Summarize the main arguments: In The Postcolonial and the Postmodern, Kwame Anthony Appiah critiques the conditions

of postcoloniality and its relations to postmodernism in the context of the two stages of modern African novels set in the 1950s to the later sixties. The development from the celebratory novels of the first stage to the cynical ones of the second stage is a conglomeration of space-clearing gestures with the preposition post-. To clear the space means to transcend it and challenge it. Postmodernism, for example, is a rejection of the antecedent Modernist exclusivity of vision. Appiah argues that postcoloniality is similar to postmodernism in its techniques of challenging previous narratives, such as those of realism, nationalism, nativism and binarism. But it is different from postmodernism in its concern for common human suffering and an universal ethical rather than an return to traditionalism. Appiah argues that the postcoloniality of the Africas second stage novelists, who challenged the form of realism and the content of nationalism, is not an aesthetic postmodernism but a political postmodernisation; it pessimistically rules out the possibility of rationality championed by the modernizers colonialism does not make way for rationalisation and industrialization but further political exploitation through naturalisation of bourgeois nationalism and precolonial ethnicity. Unlike the first or modern stage of Africas modern novels that celebrated anti-colonialism through realist legitimations of nationalism and nativism, the second or the postcolonial stage delegitimates the ethnographers invention of a national history and tradition through its postrealism and postoptimism in the name of humanism. In the end of the essay, Appiah also suggested a postcolonial postbinarism that challenges the postcolonial adherence to a pure Africa by revealing its multiple existence and its irrepressible circulation of cultures with the West. Situate/contextualize the text: I. Context of global American postmodernist culture Appiahs essay criticizes part of a postcolonial adherence

to Africa by pointing to its binarism and fantasy of a pure and unitary African culture amid an international market and global postmodernist culture. In order for postcolonial writings to recover an anti-essentialist humanism from postmodernism, the novelists need to throw away the binary oppositions between Self and Other, nature and culture, and admit to the multiple existence of African culture thats also contaminated by Euro-American culture. A nation or precolonial ethnicity does not have a predetermined essence. This argument will be situated within postcolonial writings after political failures in the 60s. Postnationalism and postbinarism will make space for the multiplicities of interrelated conflicts involving class, gender, etc. Context: - Yambo Ouologuems novel, Le Devoir de Violence (1968). The novel focuses on the fictitious African country of Nakem. Ouologuem recounts its history, from grand empire to French colony and the truncated modern African Republic of Nakem-Ziuko. The ruling dynasty of Saifs dominates the history of the land, from ancient times to modern. (http://www.completereview.com/reviews/mali/ouology.htm) - Controvertional approach to Africa, not romanticizing it. Portray of native blacks as victims of Western colonizers and Arabs. - Echoes history of Ouologeums country of Mali. Mali is a North Western African country that was under French colonial rule during the nineteenth century, up until the 1950s and 1960s (part of French Sudan). As Mali gained independence in 1960, it adopted an African independent and socialist orientation and implemented broad nationalist reforms of natural resources.
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Le Devoir de Violence was his first novel, written in

France. 1968 was a particularly significant year both in Paris and in Mali. In May 1968, France was faced with a large general strike, the first of its kind in an industrial country. For weeks, students and workers protested against the constraints of traditional society and its rigidities. The country was at a standstill and the government of Charles de Gaulle, almost dissolved. Although May 1968 might have been a political failure, the social implications of the protests still resonate today and set forth a transformation of consciousness within a new generation. In that same year, in November 1968, following economic decline, the Keita Regime in Mali was overthrown in a military coup led by Moussa Traor. - In the article by Kwame Anthony Appiah, he presents the postcolonial intellectuals in Africa as being dependent on the support of two institutions: the African University and the Euro-American publisher and reader. It is within this context that Ouologuem wrote his novel, which also announced a shift in literary sensibility. It was an alternative to the strict realist novel of the time. Despite being written in French, it set forth to set itself in its African cultural environment rather than its nationalist legitimation. - In the 1960s and even today, despite independence, there was still a form of colonial relationship to Europe. Even if in parts unofficial, it still affected social, political and economic reality as it continued to apply the same myths of patriarchal authority. Issues surrounding Postcolonialism: - The articles reveals through the presentation of the novel many important notions surrounding postcolonialism:

- 1. Postcolonialist is not a strict art historical method, it is not a code or apparatus, but rather often combines methods to examine visual culture and narratives. - 2. It would be to continue the authoritative discourse of colonialization to categorize as simply poscolonial. Therefore, postmodernism becomes an instrument of decolonization which further helps to define identity. - 3. Postmodernism aims to rethink the critical position of modernity and it terms of postcolonialism, it is not based on primitivism but rather multiculturalism. - 4. Primitivism viewed native populations as aligned with nature and at times, viewed outside movement of humanity. Push for humanism as argued by author, affirmation of heterogeneous culture. - 5. Language, novel, as important carriers of significance. Language to create context, critical agency in identity formation. I. The issue of social formation and identity a. First modern stage: social formation through a common cultural past or precolonial ethnicity. Legitimation of nationalism through realism and ethnography. Binarism: nationalism/postmodernism. b. Second postcolonial stage: social formation in a common cause in the name of humanism and universal ethical. Africa identity as postnationalist and postnativist concerning the continent and its people, yet contaminated by EuroAmerican culture and vice versa. Postbinarist: contradictory unity with multiple existence. II. The issue of space and time a. First modern stage: linear in both time and space. 1. Modernization and industrialization as a forward movement in time to create a new

nation state. 2. Moving back in time to find a pre-colonial ethnicity with common cultural past. b. Second postcolonial stage: Repudiation of national history, common origin and rationalist progress through time and space. However it is a progress itself. Postcoloniality is after all this. It challenges and builds upon past intellectual narratives. It clears the restricted space of binarism for multiple existence. III. The issue of ethics a. First modern stage: building a new nation and return to tradition are the desired and virtuous ends to which any means can be legitimated. b. Second postcolonial stage: an appeal to an ethical universal with concerns for human suffering.