Atalanta's Apples: Postcolonial Theory as a Barrier to the "Balance of Stories"

All the terms in which I think are for me . . . true terminations, borders of . . . all the states to which I have subjected my thinking.

—Antonin Artaud

The ancient Greek myth of "Atalanta's Apples" is a story in which Atalanta, who had no wish to marry, challenges her suitors to a race, slows them down with well-placed golden apples, and ends up frustrating their desire. I came across this variation on the better-known African fable of "The Tortoise and the Hare" came while I was reading Francis Bacon's "Plan for The Great Instauration" (25). Bacon was not just any old citizen of the Western European nation that colonized my native land, Ghana, but, rather, one of the first advocates of inductive, experimental modern Western science. The chief and only end of science, according to him, was to create "fruits and works," that is, material results and creature comforts. In other words, Science must justify itself as "Technology," yet one that serves the glory of God in that these fruits and works of science are also "Works of Light." This comes right out of the Christian Bible, especially the exhortation to "Let your light so shine before men, that they many see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). Meet it is, then, that the Cross goes into the wild, unknown world armed with the Sword, leaving it to others or future generations to beat either of these into Ploughshares, if they choose.

One of the first 'fruits and works' of modern science was, of course, the charting of the skies (by Copernicus and Galileo, for instance), which aided navigation and so facilitated the intrusion of the Europeans into other parts of the world, Africa included. The Europeans, denizens of what the called "the known world," landed in these other, unknown worlds, armed with notions of their cultural superiority and manifest destiny, as endowed by both religion and science, and settled down to the systematic colonization and devastation of these lands, Africa included, using technology. Surely, an essay, written by an African, advising wariness with all borrowed terms and theories could do better than craft its title from an ancient Greek myth, and moreover one acquired by way of an Englishman? Surely, native-indigenous myths and parables could provide more worthy titles, such as "Ananse's Web," "Eshu's Foot-tracks," or even "The Worm's Dance" (Ananse and Eshu being tricksters in Akan folktales and Yoruba mythology, respectively, while the third alternative title alludes to the Yoruba/Igbo saying "You may think the worm is dancing but that is only the way it walks")? Indeed, why not craft a title out of the West African folktale of "The Tortoise and the Hare," whose moral is that the race (for knowledge and for power) is not for the swift but for the steady and the wise? The Hare's speediness lulls it into complacency, into a false sense of invincibility, and caused it to lose the race to the molasses-slow steady Tortoise, just as Atalanta's suitors had been delayed and ultimately defeated on account of strategically placed golden apples.

I could very well have used an African proverb, myth, or parable, but I chose a nonindigenous Greek/Western myth as the title of this essay because it is more pertinent to its theme or central matter. Besides, the central focus of this essay is not authenticity or local color but cognitive-intellectual vigilance in relation to the implicit assumptions concealed beneath the often placid and seemingly harmless surfaces and fronts of all terms and theories, both native and foreign. More specifically, this paper calls for vigilance vis-à-vis terms and theories used to represent or explain the postcolonial world, insisting that, in the light of dire circumstances facing the postcolonial African world, its...