Remake;Remodel
by Yvy Truong
The closer we get to the end the more I find myself appreciating the Stream B theme. Everything is starting to tie all together, and I believe I am making more sense out of everything we have read so far. In retrospect, the past things we have read have more importance and significance.
I greatly appreciated Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart. I’ve been wanting to read it for a while, and finally the day has come.
But…
I think what made me want to read Things Fall Apart was because of the poem The Second Coming by Yeats, which I think that just like The Hollow Men which referenced The Heart of Darkness, is a really important piece of modernist literature. When I studied the poem in my Literature class last year, I remember my teacher talking about a Philosopher who talked a lot about the removal of a core, and if/when the core is removed, everything falls apart. I can’t remember the name of that Philosopher, but when I find out I’ll make a small edit and add it in. It’s an interesting idea though, that the function, the reason for a being to exist, etc., etc., is based upon a centre core, and without it everything falls apart.
The discussion that was brought up in class was the idea that there isn’t one specific core, or at least, it’s not primarily the concerns of the European. There are two cores that are crumbling (or at least, that is what Achebe is trying to bring to light). I also though what was interesting was the idea of history. The idea of repetition, reform, and remaking (haha, I get it, Remake/Remodel, how could I forget?), and the function that history has. History is what both binds us to a past of customs, or an image (imago, Fanon) that shapes the way we think or know ourselves (Hacking). What happens and what is said to have happened are constantly changing, and contouring against and with each other (Trouillot). However, if there is no history or if a history is based upon one perspective, what agency do we have? What rights are we entitled to? How weird it would be to think that every new age or new generation are the Adam and Eve of the world (Paine). But all the same, words and forgotten, language cannot be so easily translated from one to another. What understanding do we have?
Hey, nice connections being made here! I like them!
I don’t recognize the idea of the philosopher you’re talking about in relation to a core needing to exist or else everything falls apart. If you find out I’d be curious to hear!
What is the “core” in Achebe’s text, that which has been removed so things fall apart? I think by “two cores” Jon was saying that there are two happening around the same time–the loss of the centre in Europe (Yeat’s poem, e.g.) and the loss of the centre in the Ibo society. But what, exactly, has been lost in the latter? I guess it’s the culture, the traditions, the religion; the very clan itself is said to be split apart by the missionaries and the fact that some of the clan have gone over to them. So perhaps it’s all that that is the core?