Hybridity and assimilation: The effect of the racial encounter on V. S. Naipaul and Chinua Achebe

It is now self-evident that the idea of fixed identities has always been a myth and that hybridity has been, since the beginning of time, a condition almost inseparable from human existence itself. However, it has only been during the past few decades---with increasing ease of travel, multiple waves of migration, drastic changes in communication and media and growth of multinational capital---that the debate over hybridity, multiculturalism, and cultural-pluralism began to take its place among the most important issues on the contemporary cultural scene. This dissertation examines the multifaceted issue of identity formation in relation to two of the most prominent novelists on the contemporary literary scene, namely, V. S. Naipaul and Chinua Achebe.;Chapter one is an introduction that lays the theoretical foundation on which I build my argument throughout the dissertation, through a survey and critique of contemporary theories of hybridity. Chapter two is divided into two parts, one devoted to Naipaul and the other to Achebe. It mainly highlights the general qualities that characterize and differentiate each of them. In this context, I consider questions of language, genre and relation to the canon in addition to the political affiliations and ideological significance of each writer as made clear through their works and what they have to say in interviews and conversations.;Chapter Three tackles Naipaul's novel: A Bend in the River (1979). The novel is a representative of Naipaul's controversial ideas about mimicry and hybridity in Africa, ideas that initiated a debate between Third-World critics who severely attack Naipaul, and Western critics who celebrate his impartiality and search for truth. Through this chapter, I take part in this ongoing debate and try, through an analysis of the novel, to reach my own conclusions.;In chapter four, I delineate a different model of postcolonial thinking through Achebe's No Longer at Ease (1960). The novel represents many critical issues, such as hybridity as an experience of disjuncture and metamorphosis that characterizes the cultural encounter with the West, the nature and limitations of the national project and the attempt to understand the reasons behind the spread of corruption in Nigerian society.