Erik Hendrix

3567168
Cultural criticism
UU, 2013

Edward Said & Chinua Achebe

A critical dialogue on cultural relativism
In this paper I will be considering the subject of cultural relativism on the basis of
Edwards Said’s theories on orientalism and Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart. The
subject of cultural relativism is, of course, an important one within post-colonial
criticism and literature. Both Said, as well as Achebe, touch upon the subject in their
texts, but each in their own distinctive way. Firstly, I will consider what cultural
relativism is and how it relates to post-colonial criticism and literature. Secondly, I will
take a look at the way in which Said and Achebe relate on the subject of cultural
relativism by taking them separately into consideration. Thirdly, on the basis of these
analyses I will try to establish a dialogue between the two texts in an effort to reach a
conclusion.

The concept of cultural relativism was mainly developed by 20th century anthropologists
like Franz Boas and Alain Locke. In many ways cultural relativism was a response to the
19th century Western ethnocentrism, which considered the European culture and
civilization superior to that of the indigenous cultures of the colonies in Asia, Africa and
Latin America. In a very interesting essay on cultural relativism James Rachel
distinguishes six different claims made by cultural relativists:

1. Different societies have different moral codes.

2. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code better than
another.

3. The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is merely one among many.

4. There is no "universal truth" in ethics that is, there are no moral truths that hold for all
peoples at all times.

5. The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society; that is, if the moral
code of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least within
that society.

6. It is mere arrogance for us to try to judge the conduct of other peoples. We should adopt an
attitude of tolerance toward the practices of other cultures.1

1Rachel, J. – The challenge of cultural relativism –

http://www3.nd.edu/~bgoehrin/literature/Rachels.html

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These six claims are quite clear and illustrate how ethics and morality constitute the
core of a culture in any society as social conduct. The last claim explicates the position of
the cultural relativist and poses that any judgment made on the conduct or culture of
other peoples is a display of ‘mere arrogance’. Cultural relativists therefore suggest an
attitude of tolerance. As we can see we need two cultures interacting with each other to
apply the concept of cultural relativism. In the case Achebe’s Things Fall Apart these
interacting cultures would be the Umuofian society of the lower Niger and the British
empire during the 19th century. Now, even though we may be tempted to compare these
two cultures in order to find which one is ‘better’ or ‘best’, cultural relativism tells us
there is no ‘better’ or ‘best’, in fact we shouldn’t be comparing them at all; we should
merely observe their differences and appreciate them for being different in their own
unique way.

Now that we have established the main claims of cultural relativism, I will take a look at
how this concept relates to the writings of Said and Achebe.

In his main work, Orientalism, Edward Said analyzed the representation of the Orient,
and the (former-)colonies, in Western academic and artistic tradition. For this purpose
he utilized Foucault’s theories on discourse as the relation between language (or, in
Said’s case, representation in general) and power:

I have found it useful here to employ Michel Foucault's notion of a discourse, as described
by him in The Archaeology of Knowledge and in Discipline and Punish, to identify
Orientalism. My contention is that without examining Orientalism as a discourse one
cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European
culture was able to manage – and even produce – the Orient politically, sociologically,
militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment
period.2

For Said the discourse of orientalism was not merely a representation of the Orient, but
also an activity to postulate an Other through which the Occident (or West) could create
an identity of the Self. According to Said, Orientalism was an ideological construction to
legitimize the colonization and exploitation of the colonies in Asia, Africa and Latin
America. Here we can clearly see Said’s criticism on the ethnocentric theories of the
European powers during the age of imperialism. As Said describes, these ethnocentric
2 Leitch, e.a. – The Norton Anthology, ‘Orientalism’ – blz. 1868.

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theories were primarily based on the idea of a ‘civilizing mission’ on the part of the
European powers which he considered to be a fraud. And when we take the shameless
exploitation of the colonies into consideration, one can hardly argue against Said’s
position, which is quite accurate in displaying the self-interested motivations of the
European colonizers. In this respect, we can clearly detect a relativist position
(something he quite elaborately explains in his response to Samuel Huntington).
However, I would like to pose that the idea ‘civilizing mission’ was not merely a
conspiracy to legitimize European hegemony, but that, in some ways, it was a sincere
(though evidently naïve and paternalistic) effort to develop the indigenous cultures. I
would like to illustrate this with some examples from Things Fall Apart.

In Chinua Achebe’s novel, the indigenous clans and tribes of the lower Niger display
some rather disturbing cultural conventions. Consider, for example, the public display of
severed human heads on the obi’s (houses or huts), the practice of human sacrifice to
pagan gods (the murder of Ikemefuna is a clear example), the abandonment (and thus
imminent death) of twin babies in the evil forest, the mutilation of stillborn babies, the
battering of women, and the total exclusion of the Osu (outcasts), depriving them of
everything the clan or community has to offer. Achebe makes no effort whatsoever to
hide these aspects of the indigenous culture. Quite the opposite, he takes a lot of time to
exhibit these customs (all the way up to page 95) and he also doesn’t refrain from
showing their negative effects and repercussions on its society. Ironically, in the novel it
is precisely these customs and practices which plant the seeds that will eventually
destroy their culture and, in the end, we see how the Umuofian culture was challenged,
tested and found wanting:

“Does the white man understand our custom about land?”

“How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are
bad, and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are
bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The
white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused
at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can
no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have
fallen apart.”3

3 Achebe, C. – Things fall apart – Penguin classics – blz. 129.

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What Okonkwo and Obierika fail to see in this passage is that what held them together
(their customs, their culture), was the very thing that divided them. The Umuofian
culture lost because of its internal contradictions: its own customs simply antagonized
too many people. What struck me most about the novel was the pivotal role of
Christianity. From its very beginnings Christianity focused on the mourning, the meek
and the persecuted.4 And so, even during the Roman empire, this religion found its
biggest supporters among slaves and proletarians. In the lower Niger, again, all the
victims of the indigenous culture find compassion and refuge in the arms of the church;
like Nwoye (Okonkwo’s son) who never forgave his father for the death of Ikemefuna,
like the Osu, the outcasts, who were finally treated like human beings, like Nneka, who
had lost eight children because they were twins, and was hated by her in-laws because
of it. We could thus conclude that Achebe’s representation of the whole process of social
transformation in the lower Niger illustrates that cultures are not equal and that we can
and should judge the customs of another culture. Now, I understand that this is rather
controversial, but even though it may sound as a reactionary or conservative (and
maybe even anachronistic) view, this is not at all my intent. In relation to the
overwhelming success of Christianity in the novel, I would like to quote a passage from
Said’s lecture on The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations:

There is an official culture, a culture of priests, academics, and the state. It provides
definitions of patriotism, loyalty, boundaries and what I've called belonging. It is this
official culture that speaks in the name of the whole. But it's also true, (…) there are
dissenting or alternative, unorthodox, heterodox, strands that contain many
antiauthoritarian themes in them that are in competition with the official culture. These
can be called the counter-culture, an ensemble of practices associated with various kinds of
outsiders, the poor, immigrants, artistic Bohemians, workers, rebels, artists.5

In his lecture Said claims that the main problem of the West’s representation of the
(former) colonies, is that it doesn’t take into consideration the dissenting or alternative
strands (i.e. the counter-culture or counter-hegemony) within the indigenous societies.
However, when we read Things Fall Apart it is exactly this kind of opposition which is
completely absent and which rallies all the dissenting voices behind father Brown and
the Anglican church. In this respect it is not at all surprising that the ‘primitive’

4 I am, of course, intentionally paraphrasing the beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew (5:3-12).
5 Said, E.W. – Transcript of The myth of the clash of Civilizations – www.mediaed.org

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indigenous culture is replaced by a more sophisticated Christian culture.
Cultural relativists, like Said, may claim that we shouldn’t judge other cultures, and that
we should learn to tolerate different customs, but when it comes down to it, these
relativists would never affirm that a society (like Nazi-Germany or the modern state of
Israel) which is bent on the destruction of another culture (like that of the Jews or the
Palestinians) should be tolerated. So now we have to ask ourselves: Where do we draw
the line? Should we tolerate a culture which practices human sacrifice, the battering of
women and the abandonment of twins? Of course not. And based on Achebe’s Things Fall
Apart I tend to think that he would agree with this assessment. After all, why else would
he have chosen to present these issues in the novel in such a problematic and
destructive way? But when we read Things Fall Apart, this seems to be beside the point.
In my opinion, the main tragedy of the novel is not the fact that the white man has come,
nor the fact that the indigenous people convert to Christianity (which under father
Brown functions as a counter-hegemony), but it is the loss of independence and the loss
of self-determination of the clans of the lower Niger.

In the dialogue between Said and Achebe that I have established in this paper, I have
tried to give an honest representation of their ideas. However, I would like to state for
the record that Said’s opinion on cultural relativism might have been more nuanced.
Unfortunately, the nature of theory and criticism is often very polemical, and I think this
is reflected in most of Said’s work. Achebe, on the other hand, had the creative freedom
of an artist, which he used very wisely with its incredibly balanced representation of
such a relentless destruction of a culture that he knew so intimately.