Travelling: Chinua Achebe in Scandinavia. Swedish Writers in Africa PDF
Preview Travelling: Chinua Achebe in Scandinavia. Swedish Writers in Africa
UMEÅ PAPERS IN ENGLISH No. 11 Raoul Granqvist Travelling Chinua Achebe in Scandinavia Swedish Writers in Africa K * U 4- SI Y* . S •L 3 i- Umeå 1990 Raoul Granqvist Travelling Chinua Achebe in Scandinavia Swedish Writers in Africa UMEÅ PAPERS IN ENGLISH No. 11 Raoul Granqvist Travelling Chinua Achebe in Scandinavia Swedish Writers in Africa Umeå 1990 Umeå Papers in English Printed in Sweden by the Printing Office of Umeå University Umeå 1990 ISSN 0280-5391 CONTENTS Introduction iii Chinua Achebe in Scandinavia 1. Achebe Reading 1 2. Achebe Lecturing "Myth and Power: The Hidden Power of Igbo Women" 11 "The African Writer as Historian and Critic of His Society" 18 3. Achebe Answering Questions 25 4. Achebe Interviewed 43 5. Scandinavian Reviews of Anthills of the Savannah 51 Swedish Writers in Africa Rendezvous with Africa: Swedish Writers Travelling 57 iii Introduction Contemporary critical activity has become more and more interested in travelling as a trope for subversion, appropriation, and displacement. Discourses of all kinds, travelogues, so called popular texts, and novels by post-colonial (ethnic and migrant) writers (these terms are shaky, I admit) are being scrutinized and read for what the "travel trope" might disclose about the denigration of otherness and cul tural expansionism. It is then used to deconstruct imperialism, which activity, in contrast to Dian Brydon,1 in her recent article called "New Approaches to the New Literatures in English: Are We in Danger of Incorporating Disparity?," I believe must still go on. The "politics of blame" that she sees as characteristic of the critical ventures to come to terms with the colonial discourses, such as the notion of Them and Us, does not need to end in mental despair and semantic self-perpetuation. At least writing from the perspective of a Northern European whose part in Western expansionism could definitely be called "imperial," but not "imperialist," I find the excercises to dismantle local prejudices and replace them with new insights and challenges both worthwhile and important. This may in fact read as an unabashed apology for the volume at hand. Here the two perspectives, Them and US, Africa and Scandinavia, are organized to meet at a cross-roads. This meeting does not eschew the semantics of confrontation. In fact it invites it. It implicitly advocates - and this is my main, albeit optimistic idea - the erosion and underpinning of the dialectics, not through the romance of Them becoming US, nor through the cultural relativism fad of We Are All the Same, but through notions of Connections and Multivoices. From a formal point of view this volume is as disparate as any postmodern- istic novel. The first part of the book is a documentation of Chinua Achebe's visit to Scandinavia in October 1988. The main purpose of his visit was to be present at the launching of his latest novel, Anthills of the Savannah, in Danish and Norwegian. But he was spurred to extend his trip to Sweden to meet his old-time readers, writers and academics. The documentation of his tour is fairly comprehensive and truly authentic. It represents two of the lectures he gave and parts of his public readings, it reproduces the exchanges that took place between Achebe and his lis teners, and it analyses his reception. 1 In A Shaping of Connections: Commonwealth Literatures Studies - Then and Now. Essays in Honour of A.N. J effares. Edited by Hena Maes-Jelinek, Kirsten Holst Petersen, Anna Ruther ford. Aarhus: Dangeroo Press, 1989, p. 89 iv The second part of the book draws a sketchy historic outline of Swedish travel writing on Africa. I attempt to show two things: first, how the Swedish writers allied themselves with the rest of the Western world in the imperial enterprise to incorporate Africa and how they gradually started to question their own position and that of Sweden, and, secondly, how they fashioned their narratives. Needless to say, the images of Africa that they create are self-reflexive and oppositional. This section then acts as a narrative foil and an ideological background for the first part in which Achebe is seen negotiating and mediating his Africa to his listeners. Although aware of the problems involved, I sincerely hope that the book will advance and extend the cross-cultural meeting place. I dedicate it to Chinua Achebe as a small token of gratitude from his Scandi navian readers for his sixtieth birthday. Congratulations! / would, like to thank a number of people that have assisted me in organizing the material for this book. Among them are in particular Aase Gjerdum ofJ.W. Cappelens For lag, Johannes Riis of Samlerens Forlag, Stephen Larsen, University of Stockholm, and Isabella Thinz, The Swedish Broadcasting Corporation. Special thanks to Eva Lambertsson Björk for her meticulous work on the transcriptions and to my colleagues Bengt Odenstedt and Gunnar Persson for their valuable editorial advice!
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