The Fanonian dialectic: Masters and slaves in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born  

Oleh:

Dunham, Jarrod

Jenis: Article from Article
Dalam koleksi: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature vol. 47 no. 2 (Jun. 2012), page 281-294.
Topik: Ayi Kwei Armah; Frantz Fanon; Ghana; The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born; Hegel; master–slave dialectic; Alexandre Kojève
Fulltext: The Fanonian dialectic- Masters.pdf (552.88KB)

Isi artikel

The polemical social commentary of Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born has understandably been the focal point of numerous critical interpretations. Such readings, however, tend to neglect the significance of the other, interpersonal dimension of the text that positions individual characters in relation to one another in interactions that mirror and amplify Armah’s larger social concerns. This article undertakes a reading that, by tracing Armah’s intellectual heritage from Frantz Fanon, through Alexandre Kojève, to Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, simultaneously accounts for the novel’s political agenda and its more nuanced portrayal of the everyday plights of its characters. A distinctly Fanonian iteration of the master-slave dialectic, which is manifested in the highly stratified structure of Ghanaian society and in the desire for recognition that characterizes all social and economic interactions within that society, is proposed as a unifying theme by which the novel’s socio-political and interpersonal dimensions can be understood as complementary rather than oppositional or unrelated facets of the text.

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