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1	Reimagining African Authenticity Through Adichie's Imitation Motif Rodriguez, Ivette 31 July 2017 (has links) In An Image of Africa, Chinua Achebe indicts Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for exemplifying the kind of purist rhetoric that has long benefited Western ontology while propagating reductive renderings of African experience. Edward Said refers to this dynamic as the way in which societies define themselves contextually against an imagined Other. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s fiction exposes how, by occupying cultural dominance, Western, white male values are normalized as universal. Nevertheless, these values are de-naturalized by their inconsistencies in the lived experiences of Adichie’s black, African women. Women who are at once aware of and participant in, the pretentions that underlie social interaction—pointing to the inevitability of performativity and disrupting the illusion of pure identity. These realizations interrupt Conrad’s essentialist conception of identity and reclaim diverse ontological possibilities for the Other. african feminism black feminism feminism identity Said Achebe Adichie Walcott imitation performativity the thing around your neck americanah transnational blogger American Studies Arts and Humanities Comparative Literature English Language and Literature Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Latin American Languages and Societies Philosophy