ousmane Sembene, Kateb Yacine, Ngugi
production of African novels in English far outpaces that of novels in
wa Thiong' o, and Alex La Guma imagined communities, invented
Igbo or Yoruba. "When Nigerians write novels," says Wendy Griswold
(2ooo, 31), "they normally do so in English:' traditions, and wrote themselves into History and Literature. The
novel in Africa answered back to colonial silencing and helped to
As the story goes, novel writing in both francophone and anglo­
consolidate disparate religious, ethnic, racial, and class differences
phone Africa emerged on the world literary scene in the 1950s and
into a single national identity. In telling this story, I nevertheless aim
'6os as part of the cultural renaissance that accompanied decoloniza­
to challenge its simplicity and note some lacunae that make the
tion. Negritude, which flowered in the 1940s and 'sos and came out of
received narrative inaccurate in some important ways. I do not­
francophone West Africa and the Antilles, was the first literary move­
indeed, cannot-offer a complete history of the continental novel.
ment made thus visible, though its primary genre was poetry.2 West
Nevertheless, my working historical model insists first and foremost
African literature, francophone and anglophone, from Senegal, Cam­
on Africa as more than a cluster of countries south of the Sahara and
eroon, Nigeria, and Ghana was the first literary expression of pan­
sees Africa as a continent inhabited by people of different ethnicities,
continental African nationalism. Although East African novelistic
religious practices, languages, hues, and racial phenotypes. Objecting
production was not as great as that of West Africa, the region soon
vehemently to the racially based separation of sub-Saharan from
produced international writers such as Ng11gi wa Thiong'o, and it
nourished several important literary journals such as Transition and North African literature, the Cameroonian curator and novelist Si­
Penpoint, the first of which originated in Uganda, became continent­ mon Njami calls the will to divide the two a historical revisionism
whose refusal to seek links between various cultures or peoples itself
ally important, and ultimately moved to Ghana. Moreover, Kiswahili,
represents a colonial neurosis:
more than its West African counterparts, flourished as a regional
literary language, and it has been claimed to be a pan-continental
En effet, dans la plupart des esprits, !'Afrique se limiterait a I'e nsem­
language that speaks more for and to the continent than any other
ble des pays situes au sud du Sahara. Au nord commencerait une
indigenous language.
autre region, un autre monde presque. Cette forme de revision­
There was a lag in time between state decolonization and black
nisme, qui voudrait opposer Ia fraction "ethiopienne" a Ia fraction
enfranchisement in southern Africa, in some cases a prolonged lag
"mediterraneenne" d'un continent sur lequel le desert s' ouvre
filled with varying degrees of armed struggle. Because of this de­
comme une interminable parenthese, est pathologique, car elle pre­
calage, and especially because of the more heterogeneous population
tend nier les influences multiples qui, depuis le Moyen Age, ont ete
-in part, white settler populations-southern African literature de­
nourries par les echanges entre les grands metropoles saheliennes et
veloped differently from that of West Africa and East Africa. Full
leurs voisines du Maghreb. Elle pretend nier !'importance de la reli-
citizenship rights came late to Zimbabweans (1981) and even later to
4 Introduction Introduction 5
giomnu sulmaa nter av'Afreirqsu e noeitcr eeb,'i eanv aIn'a tr rivee des ofw hahte p reachientd h ie ntrodutctoti hoecn a talowghuiec,ih n,i ts
"decouvreeuurrosp"e ealnasn ,e grituded easvp erermeieEe grysp ­ insistoennd ciev ersaispt oyl itsitcraalt, se pgeyaktsot hev erfyi rst
tieEnnsu .n m ote,l lper etennideI rac ommunaudt'esh tioiqruemi e le princiopfal neAfr icanl iterary I ohuitsltiohnreeyr Mer.i ciasr epre­
ledse stdienn sa tioanysa ntto uteetc eo lonipsaelree sms e mep uis­ sentiendi tcso ntinednitvaelr sitiyn,s imnporltae c iraelg,i onoarl ,
sanceetls e lsu ttdeels i beraqtuieion dn e coulerent.s i!C 'oEmum­e linguitsetrimcs -thotuobg hes, u rael,ol ft hostee rmasn dd efinitions
ropqeu sie c onstsrouuinsto sy eunxe p resenptaadsi etsc ontradic­ helsph apAefr icaan di tmsa nyl iteratIunrs eosm.ew4 a yst,h ec onti­
tiotnosu atu scsrii anItlee ssdt.e sc ercelnecso prleu lsa rgdeo'sn t nentamloidseto fA fricalni teraI ptruorpeo wshei,c chl aitmhsag te og­
celdu'ia utcroenst inqeunita,sv e!c' Afriqounce o,n stiltecu oer tege raphayn dp roximoiutgyht tob er easseasnsder de valausem do delosf
dec eq ueF ranFtazn obna pt"ilsedaas m nedsel at err(eN.j"a 2m0i05 , cultuarffaill iaatnidpo onl itical swoolrikadsga ariinPty,sa tn -African­
15-16) isms,i ncteh el attfeorr mo fc ultunraatli onaelmipslmo ay sr acial
princoifp loer ganilziantkibiolnnag,c i knts h dei asptoort ah osoeft he
Mostp eoptlhei nofkA fricaasb einlgi mitteoa dg rouopfc ountries
continbeuntit,n t urcna,t egoriecxacllluAydfr eisc aonfsA rabE,u ro­
soutohft hSea harwai,tt hh ree gitohnas tt aritnts h neo rtahsa lmost
peana,n dS outAhs ian origin. Njoafprni l'ass atcrihtcoi iiscltels u s­
anothweorr lTdh.i ksin do fr evisioenaigsetmros, e tth "eE thiopian"
trataeb sr oando n-raciHailsci istma.t oifFo rna nFtazn osnu ggehsitss
agaitnhs"etM editerrfraancetainoo"fan c ontinaecnrtow shsi cthh e
ownw istho s tradadll ei nbee twetehnea c tiisvt-philoseovpohcear­'s
deseorpte nusp l ikaeni ntermipnaarbelnet hiesps aitsh,o lofgoirc al,
tioonf P an-Africanoisntm h,e o neh andw,h ileem braciFnagn on's
its eektson egattheem ultiipnlfleu ences bfyeu xeclheadn bgee­s non-racial huomna tnhieos tmh,e Bry. referenFcainnogn T-he
tweetnh el argSea helciiatni est haenNidor r tAfrhi cann eighbors Wretched of the Earth (1968) , pina rticular-sNijgansmaoilm se thing
sincteh eM iddlAeg esI.tc ontradtihceit msp ortaonfcI es lam
thamto sto ft hel atcehra ptoefrts h ibso oke labortahtaeFt:a non's
throughsouubt- SahAafrrainac lar,e apdrye sewnetlb le fotrheEe u ro­
mosfta mouasn dm ositm portbaonothk a se xertape odw erifunls pira­
pean" discovesreeftro sot"th erIen.s horitts, e ektson egatthee
tioninflaule nceo nA fricanno veliwsrtiitciI nw gi.lr le fteort hipso int
commohni sttohrayut n ited the odfne asttiinqiness coblyto hnies ed
agaiinnt hceh apttehrasft o olwl.
samep owerasn dt heeinrs uisntgr uggfloleris b eraAsti tohno.u gh
Seconidn,t h ep eriIo edx aminteh,ec ategoofrg ye ndedro enso t
Europbee inbgu ibletf ooruere yedsi dn otp reseenqtu algllya ring
exisittc; a nn eithbeecr o mprehenadpeadfrr otm c olonianloiris sim t,
contradicWtiidoecnris r.c elxeists oto i,n cludtihneog n eesn com­
legiabplaer t frtohmec ultunraatli onatlhiastm airnor seesp ontsoe
passiontgh ecro ntinwehnitcsah l,o nwgi tAhfr ichaa,v feo rmead
coloniaMlainsymo .ft hewo rkisnt he firstw abvioeg fn ovewlrsi tten
procesosfiw ohna Ftr anFtazon n c all"etdhw er etchoeftd h eea rth:'
bym enc elebrnaatteido naalsia s rme spontsote h ec olonial enter­
(Njarni20 06, 113-14)
prisoere xplorietfd o ri tlsi miitnes ff ectisnogc itarla nsformation.
Njami's iwnotrrdos dutcheeed x traord"iAfnrairRcyea - Mixo;n'eo f Howeveorn,ew oulsdc arcreelayl firzoerm e adienagr nlyo vewlrsi t­
the larmgoesstet l,a borgaetoeg,r aphiicnacllluys ainvdem ,e dia­ tenb yw oment hanta tionasltirsutg gwleerset hebne inwga geidn
incluseixvhei bitiocnosn teomfp orAafrriyc aanr te vemro unted. African miannddso nAfr ican land. Earwlryi tfereresmp'ar lees enta­
Withtihnge e nroefe xhibiNtjiaomni,c' hso icaerdsei ffitcocu rlitt icize. tioonf p olitriacrse ilnyv olveexdp licniattliyo naolrsi ysntd icalist
Hisw ide-rancghionigco eff orm(sp hotography, svciudl,ep oture, themePsa.r tfloytr h irse asownr,i tibnywg o menh asb eecno nsidered
paintianngdm, i xemde diaa)r,t i(smtasl aen df emalaen)d,r aces apoliticalm-ewahnicsco hn ceronneldwy i tdho mestiiscs ues-and
(whitAes,i aAnr,a ba,n db lacka)sw, e lalsh issh owcasoinfug n com­ certainnoltpy a rotf t hen ationnaarlr atEivveenin. q uirianbgo ut
monlsye emne diaan di nclusoiffro enq uenntelgyl ecatretdi psatrs­, femalwer iterresl'a ttioop no lithiacsbs e edni fficuwlitt hAifrni can
ticultahrolsye lfursoom phAfroincea m,a de"Afr icaR e-Miaxp "r actice litersatruyd ibeesc auosfea scholaernlvyir onmetnhtah ti storically
6 Introduction Introduction 7
has been inhospitable to feminism, rejecting it as a European import. which defined itself as a field in the 196os, has tended to read and
Critics are far less openly dismissive now than they were fifteen or represent itself instrumentally rather than for an aesthetic sensibility,
twenty years ago, but their history of dismissal has left a defensive and anticolonial nationalism has shaped that political thrust.
critical legacy: feminist readers of African literature have tended to Well before the publication of Things Fall Apart (Achebe 1958 ),
celebrate writing by women simply because they give voice to femi­ L'e nfant nair (Laye 1953), or Une vie de boy ( Oyono 1958)1 several
nine subjectivity.5 My study grows out of a larger question: at a time writers from different parts of the continent published variously suc­
when novels written by men were understood to be deeply involved cessfullong narratives with anticolonial content. Yet until the 198os,
in the project of anticolonial nationalism, why were novels written by when europhone African literature began to be incorporated more
women understood to be apolitical? In sketching a broad literary fully into the body of world literature, many of these writers had not
history, I attempt some answers. After briefly outlining a context for been acknowledged as part of African literary history by critics and
why feminists have not rigorously scrutinized women's writing in scholars. One of the most remarkable of these lacunae is Sol Plaatje's
public political terms, I turn my attention to how such a scrutiny Mhudi ( 1930), one of the earliest anglophone African novels. Its title is
might take shape. now fairly well known, but it remains rarely taught outside specialized
It was not only women's novels that were marginalized in national­ courses in southern African studies, and until very recently, it was not
ism's schemes for regulating the field of African wridng and distribut­ much written about, despite Plaatje's importance as a co-founder of
ing cultural capital within it. Novels published by men as late as the what became the African National Congress. A still earlier novel is Ethi­
1930s, but before anticolonial sentiment reached its height in western opia Unbound (1911) by the Sierra Leonean Joseph Caseley-Hayford.6
and southern Africa, were also excluded from the consolidating canon The Senegalese writer Ousmane Son� published Karim: Roman sene­
of African novels. Critical attention by and large has focused on a galais in 1935 (translated into English in 1938) and the Nigerian Daniel
narrow conception of resistance, and literary criticism has not yet Fagunwa published his first novel, Ogboju ode ninu igbo irunmale, in
fully acknowledged that African independence struggles did not gain Yoruba a few years later (translated by Wole Soyinka as The Forest of a
momentum until after the Second World War. Not until after that set Thousand Daemons [Fagunwa 1968])? None of these early authors,
of global wars was settled did a francophone black cultural national­ not even Plaatje, appears in Gerald Moore's canon-shaping work of
ism make itselfheard, which is precisely what happened in the case of literary criticism, Seven African Writers ( 1962), or in his subsequently
Negritude. One of Negritude's tenets involved the claim to moral revised and expanded version, Twelve African Writers ( 1980).
superiority over whites precisely because Africans did not engage in Negritude, the first major black cultural nationalist literary move­
the forms of warfare and civilian slaughter that became visible after ment, exerted a powerful influence on African belles-lettres of the
the war. 1940s and '50s, although poetry was its important genre. As a literary
With a few exceptions, novelists who published before Negritude movement, Negritude is understood to have been assimilated into
have been obscured by mid-twentieth-century genealogies con­ French literary culture through the publication of the enormously
structed by both readers and critics, or if they have been noted, their successful Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie negre et malgache de langue
importance has diminished, which Alain Ricard ably illustrates in The fran�aise ( 1948), edited by Leopold Sedar Senghor and prefaced by
Languages and Literatures of Africa (2004). This fate befell Amos Jean-Paul Sartre's essay "Orphee Noir." The book's translation into
Tutuola, whose writing did not conform to the resistance model of English meant that anglophone Africans, particularly Nigerians and
cultural nationalism. Attention to these early novels highlights the Ghanaians, could be energized by its aesthetic and political spirit. 8 By
stakes for Africans of both genders entering an emerging public the 1950s, the novel had displaced poetry as the dominant genre even
sphere of novelistic writing. Moreover, African literary criticism, in francophone Africa. Although Laye, Oyono, and Mongo Beti were
8 Introduction Introduction 9
embraced early on for their aesthetic sensibility, as well as for their some twenty-five years yet later, it was elaborated on by Ato Quay­
politics, critics did not link their work to earlier literary forays. I know son, who linked Tutuola to the more recent writing of Ben Okri. In
of no scholarship, for example, that places any of the three writers in this respect, Things Fall Apart is unlike Efuru (1963), and Achebe
relation to Soce's Karim, a novel that explores the theme of assimila­ unlike Flora Nwapa, the first female Nigerian novelist. Nwapa's influ­
tion. And with the notable exception of Abiola Irele, I know of no ence on Buchi Emecheta is explicitly thematized by Emecheta in
scholarship that juxtaposes Karim to Cheikh Hamidou Kane's lyrical what remains the younger writer's most famous novel, The Joys of
and much admired novel I.:aventure ambigue (1962), which also ex­ Motherhood (1979) . The relations between the two may seem obvious
plores assimilation through the protagonist's struggle between re­ today, but they were not in 1990 when I first published an essay
ligious tradition and faith, on the one hand, and his experience of outlining the influence Nwapa had on Emecheta.12
cultural change within the secular world, on the other. It has become increasingly dear-within the europhone tradition, at
Only now are critics of African literature beginning to elaborate the least-that the novels that have become important are those that were
connections between these earlier authors and the traditions that read as, and thus performed the function of, national narratives. How­
emerged shortly after independence. By the 198os, Fagunwa had be­ ever, not all political novels were visibly nationalist in their anticoloni­
come known to those not fluent in Yoruba, and The Forest of a alism; not all, therefore, were easily recuperated for a national(ist)
Thousand Daemons is now read in English translation alongside tradition. Tutuola serves as one example, illustrating an indigenous
works by Tutuola, Soyinka, and Ben Okri.9 Fagunwa published Forest West African magical realism before the popularity of the Latin Ameri­
in 1938; Tutuola, the celebrated The Palm-Wine Drinkard in 1952; and can Boom.13 Despite, or perhaps because of, his writing of non-realist
Cyprian Ekwensi, People of the City in 1954. Nevertheless, it is Ache­ prose, Tutuola has only recently secured a place in the pantheon of
be's Things Fall Apart that became the single novel read by those who midcentury African writers. As the drive to read literature on behalf of
knew nothing about African literature; it also became the novel that an orthodox nationalism abated somewhat, and the wish to read
scholars of African literature returned to again and again. C. L. Innes against realism understood as transparent markedly increased, Tutuo­
bestowed upon Achebe the honorific "father" of African fiction, and la's literary stock has soared since the 198os1 and anti-mimeticist writ­
Simon Gikandi elaborated her claim that Things Fall Apart performs ing, such as that by Okri, Yvonne Vera, Sony Labou Tansi, Dambuduzo
a certain literary work that makes it the first African novel. Gikandi Marechera, and others, have captured the attention of the current
says that Achebe imagines a collective vision from within a colonial generation ofliterary scholars of Africa.14
prism and writes a strong narrative of the colonial drama that also By 1980, shortly before the publication ofMoore's restatement of the
projects itself into a future of national independence. field in Twelve African Writers, a volume of criticism that, unsurpris­
Achebe is immensely important to African literature as the author ingly, does not include any female authors, critics of African literature
of several major novels and books of criticism-and, perhaps more had established a nationalist aesthetic around anticolonial resistance.
important, for his founding editorship of the Heinemann African They had little imaginative space for female writers who were less in­
Writers Series. Nevertheless, to my knowledge, Things Fall Apart has terested in decolonization and national sovereignty than in "feminine
not formally influenced any other novel-indeed, any other work of questions:' As time passed and gender became increasingly better
literature-as has, for example, The Palm-Wine Drinkard.10 Tutuola's received as a political category, female African writers were reviewed
relation to a consolidating West African canon has been clearly estab­ and written about more and, by the mid-198os, were increasingly
lished through genealogical readings, first, and most important, by added to course syllabi and reading lists.15 New entrants to the public
Achebe himself in an essay delivered at the University of Ibadan.11 space shaped by orthodox nationalism, early female novelists such as
Later, and perhaps more famously, this was expressed by Irele, and Nwapa and Grace Ogot had been invisible as writers, and they con-
10 Introduction Introduction 11
tinued to be illegible as political writers. The regulative mechanism of slave trade, a mass movement of people that changed the landscapes,
this aesthetic has become more visible recently, and by attending to cultures, and economies of most of the world. The slave trade did not
the public-private divide that frequently has shaped our understand­ lead to the immediate colonial conquest of Africa, although it was
ing of women's writing, I hope we may begin to read for the complex, made possible by and, in turn, exacerbated internecine African war­
hesitant, and often ambivalent mix of political and cultural expression ring. Slavery and local warfare together were responsible for the de­
in which the first female novelists composed their first works. A read­ struction of human life and waste of incalculable human potential.
ing structured along the axis of micro-politics and macro-politics Trade in slaves allowed Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands
makes visible a greater conversation between male and female writers to compete with-and, in the case of Britain and France, to surpass­
wherein they address concerns raised by each other, regardless of Portugal in establishing toeholds on the continent. Africa was not
gender.16 formally carved up and its spoils were not divided between European
colonial powers until the late period of imperialism, at the Berlin
Amilcar Cabral and Mariama Ba speak in very different, and dif­ Conference of 1885. While formal colonialism does not have a long
ferently helpful, ways to the questions I have raised. I quote from both historical presence in Africa, as it did in much of South and Southeast
and discuss their value for the sort of literary study I propose. In Asia or Latin America, the transatlantic, transnational practice of
"Identity and Dignity in the Context of the National Liberation African slavery, begun in the sixteenth century, sharpened and en­
Struggle" (1973), Cabral, a revolutionary Marxist intellectual from trenched racial hierarchies and contributed to Britain's and France's
Guinea-Bissau, takes a radically teleological approach to imperialism, newly asserted sense of themselves as imperial powers. Trade in hu­
claiming that despite its violence, imperialism ultimately benefited man flesh bound racial difference to the consolidation of commodity
those who underwent it. Cabral gave this talk in English to the histor­ relations. Cabral's language resembles that of the youthful Marx, who
ically black student population of Lincoln University near Oxford, in 1848 sweepingly condensed description and prescription into a
Pennsylvania, despite the fact that English was his second language single statement and attributed to the bourgeois villain of his tale
(possibly his third) after Portuguese: greater agency than he did the proletarian protagonist. Marx "grasps
the long-range dynamics at work behind and beyond what he actually
It is not to defend imperialist domination to recognize that it gave
sees, so that if one sentence of the Manifesto gives us the capitalism of
new nations to the world, the dimensions of which it reduced and
1848 [as established by the creative and dynamic bourgeoisie] the
that it revealed new stages of development in human sciences in
very next one gives us an image of what was yet to be;' says Aijaz
spite of or because of the prejudices, the discrimination and the
Ahmad (1 999, 39) in his introduction to a special anniversary Indian
crimes which it occasioned, it contributed to a deeper knowledge of
edition of The Communist Manifesto. Marx's logic, some of which we
humanity as a moving whole, as a unity in the complex diversity of
the characteristics of development. ( Cabral1973, sS) hear echoed in Cabral, is that the economic and technological expan­
sion of capitalism ultimately advances all of humanity, albeit at a far
Cabral said in 1970 what we in the early twenty-first century all know: greater cost to some. For Cabral, imperialism appears as historically
that imperialism brought many of the world's inhabitants closer and necessary as capitalism is for Marx. It ushers in a new stage of the life
made them known to one anotherj that imperialism was produced by process, "reveals new stages of human understanding;' seems to be an
and, in turn, reproduced a form of internationalism and knowledge
inherent part of the modern world and therefore, one of the stages
productionj in effect, that imperialism originated what we now call
humanity passes through to arrive at a non-racialized socialist world. I
global capitalism or globalization. The most prominent connection
suggest that, although the novel is no more indigenous to Africa, as
between imperialism and early capitalism in Africa is the Atlantic part of the imperialist enterprise it, too, constitutes part of the larger