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Resistance
In Postcolonial African Fiction By: Neil Lazarus
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![Sunset]() In 1990, Neil Lazarus wrote the book
entitled Resistance in Postcolonial African Fiction. This particular book argues that
African anti-colonial activist writers tended to overvalue emancipatory
significance of independence. One
of the focus points of the books was the notion that African postcolonial
leaders betrayed the African revolution. The problem revolved around independence, which was the
goal of the people. Once gaining
independence there still existed yet another problem that Lazarus points out,
he entitles it “Decolonization and African Intellectuals”. Fanon said, “If the leadership in the
postcolonial African world were to come to rest in the hands of the African
middle class, the whole momentum, of the national liberation struggle would
be derailed. The structure of
the colonial economy would be consolidated instead of overturned, with the
national bourgeoise transforming itself into capitalism’s broker.”(Lazarus
8) Fanon brings a good argument
that even once Independence is established, there still are concerns of who
gains the power of the people.
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![]() Many
colonial writers wrote in resistance from the colonizers. On the other side, many writers wrote
to appease the masses which were prodominatly European and conservative
Africans. The voice of the
people could heard in books and essays such as; The beautiful Ones Are Not
Yet Born by Frantz Fanon, The lost Steps by Edouard Glissant, This
Earth of Mankind by Aijaz Ahmand, and the list goes on.
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![House]() The model of independence has
fundamental problems. African
revolutionaries seem to have adhered to strict definitions of the dominant
and subservient. The rhetoric of
independence depends upon bad and good, colony and colonizer, dominant and
oppressed, enslavement and freedom.
We could say that this binary model consists, fundamentally, of the
subject position and the object.
The ruler is not all-powerful all the time and the slave is not all
powerless every moment. Allowing
for inequalities, we can take another viewpoint and say that two people
existing within a relationship are differently empowered.
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***Lazurus's
views
This site has plenty to offer. You can
explore this book as well as other books.
***About the author
This site offers a brief summary of
Fanon's life, and some of his Ideology.
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Some questions that
you could ask students about Lazarus’s book are:
- What is Independence?
- If it is the absence of the oppressive
colonial power, then what, in positive terms does it consist of?
- Who were some
post-colonial authors?
- Should we blame the
revolutionaries for having a faulty idea of how human beings behave?
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Neil, Lazarus. Resistance in
Postcolonial African Fiction.
New Haven: Yale UP,
1990.
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