Comment and analysis

Achebe: redefining colonial values?

Chinua Achebe: Man Booker International 2007

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/42390

Stephanie Kitchen (2007-07-05)

Recently, Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe was awarded the Man Booker
International Prize for 2007. Stephanie Kitchen argues that although the
prize is decided by the literary establishment and still embodies the values
of the former colonial power, African writers are fighting back as 'active
definers and custodians of society's values'.


'The colonialist critic, unwilling to accept the validity of sensibilities
other than his own, has made particular point of dismissing the African
novel…did not the black people in America, deprived of their own musical
instruments, take the trumpet and the trombone and blow them as they had
never been blown before, as indeed they were not designed to be blown? And
the result, was it not jazz? Let every people bring their gifts to the great
festival of the world's cultural harvest and mankind will be all the richer
for the variety and distinctiveness of the offerings.
…
My people speak disapprovingly of an outsider whose wailing drowned the
grief of the owner of the corpse… One last word to the owners…most of what
remains to be done can best be tackled by ourselves.' – Chinua Achebe[1]

At a ceremony in Oxford on 28 June 2007, Chinua Achebe, Nigeria's great
living novelist, for some, the greatest, 'the founding father of African
literature', and the founding editor of the groundbreaking African Writers
Series, was awarded the second Man Booker International Prize (
http://www.manbookerinternational.com/home).

Achebe has written over 20 books, including novels, short stories, essays,
collections of poetry and children's books. Things Fall Apart, published in
1958, has sold over 10,000,000 copies around the world and been translated
into 50 languages. Achebe is the recipient of over 30 honorary degrees and
numerous awards for his work. Now 77, and paralysed from the waist down in a
car accident in 1990, he did not attend the ceremony.

In conjunction with the award, the prize hosted a public panel discussion of
the jury, comprising Elaine Showalter (the chair), Colm Toibin, Nadine
Gordimer and Ion Trewin, the Booker prize administrator. It was an
extraordinary moment, a rare opportunity to listen to Nadine Gordimer, one
of Africa's greatest authors pay tribute to the work of another whom she
deeply and publicly admires. Gordimer's participation on the jury was
doubtless instrumental in this much deserved, for many, too long delayed,
recognition of Achebe by the international literary establishment.

The Man Book International Prize is intended as a 'global' literary prize,
awarded to a writer 'whose body of work has make a major contribution to
world literature', rather than to an individual book. It may be awarded to
any writer whose work is available in English and deserves to be better
known or more widely translated. In the words of John Carey, chair of the
judges for the inaugural prize 'This new prize will reward high
international achievement, but unlike other global prizes, it will target
fiction in English, or translated into English, and so will celebrate
English-language fiction as a major cultural force in the modern world'.[2]
The prize differs from other book prizes in that the judges, not publishers,
authors or academics, nominate the candidates. Each year, the jury inherits
and may discard or add to the shortlist from the previous year. The prize
does not have hard-coded standards or criteria.

This new 'international' Booker prize should not bypass debates about its
legitimacy unchecked. Once again, it raises questions about the British
establishment's all too familiar tendency to slide from national, parochial
literary concerns into uncritical notions of the 'international' or
'universal' (for which, read London, Oxford, New York, Washington…). Worse,
arguably, it plays to colonial and neo-colonial practices of the literary
and publishing industries, whereby it is deemed not unethical, at least
acceptable and inevitable, for the former colonial power to sit in judgement
and exercise power over the books, authors and literatures produced by
descendants of the empire. As the prize develops, these suspicions must be
kept under scrutiny.

But for the moment, such a happy and imaginative choice doubtless increases
the stature of this nascent award in the eyes of the international literary
and publishing communities. The International Man Booker may raise lesser
known writers out of the ghetto, for example the dubious, and for many
discredited - on literary and ethical grounds - Commonwealth Writers Prize
(which, for example, has disqualified Zimbabwean writers from entry -
imagine, African literature without Shimmer Chinodya, Yvonne Vera, Dambudzo
Marachera...), and into the mainstream. No one can be more deserving of that
than Achebe after all he has given as enrichment to our different and shared
cultures. If the award leads to the revival, promotion, translation and
dissemination of all his works, then it will have made its mark.

The jury had begun with a longlist of 70 names, around 250 novels,
collections of short stories, which included writers from 29 countries in 20
languages. They had met three times, in Washington, Toronto and Dublin. At
the second meeting, the list was reduced to 30 names. At the final meeting,
the shortlist drawn up and winner decided. The final shortlist comprised
Margaret Atwood, John Banville, Peter Carey, Don DeLillo, Carlos Fuentes,
Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Harry Mulisch, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje,
Amos Oz, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie and Michel Tournier.

The judges were keen to respond to anticipated media criticisms, such as the
dominant presence of Anglo-Saxon writers on the shortlist, of their own
national prejudices and the fact the list included few authors of books in
translation. They asserted that they had made an enormous effort to be as
wide-ranging and inclusive as possible, acknowledging the genuine difficulty
that whilst one of the missions of the prize is to encourage translation,
they could only review writers whose books had been translated into English,
reflecting the challenge more generally for more books from languages other
than English to be translated.

Nadine Gordimer was keen to keep the discussion focused on the shortlist,
the purpose of the prize being to make important works better known, and to
give them as much publicity as possible. Anthills of the Savannah has been
shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987; this award gave opportunities for
wider promotion of the book. 'It would be presumptuous to say we chose the
greatest writer in the world', but nevertheless 'Chinua Achebe's early work
made him the father of modern African literature as an integral part of
world literature. He has gone on to achieve what one of his characters
brilliantly defines as the writer's purpose: "a new-found utterance" for the
capture of life's complexity'. Achebe's books 'explore the mystery of
life…bringing 'a new found utterance' to what we are as human beings, to
what life is and its changing circumstances'. Additional to the famous
trilogy of novels, Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960) and
Arrow of God (1964), she spoke warmly of A Man of the People (1966), 'a
prophetic book, an exposure of corruption in a newly independent African
state after colonial oppression; in its attendancy to the corruption, not
only in Africa, also in other parts of the world, eating away at our
humanity…preventing the establishment of true democracy'.

The other judges commented on Achebe's achievement in his original synthesis
of the psychological novel, the Joycean stream of consciousness, the
post-modern breaking of sequence traditions and arriving at a new
prescription thereby out-dating any prescriptivity. They commented Achebe
describes changes taking place that are momentous. He had written books that
could be given to anyone in the world, to any general reader who loves
books. Elaine Showalter described Achebe as 'a wonderful choice'. It had
been 'the year of judging dangerously…in the current state of the world, we
can't pretend fiction does not have some political repercussions'. Gordimer
added that governments feared literature because it makes people think,
'true thought is a danger to governments that are oppressive in the weight
of propaganda'.

The judges stressed they had not been overtly concerned with 'politically
correct' categories of the gender, sexuality or nationality of the writer.
There had been no discussions about 'balancing the list'. 'What matters is
the quality of writing…writing is the important issue…nor did we sweep
anything under the bookcase'. Nadine Gordimer stressed that concerns of sex
or race had been irrelevant to the literary question of 'new found
utterance', and 'literature being about the mystery of modern life' –
echoing and inversing Achebe's thoughts on the matter, expressed elsewhere:
'it is not even a matter of color. For we have Nadine Gordimer'.[3]

James Currey, the eminent African studies publisher and inspirational force
behind the African Writers Series (AWS) asked about the extent to which the
judges had taken into account the 'general literary situation of the
writer'. After all, Achebe's contribution to literature had not only been
his own books, but the 'massive contribution he had made to the African
Writers Series'. In this sense, the award celebrated not only Achebe, but
the body of literature, not always uncontested, he had inspired. Gordimer
agreed about the importance of the publication of the AWS, which had brought
African literature 'out beyond the borders'. It had been 'an assertion of
the freedom of expression' and had served as 'an encouragement to younger
writers'. In the end though, she felt Achebe's lasting and greatest
achievement remained his 'new found utterance'. It is 'all there, he
synthesises all these things'. From all ideas and thoughts about what it
takes to be a writer, 'there must be some special quality'. For as the
writer, you are 'going to bear the chalk around your eye'. Writers are
engaged in the endless task of finding new modes of telling our stories as
human beings, and 'Achebe has gone very far in that'.

Gordimer, now 84 years old herself, is one of the most exceptional novelists
and short story writers in English. She won the Booker Prize in 1974, whose
work has been translated into over 20 languages. With acute intelligence and
her deep, long and intimate understanding of the art of writing and
literature, she spoke in almost mythical proportions. For many of us
present, and for others throughout the world, she has helped shape and
deepen our understanding of apartheid South Africa and the human dimensions
of its injustices and horrors. Her now canonical and classic texts will
doubtless go on elucidating that period of history and lived present for
generations to come.

African literature and its appreciation are currently in rude health from
our perspective in Britain. There has been Achebe's Booker prize award; the
passing of Sembene Ousmane to accolades of his massive contribution to
literature, film and culture globally; Wole Soyinka's multitude of
appearances in conjunction with his new work You Must Set Forth at Dawn: A
Memoir; and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's marvellous success at winning the
Orange Prize for her new novel Half a Yellow Sun, and achieving popular
status, including TV recognition.

This said, there remains a long way to go to achieve true cultural exchange
and dialogue between North and South, '…the problem of dialogue which has
plagued Afro-European relations for centuries' that will persist 'until
Europe is ready. Ready to concede total African humanity'. But in the
literary domain – involving 'the active definers and custodians of society's
values…literature giv[ing] us a second handle on reality; enabling us to
encounter…the same threats to integrity that may assail...in real life'[5] –
Achebe's prophecy is being fulfilled: 'I have no doubt at all about the
existence of the African novel. This form of fiction has seized the
imagination of many African writers and they will use it according to their
differing abilities, sensitivities and visions without seeking anyone's
permission. I believe it will grow and prosper. I believe it has a great
future.'[6]

Stephanie Kitchen
July 2007

References
1 'Colonialist Criticism' in Chinua Achebe: Hopes and Impediments: Selected
Essays, New York: Doubleday, 2003 edition, 1st publ. 1989, p. 89
2 Press release of the inaugural prize,
http://www.manbookerinternational.com/home
3 'Thoughts on the African Novel', in Chinua Achebe, Hopes and Impediments:
Selected Essays, New York: Doubleday, 2003, p. 93
4 'Impediments to dialogue between North and South' in Achebe, Hopes and
Impediments, p. 23
5 'What has literature got to do with it', in Achebe, Hopes and Impediments,
p. 170
6 'Thoughts on the African Novel', in Achebe, Hopes and Impediments:
Selected Essays, New York: Doubleday, 2003, p. 99

* Stephanie Kitchen is Publications Manager for Pambazuka News.

* Please send comments to [log in to unmask] or comment online at
www.pambazuka.org

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html

To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤