Spaces affected by Colonialism. A study on Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease

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“What fundamentally is colonization? To agree on what it is not: neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law”
– Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism.
The effects of coloniazation was Far reaching. Though the generation under the tyranny of the colonizer sufferd a lot under their physical rule the next generations are yet suffering under their subjugation mentally. Coloniaztion was not a philanthropic enterprice, it was some thing which didn’t carry any human value, it decivilized the colonizer,to be brutal and awakend in him the buried instincts. The major spaces where the colonialism affected was, culture , the notion of Nation and Identity of individuals.In order to understand these concepts deeper, we should first of all understand the relationship between these three factore, how they contribute to each other in the formation of the excat meaning of theor words.
Identity is something which is construted based on the the relationship between the Self and The Other. So the formation of Identity of a self always needs an Other. So if the Other has to be present there must be a community of men and women who can have this relationship between each other. This Community could be termed as a Nation or even as Benedict Andersons says “imagined communities”. The survival of the nation is largely depended upon the social customs the cultural beliefs, histories which help the notion about the Nation come into reality. Thus Culture is which binds men and women to form communities and these communities help each other to build their self or Identity , o...

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...st for recognition and because of the reacil discrimination done by the colonizer. Thus colonialism affected the identity of the native , then the culkture , then the Notion of nation. If identiy is affected naturally rejection of culture takes palce, then if cultuture is rejected then the notion of a nation cease to exist which makes things easy for the colonizer to still have his psychological subjugation to continue.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua, No Longer at Ease. New York: Fawcett Publications,1960.Print.
Anderson, Benedict.Imagined Communities. London – New York: Verso, 1991.Print.
Cesaire, Aime. Discourse on Colonialism.Ed Robin D.G Kelley. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001.Print.
Fanon, Frantz,Black Skin White Masks. London:Pluto Press, 1967.Print.
Westermann, Diedrich Hermann, The African: Today and Tomorrow. London: Oxford University Press, 1939.Print

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