 As moderator of the session, we've got the great good fortune to have with us Professor Esther M. A. Terry, who was here with Chinua Chebe, a great friend of the Achebe family, a great friend of us all, and she will introduce our speakers and have some words to say herself for our first session. Thank you, Stephen. You look wonderful. I want to begin by thanking everybody too. This has the feel of a most important conference, and I'm grateful to be a part of it. So let me just observe protocol and beg your indulgence as I repeat some of the thank yous that have been uttered by Stephen. I want to thank Joy Bowman, Stephen Klingman, Sabrina Murray, Britt Russet, and my long-time colleague, Equame Michael Thelwell, for their roles in conceiving the idea for this very special symposium. I thank the staff of the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute for the competence, the patience, and the graciousness with which they have carried out the responsibility of getting us assembled here. It has been an awesome task. I thank all of the supporting departments and programs across the campus, but certainly and especially Chancellor Supaswamy and his administration for all aspects of its support, but especially and particularly, sir, for the financial investment. I've not been so long retired from university life that I've forgotten how important it is, Stephen, to always express gratitude and friendly feelings toward the man or the woman with the purse. Thank you all. It's a wonderful thing that you've done, and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to join with you over the next two days of recollections and celebrations of Chinua Chabee, not only one of the world great writers, but also remarkably one who walked among us here at UMass as an inspired mentor and teacher, a trusted colleague, and a loyal friend. He is worthy of our praise. I've been asked to serve as moderator for this session for which you have invoked the proverb where one thing stands, another will stand beside it. And I'm going to do my very best to be a responsible moderator and get us to the finish line with having left sometimes for your questions, your comments, and your reactions. I'm delighted to introduce two very special colleagues. But first, please, let me take a few moments to say a few words about Chinua Chabee's presence on this campus before and apart from that iconic lecture, an image of Africa, racism in comrades, hot darkness. Although the world is blessed by its appearance, I stand today to say, and although we are happy for its appearance, if Chinua had never made that speech, if those wise editors of the Massachusetts Review had never published it, and his only relationship to this campus had been that of a faculty member in our English and Afro-Am Department of African Studies, we would still be justified in honoring the man and his great contribution to this campus and to this community. I think particularly of Chinua as the man who shared an office with me for a little while. And then finally, I moved out of the office after I had cleaned it very well for this very orderly man. And if any day one were quiet on the third floor of New Africa House, as I was often as I sat in the office across from Chinua, one could hear his marvelous, his kind, his effective interaction with the black student, not all black, but certainly most black students on this campus. That endeared him to me in particular ways, for you must know, if you know the campus, that we had not been long at the point that we could invite black students to this campus in any appreciative numbers. When they came, they came uninvited. When they came, they were literally forced to big numbers of them. That wonderful class that was ushered in in 1968 by virtue of a group of black faculty members, two of them constituting a group, had when they could not convince this campus that if the university was a flagship institution, if it were a land-grant institution, it had some responsibility to the black citizens of this campus, of this Commonwealth. And since black people at that time were 4% of the population of the Commonwealth, wouldn't it be a good thing to have maybe 4% of the student body to be representative? It was not to be. The campus solidly agreed that black students were not yet qualified to become students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. So not to be thought of these two, this group of men, Bill Brommer, Bill Darity, and I think there was a third who joined them lately, Bill Wilson, started to make themselves into a corporation and then they went to seeking funds. They convinced the Ford Foundation to give them $1 million at that time more money than we had possibly imagined they would. And with that $4 million they approached the administration, the recruiting arm of the administration, the admissions arm and said, if we paid their way, would you let them in? And the answer was no. They're not qualified and we can't lower our standards. Not to be done it, Bill Brommer said, well, here's what I have in my pocket and produced, he couldn't have produced because it didn't have them, but threatened to produce the resignations of all of the group of men and was told quite hurriedly, no, don't do that. I will see what we can do. So as a result of that we brought 400 students, no, two students, no, we bought at that first course 100 students fully expecting to lose a good number of them. I was a member of a committee set up to help to guide them through their academic life once they were on this campus. The students were brought in and they were faced each day with rejection. The teachers couldn't find ways to teach them. So our wonderful SAFES committee paid for specific teachers. We paid the teacher who taught rhetoric, a university requirement. We paid the teacher who taught math in the math department and we paid all that we could pay to have our students present and so they came. By the time Chinoah got here, our department was six years old. We had had such a relationship with those young black students. They had moved into a dormitory, found themselves to be slightly unwelcome, a male dormitory. So that was settled. I think Mike Thelwell was a part of the strategy that settled that. Mike initiated the idea, he advanced the idea that if we moved into the dormitory and sort of evicted all the white kids and the black kids could stay with us, we could bring gravitas to the building and we would be a force to help them. Well, the students wanted more than that. In their zeal with having commandeered, they said they had commandeered it and we did not contradict them. And their zeal to conduct for having commandeered a place of their own, they sought to name it. And name it they did. When Chinoah Chibi got here, this is what he found. He found a department that had purposefully named itself for W.E.B. Du Bois. We had our offices housed in New Africa House and we went to work every day. Every day teaching and hoping that we were building a curriculum and a group of people who could stand against all planes that they were unworthy in any aspect. Chinoah moved into our campus and immediately sought us out. When he came to our department, he not only did not laugh at us, we were a red tech group, we were a very small group, he joined us and became a soldier in our army and the education of black and other minority students. All the time that I worked with side Chinoah with him, watched him, I was amazed at the way that he could turn students into serious thinkers. He broke no foolishness and he chased rascals away from his office quite swiftly. But he stayed as long as it was necessary when he thought a student was serious. When I timidly approached Chinoah to ask for permission to direct things fall apart, he agreed. Not only did he agree but he became the best teacher of evo-culture that one could ever have and the students loved it and loved him. He had become their teacher, their mentor, their brother and on the night of our production, Chinoah slipped something into my hand. It was colonuts. He brought colonuts. I have been talking to Michael well over the course of his preparation for this symposium and he has talked a lot about praise names and the importance of praise names in the ego community. He told a story that I would now like to borrow if I could. Mike, with your permission I would like to share and with apologies for not knowing precisely the correct pronunciation, Chidi. I would like to share a story of what happened when Mike, who was teaching at another institution, teaching Chinoah's works and works place in the evo-culture and the importance of that. He invited Chinoah to come to his class and the students wanted to greet Chinoah so they asked Mike. How shall we greet him? And Michael taught them. He taught them this. He taught them to say as they rose to ask the question, to be respectful. He taught them to say, a kuchimba assalutu. Today as I think of the importance of Chinoah taping to my life, as I stand here before all of you, as we soak in from our brothers, the meaning and the beauty and the inspiration of a culture that was not ours, not mine to know early, but certainly mine to appreciate and to embrace. I say about my relationship and my love and deep respect for Chinoah Chibi. A kuchimba assalutu. So now let me introduce two of my very special colleagues, Johnetta Cole by way of a video and Michael Felwell. Johnetta was there with me and with Michael and all of the members of our department on the night that Chinoah stood before that audience and rocked the house with his essay on the racism in Conrad. It was an extraordinary evening, but those of us who had been pleased to have him join us and to support our mission and the meaning of our mission and encouraged us in our mission, in the rightness of it, were delighted. Chinoah had spoken for us all and Johnetta lived with the Chauvin. She loved Chinoah and the family. They had a very special relationship. They had children who were in school together. They shopped together. They shared their love of cooking and art with Christy and they became so close that to see one on the campus was to see the other. I'm glad she has joined us today. And so I present her to you. She'll be here with a little regret that she couldn't be here in person, but let us hear her, Steve, if you will. Friends, colleagues, sisters and brothers all, good afternoon. Drawing on the Southern African American tradition in which I was raised, I want to respectfully acknowledge a number of individuals beginning with Chancellor Kumbhle Subhaswami. I want to call the name of Professor Roland Abiodin and to say how proud I am that Proth serves on the National Advisory Board of my museum, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art. Warm and special greetings to Brother Professor Jules Chemetsky, editor emeritus of the Massachusetts Review. Professor Stephen Klingman, thank you. Thank you for so ably leading the process of organizing and convening this highly important symposium. Forty years ago, I and other members of the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies were present when Professor Chinua Achebe presented the Chancellor's lecture. Warm greetings to all of those sister and brother colleagues who were present for this symposium. A special greeting for my dear sister friend, the moderator of this session, Dr. Esther M. A. Terry. And of course special greetings for the keynote speaker, Brother Professor Akoame Michael Falwell. Akoame, your praise name and what a special one it is. An Ebo praise name which says he does what he says. A virtual hug and much love for each member of the Achebe family attending this symposium. Professor Christy Achebe, Dr. Chidi Achebe, Dr. Mimi Achebe, Professor Chinnello Achebe and her family. My sisters and my brothers all, I'm deeply grateful for this opportunity by way of video to share some of my thoughts on the ongoing relevance of the lecture that Chinnello Achebe boldly entitled An Image of Africa Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I will also acknowledge how deeply the literary title I was privileged to call Brother Chinnello continues to influence my life and my work. Our sister poet, Mari Evans, issues a challenge to all of us in a poem she entitled Speak the Truth to the People. And that is exactly what Chinnello Achebe did in his carefully constructed and exquisitely written 1975 Chancellor's Lecture. Listen to this passage from that lecture. African as setting and backdrop, which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield, devoid of all recognizable humanity into which the wandering European enters at his peril. Can nobody see the preposterous and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the breakup of one petty European mind? But that is not even the point. The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africanness, which this age long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel would celebrate this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art? My answer is no, it cannot. I do not doubt Conrad's great talents. Even Heart of Darkness has its memorably good passages and moments. The reaches opened before us and closed behind as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. Its exploration of the minds of the European characters is often penetrating and full of insight, but all that has been more than fully discussed in the last 50 years. His obvious racism has, however, not been addressed, and it is high time it was. True to his commitment to speak the truth to the people, Professor Achebe shared that when he was a child, he was attracted to Conrad's book. But once he reached a certain age, he realized that, quote, he was not on Marlowe's ship, but was instead one of the unattractive beings Marlowe encounters in passing. At one point Conrad describes an African working on the ship as a dog wearing trousers. Achebe went on to say how terrible it was to portray his people, indeed, in people from that attitude. The response of this lecture by the father of African literature ran the gamut from strong agreement with Achebe's thesis to outcries and defense of Joseph Conrad. Despite the countless expressions of racism in Heart of Darkness, including, as Achebe notes, Conrad's problem with niggers and his fixation on blackness, despite these expressions of racism, well, a leading Conrad scholar nevertheless considers Heart of Darkness to be among the half dozen greatest short novels in the English language. Some scholars have argued that ironically Conrad wrote a racist book that denounces the values of the very civilization that produced racism. To that argument, Professor Chilawa Achebe said this. You see, those who say that Conrad is on my side because he is against colonial rule do not understand that I know who is on my side. And where is the proof that he is on my side? A few statements about it not being a very nice thing to exploit people who have flat noses. This is his defense against imperial control. If so, it is not enough. It is simply not enough. If you are going to be on my side, what is required is a better argument. Ultimately, you have to admit that Africans are people. You cannot diminish a people's humanity and defend them. Many scholars and writers have observed that Chilawa Achebe's first and his best known novel, Things Fall Apart, in almost every respect contradicts the stereotypes that reign in Heart of Darkness. Published in 1958, two years before Nigeria's independence, Professor Achebe's Things Fall Apart was one of the first novels by an African author to garner worldwide acclaim. And today it is considered a masterpiece of 20th century African literature. In calling together distinguished writers and thinkers to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Chilawa Achebe's Chancellor's Lecture, Professor Stephen Klingman and his colleagues in the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute pose these two questions. How do we see the past Chilawa Achebe laid out for us now? How do current writers and thinkers see their own roles? They went on to say that in taking on these questions, we want to underline our appreciation for Chilawa Achebe and the extraordinary path he played as both writer and person. It is a privilege and a joy for me to turn now to offer some reflections on Chilawa Achebe, the person, and to speak to the enormous influence he continues to have on my life at work. In 1972, Chilawa Achebe accepted an offer to teach at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as a visiting professor of English. He returned to UMass in 1987-88 as a visiting professor of Afro-American Studies and a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. His last visit to the University was in 1999 when he read from Christmas in Biafra and other poems. He did so while attending a touring production of a play based on things fall apart. How well I remember the day back in 1972 when I went to the home where the Achebe family would stay in Amherst. I went there to warmly welcome them to our town, our university, and the Department of Afro-American Studies where I was a professor. Now, I was a little awestruck by this opportunity to meet Professor Achebe, the renowned Nigerian writer. But within minutes of reading him, we became colleagues and we took the first steps toward a very special sisterly-brotherly relationship. During the time of the Achebe's first visit to Amherst and over the course of the four decades that I knew Chinua Achebe, I had the honor of witnessing how one of the world's greatest writers loved, taught, challenged, inspired, and cared for his family. On the very first day that we met Chinua's wife, Professor Christie Achebe and I began to relate to each other as if we were blood sisters who had been separated at birth. Over the course of the years that I have known Christie, I've become increasingly convinced that that is exactly what happened. I have no details, but I'm sure it happened. And because we had such a close and continue to have such a close sisterly relationship, Chinelo, Aike, Chidi, Wando, the Achebe's four children are my nieces and nephews. When Christie Achebe decided to pursue a doctoral degree at the University of Massachusetts, she invited me to serve on her dissertation committee. I immediately accepted that invitation and had the pleasure of working with Christie as she carried out the stellar academic work that led to the day when my sister friend Christie was addressed as Dr. Christie Achebe. During Chinua's days in Amherst, all of us who were in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies had the truly special experience of knowing and working with him as a colleague and a friend. There's a particular trajectory that Professor Thelwell and I share. It began, of course, when Brother Chinua first came to Amherst to teach at the University, and he remained a presence and an inspiration in both our lives and work. And then the day came when my brother Michael Thelwell and I each traveled to Nigeria. We were together in Chinua Achebe's house in Ogidi and in the church of his funeral service. Chinua Achebe, the writer, professor, and person, continues to strongly influence my own life and work. In my daily activities as the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art, I often think of and reference Chinua's insistence that what is written in the fields of literature and art history, what is written in any field, must acknowledge the full humanity of African people. I even see the mission of my museum as intimately aligned with a fundamental message that is so much a part of all that Chinua Achebe wrote and lived by. For me, it is through the visual arts of Africa that I challenge our visitors to rethink how they think about Africa. Very much in communion with Professor Chinua Achebe at our National Museum of African Art, we invite conversations about the diverse and dynamic traditional and contemporary art of Africa. We call for a fuller understanding of Africa's relationships to the diaspora and an acknowledgement of how Africa always has been and is connected to the world. Brother Chinua had a very special smile. He had a distinctive laughter and there was a twinkle in his eyes. I can imagine that from his special place among the ancestors, he is chuckling. When at gatherings and events at our museum, I address the diverse folks who are there as my fellow Africans. I then say this to our visitors who are different races, genders, sexual orientations, ages, classes, religions, nationalities, abilities and disabilities. I say this, if you go back far enough in time, each of you, indeed all of us, are Africans. For it is the continent of Africa that is the birthplace of humanity. I can imagine Brother Chinua breaking out into laughter when I go on to say that the sooner white folks admit that they are Africans, the better the world is going to be. My fellow Africans who are assembled to pay tribute to Professor Chinua Achebe and the celebrated and iconic lectured he delivered four decades ago. You have my best wishes for a spirited and significant symposium. One of the things that happens when people in different places write for the same program often happens is they duplicate each other. In the instance that any one of us today or this week repeats anything about the great man Chinua, it's a benefit. So I want to say in introducing the next member of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of African American Studies, I want to say that in all the years that I have known him, he has never, ever, ever disrespected black people. Not jokingly, not with any way will Mike ever, ever, ever brook anybody's disrespect of black people. In any ways he and Chinua were soul brothers in that respect. I know that Chinua really and deeply admired Michael and the work that he did for the department and that he celebrated it. You will hear I'm sure when Michael comes to the podium how he felt about Chinua. But I say to you that the feelings were mutual. Chinua's praised name for Michael is special. He who does what he says he will. As one of the people who came to this campus with him. I think perhaps I've known him longest. We came in 1965. He and I both had been recruited to the campus. By way of, well, Sidney Kaplan recruited us at the instigation of Sterling Brown. He had come from doing political work. He had, as you all know, been a key person in getting some ill-gotten senators unceded. Congress people unceded in the Mississippi Congressional thing. He came here. I don't know why he came here. But he says he came here because he thought it was time for him to come. And we didn't ever question that. But we think that there were people in Mississippi, certainly in the white population. And in the whole civil rights movement all the white people were pretty happy that he got out of Washington, D.C. And it was our, our great, great, our great, great and important space that he came to us. Mike immediately joined with those four other men that I talked to you about today and did with them in bringing to this campus black students and Sid. And then Mike alone worked to produce the plan and the document that would lead us to forming the Afro-American Studies Department. He really does what he says he's going to do. Join me in welcoming him. Good afternoon. Given the shortness of time and my immense good fortune, bad fortune, I thought I lived a fairly principled and upright life. But obviously for my sins I have to appear after Professor Klingman, sister Terry and sister Cole. That leaves me very little to say. But I will do what I have been asked to do. First of all, let me clear the air. I think in circles of commerce they have something they call fullest closure. I'm discussing the CHAB, therefore it's important that I tell you and of course in my life I've met some extraordinary people, some admirable people. They're extraordinarily effective people. Malcolm X, for example, Ms. Finan Lujema. Dr. Martin Luther King, whom I have every reason to be grateful to personally for something he did. The great James Baldwin, whom I really admire. Bishop Paul Moore, Piscopal Bishop of First Washington and then New York. An extraordinary human being and a great American. So I've met people whom I truly admire. I'm called Meheeth, the classical actor, black. But I've only met one person in my entire life whom I revere. And that is Ike Jemba, Chinmoy Chibi. And I think by the time I'm finished maybe you'll have some sense that the reverence actually for this man is not misplaced nor sentimental but based on very high realities. And the other thing I have to say before I get on is I want to acknowledge rather Roland Abiodin. In my remarks I'll be talking about aspects of rather Chibi's work which continues to resonate and be effective in the world and always invariably in the interest of his people. And in this room today, if there's anybody who works in that tradition, most effectively, and there are people who do, but rather Abiodin has just published a book on African art criticism. A lengthy, careful, brilliantly argued book saying that what passes for art criticism in a contemporary world, and that bears very much on the subject of Chinmoy's lecture, is almost totally worthless. The vocabulary is rooted in Europe. The concepts are rooted in Europe. And that European art historians cannot approach African art from that perspective within a productive result. And that the art has to be looked at in the context of its own languages, in the context of its own culture, in the context of its own meaning. And he demonstrates that very brilliantly and effectively, so much so that there's been a response to the book, people, the claim in it. But his thesis which he convinces is that African art, no, that the criticism of African art is far, far inferior to the art itself. And for that, rather, Roland, I know Ike Jemba would be proud of you, and I salute and thank you. I spent mostly the last few moments rejecting pages of this discussion I was planning to have with you, because time will not permit it, and a lot of it has been said. We had planned to start out with the lecture itself. The lecture that brings us here. And I'll just read a couple of pages. Less than a hundred yards from here, directly across the quadrangle, there's a building called Memorial Hall. So-called because it is dedicated to the memory of alumni of this school who gave their lives in the nation's wars. Forty years ago on a cold February evening, a member of our faculty accepted the Chancellor's Medal for Distinguished Professors by delivering a lecture in Memorial Hall. With that lecture, image of Africa, Chinua Chibi, to borrow a suitably military metaphor from the nation's history, fired a shot heard around the world. In Memorial Hall, what could be more appropriate? Well, now, heard perhaps it's not around the whole wide world, then at least across this academic subcontinent. And again, maybe not even in the entirety of that territory, but merely in an area of its literary provinces. Those exotic provinces of the humanities, which are these days referred to by its practitioners as quotes post-colonial studies. A truly uninspired appellation, but never mind. But in those regions it certainly was heard, continued to be heard, created quite a few and had lasting effects. Now I want to spend a few minutes talking about the craft of the lecture because that was typical of Chibi's approach. He never was strident. He never was that dyctic. He never was ideological. But he always instructed and elevated the discourse. Let's consider the landmark and in Professor Klingsman's words a remarkable moment in literary criticism and in broader cultural assessment. And he went on to say, a challenge in the framework in which ours would be judged, a challenge in the terms in which the discussion of Africa would be sustained. Now those are four very massive accomplishments for a single piece. But for a single piece of literary criticism it becomes very strange. Combining those elements would be a formidable undertaking for any single essay and certainly beyond the reach and province of literary criticism, as that is now understood. And that is also a subtext of what we have to talk about. The state of the literature and the discourse now, as opposed to the time of what Chinua made us address. The lecture began very casually, conversationally even, with what at first appeared a couple of random and admittedly, Chinua's words, very trivial encounters. One, a chance conversation with a mature man on this campus. The other, a letter from a New Jersey schoolboy, both giving different perceptions of Africa. Very random, very chance. From which the brother proposed to draw rather heavy conclusions, his words. Exactly as though he were saying to the audience, only permit me to begin with the trivial and I will usher you very directly into profundity. Which of course is exactly what he proceeds to do. Because there really had been nothing either random or careless in the selection of those encounters. As he proceeded to make clear in a tone all the more effective by virtue of his quiet and reasoned calmness. Having, if there is something in these utterances from the man and the boy, more than useful inexperience or more than a lack of factual knowledge, what is it? Quite simply, it is desire. One might say the need in Western psychology to set up Africa as a foil to Europe, a place of negation at once remote and vaguely familiar in comparison. And then having set up a larger concern, he focuses on a major sacred call in the exalted passages of Western literature. As a novelist he says, I can respond to this. To one famous book of European fiction which better than any work I know displays that Western desire and need of which I have just spoken. So he haunts it on a book. It becomes a work of literary criticism. But it actually becomes, as you will see, a whole cultural discourse. I'm not going to go into this part of my remarks in any great detail because by the, and I've become accustomed to that, generosity and kindness of Dr. Christy Achiever. The estate has made copies which have been bound in a memorial issue by the mass review, which will be available to the audience. So you, and I would urge you to go back and look at how this thing was accomplished. And he says, the desire and need, the Western desire and need of which I have just spoken. Heart of darkness projects an image of Africa as in Conrad's word, the other world. The antithesis of Europe, therefore of civilization. A place where man's wanted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by a triumphant bestiality. The book opens on the river Thames, tranquil, resting in Conrad's words, peacefully at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race at people's backs. Conrad's words, resting peacefully, tranquilly at the decline of day, after ages of good service. And here the Achievin-Sidonic wit becomes very evident. This is the first time the audience laughed. It's an audience of academics, because he goes on to say, but the actual story takes place on the river Congo. The very antithesis of the Thames. The river Congo is quite decidedly, not a river emeritus. It has rendered no service and enjoys no old age pension. We are told, Conrad's words, that traveling up the river was traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world. He then treated us to a very taboo tour of the forest of the kind of engaged, serious purposeful, disciplined and informed literary criticism, which reflects respect for the meaning and value of literature, which his work also reflects, and which no longer obtains in Western literary circles. I respect for the meaning and value of literature no longer obtains in Western literary circles, but that's not the subject of this talk. Deploying wit, intelligence, irony, ridicule, lengthy telling quotes, and a delightfully close reading, the essay marshals evidence from the novel's language and details to carefully document and expose Conrad's stylistic imbecilities, evasions by narrative strategy, terminal ignorance, and a vulgar racial bigotry. In effect, allowing the text to testify eloquently and at convincing length against itself and its author. It was a masterful display of the craft of criticism. One could see that the greater part of an audience, predominantly of literary or academic types, whether student or teacher, seemed to grow increasingly convinced, apparently against their expectations or inclinations. They're bemused, growingly more embarrassed expressions as they listen to the evidence of long, direct, Conradian quotes buttressed by the uncompromising elegance of Achieve's prose seem to say, oh my God, that's really so explicit. How could I possibly not have noticed that before? How could I have read over that? A smaller faction, however, mostly of older men, I don't need to say white, apparently less susceptible to conversion, seemed increasingly uncomfortable, teetering on the brink of outrage and finally having cause to express it only when the speaker made plain the summer of his argument that, and I quote, the point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Conrad was a bloody racist. Then the audience became animated. Esther was here, Jeanette was here, the black community was here, the black studies department, and we weren't at all surprised or even particularly animated. I mean Esther was with me, as was the Jean Terry, her husband, in Sid Kaplan's course, and Sid Kaplan was editor of the Master of the Year at the time, he was president at the time, and we had started Conrad and the racism was something we understood perfectly, we knew very well, we knew everything Tino was saying, and we weren't surprised. I mean, in fact, we knew first, well, it's not about Conrad anyway, but Conrad is a very curious case which seems to have recapitulated itself in British literary culture, and another exile who has turned, tried to graft himself onto the higher tradition of British literature as Conrad tried to do, an Eastern European immigrant, small, dark man, but every reference in his work has a kind of homoerotic adoration of Englishmen, blonde, blue-eyed Englishmen, and the descriptions are all physical. Go back and look at Conrad and compare those to his description of the big black buck he saw in Haiti that has haunted his imagination ever since. So Conrad wasn't the issue. But that was neither the major point nor intention, though I doubt that this faction, the one that has been agitated, the one who in fact said, I dare you, how dare you, to brother Achévy, was in either sense mollified when Osweco honed in on his larger concern, the serious value he attributed to literature and the framework in which art is to be judged. Genette ever, as I already quoted that, whether a novel which celebrates a dehumanization, which we personalize a portion of human race can be called a great work of art. No, and he says, I would not call that man an artist who composes an eloquent instigation to want people to fall upon and destroy them. No matter how striking his imagery or how beautiful his cadence is for, such a man is no more a great artist than another maybe called a priest who reads the mass backwards or a physician who poisons his patience. Now that statement is very important because it is a discussion of literature as vocation. Literature has been purposeful, has been meaningful, and the effectiveness of which and the value of which should not be compromised, trifled with or commodified. So what was really under indictment was not one writer, however offensive, but an entire European tradition, a pattern and a practice of widespread cultural ignorance and arrogance manifesting itself as racial hostility towards old people and to which writers like Conrad had shamelessly handed a circumstance given rise to and deforming almost a century of what was called colonial literature. Hence this was an indictment of the Western literary establishment as much as of a single novelist or novel. That this was clearly recognized by the more recognized elements of this alleged intelligentsia is evidenced by the outpouring of theoretically convoluted, densely obscurantist denial come defense of the novel of Conrad and by extension of themselves which greeted the SS publication. But as you heard, that was one portion. The other portion was obviously influenced, was converted and tried to change the ways. And after much of that talk I believe it was a novelist who had been my director, my thesis director and my academic advisor when I was a graduate student and myself, we almost came to blows. Fisticuffs, we had to be separated. But this was afterwards in the reception and some alcohol had been consumed. And if you want, if I have time, let's say what triggered that. But all of this was exactly 40 years ago in an age in which the pace of technology propelled change seems beyond human control with the degradation of the planet's environment, the extinction of ancient cultures and their languages and in which seven years becomes a generation then 40 years must be a century. And in the 40 years since that speech the Soviet Union has disappeared, the Berlin Wall is crumbled, white South African apartheid overthrown, capitalism has become global, the internet unleashed on the world and the American presidency captured by Negroes. One might cautiously venture to suggest that the world might have changed somewhat. However, so far as the literary discourse between the West and the rest of us is concerned what was the essay's relevance and consequence to then and now what are its implications now. I'm more than content to leave that last question of its implications now to succeed in speakers. But precisely because the pace of change and an attendant loss of historical memory is so pervasive today it might be useful to recognize the human and historical context of this essay. At first glance a lecture on a 19th century quasi-British author to a mostly white academic audience at the State University in a remote western province of Massachusetts might well appear something of an intellectual detour for an intellectual and geographic detour for a committed, serious African author. But in fact given a subject and reach and effect as I've been discussing it is entirely consistent with an organic to achieve a sense of mission, purpose and responsibility as an African writer which is what has earned our brother's work and its author the widespread international acceptance and the fervent political affection and respect they command across the black world. The reason for this essay is once historical, political and cultural going simply beyond excellence of craft and literary innovation to life experiences and fundamental moral and political rectitude and commitments of life. How much time do I have bro? 10 minutes? All right. I will tell you what I was gonna say and then on a point of personal privilege and contribute to the fact that I am all and in African cultures you don't mess with an elder. There is a section which I will insist on reading. Long eloquent passage about Shinro Chihiro's background when he was born into a traditional Africa whose native institutions were under increased pressure and growing control from an aggressive western penetration. He grew up at the final stages of colonialism. Okay. No, I'm telling you what to say. What I say was how he came into young manhood at the time of independence the challenge, the excitement, the uncertainty of that and his profound commitments and his commitments are in layers coming from the center out and I think I will read that. Our brother and I never called him my friend that would have been presumptuous but I was presumptuous enough to call him my brother of the spirit. Our brother was at his, my senior brother of the spirit. Our brother was at his core and evil mind with an undying love for his people and a profound understanding, subtle and profound understanding and respect for their culture. That's number one. After that he was a patriot and a nationalist with very high hopes and a deep commitment to serve in the new nation and to see it succeed and create a new presence in the world neither east nor west using what was available and retrievable from the traditions of African wisdom in the past the new technology, the best of the east the best of the west and creating a modern African civilization that would make everybody in the diaspora and the continent proud and after that he was a pan-Africanist with a profound interest and concern to the interest and faith of the continent and the people there and after that he was a pan-Africanist and a man with intense interest in the diaspora his people all around the world and those prevailing interests and commitments of what informed all his work then I went into a discussion of his selection and that is the context in which he decided to be a writer you can still hear me right? That is the context in which he decided to be a writer because writing was a vocation of great seriousness African needed a literature he said we had to create a body of literature to counter veil the misuse of our cultures our identity and presence in the world in the tradition of Europe and that is an important part of nation building so everything he did including this lecture was a part of that seamless organic whole of his commitments and then we spent a long time talking because of his love of his cultures people as he put it very succinctly one time our ancestors didn't discover culture because some white man came and told them and he wanted to retrieve the beauty, the complexity, the poetry the density and the moral sternness of that culture which is what of course he did in his first novel and which he expanded in Arethub Guy these are classical fundamental books for anybody interested in the presence and meaning not just of the evil people but of black people in the world and he did that without models and I went into a long discussion of which language the book could be in how could the English language be made to represent evil culture to invent the modern African novel now we'll have to go into all things follow pathos born in duality same cultural conflict that was a subject the coming of European Christianity but the two innovations is all I talk about here the difference with this book this is a book which fills the literature in the journals of missionaries district commissioners the coming of Christianity except this time the perspective is African and the culture itself which is the secret of the greatest of that book which nobody understands the critic that is that complex, the culture, evil culture that complex, rich, layered and poetic evil culture is the real protagonist of the novel this open section I'd rather roll and met it was the culture that was being presented to us and that is the first major strategic breakthrough and innovation a dramatic innovation which largely accounts for the popular appeal and lasting power of the novel because when the Europeans arrive my students are incensed because they have become so accustomed to and so so intelligent in the culture the next innovation is a narrative voice of the novel and the language the narrative voice because he's writing this book because in his literature class in the university that brought in a book and told him it was an African novel which was a Konorian novel Mr. Johnson absurd and offensive and when the African students said that is not us, that doesn't represent us as a faculty member said well if you don't like it write your own and Chino said okay but there are no models for the kind of book with the respect for the culture that were presented the way he wants to present it and in what language he decides on a narrative voice which has the style the cadences, images and references of a traditional Ebo elder storyteller who of course can only speak formal Ebo as do all the other characters so we get in the book the cultural sensibility, rhythms image, poetic, richness and feel of an African language being beautifully rendered in an English vocabulary that's how he solved the problem of what language the book could take place in this is our introduction to the literary language which he has invented and created and English as he put it able to carry this full African burden while remaining in full communion with an ancestral home and that voice evocative of the tale teller the oral historian which opens the novel and as soon as I read that first chapter and you had come to about my first African novel we thought this is an African voice as a young man of V18 he had brought honor to his village he had thrown an land to the cat and this is in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged the spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights the drums beat and the flute sang and at that point we have smoothly conducted into a world where God's ancestors and mine dance their primal dance and stately step where the bonds of tradition can be very cruel but through a social order and moral balance are maintained by elaborate and circular protocols of law, custom and ritual articulated by the ancestor alright what I really wanted to do though was that is the background that is the commitment that is the mission which this extraordinary man set and kept his whole life there would have been great disappointments in the experience of independence to morally incompetent brutal superpowers vying for his German in the world with great surrogate war across the continent and now recapitulate the forces failures of leadership the great investment in global capitalism of a rapacious kind of superficial cultural greed across much of the nation all of which grieve them severe personal problems distressing tragic accident so forth so the life was buffeted his ambitions for his nation his ambitions for his people his ambitions for his culture were buffeted but history finished this is just the first 50 years we will see what will happen the vision that he had but he continued with the aid and only because of the aid and support of his wife Dr. Christy H. Hebe after the accident to continue to struggle for the next 50 years that also is noble and very humbling because there are some young African writers here I really think they're doing important for me to discuss this thing what I will it's about the Nobel Prize and it's about African prizes and its effect on African literature because I came here shaking by an absolute disaster this morning because I see at the Jamaican so called author has gotten the Booker Prize which is just further evidence of the absolute debasement of intelligence and judgement which has taken over the literary establishment this will probably take me 15 minutes thank you sir you're one of the just of the world one of the things what you even did was to set up the African writer series I've been reading through it it's on even there are three almost 400 books before it got suspended but some of these books have bona fide classics in any language or culture and a great many of them were clearly influenced by the example of trying to create a literary idiom and language to discuss African realities I'm not sure if the current state of the literature pays homage and tries to continue to affect that but the last driven as much by quotes market forces as fickle literary fashion most of these invaluable books quite a few of them classics by any measure have been allowed to follow to print the best of them and the best are very good indeed must be kept accessible or cultures the cultures of the world are impoverished young writers of Africa especially are grievously deprived by their avoidable early elimination it has been mentioned the African novel came onto the scene already in combat with history's ironies not the least among them was that remains a tension between the frequent conflict and impulses from the two sides of his experience the African the European this tension surfaced as early as at the first conference of African writers in Dakar Senegal where I believe Achieveee was very much present would have been it was an extraordinary historical moment writers from all corners of the continent some highly cosmopolitan and Western in education others literate more so in the indigenous traditions of their cultures some representing newly are soon to be independent states others from liberation movements in territories still on the brutal occupation assembled for the first time and you see that before even independence is affected there is some sense that literature and writing is an important part of that whole historical and cultural struggle the conference engages this range of infinitely complex questions regarding the role and meaning of writers literature and even culture itself in the context of the continent's historical circumstance as we shall see many of these questions remain contentious to this day but at first generation in the hopeful flush of liberation as they as they as the situation out of which Achieveee this young man who had emerged stimulated by a consortium of very prestigious French publishers achieved a remarkable clarity at least on one important issue the consortium acting one is persuaded out of a high purpose and the recognition of accomplishment as well as potential unveil their proposal they were prepared to establish a prestigious prize to be awarded at regular intervals perhaps not as often as annually to a deserving and representative work of African literature the award would can be wide recognition a substantial endowment and prominent publication in Europe by one of the participant companies all in all a most seductive offer and well-intentioned effort to encourage and project the nascent literature it was on this initiative that the conference reached the first as it came to clarity a polite and sincere thanks with no thanks however well men such initiative seemed or men such an initiative it seemed fraught with danger perhaps unanticipated to the natural development healthy independence and integrity of the infant whose growth it was meant to stimulate might it indeed would it inevitably mean the universal law of money and fame being what they are that European models tastes and critical opinions would be institutionalized in such a manner as to influence if not control the direction form and content of African literature we fully appreciate the gesture the conference said in effect for generations we have benefited from your tutelage but now leave us please to find our own way even should we stumble that's what our ancestors said jump ahead now time has not eroded those variations of opinion when it comes to western literary icons such as the Nobel Prize vibrant and boisterous as ever as happened in October 1986 20 years after Dakar when the Swedish Academy bestowed the prize on the Nigerian man of letters William Schoenke not by any means an outrageous choice playwright, poet, novelist and essayist Schoenke was also vocal human rights activist highly visible somewhat flamboyant and controversial presence in the political and cultural life of the nation during the civil war he had been jailed he had been embraced by Amnesty International and had become a cause she lived in European literary circles the announcement was a matter of my surprise to most westerners remember the man General Met didn't know that Africa had a literature get copies of that essay and look at it whose perceptions of Africa to the extent they had any centered vaguely around not literature but disaster having been conditioned by images of great apes, Tarzan cannibals, missionaries and stupads before evolving to military crews dictators, failed states, terrorism, refugees, wars and famine all right to the Nigerian public it was a tribute not only to African literature but to a fully deserved honor to the Nigerian nation itself the laureate was given a hero's welcome and decorated high national honors a spirit of national celebration ensued the official media great band both with talks of the prize at the meeting of the association of Nigerian authors and experts the presidents declared ex-officio that we rejoice we will the shoyinka on his magnificent achievement a lot has been written and said about it I no doubt more will be said for me what matters is that after the oriki the prayer songs and the celebrations we should say to ourselves one of us has proven that we can beat the white man at his own game operative word there his own game but now we must turn away and play our own game in Dakar there have been word that the european taste and styles would influence the development of african literature remember though that those european tastes and styles and perceptions that had produced Conrad now african literature now african literature going to recapitulate those kinds of slanders of our heritage our people and our cultures that's the issue the underlying measure okay we should say to ourselves one of us has proven that we can beat the white man at his own game and for the white man and that is good for us and for the white man but now we must turn away and play our own game organization african literature setting a place where people can study write, produce and publish literature if independence had gone better young african writers wouldn't have to come to this country to go to creative rights in schools to be taught by people whose understanding of africa our expectation of literature is very questionable they would be doing it in africa but anyway I'm trying to save time in most emergent societies the self-definition still has urgency literature has certainly not achieved its fullest development has still informed the revolution but it neither taken for granted nor been marginalized and can play a role and the very as I say this works do the very least fierce debate on the form, meaning, values audience and appropriate languages of literature commands public attention that of course was 50 years ago powerful loyalties often occurring in what professor Berns Lindfels had accurately called an engaged irreverent idiom in the 9th year of the 70s such a lively debate had erupted consequence of a bristly polemical volume entitled the decolonization of african literature by a tribe of critics Chinwezu, Jami, and Madubuke subsequently known as the balikajah boys balikajah is a street term of challenge used by mammy wagon conductors competing with or for passengers in the dog eat dog commerce of popular transportation this best translation will be jump down and fight not an inappropriate description of the style and posture of the critics their bluntly stated argument was that certain annoying and destructive tendencies among prominent Nigerian writers represented by a reason of their slavish recapitulation of certain avant-garde European fashions quotes and crustaceans of the colonial mentality and their stylistic eccentricity and experimentation for its own sake they're indulging in a quote self-seblevritory mystification in euromodernist obscurantism brainwashed they were kind of mentally brainwashed colonials cringing before alien literary gods their quotes advanced modernist literary pretensions notwithstanding and these critics had done fight as chief scientist this was many years a couple years before the price business a big argument started and it became very clear to people I want to start talking about the literature addressed to Africans using the resources of their own culture and accessible and understandable that the model that these critics had in mind was achieving people that he was cultivating and who had started to write in that way but although a chibi adhering perhaps to the proverbial wisdom that the eagle who flies too low will be mistaken for a crow remained above the fray it was why I assume that his achievement an example was the inspiration for the critical eccentric the number of ironies and the most fundamental Weshayinka Nigeria's most prominent playwright and a chibi and most prominent novice as spiritual allies both share a sophisticated awareness and inheritance represented by the mythic imagination and stylistic resources of a traditional culture can and should be transmuted into a modern literature and they have pioneered in this after that there is difference in styles and so forth I won't go into the details of that they are copies by the way of the original Weshayinka which might be available to anybody which is available to anybody who is interested outside then it becomes interesting because in 1965 the Nigerian papers are filled with stories that Weshayinka is on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize and then he doesn't get it some Nobel Romance Obscurantist avant-garde French writer gets it who nobody ever heard about the outrage and disappointment in the Nigerian media with a spark of leisure pride and joy would be the next year but in 1985 the Swedish Academy was in the Nigerian press Eurocentric, parochial, chauvinist racist this was not merely a rejection of Weshayinka but an insult to African literature and Africa itself then Shin Weizu whom I really like and who are attacked with Weshayinka as an obscurantist joins the debate in a very surprising way in my view as I already explained the Nobel Prize and Shoyinka surprising everyone by admitting a certain disappointment at the non-selection of his adversary in my view the Nobel Prize and Shoyinka's works fully deserve each other an excellent case of the undesirable honoring the unreadable nor was he bashful about his reasons denouncing the Nobel's role as a bewitching instrument of your imperialist intellectual hegemony that's phrase and a conceit that a gaggle a gaggle of Swedes all by themselves should pronounce on the intellectual excellence for the diverse cultures of the whole world he went on to advise Shoyinka to become even more difficult, unreadable and obscure since in this case the competition the French novel Roman had clearly so obscured it so they left it there Shoyinka doesn't get the prize just yet they're very interested in development and I just want a couple minutes to talk about this happens the outrage not just in Nigeria across Africa calling the prize racist obviously affected the Swedes because then invitation started to arrive in Africa inviting African writers to come to a conference in Stockholm to discuss the future of the literature that just seemed to be an invitation you can refuse and a great many African writers went but a good number of African writers responded to the invitation come to Stockholm to discuss the future of the literature but the president of the Nigerian authors association whom you remember was not among them he didn't ignore it but he was at pains to explain his reasons with his usual courtesy tact and clarity here's what he said and I want you to bear in mind that in sending this letter to the Nigerian committee I mean to the Swedish committee he knew what effect it would have in terms of his being considered he was genuinely appreciative of your interest in African literature a manful fully appreciative of the principal political support of the Swedish government and people for African interest over the years however there are certain fears for which Africa itself should take responsibility the future of its literature while the situation was not at all identical a gathering of African writers in a European capital for discussions of the state and future of African literature was a trifle to reminiscent of the independence conferences in European capitals to which African leaders were summoned to define Africa's political future however he wished the gathering ever success and in his clarity of principle he was absolutely right I cannot recall any gathering of Scandinavian writers in the Lagos, Nairobi or Acre for the purpose of discussing the future of Nordic literature when one remembers achieving his example and presence in the development of the African novel and that he himself had been frequently nominated for that prize his principal discipline and forbearance appear all the more exemplary especially so because of the seriousness of purpose he holds towards his culture and its literature he is fully aware how much an award from the nobles would ironically observe to enhance not his ego but the effectiveness with which to pursue that mission in Africa he once told me brother you know that no tiger is merely an honorific in Africa not all African writers thought that many of them went including the future laureate they went to Sweden to discuss the future of African literature Chinwezu however did not go but now did he wish it well as Achieve had done he made his presence felt in Stockholm by a document which was widely circulated and discussed at the conference and it could not please the host to read this conclusion now by that time the Swedish committee knows that Chinwezu has talked very fusively about Achieve's work they see that Achieve has not come to their conference and so they would invariably read Chinwezu's document as representing Chinwezu and I would suspect that Chinwezu might have discussed it with Chinwezu before he sent it its conclusion Africa does not lead the cultural disorientation and subservience which western prizes promote by its origins and operations even the most globally prestigious of these prizes the Nobel is a local European prize and should go back to being just as that if it wishes to become an international prize the international prize it aspires to it should stop lending itself to hegemonic uses its terms of reference selection procedures and this award committees should then all be internationalized as another phrase where he says and if they refuse to do that they should go back to their appropriate state of European minitude and that Achieve's posture is implicit in that and he is disdain for that kind of false honorific and his sense that literature is too important the national literature is too important to be entrusted to the definition and case and impulses of foreigners and that had independence gone in the way that he had envisioned prayed, hoped and worked for they would have a flourishing publishing industry and they would have areas where generations of African writers could develop in that way now people will argue that literature is now global and people should come out in the age of the internet which Professor Klingman referred to but the question I think those are important questions that I wanted to raise I'm hoping that they'll become an ongoing theme issue discussion in this conference and I thank you for your patience and the timbre, I'm very grateful