Narrating the Struggle,Theorizing the Genre: The Convergence of Narrative and Literary-Critical Theory in Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah (1987)

Introduction

When literary critics consider that continental African novelists seldom address literary-theoretical issues in their novels, the publication of Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah (1987) becomes significant in the development of the continental African novel. In this novel, Achebe utilizes narrative space to simultaneously address literary-theoretical issues as well as his traditional concerns with the struggles of African people for life, freedom, and human dignity that underpin his earlier novels: Things Fall Apart (Achebe, 1958), No Longer at Ease (Achebe, 1960), Arrow of God (Achebe, 1964), and A Man of the People (Achebe, 1966). This article illumines Achebe’s adaptation of narrative interstices of the continental African novel to literary-critical theorizing through critical analysis of the arguments raised by some of his central characters with respect to, 1) the place and role of the story and the storyteller in society, 2) the entanglement of the story and storyteller in political, cultural, and social issues, and, 3) the storyteller’s freedom to reimagine the contours of the story in keeping with cherished political, cultural, economic, and social priorities. It argues that Achebe’s aptitude to concurrently address literary and literary-theoretical themes in Anthills of the Savannah speaks to his versatility as a storyteller adept at adapting the novel, as a literary genre, to multiple purposes. The convergence of narrative and literary-critical theory in this novel bridges the chasm between the novel as a genre and literary-critical practice. Given the dichotomizing perception of literary-critical discourse as largely secondary to literary production and helplessly dependent on the latter for the very possibility of its being, Achebe’s narration of the struggles of African people for life, freedom, and dignity while also engaging in literary-theoretical intellection in Anthills of the Savannah is notable for how it avails new literary and literary-theoretical possibilities for continental African novelists and literary critics. Through such new possibilities, continental African novelists can begin to think of narrative and literary-critical theory in terms of how they can coexist, reflect, refract, and ramify each other while dialoguing with readers on some of the literary-theoretical perspectives that enable them to “fine tune [their] emotional and intellectual antennae” (Chinweizu, 1987, p. 259) in order to “gather the best stimulus from both the [novel] and the world” (Chinweizu, 1987, p. 259).

Scholarship on the development of the continental African novel seldom unravels without acknowledging the writings of Chinua Achebe as foundational. Of particular importance in the countless critical works on the continental African novel is the value that Achebe attaches to literature as a site of conflict and conflict resolution, struggle, and liberation, and the role of the African novelist as a teacher and an historian (Achebe, 1988). However, it is notable that while scholars emphasize Achebe’s contributions in the continental African novelistic quest to render intelligible the struggles of African people for life, freedom, and human dignity, they seldom address his broadening of the scope of the continental African novel as an arena for the elaboration of some of the literary-theoretical criteria that have since become instructive in the interpretation of the canon from an Afrocentric perspective as propounded by Asante (1998, 1999, 2003, 2007), Chinweizu et al. (1985), Chinweizu (1987), Clarke (1999), and others. On their part, continental African novelists tend to articulate literary-theoretical ideas and engage the multifarious literary-critical discourses inspired by their novels outside the narrative confines of their novels. In a literary-theoretical corpus generated by novelists who include Achebe (1975, 1983, 1988, 2009, 2012), wa Thiong’o (1981, 1993, 1997, 1998, 2012, 2013, 2016a, 2016b), Osundare (2002), Armah (2006, 2010), Soyinka (2006, 2012), Adichie (2015, 2018), and wa Ngugi (2018), continental African novelists reflect on their novels, novels of their colleagues, literary-theoretical discourses that inform the discussion of the continental African novel, and the complex web of relationships connecting them with readers, publishers, and literary critics. In this literary-theoretical corpus, continental African novelists also explore historical, cultural, economic, and political issues that implicate systems such as imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, and their role in framing the African experience. The very existence of this canon of texts speaks to the continental African novelists’ appreciation of their role in clarifying the issues portrayed in their imaginative works. Yet it seems that it is in novels such as Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah that the role of continental African novelists as participants in a literary tradition in which “people of color have always theorized . . . in narrative forms, in the stories [they] create, in riddles and proverbs, [and] in the play with language” (Christian, 1988, p. 68) is most evident. This article advances this contention by placing emphasis on the ways in which Achebe adapts narrative space in Anthills of the Savannah to rethink the place and role of the story and the storyteller in society, the entanglement of the story and storyteller in political, cultural, and social issues, and the storyteller’s freedom to reimagine the contours of the story in keeping with cherished political, cultural, economic, and social priorities.

Anthills of the Savannah, the Continental African Novel and Related Canons

While this article explores Achebe’s innovative adaptation of narrative space for the purposes of engaging literary-theoretical issues and his long-standing concerns with the struggles of African people for life, freedom, and human dignity in Anthills of the Savannah concurrently, it identifies this novel as part of a corpus written by continental Africans in English. This corpus exists side by side with others also authored by continental Africans in other colonial languages (French and Portuguese, for instance) as well as indigenous African languages (Swahili, Zulu, Gikuyu, Igbo, Shona, Wolof, Yoruba, Ndebele, Xhosa, Sotho, and countless others). It is on account of these various linguistic manifestations of the novels written by continental Africans that the term continental African novel is appropriate in identifying all the novels that have been published and are being published by continental Africans. This characterization of the corpus underscores that novels that qualify to be identified as African can be written only by Africans. Since the 1960s, African writers and literary critics have tried to no avail to achieve consensus on the novels that would comprise this canon. As is now well known, the contestations that took place then and continue to unfold in contemporary times, as the work of wa Ngugi (2018) bears witness, were and are still informed by the languages in which the novels are written. This is an important and unavoidable consideration. However, it arises under the auspices of a pursuit for African cultural purity that does not prioritize the commitment of continental African novelists to the visions, values, and ideals that African people need to embrace in order to realize their full humanity and dignity in the midst of other people, even as they write in colonial languages.

The onslaught for cultural purity through an exclusionary emphasis on indigenous African languages for the continental African novel obviates the complexity of Africa’s experiences and its place as

an intimate part of the histories of others, both cause and consequence, a complex organism formed of its own internal pulsation and external interventions, one that continues to be part of, yet is often denied, the triumphs and advances of the rest of the world. (Soyinka, 2012, p. x)

It also does not attend to the phalanx of ways in which indigenous African languages can be called upon to participate in the victimization of the very African people whose interests they are privileged to embody as sole carriers in the quest for African cultural authenticity. The employment of indigenous African languages by colonial regimes throughout Africa to function as vessels of a literary aesthetic of apathy and submission (Chiwome, 1994; Furusa, 1998) that was intended to guide Africans “along the path of the least ideological [and political] resistance towards the colonial system” (Chiwome, 1996, p. 9) in colonial Zimbabwe is a case in point. At the same time, exponents of colonial languages for the continental African novel complicate the situation by placing emphasis on these languages as indispensable bridges that Africans need to get through to each other as well as finding their way onto the international arena. They conveniently avoid countenancing the ramifications of this perspective in the unfolding of power relations on the world stage where the dearth of African languages testifies to the continent’s political, economic, and cultural marginality.

The resolution of the impasse pertaining to whether it is indigenous African or colonial languages that are critical in identifying the continental African novel is achieved by acknowledging that novels written by continental Africans are products of both indigenous African and colonial linguistic heritages. This enables critics and scholars of this literary tradition to refer to the continental African novel in Wolof, Yoruba, Tswana, Chewa, Sotho, Zulu, Shona, Igbo, Swahili, and so on, without marginalizing or normativizing one or the other of these manifestations of the canon. It also enables the acknowledgment of the continental African novel in colonial languages such as English, French, and Portuguese without creating the mischievous impression that they are the only languages in which this canon is written. Qualifying continental African novels in terms of their linguistic manifestation in any of the indigenous African or colonial languages addresses the anomalous tendency of thinking of this canon of works as primarily written in a particular language or group of languages. Reference to the continental African novel in Zulu, Portuguese, Gikuyu, English, or Shona, for instance, implies that the language in question is not the only one in which the canon finds expression. To that end, the term continental African novel does not privilege this or that language of literary expression in the imaginative construction and critical analysis of works that constitute this corpus. If anything, it leaves the space uncluttered in order that critics are able to specify the particular stream of the canon where their interests are located. This is critical for the creation of a literary and literary-critical dispensation of “pluralism without hierarchy” (Asante, 1998, p. 12).

The geo-spatial description of this canon as continental distinguishes it from other literary canons produced by African-descended people scattered in various diasporic abodes in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. What connects these literary canons and the continental African novel is another literary tradition that consists of the novels of first generation and recent immigrants into the African diaspora. Examples in this category include Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie (2003, 2007, 2014), Brian Chikwava (2010), Taiye Selasie (2013), Imbolo Mbue (2016), Yaa Gyasi (2016), Novuyo Tshuma (2018), and others who recently migrated from Africa to become part of the African diaspora. By and large, these authors narrate both continental and diasporic African issues in ways that illumine the relationship between Africa and the African diaspora as spaces of African abode, as well as social, cultural, political, and economic struggle. Considering that this body of novels is written by African-descended authors stationed in various continents but with a robust connection with Africa, it is best described as the trans-continental African novel. This designation captures the multiplicity of spaces outside Africa from which novelists in this category write. It also speaks to the fact that “Africa is not only a geographical expression; it is also a metaphysical landscape—[that is] . . . a view of the world and of the whole cosmos perceived from a particular position” (Achebe, 1988, p. 98). Novels in this category are written exclusively in the colonial languages cited already.

In its various linguistic manifestations, the continental African novel as a canon to which Anthills of the Savannah belongs is “the written part of a dialogue which [African] people conduct among themselves” (Chinweizu, 1987, p. 257) about their history, the realities presently confronting them, and the future they aspire to build. It functions as a bastion of “the kinetic energy necessary for social [as well as cultural, economic and political] transformation” (Achebe, 1988, p. 167) and an embodiment of “the images, symbols, words, narratives and ideas that we are free to use, if we feel called to such work for invoking a future made of the best values we can know” (Armah, 2006, p. 262). The continental African novel “is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives [that] lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before” (Lorde, 1984, p. 37). Its authors are rulers and thought-leaders (p’Bitek, 1986), teachers and historians (Achebe, 1988), as well as seers and healers (Armah, 2006) whose words are critical in the conception, construction, and deployment of the values that are central in the unfolding of the quest to enable African people to stand on their feet again (wa Thiong’o, 1997).

As a canon, the continental African novel is saddled with the responsibility to congest the minds of African people with images and narratives that empower them to deal with the impact of centuries of abasement, claim the present, and make the best of the opportunities with which it reverberates as they endeavor to “imagine a whole new future and forge it in the most ethical and expansive way” (Karenga, 2008, p. 12). Put differently, authors of the continental African novel in its various manifestations are compelled by historical necessity, contemporary reality, and the future that must still be called into existence to operate from the understanding that African people need all the instruments at their disposal to effect their healing and reconstruction as a free, dignified, and self-determining people. Thus, the best continental African novelists realize the pertinence of ethnic, national, racial, and continental questions that still require answers in order for independence, development, empowerment, peace, and security to become more than mere political rally and party manifesto rhetoric. Such novelists are alive to the fact that African people still have to settle an entire gamut of issues and that in doing so, the continental African novel plays a critical role in cultivating the consciousness that will carry the day in the direction most beneficial to the continent and the hundreds of millions who call it home.

Narrating the Struggle

Anthills of the Savannah tells the story of political dictatorship, patronage, corruption, violence, struggle, and resistance in the fictive West African nation/state of Kangaan, a former colony of the British. The novel begins by introducing readers to the political leadership of the nation/state of Kangaan, born of a military coup that swept Sam (a former Army Captain) to power alongside 12 colleagues responsible for various government portfolios. Among Sam’s colleagues in post-coup Kangaan are characters such as Chris Oriko, Sam’s high school classmate now serving as Commissioner of Information; Ikem Osodi, Sam’s and Chris’s high school classmate and editor of the National Gazette; Professor Reginald Okong, the Commissioner of Police; the Attorney-General; and eight others. Beatrice (Chris’s girlfriend), Chris, and Ikem are the major witnesses through whom the bulk of the story in this scintillating political satire is told. From their recollections of what transpired, it is apparent from the onset that their narratives of Kangaan, trying to stand on its feet after a military coup, are narratives of a nation/state torn apart by contending forces in the corridors of power. In the style and manner reminiscent of the status quo in many African countries, the government of Kangaan is faced by the chicanery of a head of state bent on manipulating government officials and procedures to secure his position in office as president-for-life without appearing to be interested in this onslaught on good governance. In the first state meeting that readers encounter in Anthills of the Savannah, Sam and his commissioners are deliberating on what readers are told is the manifest desire of the people of Kangaan to “condemn [Sam] to serve them for life” (p. 5). As readers quickly realize, the deliberations unfold against the backdrop of a referendum in which three out of four of the provinces that make up the nation/state of Kangaan had voted in favor of having Sam as president-for-life. Apparently, the proposition could not be enacted into law because it needed to be ratified by all the four provinces. However, what is important here is not the discussion about Sam’s president-for-life machinations but the political turmoil that the discussion and the arguments accompanying it point to. While Sam appears not to be interested because he must be seen to be respecting the will of the people after the proposition to have him installed as president-for-life was rejected by the people of the Abazon province to the north of Kangaan, it is evident that his commissioners are dichotomized into loyalists and/or patronage seekers on the one hand and critical realists on the other. It is this polarization that Sam manipulates to master power for power’s sake while the issues affecting the nation/state of Kangaan and its suffering citizens go unattended.

The loyalists and/or seekers of patronage among the commissioners running the affairs of the nation/state of Kangaan feel that “what this country needs is a ruthless dictator [. . .] at least for five good years” (p. 3). They seek to outdo each other in their individual efforts to get the president’s patronizing acknowledgment. The bulk of their words and actions as loyalists and/or patronage seekers are directed against Chris and what they see as his poverty of allegiance toward Sam in his capacity as president of the nation/state of Kangaan. Their commitment to individual proximity to Sam is summed up by Professor Okong when he is summoned to the former’s office to explain why and how demonstrators had been able to storm the presidential palace without any of the commissioners’ knowledge. Professor Okong tells his colleagues that “I go to prepare a place for you, gentlemen . . . but rest assured I will keep the most comfortable cell for myself” (p. 9). It is quite telling that in addition to his nauseating sense of commitment to individual access to material advantages even in the most sordid circumstances, Professor Okong also embodies the self-effacing tendencies of most of the commissioners in Sam’s government. After receiving stern instructions on how to handle the demonstrators and being belittled for lacking political foresight and ingenuity, Professor Okong further humiliates himself by obsequiously massaging Sam’s ego:

Your Excellency is not only our leader but also our teacher. We are always ready to learn. We are like children, washing only their bellies, as our elders say when they pray. (p. 17)

The tragedy in Professor Okong’s response to Sam’s onslaught on him and his colleagues is that he mistakes an aspiring tyrant for a leader and a teacher. Not surprisingly, readers note that regardless of his desire to ingratiate himself to the self-absorbed president that Sam is, Professor Okong is told to his face that “I’ve never really relied on you fellows for information on anything or anybody . . . [and] I should be a fool to” (p. 14). Sam’s dismissive description of his commissioners as worthless bears witness to the depth of the leadership crisis facing the nation/state of Kangaan. This is compounded in the novel by the fact that as president, Sam himself is not his own man. As Chris recollects in his account as first witness to the crisis in Kangaan, the fictional country’s tragedy lay partly in the fact that all that Sam ever wanted was “to do what was expected of him especially by the English whom he admired sometimes to the point of foolishness” (p. 44). Thus, it is quite revealing that when John Williams, Sam’s high school English headmaster, “told him that the army was the career for gentlemen, he immediately abandoned thoughts of becoming a doctor and became a soldier” (p. 45). In addition to this is the schoolboy ease by which he gets enchanted when he thinks of his African heroes, especially the old emperor he met at one Organisation of African Unity meeting. Sam is especially enthralled by the fact that the old emperor “never smiled nor changed his expression no matter what was going on around him” (p. 48). The old emperor’s demeanor awakened Sam to “the possibilities for his drama in the role of an African Head of State” (p. 48) that he decides to “withdraw into seclusion to prepare his own face and perfect his act” (p. 48). Through these and similar portraits of the major actors in the intriguing drama of political dictatorship, patronage, corruption, violence, struggle, and resistance at the heart of the narrative in Anthills of the Savannah, Achebe succeeds in mapping postcolonial African problems as explainable through the lenses of a sociohistorical perspective which accentuates awareness of the continent’s poverty of leadership that exemplifies commitment to transparency, accountability, and other principles that enable human beings to contribute and participate meaningfully in their country’s development projects.

Achebe’s portrayal of the challenges confronting Kangaan as connected to the dearth of progressive leadership qualities in the faction of the nation’s rulers represented by Sam, the Attorney-General, and Professor Okong is suggestive of the urgent need for a leadership paradigm shift in African countries. The possibility of this shift is rehearsed by the eventual overthrow of Sam’s government toward the end of the novel. This development compels political actors from both sides of the political divide separating Chris, Ikem, and Beatrice on the one hand, and Sam, Professor Okong and the rest of the commissioners in Sam’s government on the other, to come to terms with the transient nature of power. However, this anticipated leadership paradigm shift is to be understood in terms of the complexity of the struggle that begets it and its resistance to reductionist framing on an either/or basis. Achebe’s disdain for dichotomized conceptions of struggle is apparent in his reluctance to reward either of the factions as the story concludes. As the fierce critic of Sam’s regime whose propaganda he is supposed to peddle as editor of the National Gazette, Ikem is the first to be dispatched by members of the State Research Council, a Gestapo-type security institution responsible for disappearances of Sam’s political opponents. He is joined in the realm of the departed by Chris who dies at the hands of a rogue soldier in the heat of the moment that follows the toppling of Sam’s regime. Sam himself is overthrown, and his dream of becoming Kangaan’s president-for-life is denied the opportunity to see the light of day. As the novel concludes, Achebe’s management of the political conflict is such that what readers have to contend with are characters who have seen and experienced everything from struggle, victory, defeat, hope, fatigue, and death. The role of these characters in forging a new future for Kangaan is acknowledged by the old man who presides over the naming ceremony of Elewa’s baby by the slain Ikem:

You young people . . . What you will bring this world to is pregnant and nursing a baby at the same time . . . My wife here was breaking her head looking for kolanuts, for alligator pepper, for honey and for bitter-leaf . . . And while she is cracking her head you people gather in this whiteman house and give the girl a boy’s name . . . That is how to handle this world. (p. 210)

Achebe’s narration of the struggle in Anthills of the Savannah is instructive in that the story is not a mere catalog of insurmountable challenges. Instead, it is a celebration of human agency, endurance, intelligence, and character in the face of catastrophe. It celebrates the human ability to dare to transform reality and challenge norms. Achebe stresses this through, among other strategies, telling the story of the calamities that overcome the nation/state of Kangaan through the eyes of Chris, Ikem, and Beatrice, the three characters who are central in the struggle to restore sanity to the politically troubled country. In addition to this is Achebe’s dedication of eight chapters of the novel to the exploration of what he describes as “views of struggle” (p. 75). Through the testimonies of the three main witnesses and the voices of the unnamed elder at the head of the delegation from Abazon province that visits Bassa to petition Sam’s government on the drought situation in their part of the country, taxi-drivers such as Braimoh, and Emmanuel, a University of Bassa student leader, Achebe crafts a story of struggle that leaves the reader with an understanding of the price that must be paid for life, freedom, and human dignity to be secured in the previously colonized countries of Africa. It is also a story that compels the reader to appreciate that struggle in terms of the momentum it creates once set in motion and the limitless possibilities for human self-expression that this momentum engenders. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that what Achebe has in mind is neither the mere cataloging of challenges facing the fictive West African nation/state of Kangaan nor the expedient resolution of the conflict in favor of the anti-establishmentarians. Instead, Achebe’s accomplishment in his narration of the struggle for life, freedom, and human dignity in this novel is in his innovative portrayal of the consciousness that should inform this struggle.

The most important component of the consciousness that Achebe locates at the center of the struggle for life, freedom, and human dignity in Anthills of the Savannah is the need for clarity in the appreciation of the forces that militate against the interests of fledgling nations of postcolonial Africa seeking to master their destinies in the wake of the colonial holocaust. Ikem brings home this need in his lecture at the University of Bassa:

I think I should take the advantage of this forum to propound the new radicalism which I believe we should embrace . . . First and foremost, this radicalism must be clear-eyed enough to see beyond the present claptrap that will heap all our problems on the doorstep of capitalism and imperialism . . . Please don’t get me wrong. I do not deny that external factors are still at the root of many of our problems. But I maintain that even if external factors were to be at the root of all our problems, we still must be ready to distinguish for practical purposes between remote and immediate causes, as our history teachers used to say . . . To blame all these things on imperialism and international capitalism . . . is like going out to arrest the village blacksmith every time a man hacks his fellow to death. (p. 146, emphasis in original)

The emphasis that Ikem places on keen awareness of internal and external factors in the construction of Africa’s social, cultural, economic, and political malaise is infuriating for many postcolonial African leaders. It identifies and exposes them as immediate forces that enable neocolonialism to thrive when all they want is to have the attention of the people fixated on the ravages of colonialism as singularly responsible for the challenges at hand. The fixation on colonialism as the only factor responsible for postcolonial African challenges invents innocence for kleptomaniacs that have presided over the plunder of postcolonial African economies through corruption, maladministration, nepotism, tribalism, regionalism, and the sense of entitlement deriving from having participated in anti-colonial wars that saw to the advent of independence. It lifts the burden of developing postcolonial African countries from the shoulders of the leaders that took over after the demise of colonial rule. Yet even more insidious in the emphasis on external factors for postcolonial African challenges is how it misrepresents postcolonial African countries as mere victims whose fate is in the hands of former colonial masters. This emphasis castigates former colonial masters for not availing a conducive environment for trade and fair prices for African products on the world market. It creates the impression that all the conditions for the development of postcolonial African economies should be availed to them on a silver platter, creating a hand-me-down kind of culture that undermines reliance on the sense of responsibility and accountability that drives economies and cultures to engender development. In that regard, Ikem’s emphasizing of local and immediate causes of postcolonial African problems is an invitation to self-criticism. This empowers those who see themselves as victims to realize how they avail themselves for victimization by insisting on identities that do not connect them with their social, economic, cultural, and political agency (Asante, 1998). By drawing attention to both immediate and remote causes behind the challenges besetting the postcolonial nation/state of Kangaan, Ikem affirms the view that the struggle for life, freedom, and human dignity in today’s Africa has to focus on two basic issues, that is, class oppression at home and exploitation by international forces (Nzongola-Ntalaja, 1997; Turok, 1987). Against the backdrop of this emphasis, Ikem furnishes students at the University of Bassa with an inventory of capacities they should master in order for their agency in the struggle to be enhanced:

I have no desire to belittle your role in putting this nation finally on the road to self-redemption. But you cannot do that unless you first set about to purge yourselves, to clean up your act. You must learn for a start to hold your own student leaders to responsible performance; only after you have done that can you have the moral authority to lecture the national leadership. You must develop the habit of skepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witchdoctors and professors. I see too much parroting, too much regurgitating of half-digested radical rhetoric . . . When you have rid yourselves of these things, your potentiality for assisting and directing this nation will be quadrupled. (p. 148)

The focus on external forces as singularly responsible for the socioeconomic, cultural, and political woes facing postcolonial African countries such as the fictive west African nation/state of Kangaan in Anthills of the Savannah ensures that these afflictions continue to stand beyond the reach of the processes that should resolve them. Agency can only be evoked and deployed in keeping with what one knows and is willing to accept about the situation at hand. Put differently, challenges whose existence has not been acknowledged cannot be resolved. The reluctance to accept the role of local forces as equally pertinent to postcolonial African problems complicates the latter and misdirects the agency of potential revolutionaries who end up engaging forces that have not been objectively understood. This is especially the case when note is made of the fact that external forces seldom hold sway in the previously colonized world without the connivance of local socioeconomic and political elites. As managers of the status quo, most local elites are at peace colluding with external forces for crumbs and the proverbial 30 pieces of silver. As a class, the local socioeconomic and political elites in postcolonial Africa are “not geared to production, invention, creation or work” (Fanon, 1967, p. 98). They have “the psychology of a businessman, not that of a captain of industry, [a]nd it should go without saying that the rapacity of the colonists and the embargo system installed by colonialism hardly left [them] any choice” (Fanon, 1967, p. 98) except channeling their energy into “intermediary activities” (Fanon, 1967, p. 98) over which they maintain proprietorship through violence, electoral fraud, and the reluctance to decolonize education. Ikem’s murder at the hands of the State Research Council and Chris’s death as he tries to evade the fate meted out on Ikem by the same institution are both significant developments speaking to the fact that local political elites constitute a formidable stumbling block that participants in the struggle for life, freedom, and dignity in postcolonial Africa have to contend with. Thus, it becomes clear in Anthills of the Savannah that it is by engaging immediate causes to the postcolonial African predicament personified by local political elites that progressive forces will be able to deny external interests the possibility of continued dominance when colonialism ends.

Theorizing the Genre

As outlined above, the touchstone of this article is that Anthills of the Savannah is instructive in the development of the continental African novel in English on account of the innovative ways in which Achebe adapts traditional narrative space to the dual purpose of portraying the struggles of African people for life, freedom, and human dignity as well as outlining some of his enduring literary-theoretical ideas on the conception, production, and consumption of literature. This contention is particularly compelling when considered in the context of the view that

writers are the cooks; the readers are the guests invited to the feast; and the proper roles of scholars and critics are, first, to help the cooks in the kitchen by preparing materials, insights and suggestions which writers may use in their cooking if they like; and second, to set the table and hand to the guests the salt and pepper of their commentary to enhance the flavour of the dishes. (Chinweizu, 1987, p. 257)

In this analogy, separate responsibilities are allocated to writers, readers, and literary critics in ways that portray literary production, appreciation, and consumption as mutually exclusive. What Achebe accomplishes in Anthills of the Savannah is a suggestive incursion into the world of the possible to construct the novelist as an embodiment of all these identities, which, as the novel suggests, can coexist. In Anthills of the Savannah, Achebe is at once a novelist and a literary theorist without any suggestion of conflict between the two identities and the responsibilities they imply. That he manages to balance these roles has to do with the free reign that he gives to his characters to narrate the struggles they are involved in while also delving into the place and role of the story and the storyteller in society, the entanglement of the story and storyteller in politics, culture, and society, and the storyteller’s freedom to reimagine and re-frame the contours of the story in keeping with cherished political, cultural, economic, and social priorities. Achebe’s literary-theoretical perspectives on these subjects are articulated in Anthills of the Savannah by the leader of the Abazon delegation that visits the city of Bassa to petition the president of Kangaan on the drought situation in Abazon, and by Ikem Osodi, the editor of the National Gazette and a son of Abazon based in Bassa.

As it turns out in the novel, the leader of the Abazon delegation and Ikem contemplate the place and role of the story and the storyteller in society in ways that enable Achebe to imaginatively craft Afrocentric literary-theoretical perspectives of importance in the discussion of the continental African novel. At the core of these perspectives are the functions of the story and the storyteller in African societies. Through the meditations of the two characters on the roles of the story and the storyteller in African societies, Achebe is able to imaginatively articulate literary-theoretical ideas in his non-literary writings in which he insists on art, in its various genres, as functional and the artist as a teacher and an historian with responsibilities to enlighten and empower. The authority with which the Abazon elder talks about the power of the story, for instance, leaves the reader besotted with the idea that Achebe deploys him to theorize about the novel as a genre and the role that it must play in the struggles of African people for life, freedom, and human dignity. The remarks of the leader of the Abazon delegation on the story are weaved into the narrative in the wake of the censure that Ikem receives from one of the members of the delegation for not attending the gatherings of Abazonians living in Bassa. The Abazon delegation leader’s words in defense of Ikem are anchored in the role that the latter plays as a storyteller, as he is the editor of the National Gazette, to the benefit of both Abazon and Kangaan:

To some of us the Owner of the World has apportioned the gift to tell their fellows that the time to get up has finally come. To others He gives the eagerness to rise when they hear the call; to rise with racing blood and put on their garbs of war and go to the boundary of their town to engage the invading enemy boldly in battle. And then there are those others whose part is to wait and when the struggle is ended, to take over and recount its story. The sounding of the battle-drum is important; the fierce waging of the war is itself important; and the telling of the story afterwards—each is important in its own way. I tell you there is not one of them we could do without. But if you ask me which of them takes the eagle-feather I will say boldly: the story. (p. 113)

The unnamed Abazon elder explicates the role of the story in society with due cognizance of how it is connected to other departments of life, particularly those that have to do with mobilization and revolution. However, it is clear that to the extent that the Abazon delegation leader is concerned, the story is central to a society’s being and becoming. It rehearses the struggles, values, habits, challenges, victories, and aspirations that bind a people and how all these intersect in a society’s quest to locate itself, develop its people’s abilities, widen the spectrum of opportunities available to them, and secure the future. To that extent, the reader-critic of the novel is urged, in the Abazon delegation leader’s homily to the story, to appreciate the novel as a genre that archives a society’s memory and informs the processes through which the same society defines itself in relation to other societies and the vagaries of existence at the center of its experiential trajectory. What this entails is that as an embodiment and an expression of a people’s memory, the novel is to be appreciated for the role it plays in raising awareness and building the kind of consciousness that takes society forward. The Abazon delegation leader makes this clear:

It is only the story that can continue beyond the war and the warrior. It is the story that outlives the sound of war-drums and the exploits of brave fighters. It is the story, not the others, that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind. (p. 114)

If the continental African novel as a genre is appreciated with the Abazon delegation leader’s views in mind, it becomes easy to embrace it as a genre that resonates with testimonies of exemplary human agency in a society’s political, cultural, and social experiences. Captured in symbols, metaphors, and images, these political, cultural, and social testimonies of exemplary human agency become yardsticks that future generations can rely on as they seek to understand the work accomplished in building their society by preceding generations, and what that work entails in the struggles yet to unravel. Through the Abazon delegation leader, Achebe encourages creators and consumers of the novel in its continental African manifestation to realize that art is inexorably entangled with political, cultural, and social processes in society. It binds the past, the present, and the future, making inroads into the past to inspire the present, narrating the realities of the present to imagine the future, and evoking the future to legitimize contemporary struggles. As it rehearses the past, art presents readers and critics with images, symbols, and metaphors that speak to both their greatness and weaknesses as reflected in the struggles of preceding generations, placing them on a pedestal where they can make informed decisions that prompt human progress and social advancement in their community. On the basis of these persuasions, art becomes

the campus that a people use to locate themselves on the map of human geography and a clock to tell their time of day, showing them where they have been, where they are, where they still must go and what they still must do. (Clarke, 1999, p. 12)

What this suggests is that the evolution of political, cultural, and social habits, customs, institutions, and values is tied to the arts created and consumed in a community. It is in the arts that consensus is negotiated and achieved to allow a society to function with a level of coherence that enables the dispatching, channeling, reception, and utilization of creative energy. As one of the genres in which the story as framed by the Abazon delegation leader finds manifestation, the novel plays a critical role in the imaginative rehearsal of political, cultural, and social values, images, symbols, motifs, myths, legends, and metaphors that empower people to locate themselves in time and space and in relation to other people. Through images of the war, the warrior, the sound of war drums, and brave fighters as portrayed in the novel, the people who constitute the subject of a given work of art are able to envision, capture, claim, and deploy the political, cultural, and social brilliance, agency, courage, and passion of their forebears. In the process, they set themselves apart from other members of the human family who may not be products of such historical exploits and myths of greatness as depicted in their arts.

The implications of these narrative interventions on literary theory are palpable when considered against the backdrop of the emphasis applied on the death of the author by Eurocentric scholars steeped in literary-critical theories such as Postmodernism and Deconstruction. Apparently, these are literary-theoretical perspectives articulated by scholars raised in societies that have since settled their national questions and are in a position to afford the luxury of art for art’s sake. The healing, reconstruction, and restoration that African people have to experience in order to regain their balance in the wake of tragedies such as slavery, colonialism, and genocide do not command the same kind of urgency in African and Euro-American societies. The primary concern in Europe and North America revolves around the need to maintain global hegemony. Such an agenda is curtailed if societies outside Europe and North America develop vibrant national literatures, among other tools of self-definition, that enable them to spell their proper name and unmask the face of the oppressor (Achebe, 2009) in the development of their struggles to achieve authentic freedom and create alternative modes of human existence. Achebe’s deployment of the leader of the Abazon delegation and the emphasis he places on the function of the story in African societies enables him to write back to Eurocentric literary-critical discourses in which art is expected to be detached from political, cultural, and social exigencies of the day.

The Abazon delegation leader’s celebration of the role of the story as an instrument of political, cultural, and social struggle connects quite remarkably with the struggles of African communities as they endeavor to find their way back to the best values embedded in their cultures and histories (Armah, 1973). Through the Abazon delegation leader, Achebe echoes the foundational rubric of his literary-theoretical scholarship, namely, that the novelist is obligated to create images, symbols, metaphors, and narratives that feed into a society’s struggles. As the story in Anthills of the Savannah develops, readers and critics are brought face to face with the idea that in African countries like the fictive West African nation/state of Kangaan where people still have to secure their freedom from poverty, war, disease, and general vulnerability, the novelist plays an important role in modeling desirable futures toward which African people should channel their creative energies. As they discharge this responsibility, novelists embrace the freedom to reimagine and re-frame the contours of the story in keeping with cherished political, cultural, economic, and social priorities in order to “excite general enlightenment by forcing all the people to examine the condition of their lives because, as the saying goes, the unexamined life is not worth living” (p. 145). Freedom to reimagine and re-frame the contours of the story in keeping with cherished political, cultural, economic, and social priorities empowers the novelist to “widen the scope of that self-examination [and not] to foreclose it with a catchy, half-baked orthodoxy” (p. 146). This is instructive for literary-critical theory, given that human experience, as the subject of imaginative depiction in works of art, is too vast to be portrayed meaningfully without the artist exercising the freedom to reimagine and re-frame the contours of the story. As Achebe (1988) avers in his discussion of the Igbo world and its art, society is “an arena for the interplay of forces . . . a dynamic world of movement and of flux” (p. 62). To do justice to the dynamism and flux that define society, art has to be “mobile and active, even aggressive” (Achebe, 1988, p. 62). It loses these qualities if artists are unable to reimagine and re-frame their stories in sync with cherished political, cultural, economic, and social prerogatives in their societies.

In the absence of the freedom to reimagine and re-frame their stories, artists degenerate into prescriptivism. The defining shortcoming of prescriptivism is its commitment to narrowing the space within which phenomena can be encountered. It limits the range of what can be contemplated or explored, placing emphasis on the precision of variables that go into the making of an idea. This is because prescriptivists desire to be able to predict in order to control. That desire stands at odds with the essence of art and its capacity to generate endless possibilities. Apparently, art can only generate endless possibilities because the artist is a “miracle-man” (p. 115), and as the Abazon delegation leader has it:

This miracle-man will amaze us because he may be a fellow of little account, not the bold warrior we all expect, nor even the war-drummer. But in his utterances our struggle will stand reincarnated before us. He is the liar who can sit under his thatch and see the moon hanging in the sky outside. Without stirring from his stool he can tell you how commodities are selling in a distant market-place. His chalked eye will see every blow in a battle he never fought. So fully is he owned by the telling that sometimes—especially when he looks around him and finds no age-mate to challenge the claim—he will turn the marks left on him by the chicken-pox and yaws he suffered in childhood into bullet scars . . . yes, scars from that day our men pounded their men like palmfruit in the heavy mortar of iroko . . . But the lies of those possessed by Agwu are lies that do no harm to anyone. They float on top of the story like the white bubbling at the pot-mouth of new palm-wine. The true juice of the tree lies coiled up inside, waiting to strike. (p. 115)

The continental African novelist becomes a “miracle-man” (p. 115) in accordance with her or his commitment to reimagining and re-framing the contours of the story in keeping with cherished political, cultural, economic, and social priorities in her or his society. In fact, Achebe’s description of the storyteller as a “miracle-man” and a “liar” speaks to the grounding of stories in the fictive and the imaginative. This enables storytellers to emerge with antidotes for social, economic, political, and cultural challenges in a society. As a “miracle-man” and a “liar,” the novelist can infuse dreams into the minds of readers. He or she has the license to even distort and/or disfigure experiences in order to inspire thought patterns that are critical in the socioeconomic, political, and cultural transformation of society. Put differently, the storyteller is not bogged down by commitment to facts and the desire to reconstruct reality as it was or as it is but as it could be. This easily places her or him at loggerheads with political authorities, given that every political system

wants things as they are, for it is constituted in the first place to ensure stability in a society with contending social forces and interests . . . to arrest motion, to continue with the repetition of the moment, [and] supervise the known and the familiar. (wa Thiong’o, 1998, p. 13)

Given that political systems prefer stagnation in order to dominate, the storyteller’s ability to portray reality “in its revolutionary transformation” (wa Thiong’o, 1993, p. 46) renders the story “a threat . . . to all champions of control [and] usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit—in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever” (p. 141). The conflict that results from the story’s and storyteller’s ability to destabilize settled opinions and supposedly immutable truths on the basis of which political systems thrive is instructive for literary-theoretical intellection. It speaks to the story’s and storyteller’s roles in society and their capacity to inform and affect cultural, political and socioeconomic processes. The emphasis that Afrocentric literary-critical theories apply on art as functional in society is justified by this conflict.

Conclusion

This article explored the adaptation of narrative space for literary-theoretical intellection in Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah. It argued that this novel is significant in the development of the continental African novel which has tended, since its birth in the 1950s, to focus exclusively on portraying the lived experiences of its readers without making incursions into literary theory. Achebe’s insertion of literary-theoretical discourse into the narrative interstices of this novel suggests that literary-critical theory is way too important as a field of inquiry for the continental African novelist to leave it for exclusionary domination by literary critics. Thus, Achebe manages, in Anthills of the Savannah, to bridge the chasm between literature and literary criticism by positioning the novelist as both a storyteller and a literary-critical theorist whose fictive and literary-theoretical ideas can coexist in the same literary-imaginative text. This article also demonstrated the availability of literary-theoretical discourse to expression in alternative modes of knowledge construction. The convergence of narrative and literary-critical theory in Anthills of the Savannah is notable for how it avails new literary and literary-theoretical possibilities for continental African novelists and literary critics.