Neil ten Kortenaar

Parents, children and Fools

ABSTRACT Njabulo Ndebele has made an important distinction between spectacle and the ordinary. Meaning can easily be read off spectacle, which, like a wrestling match, involves a conflict between stock figures. The ordinary resists being read. The distinction between spectacle and the ordinary corresponds in Ndebeles creative imagination to a distinction between childhood and adulthood. In the collection of short stories, Fools, childhood is a realm of as yet undefined potential, before one must adopt an adult mask. Ndebeles interest, however, is not in childhood as an ideal condition but in the process whereby a boy becomes a man. How can the boy adopt an effective masculine mask and yet preserve into adulthood the potential associated with childhood? The first two stories in the collection concern inner resources (the potential of childhood). The next two concern role models (adult masks, true and false). And the final story, “Fools”, concerns learning to see beneath the masks of others.ABSTRACT Njabulo Ndebele has made an important distinction between spectacle and the ordinary. Meaning can easily be read off spectacle, which, like a wrestling match, involves a conflict between stock figures. The ordinary resists being read. The distinction between spectacle and the ordinary corresponds in Ndebeles creative imagination to a distinction between childhood and adulthood. In the collection of short stories, Fools, childhood is a realm of as yet undefined potential, before one must adopt an adult mask. Ndebeles interest, however, is not in childhood as an ideal condition but in the process whereby a boy becomes a man. How can the boy adopt an effective masculine mask and yet preserve into adulthood the potential associated with childhood? The first two stories in the collection concern inner resources (the potential of childhood). The next two concern role models (adult masks, true and false). And the final story, “Fools”, concerns learning to see beneath the masks of others.

THINGS FALL APART IN HISTORY

What if Achebe got it wrong? His classic novel Things Fall Apart is frequently received as an account of how things were in pre-colonial Africa. It is a staple text in history and anthropology courses. Achebe himself has said his first impulse was historical recreation in order to show his fellow Africans that not everything was darkness and primitiveness before the arrival of the white man. The troubling aspects of the narrative’s depiction of Igboland the killing of twins, the abuse of the osu caste, and especially Okonkwo’s patriarchal tyranny and his contempt for women are then read, as they are by Michael Valdez Moses (1995), for example, as expressions of Achebe’s tragic ambivalence to the passing of the old ways. The anthropologist Nkiru Uwechia Nzegwu argues, however, that Achebe’s depiction of traditional patriarchy is terribly skewed. She makes a strong case that, in Northwestern Igboland, prior to colonization, society was non-patriarchal. Instead of gender hierarchy, Igbos had a dual-sex system in which each of the genders was accorded its own sphere of power, albeit different kinds of power. Nzegwu explains that, traditionally, husbands and wives belonged to different kin-based groups and continued

Conrad and Empire (review)

university of toronto quarterly, volume 75, number 1, winter 2006 Dufresne misses the fact that psychoanalytic literary criticism long ago moved beyond the simple model of application (see Felman’s 1977 Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis). And after all, who doesn’t want to kill Freud (at least some of the time)? All you have to do is reread Freud’s smug responses to the adolescent Dora, or his quips on the nature of Woman. Still, I found Dufresne’s book less provocative than I would have liked – it is always good to have something to sink your teeth into (Freud’s dogs come to mind again). Dufresne returns repeatedly to the idea that one can’t just say ‘no’ to psychoanalysis without being read psychoanalytically (on the couch every ‘no’ is a ‘yes’ in disguise). While this is certainly annoying and brings back all the frustrations of childhood (‘I’m rubber you are glue everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you’), surely such relentless interpretation deserves a more insightful analysis. (naomi morgenstern)

New World Modernisms: T.S. Eliot, Derek Walcott, and Kamau Brathwaite (review)

The issue of alternative identities, and empowering spaces such as candomblé, holds great potential for further exploration in African diaspora studies. The fi eld has made rich use of techniques and resources for giving voice to diasporic protagonists, and work such as this can contribute to a dialogue that will help shape a more nuanced understanding of the Afro-Atlantic world. A Refuge in Thunder is a fi ne example of African diaspora scholarship, and an engaging read full of rare and illuminating glimpses into Afro-Brazilian lives thankfully preserved through the imaginative techniques of a new-generation griot.