 So good afternoon, my name is Stephen Klingman. I'm a professor in the English department and director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute, which is hosting this symposium. We're delighted to welcome our distinguished guests and all of you here today. Thank you for coming. We're especially thrilled to have members of the Achebe family with us. We regret that Mrs. Christia Achebe could not be with us, but we're delighted to welcome Dr. Chidi Achebe, Chinalo Achebe, and their families. We also welcome guests from distant places, the Chancellor and Provost of UMass, and of course our colleagues, students, and members of the public. I'll have more to say in a few moments, but first to open the symposium, I'm honored to call on our esteemed Chancellor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Kumbhle R. Subbaswamy. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome to 40 years after Chinalo Achebe and Africa in the Global Imagination. It's inspiring to see all of you here today as we explore the continuing legacy of Chinalo Achebe. I thank you for joining us. I would like to offer an especially warm, really warm welcome to our distinguished visitors, including members of the Achebe family. It is an honor to have you here. The catalyst for this symposium is the 40th anniversary of Chinalo Achebe's celebrated lecture, an image of Africa, racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which he delivered in 1975 on this campus. In considering the significance of this lecture and Achebe's entire legacy, I am proud to be a member of this university community, and I thank all of you who, over the years, created a climate in which diverse intellectual exploration could occur on this campus, allowing for breakthroughs in creativity and scholarship. And I'd really like to offer a huge round of applause for all of those who made it possible here. Chinalo Achebe came to UMass in the early 70s as an exile in the wake of the Biafran War. He was hosted by the Afro-American and English departments here, a sign of the many collegial, collaborative, and interdisciplinary links that continue on this campus today. Chinalo Achebe joined others who also came to this campus seeking an environment defined by the freedom to express and create. At UMass Amherst, he found friendship, collaboration, and community. In this supportive environment, he delivered his seminal lecture on Conrad's Heart of Darkness. And when editors of the Massachusetts Review published the lecture, his work became a crucial contribution to the post-colonial discussion of literature. Chinalo Achebe was one of the most distinguished members of our campus community to ever graze these grounds. When he sought the freedom to express and create, we were honored that he chose to come to UMass Amherst, and we were exceedingly proud to be associated with his significant legacy. Thank you again for joining us as we explore and celebrate the contributions and legacy of Chinalo Achebe. Thank you, Chancellor. I have to say right from the start that Chancellor Subhaswami has shown a kind of inimitable enthusiasm for this symposium and supported us right from the get-go. We're very grateful. It seemed to us as we planned this event that it needed something special to help initiate it, something that would set the right spirit in the African tradition. Indeed, even call on the right spirits. So we've asked our colleague from Professor Roland Abiodun, the renowned historian of African art, to provide an invocation. I should say right away that there is a kind of inter-ethnic dimension to this because Professor Abiodun is from Amherst College over there, and we, of course, are UMass. But aside from that, Professor Abiodun is Yoruba, and as everybody knows, Chinalo Achebe was Igbo. But when I spoke with Dr. Chidi Achebe about this, he assured me in no uncertain terms that having a respected elder of the community deliver the invocation was really far more important than ethnicity. And so here we are in the spirit of solidarity and openness, and there is no question that Professor Abiodun is a highly respected and distinguished elder in our community. So we thank him for providing this invocation, Roland. Well, let me start by thanking Stephen Plinkman and Michael Terwell, who drafted me into this. They're very good friends, but they are very persuasive, and I couldn't say no to them. Before the invocation, I'd like to thank my Igbo colleagues and friends, namely Professors Ubiora Udechuku, OK Indibe, Ben Oye, and my longtime friend Alban Anyaou from Umbi Sen in Oweri. They've provided me with some guidance and input as I was preparing for the traditional segment of this conference. It is almost for tutors that Chino Achebe actually give us hints as to how an Igbo invocation would have been done were we to be performing it in Igbo land. Listen to this very short passage from the opening chapter of his book, Things Fall Apart. One day, a neighbor called Okoe came in to see him, Onoka. He was reclining on a mudbed in his hut, playing on the flute. He immediately rose and shook hands with Okoe, who then unrolled the goat skin which he carried under his arm and sat down. Onoka went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden disk. Very much maybe better than this one I have here. And but it contained a collar knot, some alligator paper, and a lump of chalk. I have cola he announced when he sat down and passed the disk over to his guest. Thank you. He who brings cola brings life. But I think you ought to break it, replied Okoe, passing back the disk. No, it's for you, Onoka. You know, I say no, no, no, I think. Then they argued like this for a few moments before Onoka accepted the honor of breaking the cola. Okoe meanwhile took the lump of chalk, drew some lines on the floor, and then painted his big toe. As he broke the cola knot, Onoka prayed to their ancestors for life and health and for protection against their enemies. That is the end of that quotation. Very important translation. Achebe had laid down the proper procedure to welcome all our guests today. Fortunately, as I said, we have wooden disk, Ogoaji, which is here. We have some cola knot, Ojiibo, which is here. We have alligator paper, Ozeoji, which is here. And we have chalk, Ozeoji, which is also here. Now, all of these are indispensable for the ritual of this invocation. To end the invocation, when I end this invocation, I will give a cola knot to each of our honored guests to take home. This cola knot then will become Oji Moon, which is the metaphorical agent of the storyteller in Igbo culture. We pray that the cola knot we are bringing today will bring life and health. Is that right? We pray that the alligator paper pod is always filled. We know it's always filled with paper seats, that is, it's offspring. So may this intellectual community be filled with the great ideas that Chinua Chibi has provided. He said, we acknowledge the presence of and pay our respects to Chinua Chibi and all the ancestors who have paved the way for this conference. He said, to acknowledge them is not only true wisdom but insurance against catastrophe. Whenever the earthworm pays homage to the dry and solid earth, the earth opens its doors to the boneless earthworm. The masquerade never skips its annual performance. Each spring, plants produce new birds. Annually, the water yam plant renews its leaves. The okra plant produces no less than 20 fruits. The African mahogany 30. May all the participants of this conference be similarly blessed, he said. So my duty is over. And when we finish, all our invited guests are invited to take one kola nut with them. And I want you to know that these kola nuts have four loaves, that is, the kottilidons are four, which actually has a reference to the four market days in Ibuland. And it is not five, because once it becomes five, it becomes, it can be used for divination, which is by Onyedibia, the people. If it is three, it means it is that strength, just like you have the earth, the three stones of cooking. Now, so when you get home, you can take this home and tell them what you have seen and what you have heard. Thank you very much. Thank you, Roland. Well, we have no excuse, no exception to have a very good time here. So I'd like to say a few words to set the context and frame for this symposium, and also very important to thank numbers of people without whom it would not have taken place. First, the context and frame. It was on 18th of February, 1975, on this very campus. Today I learned in the campus-centered auditorium. The Tua Chebe regarded now, then as now, as the father of African literature, presented a chancellor's lecture entitled An Image of Africa, Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It was one of those rare moments which changed the nature and shape of literary criticism, and it was also a rare moment in which literary criticism changed the shape and perception of the world. Of course, it was always Tua Chebe's gift to do this, to conjoin spheres of discourse, to shift perceptions, to change the nature of what it was not only possible, but necessary to say. He had done so in his fiction, and here he was doing it in his social, cultural, and literary commentary. The lecture had an instant impact, and I mean that quite literally. Some in the hall were shocked and horrified. One colleague, I use the word loosely, reportedly walked up to Tua Chebe and said, how dare you? But others were exhilarated. This was a different voice indeed, someone speaking truth to power in a new way. The Massachusetts Review published the essay, and the rest, as they say, was history. Now you can barely find any commentary on Heart of Darkness which does not feature Tua Chebe's challenge. Much of the voluminous Norton edition of Conrad's novel revolves around it, and the perspectives it introduced. When Tua Chebe gave his lecture, to say the least, he was taking on one of the uncontested grates of English literature. It would have taken some courage to do so. Tua Chebe was nothing if not courageous, nothing if not forthright. He was someone who permitted no gap between what he thought and what he did. Usually what he did was elegant, graced with humor and inimitable insight. That was true of his lecture as well, though in keeping with his central charge, there was perhaps a little less humor than usual, and what there was of it was mostly sardonic. Tua Chebe was saying what he urgently felt needed to be said. If there was courage, there was also outrage. Yet strangely on a day like today, I want to suggest with all respect that it is quite possible to disagree with Tua Chebe on occasion, or not to agree with him wholly. It is entirely in Tua Chebe's own spirit, I think, to say that there are many stories in the world and many ways of seeing it. Yet no matter where one stands on the case he made that day 40 years ago, to me one fact that underlies it is striking and indisputable. And that is, it is quite remarkable that Tua Chebe had to be the first to make the case that he did. That until then, among the untold numbers of mostly Western readers of Heart of Darkness, since it was first published in 1898, the whole question of racial representation and the image of Africa it encoded was part of a collective unconscious, uninspected, unreguarded, uncared for. Tua Chebe raised it to the consciousness and conscience of the world. After him, the question could not be avoided. He had changed the framework in which works of art would be regarded and in which the discussion of Africa would be sustained. That in itself was an act of enormous and lasting significance. From 1898 to 1975, it took quite a while. Our aim in hosting this symposium is to honor and to revere, but not to turn Tua Chebe into a monument. Monuments do not breathe, but a Chebe's legacy is a living one and living legacies continue to shift and provoke. How does a Chebe's legacy provoke us now? As we say in our program notes, our aim in hosting the symposium is twofold. To commemorate Tua Chebe's lecture, but also to bring the discussion into the present by reconsidering the shape of things now in terms of the issues that he raised. When Tua Chebe was at UMass, he was one of a relatively small number of African writers in the US, certainly the most authoritative. Now we have a new generation of writers and thinkers, female as well as male, who have their own perspectives and are reimagining the shape of the planet. 40 years ago, the question was how the Western world saw Africa. Now it is also how Africa sees the rest of the world. We live in a globalized environment in which images, perceptions, allegations and defenses fly around the ether in the blink of an eye. How is that eye? Well, how are those eyes seeing? How are we doing now? That is part of the quest of this symposium to find out. As we say in the program, no doubt the question of humanity lies at the heart of it, how the human has been defined, who defines it, how we might still define it. What is the role of literature and of writers and thinkers? In taking on these questions, we want to underline our appreciation for Tua Chebe and the extraordinary part he played as both writer and person. And we want to do so by taking his challenge seriously in our present times. We believe that one of the best ways we can pay tribute to him is by continuing the discussion he initiated. We don't expect complete agreement among our speakers. We don't even want it. If we're truly to follow in Achebe's footsteps, we must have his kind of courage to have the kind of debate of which we hope he would have approved. And so we want to hear voices, lots of voices, the kinds of voices that Chinua Chebe himself enabled, the voices we have among our speakers and panelists here. So that's what we want to achieve over these two days. We hope everyone here, audience as well as speakers, will be part of a collective undertaking, a journey that will take us in directions perhaps unforeseen. If this gathering can have even one small aorta of the significance of the lecture which it commemorates, that will be significance enough. On behalf of the Organizing Committee and of the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute, I extend our warmest welcomes to you all and wish all of us a wonderful and meaningful two days. Thank you very much. But I also need to say some thank yous. You know, to quote a proverb which Chinua Chebe made very well known. When a man says yes, his chi, his personal God says yes also. Many people have said yes to the symposium and we need to acknowledge them here. So first of all, I'd like to mention people who've funded very important things and people to whom we're very grateful, not least the Chancellor, the Chancellor's Office which provided major funding for this symposium. Also the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute. Quite a list, so bear with me. The Office of International Relations in the University of Massachusetts System, College of Humanities and Fine Arts, the Five College Lecture Fund, the Department of History, the WEB Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, Commonwealth Honors College, the Department of English, the Department of Economics, the MFA Program for Poets and Writers, the Department of Anthropology. Also the Black Studies Department at Amherst College, the History Department at Amherst College, the Creative Writing Center at Amherst College, the Department of History at Mount Holyock College, the Department of English at Mount Holyock College, the Department of Africana Studies at Mount Holyock College, the Department of English Language and Literature at Smith College, the Five College African Studies Council and the African Studies Review. And we ourselves at the ISI are funded by the provost and by the deans of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts and of Social and Behavioral Sciences and of Natural Sciences. So this is a truly, you know, polyglic community, polydisciplinary community we've assembled here in various ways. I also have to say a particular thanks to certain individuals. First of all, my heartfelt thanks to my co-organizers on our planning group for 40 years after. Joy Bowman, Chair of the History Department. Sabina Murray from the MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Brick Russett from Afro-American Studies. And Ekwemet Michael Falwell, Professor Emeritus in Afro-American Studies. We've worked incredibly hard but we've had an incredibly good time. So thank you all. I also want to make special acknowledgement to my two assistants at the Institute. Graduate students, Amanda War-Largey and Bata Fanova who are at the back of the room. I want to tell you, I want to just praise them to the skies. They have done extraordinary work. I couldn't be more grateful. And all of us owe them a real debt of gratitude. At the Office of University Relations and External Events, Rebecca Default and Kate DeSanto have been invaluable. Our ISI business manager, Maria Prescott has been wonderful for administrative liaison. We've worked with Natalie Blaise, Susan Pearson, Diane Vader. The graphic designer, very special mention, Moira Klingman, someone related to me. Our web designer, Stacey Reardon to members of the Achebe family in particular to Dr. Chidi Achebe with whom we communicated frequently and often in setting this up. And even congressional assistants, believe it or not, there are visas to see to. And so to Keith Barnacle in the District Office of Congressman James P. McGovern and to Congressman James P. McGovern himself, our thanks to you. And also to the members of the Board of the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute. I do want to say a symposium such as this has many, many moving parts, even though it runs over only two days. We've worked hard. We've done our best to think of as much as we could. But if anybody needs help, if anybody is from far away, if you feel left out, if you just want to have a conversation, please get in touch, please let us know what you need and we'll do what our best to cater to it. So for the rest, we'll move on now to our discussions. Welcome again, one and all. Thank you very much.