Appropriations and Manifestations IRP

Resource Description

Critical study of the social impacts on cultural identity. The texts used were Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, A Latin Primer (the poem) by Derek Walcott, and The Yield by Tara June Winch.

This report received 14/15 marks. Appropriations and manifestations challenge accepted norms to transform cultural values and who we really are Society’s influence on cultural identity Contextual practices embedded within individual identities strip subscribers of their autonomous capability to reflect on and critique the deficiencies of society. Such deficiencies disapprove the further discernment, discovery, and celebration of the mutable nature of humanity to adapt to the malleable social façade that transcends time and space. An appreciation of the flexibility of cultural identities allows individuals to find discontentment in the substance of the socio-cultural condition, thus heightening the criticality of their examinations to enhance society. These ideas are explored in Chinua Achebe’s post-colonial novel Things Fall Apart that positions audiences at the crossroads of English and Igbo cultures to heighten individual’s cognitive criticisms to celebrate and denounce practices of varying societies. These practices are further scrutinised in Derek Walcott’s epic poem A Latin Primer which encourages Creole descendants to commemorate their colonial history thus provoking individuals to embrace the hybridity of social and individual identities. Tara June Winch critically examines this concerning Indigenous Australian cultures in her novel The Yield as a vehicle to preserving a fragile culture that has been victim to cultural genocide imposed relentlessly by institutions. Ultimately, probing through the ambivalences of the social condition and understanding its impact on individual and cultural identities allow individuals to decimate the disconnections in local and global contexts that have been fostered through the ignorance of universal predicaments.