Chinua Achebe's postcolony: A literary anthropology of postcolonial decadence

Abstract

Can the African novel work as interlocutor for anthropologists studying Africa's postcolonial politics today? Conversely, is there a role for the African literary imagination in our renewed efforts to decolonize anthropology? This article draws on Chinua Achebe's fictional representations of the postcolony in two novels, No Longer at Ease and A Man of the People, to discuss the value of the African literary archive for an anthropological interest in elites, corruption and postcolonial decadence in the early postcolony. This African literary archive has contributed enormously to Achille Mbembe's critique of power in the postcolony. Here, I argue that, in contrast to anthropologists of the late colonial and early postcolonial moment, African writers such as Achebe mobilized fiction as a powerful form of critique to address early signs of postcolonial despair and disillusionment in Africa.