Imagining a dialectical African modernity: Achebe's ontological hopes, Sembene's machines, Mda's epistemological redness

Imagining a dialectical African modernity: Achebe's ontological hopes, Sembene's machines, Mda's epistemological redness

Author: 
Myambo, Melissa Tandiwe
Publisher: 
Taylor & Francis Group
Date published: 
2014
Record type: 
Region: 
Journal Title: 
Journal of Contemporary African Studies
Source: 
Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Vol. 32, No.4, October 2014, pp. 457-473
Abstract: 

In Chinua Achebe's book of essays Hopes and Impediments, he asserts that Nigeria's failure to ‘develop’ and ‘modernise’ like Japan is because of a ‘failure of imagination’. Yet for many Africans, modernity is a tainted ‘gift’ because it was introduced into the African continent along with European colonial capitalism which simultaneously caused an ontological crisis of self. Although many Africans want to ‘catch up’ with the West, how is it possible when Western technological superiority was equated with white racial superiority? Achebe declares that, as Africans ‘begin their journey into the strange, revolutionary world of modernization’, literature should function as guide. Hence, I examine Ousmane Sembene's novel God's Bits of Wood which depicts Africans laying claim to ‘race-less’, ‘language-less’ ‘machines’. But does (Western) technology change culture? Can African culture appropriate technology to form a dialectical African modernity? If so, what role does ‘tradition’ play? In Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness, we witness the emergence of a traditional modernity made possible by a dialectical epistemology.

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CITATION: Myambo, Melissa Tandiwe. Imagining a dialectical African modernity: Achebe's ontological hopes, Sembene's machines, Mda's epistemological redness . : Taylor & Francis Group , 2014. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Vol. 32, No.4, October 2014, pp. 457-473 - Available at: https://library.au.int/imagining-dialectical-african-modernity-achebes-ontological-hopes-sembenes-machines-mdas-43