Traumatic Portrayal of Nativity and Post-Colonial Cultural Hegemony in Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart

Mohammed Ilyas ()

International Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 2020, vol. 9, issue 2, 76-85

Abstract: This study makes a traumatic portrayal of the ideology of cultural hegemony, being a part of post-colonial literature studies. Chinua Achebe recounts the state of African clans by the British imperial and colonial powers, exploiting the native Africans for materialistic gain, annihilating their culture, religion and customs in the name of humanitarian agenda of the whites. A situation arises in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in which things fall apart because the protagonist fails at the end to regain the culture all people shared once. The “whites” have destroyed the fabric of African society, and subjugated an "inferior" native culture under a "superior" western one. Chinua Achebe witnessed abysmal dismissal of the African nativity being replaced by a foreign culture; a new religion, new traditions and new values. This paper examines how the white colonizers wove a cultural hegemony around the natives with the aim of establishing their colonial domination over them. The white man does this all, not by using military force, but by luring the tribesmen and the colonized clans to drift away from their native faith and values. The invaders use the clan's own traditions against the clan in order to procure a permanent establishment for them in the village. The findings of this study reveal a binary cultural hegemony showing both consent and resistance for white man’s dominance.

Keywords: Hegemony; Colonialism; Natives; Imperialism; Religion. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:asi:ijells:v:9:y:2020:i:2:p:76-85:id:453

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