Reviews for Alternative careers for political scientists

The average rating for Alternative careers for political scientists based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-08-29 00:00:00 Geoffrey Reeser This was a great collection of essays from one of my favourite authors. I'm quite in awe by how Achebe managed to almost singlehandedly put African literature on the map and it’s clear he cares a lot about his culture, his continent, and fiction in general. If there’s anyone I would trust to succinctly point out what’s wrong with Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” it would be Achebe. Out of all the essays I read in this collection, his "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" was the most interesting, and had me saying "Yes!" more times than any other. "Heart of Darkness" had always bothered me, especially as so many people seem to like it. I admit I couldn't even finish it. What Achebe wrote about it sums up my feelings about the book: “And yet it is set in Africa and teems with Africans whose humanity is admitted in theory but promptly underminded by the mindlessness of its context and the pretty explicit animal imagery surrounding it.” But so many people say books like this aren't too be taken that seriously, they are just fiction. But the more I read the more I realize fiction isn't just fiction; it shapes our beliefs in so many ways. And when race is added to the mix, well... The other essays were just as thought-provoking and interesting. I got the sense that this is the sort of book that needs to be taught in school. Achebe is a fearless critic of colonialism, racism, and imperialism, and rightly so. But the book also focuses on his advocacy of literature. In particular I really enjoyed his look into African oral tradition, and his contrasts of African and European literature. He got me thinking about the fact that African oral stories do not belong to anyone once said out loud, it gives a different view of authorship for sure, especially contrasted with a book. Things like that I'd never really considered before, despite coming from that tradition,. This book was published in 1990 so a lot of things have changed since then. For one, America is now a lot more powerful and influential in Africa than Europe is, but still, I felt so many of the points in this book were still valid: “Many Europeans have made enormous contributions towards the understanding of Africa in Europe. Some of them have even helped us to see ourselves anew in the freshness of an itinerant perspective. But what we are talking about here is dialogue which requires two people and cannot be replaced by even the most brilliant monologue.” The last quote made me think about the present: I see the dialogue happening, especially online, and it's exciting to see these new voices entering the dialogue, unearthing stories that were hidden, ignored, or misunderstood. The empire is writing back, as they say, and it’s been powerful. I always forget how funny Achebe is, and then I read something like this: “How often do we hear people say, “Oh I don’t have the time to read novels,” implying that fiction is frivolous? They would generally add—lest you consider them illiterate—that they read histories or biographies, which they presume to be more appropriate to serious-minded adults. Such people are to be pitied; they are like a six-cylinder car which says: Oh, I can manage all right on three sparking-plugs, thank you very much. Well, it can manage somehow but it will sound like an asthmatic motorcycle!” It would have been interesting to see how Achebe would have responded to Ben Okri's Guardian piece (),

Review # 2 was written on 2019-09-13 00:00:00 Adam Patek An Image of Conrad The only Achebe work I have read is the essay that resulted from the lecture, "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'", which I read after reading Conrad's novel for at least the third time: I had read extracts from the essay and was aware of its general thrust before re-reading the novel. I was looking forward to discovering a new twist on a novel that I had loved as a secondary school student. An awareness of the debate therefore infiltrated my reading and review. Conrad's Heart of Darkness The sub-title of the essay implies that Achebe's purpose was to analyse the racism within the novel. To the extent that he did so, his analysis is relatively selective, impressionistic and scattershot. There is little attempt to understand what Conrad was actually saying at a textual level nor to appreciate the depth of the allegory that unfolded over the course of the novella. However, most importantly, Achebe wasn't content to analyse the subject-matter or prejudice of the novel or its characters. What took over from this exercise was the desire to launch a pseudo-academic character assassination of Conrad personally. The Shadowy Narrator Achebe is dismissive of the possibility that Conrad's personal views might be different from his characters: "It might be contended, of course, that the attitude to the African in 'Heart of Darkness' is not Conrad's but that of his fictional narrator, Marlow, and that far from endorsing it Conrad might indeed be holding it up to irony and criticism. "Certainly Conrad appears to go to considerable pains to set up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of his history. He has, for example, a narrator behind a narrator. The primary narrator is Marlow but his account is given to us through the filter of a second, shadowy person." Achebe doesn't make any effort to identify or assess the alleged sense of irony or criticism. Instead, he seems to undermine the entire project on the basis of a "shadowy" narratorial device. This seems to reflect a lack of understanding of or sympathy for metafiction. However, it relies for its power on the inference that the word "shadowy" is pejorative, just as the word "black" is supposed to be pejorative. The language of the essay dwells in the realm of gratuitous insinuation. Ranting in the Alternative Where I find the essay most lacking, and what effectively drags it down to the standard of an online rant, is that Achebe can't determine on what basis he wants to attack Conrad. So, he argues in the alternative. First, he asserts that "Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist....His obvious racism has...not been addressed. And it is high time it was!" What a clear statement of his polemical intent! Note that it is directed against the author personally, not the book or Marlow, although later Achebe opines that the novella is "an offensive and deplorable work". If Achebe is not right in this argument, then he has an alternative argument: "Marlow comes through to us not only as a witness of truth, but one holding those advanced and humane views appropriate to the English liberal tradition which required all Englishmen of decency to be deeply shocked by atrocities in Bulgaria or the Congo of King Leopold of the Belgians or wherever." Remember that it's Marlow's racism that is being imputed to Conrad personally. Yet Achebe goes on to accuse Marlow (and implicitly Conrad) of "[tossing out] bleeding-heart sentiments". Well, which is Marlow/Conrad? Racist or bleeding-heart liberal? Which is worse? Does it matter, if Achebe's goal was simply to pull Conrad off his pedestal and eviscerate him? Cultural Arrogance Achebe also criticises Conrad for the level of cultural superiority and condescension in the way whites relate to blacks in the novel. He argues that there is a determination not to accept blacks as equals. The condescension derives from the Western view of the superiority of its own civilisation and culture. However, Achebe seems to approach the issue from the perspective of whether, if Africans were integrated into Western society, they would be treated as equals. Clearly, historically, they were not, but that wasn't Conrad's fault. Africans Want for Nothing, Westerners Promise Only Nothingness As the novella progresses, there is an increasing sense that the Africans don't need to be civilised or "improved". They have everything they need. They lack nothing. They would have remained content, if the West had stayed out of their world. Conrad is not judging their culture and finding it wanting. To some extent, he adopts a form of cultural relativism. Early in the work, he comments that the Romans felt the same way about the English when they sailed up the Thames and conquered England. The sense of cultural superiority is not based in fact, but in myth. Besides, it's clear at the end of the book that Western sophistication disguises an underlying inauthenticity and hypocrisy. The Africans were closer to themselves and the world than people in the West were. They only turned violent, understandably, when the West sailed up the Congo and brutalised them. Their violence was an act of defiance and self-defence. Western brutality was motivated by greed. Our Heart of Darkness Achebe's polemical intent blinds him to the real power of Conrad's work, and therefore the reason it continues to resonate in the West: we are the ones with a heart of darkness. Ironically, Achebe's criticism has diminished the number of those readers who are prepared to read the novel and form their own opinion about just how prescient Conrad was. Achebe denied that this was his intent, but that was his effect. Now, 40 years after the original lecture, it's Achebe's own reputation that has arguably been damaged by his rant. Hopefully, it has done no long-term damage to the greater causes of anti-racism and anti-colonialism.