CULTURAL“SYNCRETICITY”: A POSTCOLONIAL ANALYSIS OF CHINUA ACHEBE’S NO LONGER AT EASE

Abstract

The present position paper explores cultural “syncreticity” (or cultural hybridity) in Chinua Achebe’s “No Longer At Ease” (1960). The researchers, in the Anglo-Nigerian sociocultural milieu, probes the fused personality traits of the protagonist (Obi Okonkwo) in the narrative. Obi oscillates between the overwhelming English colonialism and the Nigerian colonised culture, resulting in a hybrid identity, and consequently, passing through the interstitial socio-cultural events and experiences. He endeavours hard to assimilate the twin identities—the overbearing colonial character and the subdued colonised individuality— during which he undergoes an arduous state and status of “in-betweenness”. The allegiance he owes to the colonial masters, and the cultural adaptation in the Nigerian society leaves his character asunder, thus causing an ambivalent condition of alienated identity and cultural crisis. The current study invokes Bhabha’s theory of cultural hybridity, converging on his seminal work, “The Location of Culture” (1994), for analysing the culturally fused Obi and the circumstances coming into view thereafter. Cultural hybridity, in the existing context, comes under the broad rubric of postcolonial theory and practise. Methodologically, the narrative is probed into and unravelled through the interpretation of the momentous events, influencing the character traits of the protagonist, and their subsequent impact on the Ibo (the protagonist’s native tribe).