Monday, December 31, 2012

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn’t: Reflections On Achebe’s New Book (2)

 

Ikhide,

 

Thank you setting a trap for yourself and falling into it.

 

I knew you were headed there and allowed you to do yourself in.

 

Well done.

 

How can you, in the name of Jesus Christ of Oyingbo, equate The Trouble with Nigeria, Anthills of the Savannah, Hopes and Impediments and even go further and equate them with  There Was a Country :A Personal  History of Biafra?

 

Haba!

 

I bin tink say you be literary critic.

 

Let me take your hand and lead you though this since you are not getting it.

 

Are those books identical in form and content?

 

Are you arguing with a straight face, that a work largely fictional, Anthills of the Savannah, is identical with a collection of expository  essays on a broad range of topics, Hopes and Impediments and that these two are identical with  a book that, unlike Anthills,  focuses  on one subject from a non-fictive perspective,The Trouble with Nigeria, and does not involve movement into abstract metaphysics as Achebe does superbly in the essay "The  Igbo World View and its Art"  in Hopes and Impediments?

 

Are you standing straight and arguing that this diverse body of books is identical with an effort to present  a realist narrative  of a historical  period from a personal perspective   in  There Was a Country:A Personal  History of Biafra?

 

Is this the kind of mish mash conflation you are demonstrating in gleefully declaring : "It is stunning to me that a scholar of Jeyifo's calibre could not see that Achebe's new book TWAC is pretty much a compilation of all he has been saying all these years."

 

Is Achebe simply rehashing the content of those books? 

 

At this point, one has to ask-have you read these books? If so,what went wrong?

 

You might do well to enrol in my adult education class.

 

I will craft a special curriculum for you.

 

It will begin with a foundation in theory of genres and proceed to discussing  creative transposition from life to art.

 

You need it, brother.

 

Based on the differences between these books and the fact that even if they were similar in all aspects, unless you are arguing that There Was a Country is a direct repetition of one of those books,you need to address the new imaginative and narrative nexus constituted  by the new work, as Jeyifo is rightly doing, seeing it as a new development, not identical with the old productions,  as your one eyed criticism is too  short sighted to understand 

 

Pull your ears tight and assimilate that first.

 

What is this thing you are trying to say about musings after a driver stole Achebe's car?

 

If you are drinking or sleepy, please go and wash your face and sit up. 

 

Jeyifo states categorically that Achebe takes to task issues of class in Nigeria but does not do that in Biafra. 

 

At that point,we move beyond incidental musing resulting from the theft of a car.

 

Let me leave you there for now.

 

toyin

 

 

 





On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 3:56 AM, Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:
Oluwatoyin,
 
You are trying to immerse yourself in depths beyond your intellectual competence and the more you open your mouth I am convinced you are a waste of my time. I am tired of giving you lectures for free and you are ungrateful to boot. I paid dearly for my education but I spent my money wisely - on the right tyoe of education. Have you read Professor Chinua Achebe's book? Where is your own "critical analysis"? No amount of pompous pretensions to scholarship will hide your ignorance of literature and Nigerian history..
 
Go get your bifocals and read what I said about Professor Biodun Jeyifo's "critical analysis." Here, let me help you unpack my one-line.
 
1. Three quarters of Achebe's book, There Was a Country is from his previous books, The Trouble with Nigeria, Anthills of the Savannah, Hopes and Impediments, etc. as Achebe carefully footnotes ad nauseam in his book.   So how can Jeyifo say that "ethnicity, class and individuality had been superbly interwoven and productively explored" in those books, when much of the same thoughts are basically the new book that is pretty much 3/4s of the book Jeyifo cites?  Does that make sense to you?
 2. It is stunning to me that a scholar of Jeyifo's calibre could not see that Achebe's new book TWAC is pretty much a compilation of all he has been saying all these years. He obviously did not see that. That alone makes his "critical analysis" worthless scholarship. How can you ask me to take seriously such critique.
 
3. Has Jeyifo read Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun? That book is the most updated and elegant discussion of class not only in Biafra but in Nigeria. Have you read Half of a Yellow Sun? Have you, Toyin? What, for heaven's sakes, have you read?
 
4. How can Jeyifo in all seriousness say that Achebe did not discuss class in TWAC? He must be reading a pirated copy of the book with the substantive pages ripped off. Achebe makes clear that he was part of the intellectual elite, he was traveling the West, doing propaganda on behalf of Biafra. He had a "driver" who made off with his car and belongings one day. The resulting musing is as lucid a discussion of class as you'll ever get. It is the job of the astute reader to deduce these things. I honestly have no idea what Jeyifo is talking about. He needs to read the text more closely before any more "critical analysis" or whatevr pablum passes for scholarship around here.
 
Look, Toyin, if you are going to engage me civilly, I am happy to reciprocate, but trust me I am good at throwing punches and they land where I want them to land. Don't get me started on you, because I have all day and all night. Go and read TWAC. Go and read Adichie's HOAYS and then come back and talk to me. Until then sit down before me. And learn something.
 
Happy New Year.
 
- Ikhide
 
Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/
Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide



From: OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com; xokigbo@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 8:58 PM

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)

Ikhide, 

Please, come off it.

You wont escape through that door. 

If you really think you are in a position to criticise Jeyifo, do us a favour and do a critical analysis of the Jeyifo essay with close reference to the Achebe text you are both referring to.

All you have provided so far is a one line  dismissal, an effort  I can easily show as of little illumination if I were bothered to do so.  

You might not like my thinking, but you will observe my consistent painstaking efforts to present my case, often using a range of scholarly references.

Are you giving us a serious analysis or not?

If you persist in presenting uncritical denunciation, I will persist in calling out your actions for what they are.

toyin 
On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 10:56 PM, Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:
Dear Oluwatoyin Adepoju,
You are obviously poorly read in all the right things, that is not my problem, and no amount of faux scholarship can hide your ignorance of matters that you should know stuff about. It is not my fault that at your age you only came across serious scholarship about Biafra this year. You ought to be grateful to people like me, your real lecturers who try gamely to salvage you from your pit of ignorance. I have spent much of my life educating myself on that which is important to my future and that of people that look like me. You on the other hand, only your God knows what he did to you.
Read my submission again, Biodun Jeyifo's analysis is dead in the water because he clearly does not realize that much of Achebe's new book is recompiled from all the books he listed. Which renders his analysis inchoate, if not entirely worthless. Opinions I respect, but they must be based on facts.
And you know, you and your ilk take me seriously and I keep you up at night while I dance to my gods and enjoy the occasional glass of cognac. My gods have been good to me, on the other hand, your gods were cranky and distracted when they glued you together. Now go to your next class where they teach you how to be a misgynist.
- Ikhide
 
- Ikhide
 
Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/
Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide



From: OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 1:56 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)

Ikhide,

Sorry, but you are not really saying much about the Jeyifo contribution.

Your comments do not achieve much beyond express an unsubstantiated displeasure.

If you are to be taken seriously as a pro-Biafra critic, which you see yourself as being, you need to do better than just display displeasure and be seen to engage in serious and informed analysis of the subject you address.


toyin

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 6:42 PM, Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:
"In all of Achebe's books on our pre-colonial and postcolonial experience, he had come closer than perhaps any other writer to this conception and practice of realism. More specifically, ethnicity, class and individuality had been superbly interwoven and productively explored in such titles as No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, The Trouble with Nigeria and Home and Exile. Thus, in my opinion, There Was A Country marks a radical rupture in Achebe's writings on our country, a rupture in which the realist rigour of his previous writings gives way to, or is considerably modified by a mystique, an apologia, an uncompromising defense of Igbo ethno-nationalism. I do not think that Achebe took this path in a fit of absent-mindedness; to the contrary, I think it is a decision, a choice he made in this new book quite deliberately and purposively."
 
- Professor Biodun Jeyifo on Achebe's There Was A Country.
 
There is a reason why Professor Biodun Jeyifo's tortuous (so far) serial analysis of Professor Chinua Achebe's book is so far flying like a lead balloon; it makes little sense because it is poorly researched. Take the above statement, I just wonder how many of these books of Achebe's he has read. If he has read them closely, then he has a curious way of showing it. I also am quite suprised how little of Achebe's books beyond TFA many of our star intellectuals have read. It is a shame really.
 
As Achebe carefully footnotes ad nauseam in his book, much of the new book can already be found in, yes, No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, The Trouble with Nigeria and Home and Exile. So how can you say that "ethnicity, class and individuality had been superbly interwoven and productively explored" in those books, when much of the same thoughts are basically the new book? 
 
Jeyifo is trying awkwardly to hide his huge ethnic bias by accusing Achebe of the same and of a lack of objectivity, it is comical, really. The only reason we are reading all this wahala (or trying to, my eyes glaze over the ancient history of alphabet soup parties, UPGA, NNA, blah blah blah) is because Achebe trained his rage on Awolowo. So all the Awoists are being trotted out to write absolutely dreadful "book reviews."
 
Finally all that mumbling about ethnicity and tribalism is beyond baffling. It makes little sense in the 21st century and I am now convinced that Jeyifo and I read two different editions of Achebe's wondrous book. Jeyifo and I live in a free country, the great USA and so I would say feel free to keep writing about Achebe if it rocks your boat. But if you are looking for a clear-eyed review of Achebe's books, do not look to Jeyifo :-D LOL!
 
- Ikhide 

 
From: Chido Onumah <conumah@hotmail.com>
To:
Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2012 9:43 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)

First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)
By Biodun Jeyifo
Superficially, it was understandable to conclude that this was indeed "an Igbo coup". However, scratch a little deeper and complicating factors are discovered: One of the majors was Yoruba, and Nzeogwu himself was Igbo in name only…he was widely known as someone who saw himself as a Northerner, spoke fluent Hausa and little Igbo, and wore the traditional Northern dress when not in uniform.
Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country
In the end, I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like.
Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile
If in There Was A Country "a Nigerian ruling class" only appears in the narratives and reflections of the author in the final fourth part of the book, this is only the most stunning aspect of the general intellectual and discursive architecture of the book. This "architecture", this "grammar" is none other than the fact that for nearly all other parts of the book with the exception of that concluding fourth part, all of Achebe's "explanations", all of his speculations in the book are relentlessly driven by ethnicity, and a very curious conception of ethnicity for that matter. Logically, inevitably, the corollary to this is that "explanations" and speculations based on class, and more specifically on intra-class and inter-class factors, are either completely ignored or even deliberately excluded. As I shall presently demonstrate, this is a remarkable departure from virtually all of Achebe's writings prior to this recently published book. For now, let me illustrate this startling matter of the complete subsumption of class into ethnicity in There Was A Country with two particularly telling examples out of innumerable other instances in the book.
The first of our two selected examples pertains to nothing less than the January 15, 1966 coup itself, arguably the "opening shot" in the chain of events and crises that led to the Nigeria-Biafra war, the central subject of Achebe's book. It so happens that there is quite a significant body of both general and academic writings and discourses on this signal event. And indeed, Achebe's long citation of his sources in the bibliographic section of his book mentions many of these writings and discourses on the January 15, 1966 coup. It is therefore baffling that of the variety of "motives" or "interests" that have been ascribed to the coup plotters, the single one that Achebe addresses in his book is ethnicity, "tribe": Was it, or was it not, "an Igbo coup".
There have been suggestions, there have been speculations that it was a "southern coup", this in light of the fact that most of the political and military leaders assassinated or inadvertently killed were, overwhelmingly, either northerners or southerners in alliance with northern leaders. More pertinent to the present discussion, there has also been an even more plausible speculation that class and ideological interests were significant in the motives of influential members of the coup plotters like Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and Wale Ademoyega. Of the two alliances of the ruling class parties of the First Republic, the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA) and the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA), with the exception of Festus Okotie-Eboh, the Finance Minister, all those assassinated belonged to the NNA. S.L. Akintola, the Premier of the Western Region, was a diehard NNA chieftain; there is compelling evidence that this was why he was assassinated while Michael Okpara, the Premier of the Eastern Region, was spared because he was a major figure in the UPGA alliance. As a matter of fact, there is clear evidence that some of the coup plotters had the intension of making or "forcing" Chief Awolowo to assume the office of Prime Minister in the belief that the progressive northern allies of UPGA were far more regionally and nationally popular and credible than the southern and conservative allies of the NNA.
Achebe's book pays not the slightest attention to these other probable factors in assessing the motives of the January 15 coup plotters. Was it, or was it not, "an Igbo coup"? That is all Achebe is interested in exploring - and disproving – in There Was A Country. Of the many threads that form the complex fabric of that fateful coup d'état, this single thread of ethnicity or "tribe" is all that Achebe strenuously tries to unravel in his book. This may be because by the time of the terrible pogroms of May 1966 against Igbos in the North, all other plausible motives for the coup had been almost completely erased by assertions, indeed pronouncements that the coup had incontrovertibly been an Igbo coup. But Achebe's book was written more than forty years after the event and it had the advantage of both historical hindsight and a vast body of accumulated research and discourses. For this reason, there is no other conclusion left for us other than a finding that Achebe almost certainly has a driving rationale for sticking exclusively to ethnicity or "tribalism" while simultaneously ignoring or excluding all other plausible, and in some cases factual, factors.
At any rate, this is precisely what Achebe repeats in the second of our two examples. This pertains to the period of regional and nation-wide crises between 1964 to 1966 that preceded the January 15 coup and the Nigeria-Biafra war. Here, in Achebe's own words, is the particular case: "By the time the government of the Western region also published a white paper outlining the dominance of the ethnic Igbo in key government positions in the Nigerian Railway Corporation and the Nigerian Ports Authority, the situation for ethnic Igbos working in Western Nigeria in particular and all over Nigeria in general had become untenable" (p. 77). This is indeed a fact, but it is a partial fact, one aspect of a complex of facts and realities many of which Achebe chooses to ignore or obscure. It is useful to carefully state what these other facts and realities were.
First, the government of the Western region that Achebe alludes to here was that of Chief S.L. Akintola and his party, the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP). Arguably, these were the most perniciously right-wing government and party in southern Nigeria in the entirety of our post-independence political history. Achebe completely ignores this fact and fixes exclusively on this government's anti-Igbo programs and diatribes. Secondly, Akintola's government and party were not only virulently anti-Igbo, they were also scurrilously anti-welfarist and anti-socialist. A brilliant orator and a master of Yoruba rhetorical arts, Akintola tirelessly satirized a range of targets and issues of which Igbos were only one composite group. He was particularly fond of spewing out twisted, parodic visions of welfarism and socialism in which everything would be shared – wives, children, family heirlooms and personal belongings. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that Achebe had to have been aware of these facts and realities; but he ignores them completely. Thirdly and lastly, Akintola and his party quite deliberately stoked the fires of intra-ethnic tensions and resentments within Yoruba sub-groups and they took this as far as founding a rival Pan-Yoruba organization to the Egbe Omo Oduduwa which they called "Egbe Omo Olofin". And for good measure, they tried, unsuccessfully, to instigate the late Duro Ladipo to write and produce a play to counter Hubert Ogunde's famous pro-Awolowo and pro-UPGA play, Yoruba Ronu.
It must be emphasized that all these intra-class and intra-ethnic facts and realities were so well-known at the time that Achebe could not have been ignorant of them. We are left with no other conclusion than that Achebe simply had no place in his book for any factors, any realities beyond a pristine, autochthonous conception of ethnic identity and belonging in which no other aspects of social identification are allowed to "contaminate" the singularity of ethnicity . This, I suggest, is what we see in its quintessence in the argument expressed in the first of the two epigraphs to this essay to the effect that Nzeogwu being Igbo "in name only", the January 15 coup could not have been "an Igbo coup".
In last week's beginning essay in this series, I made the assertion that Achebe is one of the greatest realist writers in world literature in the last century and half. I now wish to clarify the relevance of that assertion to the present discussion. One of the most compelling claims of realism is that it is the mode or genre in which the chain of representation in a work of literature or, more broadly, an intellectual treatise, comes closest to the chain of causality in nature, history or society. In a layman's formulation of this "big grammar", this means that above all other modes, forms and genres, it is in realism that what is presented in a work of art or a treatise is as close as you can possibly get to how things actually happened. Another way of putting this across is to suggest that typically and unavoidably, there being always and forever a big gap between how things actually happen and how they are (re)presented in writing, it is only the most gifted and talented realist writers that come close to bridging that gap.
In all of Achebe's books on our pre-colonial and postcolonial experience, he had come closer than perhaps any other writer to this conception and practice of realism. More specifically, ethnicity, class and individuality had been superbly interwoven and productively explored in such titles as No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, The Trouble with Nigeria and Home and Exile. Thus, in my opinion, There Was A Country marks a radical rupture in Achebe's writings on our country, a rupture in which the realist rigour of his previous writings gives way to, or is considerably modified by a mystique, an apologia, an uncompromising defense of Igbo ethno-nationalism. I do not think that Achebe took this path in a fit of absent-mindedness; to the contrary, I think it is a decision, a choice he made in this new book quite deliberately and purposively. In next week's continuation of this series, I shall deal extensively even if only speculatively with this choice, with particular reference to what I personally regard as one of the most controversial aspects of There Was A Country, this being the link that Achebe makes in the book between what he deems the endemic ethnic scapegoating of Igbos in our country and the utter collapse of meritocracy in post-civil war Nigeria.
Concluded.
 

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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Note of Happiness : U.S.: Deal Reached to Avert 'Fiscal Cliff'

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/163762

U.S.: Deal Reached to Avert 'Fiscal Cliff'
The White House and top Republicans have struck a deal to avert huge
New Year tax hikes and spending cuts known as the "fiscal cliff".

AAFont Size

By Elad Benari

First Publish: 1/1/2013, 5:13 AM

Obama delivers a speech on the economy
Obama delivers a speech on the economy
Reuters

The White House and top Republicans have struck a deal to avert huge
New Year tax hikes and spending cuts known as the "fiscal cliff" that
had threatened to send the U.S. economy into recession, AFP reports.

The pact would raise taxes on the richest Americans -- those earning
over $450,000 a year -- but exempt everyone else, and will put off
$109 billion in budget cuts across the government for two months, top
congressional aides said, according to the report.

Vice President Joe Biden, who negotiated the deal with Republican
Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, was on Capitol Hill to sell it
to Democratic senators, a White House source added.

Tax hikes and spending cuts were due to come into force on January 1.
But as global markets, sure to be rocked by a failure to head off the
fiscal cliff, are closed for New Year's day, lawmakers have time to
vote the deal into law.

A Senate vote was expected overnight on Monday while the House of
Representatives was expected to follow suit on Tuesday after a display
of dramatic New Year's Eve brinkmanship.

The deal would mean a return to Bill Clinton-era tax rates for top
earners to 39.6 percent, starting at a threshold of annual household
earnings of $450,000 and above.

President Barack Obama had originally campaigned for tax hikes to kick
in for those making $250,000 and above and his acceptance of a higher
threshold has already angered liberals, though still represents a
political victory.

The president said it would extend tax credits for clean energy firms
and also unemployment insurance for two million people due to expire
later Monday.

It was also expected to include an end to a temporary two percent cut
to payroll taxes for Social Security retirement savings and Medicare
health care programs for seniors and changes to inheritance and
investment taxes.

Both sides were Monday already gearing up for the next legislative
showdown over the need to lift the government's statutory borrowing
limit of $16.4 trillion, which was reached Monday.

The Treasury will now take extraordinary measures to keep the
government afloat for an undisclosed period of time until the ceiling
is raised. Republicans are already demanding spending cuts in return.

Obama said earlier Monday that a deal to avert the fiscal cliff budget
crisis was in sight, but hinted that the proposed pact would not deal
with complementary and punishing cuts to government spending also due
to take place in the New Year, which he said would have to be dealt
with down the line.

Last week, Democratic and Republican leaders traded blame over the
fiscal cliff. In the weekly Republican Party radio address, House
Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, said that that
President Barack Obama's proposal to solve the crisis by raising taxes
"would still leave red ink as far as the eye can see."

Obama, meanwhile, seemed frustrated that Republicans were not willing
to offer him a compromise after, in his eyes, he made major
concessions to his opponents.


Tags: Republican party ,Joe Biden ,Democratic Party ,us
economy ,tax ,Fiscal Cliff

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cheikh Anta Diop

Thanks, Cornelius.

Just  seeing this.

On the knowing or not knowing issue.

There is too much at stake. There is therefore no room for false dignity.

As it is,  I know  I am not educated.

I need education.

I am hungry. 

Moving:

"That was my own reaction when you asked " Have you read Diop?" I wondered, " What kind of question is that? Next he'll be asking me " Have you been circumcised?"

By the way, circumcision might not be as taken for granted as you might assume. Some people see it as a  form of cruelty and denial of the right of the male child who is not in a position  to  give informed consent. 

"What made you mention witchcraft?  Very interested in your take on that.

Thanks for the film. It was fun.

I had to go that Stockholm site and was again challenged:





I need to live in a place like that Oxford bookshop. Nothing less than such a thing will do. 

Thanks for the evocation of the starry spaces within which the flame burns and the soul is luminous, pulled forth to the cosmic centre.

God bless you and yours and all the best for a great new year for you all.

Looking  forward to meeting.

Toyin



On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 9:17 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com> wrote:


Dear Oluwatoyin Adepoju;

What a very nice guy you have turned out to be ! I say that because I
had thought that you were going to lambast me for asking a Cambridge
man an such an impertinent question: " What else are you not familiar
with?"

That was my own reaction when you asked " Have you read Diop?"
I wondered, " What kind of question is that? Next he'll be asking me "
Have you been circumcised?"

Well, a mortal man cannot know everything and when I go to the main
public library that's when I feel really little, small and mortal,
suffer a little anguish and panic  looking at the shelves and then I
hear "Time's winged chariot hurrying near" and know that it is not
possible for a mortal to read all those books, not even if he lived as
long as Methuselah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Public_Library

For twenty three years I lived a five minute walk from there and spent
considerable spare time there.

Same feeling every time I glance at a title on one of my shelves "
1001 Books you must read before you die – Ed. Peter Boxall"

You know as well as I do that there are Mw-alim-isismus who you simply
cannot ask that kind of question and not expect some whiplash. Could
even make you a permanent enemy. That's the sort of question reserved
mostly for The Omniscient  - only HE can ask that kind of question.
You hear some heavy Ogun thunder & behold  the  naked wonder of sky
cracking with lightning  from East to West and next thing you hear the
voice of thunder:  " Oluwatoyin ! Who told you that you are  naked?
Have you been eating from the tree which I commanded you not to eat?"

Fact is we would all like to obtain the secret of eternal life if we
could. That would be real knowledge, wouldn't it?

I'm sure that the beginning of this video will bring a smile to Oga
Falola himself  ( "One day for Africa"):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvLWF0hxoow

As I heard one of the greatest contemporary Talmud scholars say here
in Stockholm

 - his exact words : "We all came from Africa"

So about knowledge I guess we've got to get our priorities right.
Quoting the Igbo's Bible, " For what shall it profit a man, if he
shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

As for me, I'm a softy. I was mostly brought up by my beloved Yoruba
grandmother and she too knew many of the psalms of David by heart and
used to quote him profusely. Cleanliness was a major concern.

About Cheikh Anta and all that  you take a look at the continent and
you see spiritual warfare going on  - the battle for the souls of
Africans   and now it's mostly a proselytizing battle between
Missionary Christianity and al-Islam. The cultural unity is under
threat and may be subsumed by one or the other, peacefully or by force
of arms.

The continent has lost its unity of spiritual identity – assuming that
there was ever such a unity.

 I believe  that one of your contributions could be in unearthing this
thing known as
" witchcraft"  - demonised by both Islam and Christianity  - just as
Judaism is also distrustful of all spirituality from the East:

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&tbo=d&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=Faith+and+Folly+-+Rabbi+Hillel&oq=Faith+and+Folly+-+Rabbi+Hillel&gs_l=hp.12..0i8i30.3424.3424.0.5015.1.1.0.0.0.0.80.80.1.1.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.MEl0-rvM3ms&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.1355534169,d.bGE&fp=da51af1112b196c&bpcl=40096503&biw=1024&bih=614

God willing, I look forward to meeting you in the UK this coming
year . I'm sure that things would happen then.

Sincerely,

http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/corneliushamelberg/





On Dec 31, 2:31 am, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tva...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks, Cornelius.
>
> 'I find it incredible that you are not familiar withCheikh Anta
> Diop.<http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&tbo=d&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=C...>
> What
> and who else are you not familiar with? And mind you, reading his stuff is
> more important than reading some of the cockroach houses that others have
> written about him or built around him. So you had better get started.'
>
> Truth to tell, bro, there is much I am not familiar with.
>
> That is why I am keen to know what I need to know.
>
> Beautiful-'reading his stuff is more important than reading some of the
> cockroach houses that others have written about him or built around him'.
> *
> *
> Thanks for addressing this-
>
> " You are puzzled by how little influence Cheikh Anta Diop seems to have
> had in the English speaking world and of course  he continues to be better
> known in Francophone Africa and Diaspora.
> *
> *
> Of course it's because he wrote in French and about an area that has little
> to do with British history and as to his methods which are still in dispute
> I intuit that once again it is the rigidity or simplicity of the logical
> positive approach, in contrast with the flowery kinds of French /
> continental philosophy we are treated to by the French speaking world  –
> which does not mean to say that Cheikh Anta Diop did not have an extremely
> tough time in getting his thesis approved as PH.D. material – it is now
> popularly believed that the reluctance in acknowledging his contribution to
> original knowledge was due to Euro-centric racism"
> *
> *
> When I first entered the Blackwell bookshop in
> Oxford<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwell_UK>,the sight hit
> me hard, like a blow in the solar plexus. "Has my youth been wasted?!" was
> the question that flashed through my mind.
>
> This kind of sight, for example, of that bookshop, convinces me I really
> need an education and need to find one that will maximise me:
>
> [image: Inline image 1]
>
> It is vital to be exposed to the universe of knowledge in which what
> one knows is an island.
>
> So, thanks, Cornelius, and thank you very much for the links on your blog.
> I clicked on those links and had to gape in wonder at luminaries like
> Falola, Appiah, Harrow, like a child finding himself in a
> vast cathedral and wondering how he could ever belong within such
> a magnificent wonder.
>
> Particularly memorable
> <http://www.princeton.edu/admission/whatsdistinctive/facultyprofiles/a...>from
> the Google Appiah search you led me on .
>
> Unforgettable-
>
> "There's the poetry of several spiritual traditions about God being a
> treasure that the seeker must find or a mystery that the seeker must solve.
> Some traditions say that He is to be found in the heart of the seeker, some
> others say that He is closer than the jugular vein of the believer and then
> there's the whole cosmos out there, the starry dynamo of the cosmos &
> galaxies also to be found inside – and to be found more plentifully in
> material time out there."
> ....
> Thought about these things some more as I skimmed this morning's Dagens
> Nyheter which reports that Higgs'
> particle<http://www.google.com/search?tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&q=Higgs'+particle&o...>
> is
> the greatest find out there, this year.
>
> ...
>
> Finding Higgs' particle is slightly different from digging in the bowels of
> history, although the motivation is the same: " Seek and ye shall find" I
> guess that that's what Cheikh Anta Diop did, with the tools available to
> him – and one of those tools is the imagination's capacity for the
> interpretation of the material evidence and the more mystical elements –
> including language communications.
>
> ...
> How far can we test the limits of rationality without talking about
> miracles?
>
> Fantastic:
>
> 'If we examine the matter even more deeply and discover that the very core
> of the human project as understood by our civilisation and its history, the
> philosophical discourse has itself been severed, and in its place a
> deliberate set of pseudo-sciences which stand in for critical thought ,
> assuring that those who desire to think will not challenge the moral
> foundations of the society but simply while away their time in meaningless
> debates, about linguistics, literary textual post-mortems,, and
> hermeneutics....;
> from the introduction of Shaykh Abdalqdir al-Murabit's  " For the Coming
> Man"
>
> Do you have any idea where this happened:
>
>  '...one occasion a student of a distinguished French University submitted
> a doctoral thesis which contradicted the new world view and found that his
> examiners accepted the validity of his thesis, and thus, by implication ,
> his scientific methodology had demonstrated his case, only to be stunned by
> the decision of the French government to revoke his degree, something
> unheard of in a thousand years of French intellectual history.'
> from the introduction of Shaykh Abdalqdir al-Murabit's  " For the Coming
> Man"
>
> thank you very much for taking this trouble, Cornelius.
>
> toyin
> On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> corneliushamelb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Toyin,
>
> > My half a kobo's worth ( if that currency is till in existence):
>
> >http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/corneliushamelberg/2012/12/30/re-cheikh-...
>
> > On Dec 29, 7:42 pm, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tva...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Cornelius,
>
> > > Have you read Diop?
>
> > > What do you think of him?
>
> > > I have not read him yet.
>
> > > He is much lionised by Africa centred thinkers but he does not seem to
> > > feature much in the little exposure I have had to readings in African
> > > history.
>
> > > I was struck to see a description in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge
> > of
> > > the ancient Egyptians as Black. I did not know that idea had gained the
> > > level of acceptance reflected in such a museum.
>
> > > In all, though, I get the impression that Egypt has little significance
> > >  for many Africans and that its significance is much stronger for
> > Diaspora
> > > Africans.
>
> > > What do you think?
>
> > > toyin
>
> > > On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <
>
> > > corneliushamelb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Today is Cheikh Anta Diop's birthday  - some of the Diopists have been
> > > > celebrating that in Stockholm!
>
> > > >https://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_rn=1&gs_ri=hp&tok=IL.
> > ..
>
> > > > --
> > > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa
> > > > Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at
> > Austin.
> > > >    For current archives, visit
> > > >http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
> > > >    For previous archives, visit
> > > >http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
> > > >    To post to this group, send an email to
> > > > USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
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> > > >    unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
>
> > > --
> > > Compcros <http://danteadinkra.wix.com/compcros>
> > > Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
> > > "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
>
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa
> > Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
> >    For current archives, visit
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> >    For previous archives, visit
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> >    unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
>
> --
> Compcros <http://danteadinkra.wix.com/compcros>
> Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
> "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
>
>  image.jpeg
> 7112KViewDownload

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"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"


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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn’t: Reflections On Achebe’s New Book (2)

Oluwatoyin,
 
You are trying to immerse yourself in depths beyond your intellectual competence and the more you open your mouth I am convinced you are a waste of my time. I am tired of giving you lectures for free and you are ungrateful to boot. I paid dearly for my education but I spent my money wisely - on the right tyoe of education. Have you read Professor Chinua Achebe's book? Where is your own "critical analysis"? No amount of pompous pretensions to scholarship will hide your ignorance of literature and Nigerian history..
 
Go get your bifocals and read what I said about Professor Biodun Jeyifo's "critical analysis." Here, let me help you unpack my one-line.
 
1. Three quarters of Achebe's book, There Was a Country is from his previous books, The Trouble with Nigeria, Anthills of the Savannah, Hopes and Impediments, etc. as Achebe carefully footnotes ad nauseam in his book.   So how can Jeyifo say that "ethnicity, class and individuality had been superbly interwoven and productively explored" in those books, when much of the same thoughts are basically the new book that is pretty much 3/4s of the book Jeyifo cites?  Does that make sense to you?
 2. It is stunning to me that a scholar of Jeyifo's calibre could not see that Achebe's new book TWAC is pretty much a compilation of all he has been saying all these years. He obviously did not see that. That alone makes his "critical analysis" worthless scholarship. How can you ask me to take seriously such critique.
 
3. Has Jeyifo read Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun? That book is the most updated and elegant discussion of class not only in Biafra but in Nigeria. Have you read Half of a Yellow Sun? Have you, Toyin? What, for heaven's sakes, have you read?
 
4. How can Jeyifo in all seriousness say that Achebe did not discuss class in TWAC? He must be reading a pirated copy of the book with the substantive pages ripped off. Achebe makes clear that he was part of the intellectual elite, he was traveling the West, doing propaganda on behalf of Biafra. He had a "driver" who made off with his car and belongings one day. The resulting musing is as lucid a discussion of class as you'll ever get. It is the job of the astute reader to deduce these things. I honestly have no idea what Jeyifo is talking about. He needs to read the text more closely before any more "critical analysis" or whatevr pablum passes for scholarship around here.
 
Look, Toyin, if you are going to engage me civilly, I am happy to reciprocate, but trust me I am good at throwing punches and they land where I want them to land. Don't get me started on you, because I have all day and all night. Go and read TWAC. Go and read Adichie's HOAYS and then come back and talk to me. Until then sit down before me. And learn something.
 
Happy New Year.
 
- Ikhide
 
Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/
Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide



From: OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com; xokigbo@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 8:58 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)

Ikhide, 

Please, come off it.

You wont escape through that door. 

If you really think you are in a position to criticise Jeyifo, do us a favour and do a critical analysis of the Jeyifo essay with close reference to the Achebe text you are both referring to.

All you have provided so far is a one line  dismissal, an effort  I can easily show as of little illumination if I were bothered to do so.  

You might not like my thinking, but you will observe my consistent painstaking efforts to present my case, often using a range of scholarly references.

Are you giving us a serious analysis or not?

If you persist in presenting uncritical denunciation, I will persist in calling out your actions for what they are.

toyin 
On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 10:56 PM, Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:
Dear Oluwatoyin Adepoju,
You are obviously poorly read in all the right things, that is not my problem, and no amount of faux scholarship can hide your ignorance of matters that you should know stuff about. It is not my fault that at your age you only came across serious scholarship about Biafra this year. You ought to be grateful to people like me, your real lecturers who try gamely to salvage you from your pit of ignorance. I have spent much of my life educating myself on that which is important to my future and that of people that look like me. You on the other hand, only your God knows what he did to you.
Read my submission again, Biodun Jeyifo's analysis is dead in the water because he clearly does not realize that much of Achebe's new book is recompiled from all the books he listed. Which renders his analysis inchoate, if not entirely worthless. Opinions I respect, but they must be based on facts.
And you know, you and your ilk take me seriously and I keep you up at night while I dance to my gods and enjoy the occasional glass of cognac. My gods have been good to me, on the other hand, your gods were cranky and distracted when they glued you together. Now go to your next class where they teach you how to be a misgynist.
- Ikhide
 
- Ikhide
 
Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/
Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide



From: OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2012 1:56 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)

Ikhide,

Sorry, but you are not really saying much about the Jeyifo contribution.

Your comments do not achieve much beyond express an unsubstantiated displeasure.

If you are to be taken seriously as a pro-Biafra critic, which you see yourself as being, you need to do better than just display displeasure and be seen to engage in serious and informed analysis of the subject you address.


toyin

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 6:42 PM, Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:
"In all of Achebe's books on our pre-colonial and postcolonial experience, he had come closer than perhaps any other writer to this conception and practice of realism. More specifically, ethnicity, class and individuality had been superbly interwoven and productively explored in such titles as No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, The Trouble with Nigeria and Home and Exile. Thus, in my opinion, There Was A Country marks a radical rupture in Achebe's writings on our country, a rupture in which the realist rigour of his previous writings gives way to, or is considerably modified by a mystique, an apologia, an uncompromising defense of Igbo ethno-nationalism. I do not think that Achebe took this path in a fit of absent-mindedness; to the contrary, I think it is a decision, a choice he made in this new book quite deliberately and purposively."
 
- Professor Biodun Jeyifo on Achebe's There Was A Country.
 
There is a reason why Professor Biodun Jeyifo's tortuous (so far) serial analysis of Professor Chinua Achebe's book is so far flying like a lead balloon; it makes little sense because it is poorly researched. Take the above statement, I just wonder how many of these books of Achebe's he has read. If he has read them closely, then he has a curious way of showing it. I also am quite suprised how little of Achebe's books beyond TFA many of our star intellectuals have read. It is a shame really.
 
As Achebe carefully footnotes ad nauseam in his book, much of the new book can already be found in, yes, No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, The Trouble with Nigeria and Home and Exile. So how can you say that "ethnicity, class and individuality had been superbly interwoven and productively explored" in those books, when much of the same thoughts are basically the new book? 
 
Jeyifo is trying awkwardly to hide his huge ethnic bias by accusing Achebe of the same and of a lack of objectivity, it is comical, really. The only reason we are reading all this wahala (or trying to, my eyes glaze over the ancient history of alphabet soup parties, UPGA, NNA, blah blah blah) is because Achebe trained his rage on Awolowo. So all the Awoists are being trotted out to write absolutely dreadful "book reviews."
 
Finally all that mumbling about ethnicity and tribalism is beyond baffling. It makes little sense in the 21st century and I am now convinced that Jeyifo and I read two different editions of Achebe's wondrous book. Jeyifo and I live in a free country, the great USA and so I would say feel free to keep writing about Achebe if it rocks your boat. But if you are looking for a clear-eyed review of Achebe's books, do not look to Jeyifo :-D LOL!
 
- Ikhide 

 
From: Chido Onumah <conumah@hotmail.com>
To:
Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2012 9:43 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)

First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections On Achebe's New Book (2)
By Biodun Jeyifo
Superficially, it was understandable to conclude that this was indeed "an Igbo coup". However, scratch a little deeper and complicating factors are discovered: One of the majors was Yoruba, and Nzeogwu himself was Igbo in name only…he was widely known as someone who saw himself as a Northerner, spoke fluent Hausa and little Igbo, and wore the traditional Northern dress when not in uniform.
Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country
In the end, I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like.
Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile
If in There Was A Country "a Nigerian ruling class" only appears in the narratives and reflections of the author in the final fourth part of the book, this is only the most stunning aspect of the general intellectual and discursive architecture of the book. This "architecture", this "grammar" is none other than the fact that for nearly all other parts of the book with the exception of that concluding fourth part, all of Achebe's "explanations", all of his speculations in the book are relentlessly driven by ethnicity, and a very curious conception of ethnicity for that matter. Logically, inevitably, the corollary to this is that "explanations" and speculations based on class, and more specifically on intra-class and inter-class factors, are either completely ignored or even deliberately excluded. As I shall presently demonstrate, this is a remarkable departure from virtually all of Achebe's writings prior to this recently published book. For now, let me illustrate this startling matter of the complete subsumption of class into ethnicity in There Was A Country with two particularly telling examples out of innumerable other instances in the book.
The first of our two selected examples pertains to nothing less than the January 15, 1966 coup itself, arguably the "opening shot" in the chain of events and crises that led to the Nigeria-Biafra war, the central subject of Achebe's book. It so happens that there is quite a significant body of both general and academic writings and discourses on this signal event. And indeed, Achebe's long citation of his sources in the bibliographic section of his book mentions many of these writings and discourses on the January 15, 1966 coup. It is therefore baffling that of the variety of "motives" or "interests" that have been ascribed to the coup plotters, the single one that Achebe addresses in his book is ethnicity, "tribe": Was it, or was it not, "an Igbo coup".
There have been suggestions, there have been speculations that it was a "southern coup", this in light of the fact that most of the political and military leaders assassinated or inadvertently killed were, overwhelmingly, either northerners or southerners in alliance with northern leaders. More pertinent to the present discussion, there has also been an even more plausible speculation that class and ideological interests were significant in the motives of influential members of the coup plotters like Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and Wale Ademoyega. Of the two alliances of the ruling class parties of the First Republic, the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA) and the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA), with the exception of Festus Okotie-Eboh, the Finance Minister, all those assassinated belonged to the NNA. S.L. Akintola, the Premier of the Western Region, was a diehard NNA chieftain; there is compelling evidence that this was why he was assassinated while Michael Okpara, the Premier of the Eastern Region, was spared because he was a major figure in the UPGA alliance. As a matter of fact, there is clear evidence that some of the coup plotters had the intension of making or "forcing" Chief Awolowo to assume the office of Prime Minister in the belief that the progressive northern allies of UPGA were far more regionally and nationally popular and credible than the southern and conservative allies of the NNA.
Achebe's book pays not the slightest attention to these other probable factors in assessing the motives of the January 15 coup plotters. Was it, or was it not, "an Igbo coup"? That is all Achebe is interested in exploring - and disproving – in There Was A Country. Of the many threads that form the complex fabric of that fateful coup d'état, this single thread of ethnicity or "tribe" is all that Achebe strenuously tries to unravel in his book. This may be because by the time of the terrible pogroms of May 1966 against Igbos in the North, all other plausible motives for the coup had been almost completely erased by assertions, indeed pronouncements that the coup had incontrovertibly been an Igbo coup. But Achebe's book was written more than forty years after the event and it had the advantage of both historical hindsight and a vast body of accumulated research and discourses. For this reason, there is no other conclusion left for us other than a finding that Achebe almost certainly has a driving rationale for sticking exclusively to ethnicity or "tribalism" while simultaneously ignoring or excluding all other plausible, and in some cases factual, factors.
At any rate, this is precisely what Achebe repeats in the second of our two examples. This pertains to the period of regional and nation-wide crises between 1964 to 1966 that preceded the January 15 coup and the Nigeria-Biafra war. Here, in Achebe's own words, is the particular case: "By the time the government of the Western region also published a white paper outlining the dominance of the ethnic Igbo in key government positions in the Nigerian Railway Corporation and the Nigerian Ports Authority, the situation for ethnic Igbos working in Western Nigeria in particular and all over Nigeria in general had become untenable" (p. 77). This is indeed a fact, but it is a partial fact, one aspect of a complex of facts and realities many of which Achebe chooses to ignore or obscure. It is useful to carefully state what these other facts and realities were.
First, the government of the Western region that Achebe alludes to here was that of Chief S.L. Akintola and his party, the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP). Arguably, these were the most perniciously right-wing government and party in southern Nigeria in the entirety of our post-independence political history. Achebe completely ignores this fact and fixes exclusively on this government's anti-Igbo programs and diatribes. Secondly, Akintola's government and party were not only virulently anti-Igbo, they were also scurrilously anti-welfarist and anti-socialist. A brilliant orator and a master of Yoruba rhetorical arts, Akintola tirelessly satirized a range of targets and issues of which Igbos were only one composite group. He was particularly fond of spewing out twisted, parodic visions of welfarism and socialism in which everything would be shared – wives, children, family heirlooms and personal belongings. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that Achebe had to have been aware of these facts and realities; but he ignores them completely. Thirdly and lastly, Akintola and his party quite deliberately stoked the fires of intra-ethnic tensions and resentments within Yoruba sub-groups and they took this as far as founding a rival Pan-Yoruba organization to the Egbe Omo Oduduwa which they called "Egbe Omo Olofin". And for good measure, they tried, unsuccessfully, to instigate the late Duro Ladipo to write and produce a play to counter Hubert Ogunde's famous pro-Awolowo and pro-UPGA play, Yoruba Ronu.
It must be emphasized that all these intra-class and intra-ethnic facts and realities were so well-known at the time that Achebe could not have been ignorant of them. We are left with no other conclusion than that Achebe simply had no place in his book for any factors, any realities beyond a pristine, autochthonous conception of ethnic identity and belonging in which no other aspects of social identification are allowed to "contaminate" the singularity of ethnicity . This, I suggest, is what we see in its quintessence in the argument expressed in the first of the two epigraphs to this essay to the effect that Nzeogwu being Igbo "in name only", the January 15 coup could not have been "an Igbo coup".
In last week's beginning essay in this series, I made the assertion that Achebe is one of the greatest realist writers in world literature in the last century and half. I now wish to clarify the relevance of that assertion to the present discussion. One of the most compelling claims of realism is that it is the mode or genre in which the chain of representation in a work of literature or, more broadly, an intellectual treatise, comes closest to the chain of causality in nature, history or society. In a layman's formulation of this "big grammar", this means that above all other modes, forms and genres, it is in realism that what is presented in a work of art or a treatise is as close as you can possibly get to how things actually happened. Another way of putting this across is to suggest that typically and unavoidably, there being always and forever a big gap between how things actually happen and how they are (re)presented in writing, it is only the most gifted and talented realist writers that come close to bridging that gap.
In all of Achebe's books on our pre-colonial and postcolonial experience, he had come closer than perhaps any other writer to this conception and practice of realism. More specifically, ethnicity, class and individuality had been superbly interwoven and productively explored in such titles as No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah, The Trouble with Nigeria and Home and Exile. Thus, in my opinion, There Was A Country marks a radical rupture in Achebe's writings on our country, a rupture in which the realist rigour of his previous writings gives way to, or is considerably modified by a mystique, an apologia, an uncompromising defense of Igbo ethno-nationalism. I do not think that Achebe took this path in a fit of absent-mindedness; to the contrary, I think it is a decision, a choice he made in this new book quite deliberately and purposively. In next week's continuation of this series, I shall deal extensively even if only speculatively with this choice, with particular reference to what I personally regard as one of the most controversial aspects of There Was A Country, this being the link that Achebe makes in the book between what he deems the endemic ethnic scapegoating of Igbos in our country and the utter collapse of meritocracy in post-civil war Nigeria.
Concluded.
 

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