By Michael Onyebuchi Eze
Today, I pay tribute to one of the greatest African living legends at Harvard, my intellectual idol and a thoroughbred pan-Africanist, Abiola Irele. My most favored passage of his writing I share today “We are conscious of the irreversible nature of the transformations the impact of Europe has effected in our midst and which are so extensive as to define the really significant frame of reference of our contemporary existence. The traditional pre-colonial culture and way of life continue to exist as a reality among us, but they constitute an order of existence that is engaged in a forced march, in a direction dictated by the requirements of a modern scientific and technological civilization. It also happens to be the case that Western civilization … provides the paradigm of modernity to which we aspire. Hence our mixed feelings, the troubled sense of acceptance and rejection … the ambivalence we demonstrate in our response to Europe and Western civilization is in fact a measure of our emotional tribute; it is expressive, in a profound way, of the cultural hold Europe has secured upon us--of the alienation it has imposed upon us as a historical fate”
You can reach Michael Onyebuchi Eze
on ezemichaelo@gmail.com
Photo Credit: Phillwebb
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