By Biko Agozino
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
isn't quite the champion of feminism you think – here's why | The Independent
A sister forwarded the above critique to me
today without comment. I guess that she sent it to me because we had debated a
similar critique of Adichie from another Asian woman that she agreed with and I
disagreed with but we agreed to disagree on that one. I guess that we may also
agree to disagree on this one given my response below:
Happy Sharpe Revolution in Jamaica Anniversary
Day,
The young lady wrote very well as a fan of
Adichie. I am also a fan and I have been critical in a friendly way as you can
see in some of my blog posts republished by Pambazuka News. See https://massliteracy.blogspot.com/2015/02/explaining-success-of-white-man-in.html and
see also https://massliteracy.blogspot.com/2013/05/adichies-americadabra.html
The jealousy of Asians against African
over-achievers is still showing in her critique. She expects Adichie's novels
to read like the manifesto of the communist party or like Neocolonialism: The
Last Stage of Imperialism. Those are different genres from the novel that
focuses on the lives of ordinary people going through extraordinary things. And
even while telling the fictionalized biographies of Black Women, Adichie
manages to expose racism, imperialism and gender oppression. The genocide
against the Igbo in Biafra that she captures in half of a Yellow Sun was
orchestrated by the British colonizers who armed and trained the genocidists
and supported the food embargo. The fake Catholic in Purple Hibiscus was a
victim of cultural imperialism. The lumpen bourgeoisie in Americanah were
compradors fronting for multinational corporations. Her letter insisting that
we all, men and women, should be feminists, should not be knocked based on
dictionary definitions of the word feminism.
The error of the 21 year-old critic is evident
when she wrote that black women are oppressed because of colonialism and not
because they are black women. Only someone who has not walked a mile in the
intersectional shoes of a black woman could say such an ignorant thing. Cabral
asked how could any crude economist go to apartheid South Africa and suggest
that the only problem was imperialism and the exploitation of the working class
when even the working class whites who assassinated Chris Hani were every bit as
racist as the Boers? The oppressed black working class men still went back to
the homelands and townships to rape Black women and girls. Right? Watint
Abafazi, Wathint Imbokotho. Amandla!
I will encourage the young critic to avoid
assuming that she knows everything that is there to learn in Black Cultural
Studies. She should bend down low and let Black women tell her what they know
about race-class-gender intersectionality or articulation, disarticulation and
re-articulation. Perhaps a doctoral degree in Black Women's Studies will
re-educate her.
Hotep. Happy Kwanzaa
The previous discussion between the sister and I went as
follows:
She wrote: Forgive if I have posted the article below but I
have finally read it and think its excellent. During the last US election
campaign I was concerned when I read that Chimamanda supported Hilary Clinton
against Trump. In my view, if Hilary had won the election, she would have
serviced empire just as Obama did in no less aggressive and patriarchal manner!
But it is unfortunate to say the least that Adichie is unquestioning and
seemingly ignorant of Hilary's political deeds as a "daughter of
imperialism" - to use the lovely and appropriate characterisation of Ifi
Imadiume. Somehow women who are liberals end up aiding and abetting imperialism
and neocolonialism just like men and need to be exposed when speaking truth to
power instead of speaking lies to power.
I responded:
Hi Comrade
I read this reaction to Chimamanda and found it wanting. Ms
Bhuto does not appear to have read any of the books of Chimamanda but unfairly
tried to rubbish her over the highly moderated and vetted interview questions
she posed to Hilary. Even at that, Adichie should have been given credit for
challenging her submission to patriarchy.
I have not read anything else from Ms Bhuto and so I will
reserve judgment. Yet, her attack on Adichie smells of jealousy and racism from
an Asian writer who wannabe the one to interview American First Ladies better
than a liberal Nigerian American. I will like to know how much risk Ms Bhuto
has taken in her own writing to confront right wing political violence and
patriarchy in Pakistan the way Adichie boldly does in Nigeria.
My dear Comrade (she wrote),
I beg to differ with you Biko and very strongly as much as I
love the writings and novels of Adichie. I have read all her novels and can't
wait for her next novel. However, I think the critique of Ms Bhuto is a valid
one in regards to not questioning the political actions of Hilary Clinton in
regards to Libya, Gaddafi, US foreign policy in Africa as well as in Haiti for
starters!! I suppose we should do the "liberal" thing and agree to
disagree on this one - eh????
This discussion has continued on a different forum and some brothers and sisters have asked for more clarifications. Here we go again:
You are mistaken in the assumption that hatred is at the back every critique. Internal criticism is a veritable African institution, according to Fanon. Mao also defended the value of internal criticism given that an unwashed face becomes dirty. Similarly, Achebe welcomed the critique from visitors who may see what the household took for granted but he cautioned the visiting critic not to assume superiority over the household members ethnocentrically.
Those of us who are critical of genocide are not motivated by hatred but by the love of human life. Those who are opposed to the critique of genocide cannot say that they love genocide but only try to justify the unjustifiable or to deny that it took place. When I spoke to an audience of Indigenous People who survived genocide in New Zealand and I shared with them that I too survived genocide in Biafra, you seem irritated but they understood perfectly why I interpreted the play, Death and the King's Horseman in the original way that I did. Many of them urged me to write up that interpretation and I did so while we debated the novel interpretation on this USADialogue series during my trip to New Zealand and Australia. Someone has cautioned us that the list is 'monitored' but without saying who is monitoring the list and in whose interest? In any case, we are not hiding anything and we are not afraid of criticism.
If you read my work, you will find that I do not obsess about genocide nor about Biafra although opposition to genocide cannot be over-emphasized for it is an ongoing crime against the whole of humanity and not just against the Igbo in Biafra. You may have your reasons why any mention of such huge crimes seems to rile you up and make you suspect, wrongly, that the speaker is motivated by hate. An Asian woman, Arundhati Roy, makes reference to starving Biafra children too but I bet that you will not accuse her of hating you or your lords. I believe that she is motivated by the love of human freedom.
|
I could have said 'Two Asian Women Attack Adichie Unfairly' to avoid the surprising over-generalization that you appear to read into the clear opinion about two Asian women who did attack Adichie unfairly. My intervention was not motivated by hatred of Asian women but by a call for more voices to join the condemnation of the genocidal crimes that Adichie condemns in her work. I could have qualified that private communication with you by inserting a comma before 'everything she has written', I could have added 'virtually' to 'everything'. But as I told you, the long sentence should not be read out of context.
Nevertheless, even when Adichie does not use the word genocide, her work almost always goes against mass violence such as femicide which the WHO recognizes to be of genocidal proportions worldwide. The two Asian women who attacked her could have applied her thoughts to combat the epidemic of femicide and genocide that is going on in Asia and around the world. If Asians were being executed in Africa for drugs offences at the rate that Asian countries are executing Africans, you would have heard African writers advocating for penal abolitionism in the interest of all. Mamdani condemned genocide in Uganda and Museveni invited the Asians who were expelled by Idi Amin to return, but he is yet to invite the descendants of enslaved Africans to return.
I write as someone who has also been very critical of aspects of the work of Adichie but without rubbishing her valuable contributions to the defense of human dignity worldwide. Africans have shown the willingness to adopt ideas from Asian writers without unfairly dismissing them as not being committed to human rights. Ghanaian students successfully protested against the statue of Gandhi on their campus partly because of his prejudiced opinions against Africans in his younger years before he was reeducated by the Zulu about nonviolence, according to Gandhi himself in his autobiography. Is there any statue of Nkrumah in India and if not why not? The critique of Gandhi is shared by Indians too and they and Africans embrace some ideas of Gandhi nevertheless.
The Asian writers who attack Adichie unfairly have not attacked white feminist writers and African women have not attacked Asian feminist writers, to the best of my knowledge. I have questioned the condescending approach to African writers by the likes of Naipaul and Spivak elsewhere without hating all their works and without generalizing their flaws to all Asians. Cultural criticism is not powered by hatred but by the love of culture defined by Ngugi and by Cabral as the struggle for and against domination, not as a way of life.
Do not campaign for Adichie to be awarded the Nobel Prize because, prize or no prize, she will remain an important voice for the whole world to listen to, not just a voice for her generation as you suggested. No matter how her scripted interviews with US First Ladies are perceived, no matter how much two Asian women wish that she would become the mouthpiece for their political slogans, Adichie is not the enemy of the people to be despised. As your Iyawo demonstrates to you, the young bard deserves all the admiration that she can get in her passion for social justice that she narrates with a compelling voice that is hard to ignore. Those who are jealous of her success should go ahead and write the type of books that they wished that she should write for them.
Happy Kwanzaa. Happy Umoja.
It is the season of rhetorical questions with implicit answers. Those who still do not get it should read the interventions of my teacher, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, which you can find on his Rethinking Africa blog or in his Pambazuka News columns if you have no access to his paradigmatic books. If your eyes are failing you, turn off the Nollywood movies and get someone to read to you. Here is a sample:
|
Biko
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment