Rethinking the Image of Africa in Selected 20th and 21st Century Black Narratives

Abstract

. Abstract: Inspired by Chinua Achebe’s criticism of Joseph Conrad’s racist ambivalence in Heart of Darkness, this paper focuses on the discourse of denigration as a continuum. It is concerned with how twentieth and twenty-first century black narratives—or more specifically, narratives of/around blackness— have either portrayed an intentionally derogatory image of Africa or become apologetic in defending such an image. While the denigration-versus-resistance polarity has characterized the conception and criticism of literary works across time, the particular experience of being black in a world of conceits has been orchestrated through several forms of conceptualizing black renaissance. We focus on the various stages of black denigration, analyse the shifts (transitions) in representation in the works of Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, Ralph Elison, Chimamanda and Mychal Denzel