Reading the Postcolonial in a Post-critical Age: Ethics of Reading the Narrative Complexity and Political Dialogism in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
Keywords:
Postcolonialism; post-critique; dialogism; ideology; affectAbstract
Literary studies is increasingly abandoning the methods of ‘theory’ and ideology-critique in favour of a disposition broadly identified as “post-critique”. While the problems identified with literary studies in this disposition is valuable, the paper argues, some of its assumptions prove to be problematic in reading of a postcolonial text. Joining issue with Rita Felski’s 2017 book, Critique and Postcritique, this paper seeks to identify the problematic of the post-critical turn in the reading of Postcolonial novels. Using theories of Postcolonialism and those of the novel form, this paper revisits Chinua Achebe’s now-classic novel, Things Fall Apart (1958) to shed light on the inadequacy of postcritique in a justifiable reading which the novel demands. The narrative complexity of the novel form and the inherent political dialogic of a postcolonial text, the paper argues, demand a critical reading practice which is different from the propositions of both ideology-critique as well as postcritique.
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