EN583 AUT: Postcolonial Writing

Assignment 2

7. ‘Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten
usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit’ (Anthills of the Savannah). How
can postcolonial literature be regarded as a challenge to power?

Foucault, in his work The Order of Discourse, analyses the concept of discourse in

relation to power, linking it to interpersonal relations but also envisioning it as the component

permeating society’s textuality, which is characterised by power relations. Accordingly,

discourse depends on power, but also generates power in the form of resistance. He says,

“Discourse is not simply that which translates struggle or systems of domination, but is the

thing for which and by which there is struggle, discourse is power which is to be seized”.1 For

Foucault it could be said that the speaker is not really a man, but the word itself2, thus,

accordingly the symbiotic relation between power and discourse, the man, one with the word,

is the personification of power. Similarly, in African societies power is attributed to whomever

has authority over the ‘word’; for instance, among the Kikuyu the word chief means ‘good

talker’3. While a myth among the Wapangwa people says that, everything is controlled by the

power of the Word4. Language is therefore a fundamental characteristic for humankind, its

workings and the manifestation of power. In fact, Bakhtin’s theory on language pays particular

interest on the dynamics of human behaviour through the use of language5. Accordingly,

1
Michael Foucault, ‘The Order of Discourse’ in Untying the Text: a Post-Structuralist Reader, Ed. by Robert Young
(Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1981), pp. 48-79 (pp. 52, 53).
2
Michel Foucault in Massimo Mori, Giuseppe Cambiano, Storia Della filosofia Contemporanea (Roma-Bari: Gius.
Laterza & Figli, 2014).
3
Mugo Gatheru in Chinua Achebe, ‘Language and the Destiny of Man’ in Morning Yet on Creation Day (London-
Ibadan-Nairobi-Lusaka: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, 1977), pp.30-38 (p. 32).
4
Achebe, Morning Yet on Creation Day, p. 32.
5
María Jesús Martínez Alfaro, ‘INTERTEXTUALITY: ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT’, Atlantis,
18.1.2 (June - December 1996), 268-285 (p. 272).
Bakhtin sees language through a metalinguistic lens, hence considering it within a social and

historical framework, and specifically focusing on communication and speech genres, and

ultimately claiming the novel as a form, in its very origins, has a destabilizing function 6. In

this paper, I would like to discuss the role of storytelling, not as narrative trope of the

postcolonial discourse, but storytelling as an effective means to challenge power. The

effectiveness of storytelling as a debilitating force is due to the fact that it does not only address

the issues and injustices of the present, but it focuses on the historical component of it, thus

validating further its subtle critique, since it is not possible to have a present without a past7.

To prove this point, I will be analysing two literary works, namely Chinua Achebe’s Anthills

of the Savannah (1987) and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea (2001), paying particular attention

to the specific figure of the storyteller and his role within the narrative. Despite the differences

between these novels in terms of history, geography, style and content, they have a point of

commonality, namely the use of language as a means to challenge power. Accordingly, I would

like to approach these texts in different ways; for Anthills of the Savannah, I would like to

examine how storytelling is used to challenge authority and subvert power, indirectly

criticizing Nigeria’s political failure after independence. While for By the Sea, I would like to

explore how storytelling is employed as a means to challenge to power, particularly in the sense

of the re-appropriation of agency over self-representation.

“Our ancestors created their myths and legends and told their stories for a human

purpose”8. One of the purposes of storytelling is community building; hence, creating

consensus, a shared culture and understanding as well as deeper ethics. Hannah Arendt, in her

book The Human Condition, claims that storytelling is linked to experience, and in fact, it is a

6
Alfaro, pp. 273, 274.
7
‘Chinua Achebe with Chris Searle’ in Writing Across Worlds, ed. by Susheila Nasta (Abingdon-New York:
Routledge, 2004), pp. 58-68 (p. 63).
8
Achebe, Morning Yet on Creation Day, p. 19.

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negotiation between what belongs to our self and what we feel needs to be shared. Therefore,

a multiplicity of public and private interest are at play. Accordingly, the condition of

storytelling as a mediation between the public and the private rearms makes it subject of

problematics such as truthfulness. For Instance, if the public sphere is defined as a space of

appearance, the individual tends to reshapes its experiences to make them recognizable and

real by others, thus altering its truthfulness. However, reconnecting to the purpose of

community-building, the public realm is also the space of the shared interest where people

create a world, which they feel they belong to as a collective9. Moreover, Arendt believes that

storytelling transforms the inner monologue into social discourse. Events are no longer lived

passively but actively through the reworking in the recalling of the story in itself. History in

the case of Africa, a continent with a painful and not yet healed wound of a colonial past, uses

storytelling to make past experiences more bearable. In fact, Jackson claims that storytelling is

normally prompt by some crisis, loss or undermined autonomy. Accordingly, individuals in

totalitarian regimes seek refuge in storytelling, however providing insights to their struggles10.

Arendt writes, “life without speech and without action […] it has chase to be a human life

because it is no longer lived among men”11. Therefore, the figure of the storyteller does not

remain in silence; on the contrary, he creates stories challenging the outer received wisdom

previously in place, producing a counter-story of their own12. In fact, Delgado argues that

stories and counter-stories can have a destructive function:

They can show that what we believe is ridiculous, self-serving,

or cruel. They can show us the way out of the trap of unjustified
exclusion. They can help us understand when it is time to

9
Hannah Arendt in Michael Jackson, The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression and Intersubjectivity
(Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press University of Copenhagen, 2002), p. 11.
10
Jackson, pp. 15-35.
11
Arendt in Jackson, p. 39.
12
Richard Delgado, ‘Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative’, Michigan Law Review, 87.8
(Aug., 1989), 2411-244 (p. 2414).

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 reallocate power. They are the other half - the destructive half –
of the creative dialectic13.

Through these counter-narratives, it starts the process of reclamation and re-appropriation of

African history. Achebe describes the importance of these counter narratives, in his lectures’

collection Home and Exile, with an African proverb: “Until the lions produce their own

historians, the story of the hunt will glorify only the hunter”14. In other words, dominant groups

create their own stories, which are told by the ingroup bringing to mind the identity of this

latter in relation to the outgroups; thus, the ingroup conjures a sense of shared reality in which

its superior position is seen as natural15. In opposition to these dominant narratives, African

storytellers have the task to produce stories about ‘the lion’, offering a different take on history.

Accordingly, transforming words into weapons. To spin off Rushdie’s description of the

phenomenon of postcolonial literature, namely The Empire Writes Back16, it could be said that

applying this notion to Africa and particularly the lion proverb, the empire metaphorically

shoots back, with an angry and strong language result of a legacy of dispossession, exploitation,

violence and silencing. Stories are powerful and Achebe believes that they can bring forward

the ‘healing’ process of Africa17. However, there are still too many stories awaiting to be told.

Achebe’s writings are very much engaged with his own country. In an interview with

Chris Searle about Anthills of the Savannah, he defines it as engaging with the belief in the

power of words and the integrity and the role of the storyteller. He describes the figure of

storyteller as the ‘escort’ whose the language drives the life of whom he or she accompanies.

The storytellers or word-makers in this particular novel are the ones who protect people against

13
Delgado, p. 2415.
14
Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile (Edinburgh, New York, Melbourne: Canongate, 2003), p. 73.
15
Delgado, p. 2412.
16
Achebe, Home and Exile, p. 75.
17
Achebe, Home and Exile, p. 83.

4
lies, corruption and abuse of power18. Accordingly, Ikegami argues that the role of storytelling

itself has a political or social function, to demonstrate knowledge and exercise power in the

novel19. However, storytelling is recognised to have a diffuse power, which cannot be located

in one place, one person or one particular method20. In fact, the storytellers in the novel are four

namely, Ikem, Beatrice, Chris and the President. All of them are concerned with finding a way

of establishing a successful and long-lasting postcolonial self-government. All characters have

different approaches to storytelling. For instance, Sam, the President, is constantly concerned

with maintaining power though telling mostly believable stories and through intimidation and

exhibition21. While, Chris has a very factual approach to storytelling, all his reports are very

objective hence lacking passion which Ikegami defines his greatest weakness, because it does

not propel any process of change22. On the other hand, Ikem’s philosophy of storytelling is

more passionate and less factual, he is the most powerful storyteller and the one who recognises

the faults of the government. Ikem himself while giving a lecture at the University of Bassa

talks about the power of the storyteller: “Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions

of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit”23. This is why

His Excellency lives in the constant paranoia of betrayal; betrayal is words put to action. With

these words, Ikem stresses the urgency of stories needing to be told and yet the subsequent

feeling of anxiety that comes with it for the fear of its consequences. Going back to the idea

proposed by Foucault, Bakhtin and Arendt on the innate condition of struggle connected with

discourse, it is here underlined the storyteller’s fundamental condition of struggle and the

necessity of its existence in order to achieve one’s utmost24. Linking struggle to the idea of the

18
‘Chinua Achebe with Chris Searle’ in Writing Across Worlds, pp. 59, 60.
19
Robin Ikegami, ‘Knowledge and Power, the Story and the Storyteller: Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah’, MFS
Modern Fiction Studies, 37.3 (Fall 1991), 493-507 (p.493).
20
Ikegami, p. 499.
21
Ikegami, p. 495.
22
Ikegami, pp. 496, 497.
23
Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah (Harlow: Heinemann, 1987), p. 153.
24
‘Chinua Achebe with Chris Searle’ in Writing Across Worlds, p. 63.

5
past, all the storytellers in Anthills of the Savannah not only share a common history, but are

actively engaged in questioning the relationship between past and present25. In fact, when Chris

tells Beatrice about his past with Ikem and Sam, it is to provide some sort of clarification on

the present, to understand the current state of things26. However, without success. The past and

the present however are not the only concerns of the characters and narrators; the idea of the

future plays a significant role. Beatrice, as storyteller “represents a movement toward a creative

amalgamation of facts and passions, past and present, people and ideas.”27 Her narration is

about mediations, reformulations and change. This can be seen at the end of the narrative, where

going against the previous patriarchal connotation of the ceremony, firstly, she names the baby

girl and secondly, she names her with technically a boy’s name, "AMAECHINA: May-the-

path-never-close". This gesture is a proposition of change and the name itself symbolizes the

importance of keeping the road of communication between past, present and future open.

Achebe in the very title underlines the importance of the storyteller’s ability to connect times

to the creation of the future28: The Anthills survive "to tell the new grass of the savannah about

last year's brush fires"29. The storytellers thus not only challenge power seen as a single entity,

but show how more voices and discourses together can make a change towards a common goal,

a better future of equality and progress captained by a rightful and just government.

People who came from colonized countries to Europe never really spoke for themselves

but actually were spoken for by the West. Now, it is time for them to tell their stories in order

to reclaim the right of self-representation. Accordingly, “the story of our times can no longer

be sealed in a controllable kind of narrative. The narrative has slipped out of the hands of those

25
Ikegami, p. 497.
26
Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah, p. 66.
27
Ikegami, p. 503.
28
Ikegami, p. 502.
29
Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah, p. 31.

6
who had controlled it before.”30 These stories have an unsettling power of disrupting the beliefs

and notions that were previously in place, in terms of defining the non-western people’s lives

and their histories. In a way, the storyteller, whether the author or the character, becomes a

threat to the powers at play due to the fact that they are no longer controllable. Gurnah’s novel

By the Sea follows this line of challenging power, since it tells the story of a migrant intellectual

and of an asylum seeker sharing a common past. The novel thus portrays migration in the

twentieth century in a new light, redefining the parameters and the stereotypes of asylum-

seekers and the reasons behind their displacement. Gurnah’s literary production engages with

the questions of history, migration and survival; it draws on voices and stories of the past,

engaging with storytelling techniques. The central focus of the narrative is the interiority of the

individual, the world within; it explores the interior landscape made up of stories, memories

and unreliable recollections presenting many gaps. However, these gaps are filled by something

so convincingly real, that all the patchwork of memories and blurred images start to create

stories of their own. Hence, the storyteller goes under a process of self-reconstruction in light

of things he remembers31. The two narrators, Saleh and Latif, translate their past in East Africa

into the present in England; their stories of ‘re-translating’ the past relieve them from their

painful experiences. Furthermore, this translation allows them to form a positive relationship32.

Their interactions become a custom, ‘I’ll have my tea and go. But then I’ll be back. If I may”33.

As Arendt proposes, sharing stories from the private realm forms strong connections where

individuals create a place where they belong, a place to call home. Steiner argues that the

fictional storytelling in the novel By the Sea mirrors the real process of migration, “where the

exile’s life is ‘taken up with compensating for disorienting loss by creating a new world to

30
‘Abdulrazak Gurnah with Susheila Nasta’ in Writing Across Worlds, Ed. by Susheila Nasta (Abingdon-New York:
Routledge, 2004), pp. 352-363 (p. 358).
31
‘Abdulrazak Gurnah with Susheila Nasta’ in Writing Across Worlds, p. 353.
32
Tina Steiner, ‘Mimicry or Translation? Storytelling and Migrant Identity in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Novels
Admiring Silence and By the Sea’, The Translator, 12.2 (2006), 301-322 (p. 315).
33
Abdulrazak Gurnah, By the Sea (London - New Delhi – New York - Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2001), p. 194.

7
rule’”34. This agency over the new world is a repossession on the behalf of the characters, which

come from a history of colonial expropriation in terms of culture, language and representation.

This expropriation of their history can be traced in Saleh report on his schooling experience:

In their books I read unflattering accounts of my history, and because

they were unflattering they seemed truer than the stories we told
ourselves. I read about […] the future that lay before us, about the world
we lived in and our place in it. It was as if they remade us, and in ways
that we no longer had any recourse but to accept35.

Saleh remarks that no body contradicted the false representation of his people. Indirectly,

Gurnah criticizes the entitlement of the West in defining others. Here the storytellers, two East-

Africans, are now in England telling their stories, creating a discourse related to their life, their

home country, their history, their culture; they mediate all their common information to draw a

picture of their identity within the present location and condition of exile. They construct their

own narrative finally free of western constraint and influence.

“Language, for the individual consciousness, lies on the borderline between oneself and

the other. The word in language is half someone else's. It becomes 'one's own' only when the

speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent”36. Bakhtin, as Foucault, comments

that language has to be seized and made one’s own to serve an individual purpose. In

Postcolonial writings, words have often been used to write back to the West for two reasons.

Firstly, to criticise the post-independence failure of the ex-colonies and secondly, to challenge

power in the name of a better future. In Anthills of the Savannah the role of the storyteller is

34
Edward Said in Steiner, p. 301.
35
Gurnah, By the Sea, p. 18.
36
Mikhail Bakhtin, 'Discourse in the Novel' in Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach, Ed. by Michael McKeon
(JHU Press, 2000), pp. 338-353 (p. 349).

8
seen as the ultimate line of resistance against the imminent dictatorship; the multiple storyteller

of the narrative offer different perspectives on the issues presented in the novel. On a bigger

scale, the novel extends its critique outside the body of the book itself, focussing on the failure

of leadership of politicians and intellectuals in Nigeria. Gurnah’s By the Sea, similarly employs

storytelling to challenge the hegemonic discourse of the West misrepresenting and silencing

people coming as refugees from Third-world countries. Both authors in their narratives

implicitly argue that the Western influence made African people lose grip with their origins,

roots and history, becoming part of somebody else’s. The true history of Africa was forgotten

therefore after independence it was impossible to recover that history and forgetting the

decades of exploitation and humiliation on the behalf of colonialism. For this reason, Achebe

underlines the importance of storytelling and the connection with a county’s past to the very

survival of the people. He writes, “If we consider the folk tales which our ancestor crafted, we

must strive to do the same thing and communicate to the next generations what is important,

what is of value, what must be preserved”37. Accordingly, the storyteller stands for this symbol

of hope, for a soon ‘healed’ and better Africa. Furthermore, his condition of struggle is not

bound to result in a concrete success; however, he has to keep attempting to serve his

destabilizing purpose and persevere in the process of re-empowerment38. Jackson claims that

“by enabling dialogue’s that encompass different points of view the act of sharing stories helps

us create a world that is more than the sum of its individual parts”39. In this case, storytelling

creates unity, as Hannah Arendt suggests in the principle of community-building, where people

collaborate in building a world they feel they belong to as a collective. Therefore, the ultimate

role of storytelling is not to assert power over others, but the fundamental capacity to bring

37
‘Chinua Achebe with Chris Searle’ in Writing Across Worlds, p. 63.
38
‘Chinua Achebe with Chris Searle’ in Writing Across Worlds, pp. 63-65.
39
Jackson, pp. 39, 40.

9
people to work together towards the creation, the affirmation, the celebration and the sharing

of something that is held in common40.

Words: 3229

40
Jackson, p. 40.

10
Bibliography

Achebe, Chinua, Anthills of the Savannah (Harlow: Heinemann, 1987)

Achebe, Chinua, Home and Exile (Edinburgh, New York, Melbourne: Canongate, 2003)

Achebe, Chinua, Morning Yet on Creation Day (London-Ibadan-Nairobi-Lusaka: Heinemann

Educational Books Ltd, 1977)

Alfaro, María Jesús Martínez, ‘INTERTEXTUALITY: ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF

THE CONCEPT’, Atlantis, 18.1.2 (June - December 1996), 268-285

Bakhtin, Mikhail, 'Discourse in the Novel' in Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach, Ed.
by Michael McKeon (JHU Press, 2000), pp. 338-353

Delgado, Richard, ‘Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative’, Michigan
Law Review, 87.8 (Aug., 1989), 2411-244

Foucault, Michael, ‘The Order of Discourse’ in Untying the Text: a Post-Structuralist Reader,
Ed. by Robert Young (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1981), pp. 48-79

Gurnah, Abdulrazak, By the Sea (London - New Delhi – New York - Sydney: Bloomsbury,
2001)

Ikegami, Robin, ‘Knowledge and Power, the Story and the Storyteller: Achebe's Anthills of the
Savannah’, MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 37.3 (Fall 1991), 493-507

Jackson, Michael, The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression and Intersubjectivity

(Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press University of Copenhagen, 2002)

Mori, Massimo, Cambiano, Giuseppe, Storia Della filosofia Contemporanea (Roma-Bari:

Gius. Laterza & Figli, 2014)

11
Steiner, Tina, ‘Mimicry or Translation? Storytelling and Migrant Identity in Abdulrazak
Gurnah’s Novels Admiring Silence and By the Sea’, The Translator, 12.2 (2006), 301-322

Writing Across Worlds, ed. by Susheila Nasta (Abingdon-New York: Routledge, 2004)

12