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To cite this article: Mpalive-Hangson Msiska (2009): THINGS FALL APART, Interventions: International Journal
of Postcolonial Studies, 11:2, 171-175
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13698010903053030
T H I N G S F A L L A PA R T
Mpalive-Hangson Msiska
Birkbeck, University of London, UK
................
Chinua Achebe
literary
criticism
literary
representation
postcolonial
theory
plurisignifying
practice
Things Fall
Apart
................
Things Fall Apart has been an important resource for the emergence as well
as sustenance of postcolonial theory and practice. This is largely because it is
a confluence of a number of conceptual tensions that are deeply implicated in
the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century intellectual
formation. It is in that sense that one might regard Things Fall Apart as
not simply a classic, but also a text that even as it takes upon itself the
designation of a classic also transgresses it, embodying the transformative
energy of the quintessentially avant garde, as an elaboration of a new
relationship of consciousness to a changing material world (Williams 1989).
More than that, the novels abiding appeal has to do with its expression of
what Williams apprehends as a new metropolitan universal that breaches
the older universalism founded within the confines of the racial, national and
western metropolitan imagination, which, in my view, enables the text to
proffer a space of dialogic exchange between African and other cultures as
well as, within Africa itself, between the diverse identity formations. In this
way, Things Fall Apart serves as both an intensely Pan-Africanist as much as
a transcultural text.
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interventions Vol. 11(2) 171175 (ISSN 1369-801X print/1469-929X online)
Copyright # 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13698010903053030
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TH INGS FA LL APART
Mpalive-Hangson Msiska
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TH INGS FA LL APART
Mpalive-Hangson Msiska
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R e f e ren c e s
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