Meio Sol Amarelo e a crítica ao pensamento eurocêntrico sobre a África: Biafra e a resistência IGBO

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to investigate how a contemporary African novel develops a critique of the Eurocentric discourse on Africa. The work Half of a Yellow Sun (2008) by Chimamanda Adichie represents the corpus of this study, as it allows us to read a rebuke to the remnants of colonialism in the scenario of the Biafra war. The author's political engagement contributes to the deconstruction of the hegemonic discourse, aiming at destroying the mistaken image of the African world. The situation of African women is the theme and motive of Chimamanda's writing, which rejects the double process of subalternization imposed upon them. The narrative addresses the civil conflict unleashed in Nigeria in the late 1960s, the Biafra War, a clash between ethnic groups, which led the Igbo community to decimation by starvation and lack of weapons. The conflicts had the concurrence of the former settler, England, who crossed arms and ammunition, allowing the disaster occurred in an unequal struggle. The impacts caused by colonization on the African continent, justified by the imperialist discourse, are bluntly rejected in the novel. The analysis is based on postcolonial theory pointing to errors rooted in Western scientific and literary discourses on the history and culture of Africa. In Half Sun Yellow, Olanna and Kainene embark on the struggle for recognition and appreciation of their culture and for the independence of their people, facing the war and the biggest enemy: HUNGER. The African woman, protagonist of the novel, assumes the position of the generals of the war, adopting the command of the familiar and social causes in a context permeated by the human barbarity representing the ruptures with the tradition and the breakdown of Eurocentric paradigms. The theoretical postulates used in the research are proposed by Edward Said (1990, 2011), Homi Bhabha (1998), Ella Shohat and Robert Stam (2006), Gaiatry Spivak (1994,1999), Innocence Mata (2007), Ana Mafalda Leite 2007), Thomas Bonnici (2000, 2003, 2006), Chinua Achebe (2009, 2012) and Ngugi Thiongo (1997).