Postcolonial ideas
often focus on a central idea that cultures form hegemonies, which according to
our postcolonial text is a culture’s “dominant values, sense of right and
wrong, and sense of personal self worth.” The text continues to provide the
colonization of the African culture by the Anglo-Saxon culture as an example of
when two hegemonies collide. These hegemonies are ignorant in their nature, and
often the superior hegemony, in this case, the white Anglo-Saxons, will try to
control and convert the other hegemony that they may perceive as savage, evil,
and ultimately just plain wrong. These postcolonial texts essentially argue
that the creation of alternities, “whereby ‘the others’ are excluded from
positions of power and viewed as different and inferior.”, kills off the
culture of the “others” by forcing its hegemony on the “inferior” culture.
This
idea relates to the text specifically through the actions of the missionaries.
The missionaries are creating the alternity of the Ibo culture, calling them “heathens”
and causing the white colonizers to view the Ibo people as inferior. As the
missionaries impose their presence upon the Ibo people, many of the Ibo are
alienated by this new and strange culture and ultimately will fight against it
if they must. However the white colonizers can easily suppress any threat to
their beliefs. The missionaries offer their Christian culture to the Ibo but
only if they reject their culture in doing so. “Unless you shave off the mark
of your heathen belief I will not admit you into the church.’ Said Mr. Kiaga.”
If they do decide to turn their back on their culture the Ibo will view them as
traitors and treat them as outcasts. Even though they may have accepted a new
culture, the converting Ibos will still be viewed as different and inferior by
the Anglo-Saxons because a alternity has already been set on their people, a
sort of “a tiger can’t change its
stripes” effect. As the Ibo culture is bleeding out, those who leave it themselves
will still be outsiders not only from their own, but the ones they turned to,
stuck in the middle with nowhere to go.
