Title:   THE CLASH OF WILLS: EXPLORING THE NEO-COLONIAL STRUCTURES IN AKACHI ADIMORA-EZEIGBO’S THE LAST OF THE STRONG ONES

Abstract
The reconstruction and redefinition of African cultural identity has been like a
hallowed mission embarked upon by most postcolonial African writers. Akachi
Adimora-Ezeigbo, in The Last of the Strong Ones, has excited literary
scholarship in this regard. However, many critics have only seen this text as that
which chiefly alters the patriarchal praxis that holds sway in early Nigerian
fictions as it introduces a strong female narrative voice. For others, it is a text
that priorities African democracy as opposed to western democracy, given the
inclusive nature of its cultural world. As such, little or no study has been carried
out on it as a postcolonial text that critically unveils what Edward Said sees as
the infamous actions or drives of those who speak for the West and for what
the West did. This paper embarks on this critical study through the lens of
postcolonial literary theory. It demonstrates that other than the text’s feminist
and cultural orientations, that it exposes some neo-colonial structures that
sustain the vestiges of such social pathologies as loss of meaning and African
identity. It argues that these structures do not only hamper the authentic
process of de-colonization but they also create doubt whether this process will
ever alter the hegemonic “normality” created by colonialism. The paper
concludes by calling for a more activist representation of these retarding
structures by African writers for it will continue to initiate a rethinking process
that might lead to the eventual rediscovery of the African true self.
Keywords: post-colonialism, neo-colonial structures, clash of wills, identity

Citations:

Publication Date: 2022-08-06