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The Interpreters

1. This analysis proposes an examination of the function of myth in differing postcolonial contexts, and argues that particular contexts of class configuration and state hegemony define the way myths are developed in novels. The paradigmatic, resonant and symbolic quality of myths means that they cannot be easily contained and condensed, hence they encode resistance to the hegemonic drives found in the narratives of the state. State narratives interpellate the subject as intimately connected to it in an effort to ease out potential dissent from the social formation. Their monologic forms do not easily offer the subject any space to articulate dissent in the form of dialogue. Myth then offers a counter to this monologic form and encodes dissent particularly when located in novels produced in the context of entrenched power formations. Historical context then makes myth an appropriate form at specific times. It will be argued that myth acts out dissent in ways that go beyond gesturing to and providing evidence of precolonial cultures and methods of organising. It engages with dominant discourses through hollowing out potential alternatives. As Stephen Slemon states:

Such acts of post-colonial literary resistance function counter-discursively because they "read" the dominant colonialist discursive system as a whole in its possibilities and operations and force that discourse's synchronic or unitary account of the cultural situation toward the movement of the diachronic. (13)

The context of Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah (1987) is that of a stagnant political situation and entrenched repressive regimes in Nigeria. It uses various degrees of humour and irony as a set of negative knowledges, and reveals potential alternatives through transgressing the forms of dominant discourses and by countering, through myth, the monologic and hegemonic forms of the official discourses of the state through plural and dialogic styles. The...

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