Western Hegemony in Achebes Things Fall Apart - Movie Review Example

November 26, Western Hegemony and the Subversion and Appropriation of African Culture and Resources in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart Several writers have used literature to challenge the dominant reading of colonial history and to assert that history has to be rewritten to ensure that it does not promote a Eurocentric ideology. Chinua Achebe challenges African history that comes from the colonizer’s viewpoints through Things Fall Apart. It narrates the story of Okonkwo, a man who both represents and undercuts African values and practices. He has a bad temper and resorts to violence easily, instead of following cultural norms and tribal rules. Despite these personal flaws, he illustrates African identity that values hard work, perseverance, and manhood. The setting of this book spans the time before and during the colonization of Nigeria. Things Fall Apart demonstrates how the colonizer conquers the colonized through hegemonic apparatuses, particularly, appropriating natural resources and political systems, feeding inter- and intra-tribal cultural conflicts, promoting the colonizer’s ideology as morally superior, and subverting African ideology by rewriting African history and identity. The colonizers are the European Christians who use hegemonic measures to conquer Nigerians, the colonized, one of which is through appropriating the latter’s natural resources and political systems. Hegemony refers to ideological domination wherein one worldview dominates or represses another ideology (Said 7). Stuart Hall defines ideology as the images, concepts, and principles that build the worldview by which people represents, understand, and make sense of one aspect of their social existence (271). The colonizer refers to a social group that dominates the colonized because of economic and political advantages in controlling the people and the resources of the latter. Gramsci talks about a social class that dominates others by force and consent because of political and economic outcomes (211), and the Europeans in Nigeria are examples of a dominating social class. The colonized suffers from the appropriation of their economic, political, and social resources and systems from colonizers who use them and their resources as means to self-serving ends. In Things Fall Apart, the Christians appropriate the natural resources of the tribes by taking away their lands, either by violence or through their missionaries. The Umuofia clan, for instance, has an Evil Forest that people fear and where the Christian missionaries build their church to prove that the former’s gods and goddesses are false. In other tribes, the novel narrates how the Europeans simply took their lands and established their structures on them. Aside from land, the colonizer also appropriates the political systems of the African tribes. The Igbo tribe has their own justice system where a group of elders collectively discuss and decide on tribal issues. The colonizer, however, removes this by applying their court system which is not even fair because it demands money from other tribes to settle disputes. The novel shows how the colonizer appropriates resources and political systems to dominate the colonized. Besides political and economic appropriation, the colonizer controls the colonized through reinforcing inter- and intra-tribal cultural conflicts. The tribes themselves already have their long-standing conflicts, although they settle these issues mostly amicably through following collective values that guide their decisions. For instance, when a member of the Mbaino clan killed a woman of Umuofia, the matter is settled through the Mbaino’s giving up of a young boy and a virgin as compensation for the Umuofia. Other issues are not as peacefully settled, as Okonkwo and others have been involved in violent clashes with other tribes. The colonizer takes advantage of these inter-tribal differences to enhance division and to gather native allies. Besides conflicts among tribes, intra-tribal issues also give way to inner division. In the case of the Igbo, some people are already having conflicts with its violent practices, such as throwing away twins who are believed to be abominations and killing other people as part of an eye-for-an-eye justice system. Okonkwo’s eldest son, Nyowe, in particular, distances himself from his father who represents cultural violence, social stigmatization, and masculine aggression. He becomes one of the early converts of the Christian church because he believes in God’s compassion and love for all. Obierika narrates to Okonkwo, who has returned after years of exile, that the Europeans have appropriated their culture through religion: “Our own men and our sons have joined the ranks of the stranger. They have joined his religion and they help to uphold his government” (Achebe 177). Religion, being central to these African tribes, became an effective hegemonic means for the colonizer to spread division and cultural integration among the colonized. To be more specific, the colonizer promotes their ideology as morally superior through denouncing the latter’s spiritual and cultural beliefs and practices. The colonizer uses hegemony to promote a dominant reading of social, economic, political, and cultural systems, in order to subvert African ideologies, and to promote the colonizer’s worldview. Religion and culture for the Igbo are closely intertwined. They have many cultural practices and events that have spiritual relevance, such as sacrificing animals to the earth goddess, Ani, before planting crops and the Feast of the New Yam, where they give thanks to Ani and pay honor to their ancestral spirits. The colonizer aims to own the colonized completely by destroying the validity of their African ideology. Christian missionaries assert that the Igbos’ gods and ancestors are evil and false: “We have been sent by this great God to ask you to leave your wicked ways and false gods and turn to Him so that you may be saved when you die” (Achebe 145). The colonizer undermines the culture of the colonized and replaces them with their own cultural ideology. They conquer the colonized through decimating their cultural identities. Finally, the colonizer subverts African ideology by introducing the printed world to an oral culture, a printed form of ideology that rewrites history towards a dominant colonizer’s reading of one nation’s cultural history and identity. The colonizer embeds a new ideology that treats the colonized as invisible and weak. In order to this, they must completely subvert the cultural transmission mode of the tribes. At the end of the novel, the District Commissioner in Nigeria intends to write a book with the title, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger (Achebe 209). The irony of the title is in its verbal and dramatic irony. First, the colonizer does not pacify the tribes. The Europeans violently and cultural oppressed them instead. Second, the Nigerians are not primitive. They have their own political, economic, cultural, and social systems. These systems are different from the Europeans and have some humanistic flaws, but their collective principles have democratic values and outcomes. Third, the printed word is a symbolic genocide of the oral culture of the colonized. The Pacification intends to perpetuate a dominant reading of colonial and pre-colonial history by insisting that the Africans are uncivilized barbarians and that the whites saved them through civilizing them. The colonizer controls the colonized through rewriting their history and identity. Things Fall Apart proves that the colonizer has psychological and physical means of subjugation. They use violence to arouse fear, fear that is also needed in imposing power. The strongest and most lasting hegemonic means are, nonetheless, fought through the psychological war for the minds of the colonized. The colonizer uses Christian religion and European culture to weaken the identity of the colonized and to divide them. They appropriate the entire African ideology in order to enforce Western hegemony. The subversion of African identity continues through the publication, dissemination, and cultural consumption and adaptation of The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. NY: Anchor Books, 1959. Print. Gramsci, Antonio. “Hegemony, Intellectuals, and the State.” 1791. 210-616. Print. Hall, Stuart. “Racist Ideologies and the Media.” 271-282. Print. Said, Edward. “Introduction.” Orientalism. 1-28. Print. Read More