Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Arts (MA)
Major/Program
English
First Advisor's Name
Dr. Ana Luszczynska
First Advisor's Committee Title
Major Professor
Second Advisor's Name
Dr. Heather Russell
Second Advisor's Committee Title
committee member
Third Advisor's Name
Dr. Nandini Dhar
Keywords
african feminism, black feminism, feminism, identity, Said, Achebe, Adichie, Walcott, imitation, performativity, the thing around your neck, americanah, transnational, blogger
Date of Defense
7-31-2017
Abstract
In An Image of Africa, Chinua Achebe indicts Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for exemplifying the kind of purist rhetoric that has long benefited Western ontology while propagating reductive renderings of African experience. Edward Said refers to this dynamic as the way in which societies define themselves contextually against an imagined Other. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s fiction exposes how, by occupying cultural dominance, Western, white male values are normalized as universal. Nevertheless, these values are de-naturalized by their inconsistencies in the lived experiences of Adichie’s black, African women. Women who are at once aware of and participant in, the pretentions that underlie social interaction—pointing to the inevitability of performativity and disrupting the illusion of pure identity. These realizations interrupt Conrad’s essentialist conception of identity and reclaim diverse ontological possibilities for the Other.
Identifier
FIDC001980
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Rodriguez, Ivette, "Reimagining African Authenticity Through Adichie's Imitation Motif" (2017). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3351.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3351
Included in
American Studies Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Latin American Languages and Societies Commons, Philosophy Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons
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