Africa and Liberty "What must a people do to appease an emb

"What must a people do to appease an embittered history?"

Beatrice, Anthills of the Savannah.

Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah and Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters both serve to demonstrate that the true freedom of Africa lies in the recognition of each of its citizens' individual liberty. Achebe's Anthills largely follows the story of two friends who are both involved and concerned with the future of their country. One, Christopher Oriko, is the Commissioner for Information of the nation and the other, Ikem Osodi, is the editor of a newspaper, the Gazette. Both men, therefore, are intellectuals who participate in the distribution of the ideology that will form their nation's character. Similarly, Soyinka's The Interpreters follows the lives of several friends upon their return to their country after being educated elsewhere. Each of Soyinka's characters is concerned with the pragmatic and ideological character of his country, but each character's ideology and beliefs are clearly situated according to their own personal history.

This paper concludes, as Achebe, Soyinka and Appiah seem to, that the solution of the issue of Africa's mental, social and cultural independence lies with the recognition of each of its citizens' individual liberty. The paper relies largely on Appiah's discussion of race as a governing factor in the history and definition of Africa and the African people. It concludes that race, in and of itself, is a

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onized seems to represent to the colonizer. Historically, the colonizer has filled this space with a racial essence of the African they have defined through their racialist views. Sagoe's narrator is attempting to demonstrate that the mere imposition of the colonialist discourse upon the colonized is not sufficient to ensure its digestion. Rather, the colonized may then use that very discourse to argue against the imposition of the system. However, his narrator discovers that if the Europeans do hear the colonized's arguments, they may then use his own arguments to argue for his primitivism. Appiah argues that the colonizer's inability to hear the colonized's arguments may be caused by their inability to give up beliefs that play a part in justifying the special advantages they gain from their positions in the social order. He argues that many people who express extrinsic racist beliefs are beneficiaries of social orders that deliver advantages to them in virtue of their "race" (Appiah 14). In opposition to the sincere extrinsic racists, Appiah identifies some people who espouse extrinsic racist doctrines but are really insincere intrinsic racists. He defines intrinsic racists as people who differentiate morally between m

Category: Foreign - A