Village of the Damned?

[Craig Clark]

LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU wrote:

> For a *real* African' s perspective on this village/individual issue, see
> Chinua Achebe's THINGS FALL APART.  

To which HAG replied
 
> See also his NO LONGER AT EASE, A MAN OF THE PEOPLE, ANTHILLS OF THE 
> SAVANNAH, ARROW OF GOD.... Just how *real* or how *African* Achebe's 
> perspective is, who knows. His stuff is certainly good. He represents a 
> particularly, (ugh!) humanist African tradition - for more hard core 
> stuff send request. My favorite 'African' writer is still Coetzee.

Included in the more hardcore stuff I hope there's the name Amos 
Tutuola, my favourite Nigerian novelist, and a more thrilling writer 
than Achebe IMHO.

> BTW, there is no such thing as 'Africa'.

Do I detect a can of worms being opened here? I'm inclined to agree 
with you on this one - the Myth of One Africa plays much the same 
role on this continent as the Myth of the Rugged Individualist plays 
on the North American continent. In a similar vein, as HAG and 
Kerneels Breytenbach may bear me out, there's currently a political 
myth of "ubuntu" being manufactured and exploited in SA. "Ubuntu" is 
a nebulous principle, difficult to translate, which supposedly forms 
the basis of the African world-view (and my problem is with the idea 
that there's one African world-view). Essentially ubuntu boils down 
to a harmonious balance between the individual and the community, 
wherein each person finds his or her full self-expression through 
service to the community (these binarisms are probably an artefact of 
trying to translate a concept from one culture into the language of 
another). The myth of ubuntu is currently being employed, inter alia, 
by black academics to argue that they are superior to their white 
colleagues who are driven by a selfish individualism. Sounds to me 
like they are prioritising their own individual self-advancement, but 
I may be wrong.






 
 
Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"