Dr. Muna Abd-Rabbo
I first read Chinua Achebe's essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness” about twenty years ago when I was still a BA student, and it really made me see Conrad and the whole notion of colonialism in a new light. I realized what an elusive and delicate matter the representation of the Other is.
Since then I have been interested in postcolonial counter-discourse and how postcolonial writers such as Achebe give a voice to the previously-silenced colonized. In Things Fall Apart Achebe not only vividly depicts the African heritage, culture and civilization, but he also presents his characters as fully-fledged individuals, not simply members of a collective entity. Upon analysing these characters’ multidimensional relationship to their society within the framework of Raymond Williams’ social categories, it was intriguing for me to see how the characters go beyond the confines of Western classification in terms of the characters’ various interactions both within their society and amidst the African/European colonial encounter.
Dr. Muna Abd-Rabbo is an assistant professor of English literature at Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan. Her research interests include postcolonial counter-discourse, hybridity and the polyphonic novel.
