Chapter Language and Postcolonialism of Critical Theory 6: Marxist and Post-colonial Criticism by Literary Criticism

society in the study of a "primitive" one, they invert the trajectory, often bringing the critical insights of an Arab or Indian upbringing to bear on a culture of Europe or North America.

The impression that a continuation of traditional orality is desired is found in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958), which employs scenes and passages which expressly refer to or make use of allegedly oral material in a way that makes the orality of that material recognizable to readers with no intimate knowledge of the culture depicted in the text. For instance, Achebe uses place names which imply 'otherness', even if they mean nothing geographically to his Western readers. The short, breathless sentences which Achebe uses imply an oral voice, whilst the transcription of the wailing song of the old women at the death of Okonkwo: "eeeeee eeeee eeeee" calls the reader's attention to the orality of the rest of the text. This is merely an extreme version of what he is attempting to do with the oral voice in the novel. By means of literary technique, these textual elements are inscribed as "oral" and separated from their "written" surroundings.