Instrumentalising Terror for Political Hegemony: Analysis of Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country

Abstract

Failure to restore legitimate authority in the postcolonial state is one of Africa's most distressing political shortfalls. The continent's political legitimacy crisis has culminated in collapsed or failed states. Several scholars have weighed in on this discussion, specifically the need for the restoration of legitimate authority to address the disintegration of credible claims to the exercise of power. In the recent past, the political situation has been grave during periods of transition because crises of legitimacy are often crises of change. In many instances, terror is used to tame dissenting voices and facilitate political dominance. Literary writers from the region have represented this sad state of affairs, and Chinua Achebe is one of them. The study is situated in this context. It aims to investigate the representation of terror as an instrument of political hegemony in Achebe's There Was a Country. This study benefits from Marxist literary theory, particularly the ideas of Tyson (2006) and Prychitko (2002). This study concludes that Achebe employs a new story-telling strategy to demonstrate that alienation and separation deprive individuals and groups of their potential to plan and control their collective fate in a hegemonic political structure. To irrigate commoditisation, obsession with a market-based society, and massage capitalistic egos, a climate of fear is created. The results of this study will serve as key reference points for literary scholars with a bias on the instrumentation of terror for political dominance.