AFRICAN LITERATURE AS A MEANS OF RECONSTRUCTING AFRICAN IDENTITY IN A GLOBAL COMMUNITY: A STYLISTIC STUDY OF CHINUA ACHEBE’S THINGS FALL APART

Abstract

Literature has continued to play a remarkable role in reconstructing the way African socio-cultural, political, religious identity are perceived in the global community. With such household names like Achebe, Nkrumah, Nyerere, Sedar Senghor and others absolved with the energy and optimism to counter the representations of African life and practices akin to cannibalism, crudity and a dark place as famously illustrated by Major British literary writers, such as Greene, Conrad, Kipling and the likes, African traditional religion, political institution, language as well as socio-cultural behaviours have been foregrounded stylistically to rescue her all round identity from the rationalized colonial enterprise and denigrating western narrative. In line with the foregoing, this article lends its voice to answering such critical questions as; what is African literature? What is African identity? How has African literature and African literary writers attempted to reconstruct western prejudiced narrative about African identity in a global community. The study purposively selects Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as primary data and subjects same to a content analysis with insights from Geoffery N. Leech’s (1969, p.62) linguistic deviation approach and Yu Xueyong’s three dimensional model for achieving foregrounding to buttress how African literature has and can be of immense help in reconstructing African identity in a global community. It concludes that African philosophies of belongingness, Ubuntu, EBUB, Ibuanyidanda among others are apt representations of African identity which the African people had employed to order her society into a peaceful, successful and striving state and all of these philosophies are been encapsulated in African literature.