Did Chinua Achebe Write Things Fall Apart? Anti-Igbo Demonization and Conspiracy Theory at its Height in Facebook Post and Thread

42 views
Skip to first unread message

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

unread,
Oct 4, 2024, 7:04:22 AM10/4/24
to usaafricadialogue

Toyin Falola

unread,
Oct 4, 2024, 7:49:59 AM10/4/24
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Apologies for posting this. Adepoju should not have sent this kind if thrash in the first instance.
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, October 4, 2024 4:48:16 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Did Chinua Achebe Write Things Fall Apart? Anti-Igbo Demonization and Conspiracy Theory at its Height in Facebook Post and Thread
 

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfPMJx090JPW9a3GrATM3Rr8W3gjjsdu%3DMvw%3D%2B6kfVjvbA%40mail.gmail.com.

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

unread,
Oct 4, 2024, 2:23:32 PM10/4/24
to usaafricadialogue
An Anti-Achebe and Anti-Igbo Argument 

Why is Falola denying the obvious?

Can he reference any research demonstrating Igbo society as so civilized in the time the work refers to?

Its also possible that Achebe did not write either Things Fall Apart or Arrow of God.

If so, why are they so different in sophistication from each other and from his other novels?

Is it not this unevenness that made him unable to get the Nobel Prize for Literature?

Are such claims of uncreditable grandeur not the bane of the Igbo person in Nigeria, claiming non-existent glories and therefore failing to grasp the apex recognitions craved for by all means?

An Anti-Soyinka and Anti-Yoruba Argument 

Wole Soyinka is simply an ubscurantist slave of Western cultural imperialism, writing an English even English people would struggle with, all beceause he wants to show he understands English better than others, even the owners of the language.

His Nobel Prize for Literature was an imperialists gift, awarded by former colonial powers for being "a good boy for massa".

Achebe, with his limpidly beautiful prose and Ngugi, with his powerful anti-colonial vision feeding his storytelling and intellectual powers, did not get the prize bcs the imperialists did not want to honour their critics.

Is such suspect empowerment not the stock in trade of Yoruba people, amassing wealth from Nigeria's Indigenization Decree after the civil war, while impoverishing Igbos who got nothing for their savings during the war?

Quasi-Intellectualism as an Ethnocentric Tool

Those two arguments above are quasi- intellectual arguments of the kind presented in the Facebook post referenced in my earlier posting and in responses to that Facebook post in the post's Facebook thread.

Should such arguments be dismissed as trash unfitting for discussion by an intellectual platform?

Such dismissal is dangerous, as history demonstrates.

Similar ethnocentrisms have been weaponized against various groups across time, across the world, with devastating consequences.

Critically examining them helps to drain them of their venom, their capacity to negatively shape people's minds.

Can they be adequately countered without some knowledge of Achebe's and Soyinka's works and of Nigerian history in relation to Igbos and Yorubas?

No.

Yet such discourse is readily found on social media.

They cant be dismissed as being of no intellectual value even as they speak to the social and intellectual cross currents of ethnic conflicts in Nigeria reverberating since the civil war.

Are such subjects not worthy of intellectual study? Why should they not be, particularly if they are part of the fabric of Nigerian society?

Anti-Igbo orientations amongst Yoruba people and anti Yoruba orientations amongst Igbos are part of the Nigerian reality.

On what grounds can a person make what they understand is a coherent claim debunking what is universally understood to be an iconic truth- Chinua Achebe's authorship of Things Fall Apart?

The poster presents what he describes as  evidence from Achebe's financial history, plus an account, supposedly from Achebe, on how the book was written and the fact that Achebe did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Respondents, all Yoruba, like the poster, amplified this approach to intellectual discourse, by presenting various arguments which they understand as reinforcing the logic of the person making the post that inspired them.

The efforts of the poster and his respondents have to be appreciated as efforts to intellectually project a bias, using methods that can be debunked only through close analysis of the claims being made bcs their efforts at creating an intellectual structure imply their claims cant be summarily dismissed.

In the wake of Wole Soyinka's critique of Peter Obi after the last Presidential elections, a related campaign of discrediting Soyinka's intellectual achievement was also launched on Facebook, largely by Igbos, to the best of my knowledge.

To counter those intellectually framed efforts, one had to have some understanding of Soyinka's work and career, a necessity taking the subject beyond calumnies one could readily dismiss.

A friend of mine, a PhD student well versed in literature and theory, the ideological influence of his Igbo ethnicity being crucial to his dismissal of Soyinka's creative work, in my view, argued that there is no valid rationale for the recent setting up of a Soyinka Research Centre, centred in the study of Soyinka's work, since Soyinka's work is simply a rehash of Yoruba culture, therefore demonstrating no originality worthy of the effort represented by a research centre.

Responding to that view required my drawing upon my knowledge of Yoruba culture as a lived reality, my understanding of its discursive expression across various disciplines and Soyinka's contribution to its creative transmutation, along with my knowledge of the range of Soyinkas work a lot of it not built on Yoruba culture.

When anti -ethnic orientations take the form of intellectual presentations, its particularly dangerous to  dismiss them as unworthy of critical attention, thereby failing to disempower them by demonstrating their false reasoning or misinformation.

Thanks 

Toyin Adepoju 


Dr. Oohay

unread,
Oct 5, 2024, 5:09:05 AM10/5/24
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Those who make (even implicitly) such (“non-philosophical”) grandiose claims must ground the claims “deductively”.  “Drink deep” “or not at all” (Alexander Pope).

Oohay

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

unread,
Oct 5, 2024, 9:58:51 AM10/5/24
to Oluwatoyin Adepoju, usaafricadialogue
“Its also possible that Achebe did not write 
either Things Fall Apart or Arrow of God.
If so, why are they so different in sophistication 
from each other and from his other novels?”Adepoju



Authors, poets and artists  evolve, and 
may develop “sophistication”
over time. It should not be a surprise 
to see a transformation over time
in their work,  due to exposure to
new methodologies, ideologies, and
 experiences, as well as new expectations 
from patrons, fans, readers etc. 

A better approach would be to
humbly attempt to analyze the 
difference between 
the two novels cited -  and
the diverse phenomena that may
 have affected the author’s writing 
and creativity.






Dr. Gloria Emeagwali
Professor of History/African Studies, CCSU
Chief Editor- "Africa Update"
https://sites.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries
www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali
www.africahistory.net
Founding Coordinator, African Studies, CCSU

Sent: Friday, October 4, 2024 1:54 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Did Chinua Achebe Write Things Fall Apart? Anti-Igbo Demonization and Conspiracy Theory at its Height in Facebook Post and Thread
 

EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.

cornelius...@gmail.com

unread,
Oct 5, 2024, 10:42:24 AM10/5/24
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Such is the tyranny of the English Language and its Literary Canon for those still suffering under the yoke of the colonial complex , that such controversies continue to flare through the medium of the English Language in diverse social media and in some so called third world academic journals.


At the same time, we cannot say that there are no such controversies about innovative people writing in their own mother tongues, dialects, traditions, although, perhaps, if Soyinka had written exclusively in Yoruba, for his Yoruba folks, and Chinua had also flexed his literary muscles in Igbo, and Jesus had originally only spoken Fulani , and the Quran had originally been revealed in Hausa, then the controversies may have mostly been about which of these languages - as translated - was a more eloquent or a more powerful vehicle for saying what God or the writers are communicating to their local and worldwide readers… 


I personally indulged - but not exhaustively with one Anthony Swerling  an Englishman who - I think, playing to the Swedish gallery was insistent that August Strindberg is “greater” than William Shakespeare ( I think that his Swedish girlfriend must have been giving it to him good)


Similar rivalries in appreciation such as who is greater, Mozart or Beethoven ?


Israel or Iran ?


Ghana or Nigeria ?


Who in his right mind can deny the poetic genius of Chinua Achebe ?


Who else, which other omnipotent and omniscient anti-Colonial writer would have most appropriately given - perhaps -  especially so to the homosexual, such an evocative baptismal name of the British Colonial District Commissioner as “Mr. Winterbottom” - a bottom, no doubt that would have been finding some solace in the tropical heat  - more than enough reason for his emigration to the Igboland part of Nigeria - and I imagine as coming straight from As You Like It, Winterbottom either whistling or singing with Shakespeare, Under the Greenwood Tree


Which other writer would have baptised such a character ”Mister Winterbottom” ? 


Certainly not Joyce Cary , a veritable Mr Winterbottom himself, and certainly not the one some people in this forum so love to hate : Soyinka’s Nobel Brother, fellow Nobel Literature Laureate Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul FRAS TC ….


As the wisest Solomon who had so many wives told us in Ecclesiastes, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” , and about that kind of intriguing headline - for Achebe’s fans that kind of inquiry is at the same level as other impertinences, controversies and blasphemies such as


 “Does God exist?”


Did Shakespeare write his plays?


Did Noah’s flood ever happen ?


Did Moses write the Torah ?


Were the Children of Israel ever in Egypt?


When it comes to Authorship we ought not to subtract the possible role of the editor/s


So, if Amos Tutuola or maybe even Sam Selvon had been subjected to the editorial savagery and the wanton butcheries of the purveyors of Nigerian Big Grammar Buckingham Palace English, all originality would have been squashed, “corrected “ and erased from the original drafts and The Palm-Wine Drinkard would  not have been published in 1952 in England, by Faber & Faber.



On Friday 4 October 2024 at 13:04:22 UTC+2 Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

unread,
Oct 5, 2024, 10:42:24 AM10/5/24
to Emeagwali, Gloria (History), usaafricadialogue
Adepoju was being a devil's advocate, presenting a hypothetical position,, not affirming it.

Note that he also presented another hypothetical position in critique of Soyinka.

Those hypothetical positions are exemplars of ethno-centric pseudo-intellectualism that need to be publicly combated.

All this is clearly stated in the post the quote comes from.

Thanks 

Toyin
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages