ABSTRACT
The last chapter is as an illustration, from the prism of a literary-philosophical study, of the formal and substantive universalism undergirding the arguments of the entire book. It revisits Chinua Achebe’s famous call of the 1970s: ‘I should like to see the word universal banned altogether from discussions of African literature until such time as people cease to use it as a synonym for the narrow, self-serving parochialism of Europe.’ Reading that call as a strategic and provisional stance, the chapter is an invitation to reencounter in literary texts that are undoubtedly shaped by a particular historical experience – the brutal enigmas of the postcolonial world – visions of history and redemptory action made compelling by that very experience; but also characteristic social, existential and moral dramas, even metaphysical quandaries occasioned by crisis regarding identity and difference, being and time, nature and history, essence and appearance. Novels by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Armah are canvassed as exhibits of the context-marked literary universal.
