“I AGREE, OF COURSE, THAT A GOOD ART CHANGE THINGS”. THE LITERARY WRITING OF CHINUA ACHEBE AND THE CRITICISM OF COLONIALITY.

Abstract

The presente article aims to show some initial reflections on the writing of the nigerian Chinua Achebe (1930-2013), discussing the social and political role of his literary production as well as the possibility of, based on this analysis, pointing evidences around de perception of the writer regarding on the nigerian society historical events. Having as document of analysis the works Things Fall Apart (published in 1958), Arrow of God (published in 1964), interviews and essays by the author, we assume that his literary writing, while narrative framework and historical document is informed by his visions and senses of history, since he and his works are events dated historically and express, therefore, his time and his place. In a dialogue between intellectuals from the theoretical fields post-colonial and decolonial our proposal is to think about the contribution of his literary writing articulated with the idea of “balance of stories”- term coined by him in his interviews. For the author, we all have the right to tell our own stories from our experiences, opposing the inheritance of coloniality which diffuses the idea of the existence of a unique history – from the eurocentric point of view. Such positioning, of questioning Western/colonial epistemic knowledge and the discovery and appreciation of Southern theories and epistemologies that think with and from subalternized ethnic/racial/sexual places and bodies, opens up possibilities for the emergence of paradigms others. Thus, with the research proposal to look directly to the literature, we believe being possible to identify not only the perspective of a subject of history, but also the way he constructs a reference to the past starting from the presente. In a relation with the literature from Achebe’s own categories, we propose to think a logic of reflection that shifts from the optics of the coloniality.