many of them use their reason as much as more than we do... it is more custom and
example that persuades us than certain knowledge...” (William Ray 2001: 31). The
Cartesian philosophical travels and the new modes of understanding acquired about the
need for the respect for other peoples’ way of life sounded humble and innocent. It failed,
however, to persuade the intending empire to desist from casting strange peoples in their
own natural space as “barbarian”, in order to find an alibi for imposing its own self-
acclaimed universal order.
As a matter of fact, a farther reflective travel in time beyond colonialism would reveal
how inveterate the biased idealization and attitude of the West towards Africa and
Africans had been. In the reflection of Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow, the
misconception of the West about Africa dates back to the classical times when:
African ...exerted a powerful hold on the European imagination. The ancient world knew
little of Africa other than Egypt and the Mediterranean littoral. Imagination transformed
the rest of the continent to a strange and wonderful land where were to be found tailed
men, men with heads beneath their breasts, and men who did not dream. To this classical
heritage were added in time tales of other prodigies and of great riches. (1970:13)The exceptionable liberty taken by the West to imagine and pontificate on the void
created by non-familiarity with the rest of Africa− apart from Egypt− and the formulation
of narratives into yardsticks for apprehending the continent then provided the basis for
assigning inferiority to African people. It was this that subsequently bolstered the attempt
to deny Africans their humanity through the prosecution of trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
As Hammond and Jablow observe further, the continual reinforcement of an imagined
Africa’s stasis and weirdness which stood in sharp contrast to Europe’s western literary
tradition succeeded in entrenching a narrative about an African that was more imagined
than real. One sure explanation for the spread of these accounts of fantasy in the West
was the “ethnocentrism” of Europe, that is, “all perception is made through the lenses of
one’s own system of values and belief” (15). Therefore by discounting African value
systems and beliefs the West ended up painting a picture of Africa that was light years
away from reality. This thus accounts for why for the most part the evolution of modern
African literature is often discussed against the background of reaction. The most urgent