Ecumenical Humanity
TLS April 2 2010 from Andrew van der Vlies's review of Chinua Achebe's THE EDUCATION OF A BRITISH-PROTECTED CHILD: The lecture extols the virtue of the "middle ground", the point of view not given to extremism or "fanaticism." This is a space much appreciated in the Igbo society of Achebe's youth and one that informs his own insistence on considering the complex effects of the colonial encounter: "I could have dwelt on the harsh humiliations of colonial rule or the more dramatic protests against it", he writes, but he remains "fascinated by that middle ground . . . where the human spirit resists an abridgement of its humanity". For many, it is Achebe's nuanced sense that while this "space was to be found primarily in the camp of the colonized", it was also "now and again" visible "in the ranks of the colonizer too", that lends his assessment of colonial contact its gravitas and pathos. Ikem Osodi,...