Discourse of Denunciation: A Critical Reading of Chinua Achebe’s Man of The People

Achebe’s narrative text, A Man of The People (1966), is a political satire in which he exposes the intricacies of democratic politics in a Nigerian setting. At the heart of this narrative is a clear denunciation of a bastardized political system in a perverse socio-cultural and economic environment similar to what pertains in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), Ahmadou Kourouma’s The Suns of Independence (1970) and Amu Djoleto’s Money Galore (1975), among many others. Despite the fact that A Man of The people was published in 1966, its central theme, that is politics, corruption and underdevelopment in Africa, is still relevant to contemporary socio-cultural, economic and political context in Africa. No doubt the novel is classified among African classics in literary studies, as it is one of the narrative texts studied in universities across Africa and beyond. This study seeks to critically examine the nature of linguistic tools and stylistic detours that define the satiric outlooks of this narrative text of Achebe as a denunciative discourse and its impact on the effective transmission of the message of socio-cultural and attitudinal transformation for sustainable socio-economic and political development. Considering the nature of literature as a social discourse (Fowler 1981), the study will be posited in the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis CDA (van Dijk, 1993b). Critical discourse analysis is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequalities are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context (van Dijk, 2001)

Nationality Versus Global Citizenship Towards the Realization of Sustainable Development Goals: Ahmadou Kourouma’s Perspective

In the face of the fast depletion of natural resources worldwide resulting from industrial and economic cannibalism, selfishness and marginalization are becoming more and more pronounced in a globalizing world. The phenomena of selfishness and marginalization are manifest in the introduction of stringent immigration laws by most industrialized countries in the North to ward off migrants from the less developed economies in the South; and also the reinforcement of existing laws by the latter to protect their citizens and natural resources in recent years. Issues of national identity, territorial integrity as against the centrality of humanity remain an Achilles heel toward the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As far as 1968, Ahmadou Kourouma, an Ivorian novelist, in his very first narrative text, “Les Soleils des Indépendances” later translated into English as The Suns of Independence, raised the tragic dilemma of national identity at the expense of ‘human identity’. In the absence of concrete steps to address the issues over the years, Liberia, Sierra Leone and La Côte d’Ivoire were engulfed in intestine civil strife over two decades later. The main causes of this strife are found in the irrational quest for self-identity in the name of nationality and ethnic superiority for greater access and control of “national” resources. This paper examines the upsurge of socioeconomic and political exclusion, and the potential threats they pose to the realization of the recently launched Sustainable Development Goals. It is done through a critical reading of Kourouma’s The Suns of Independence, Allah is not obliged and ‘Quand on refuse, on dit non’. The study is posited within the analytical framework of literary studies and sociocriticis

Le pessimisme dans Les Soleils des Indépendances d’Ahmadou Kourouma

Cet article examine le thème du pessimisme comme une perspective dominante dans Les Soleils des Indépendances d’Ahmadou Kourouma. Il retrace le pessimisme à travers le jeu des personnages et les indices spatio-temporels tels que Kourouma les déploie dans ce texte. À cet égard, l’article y examine certains des personnages clés dans le cadre spatio-temporel dans lequel ils évoluent. L’examen de ces phénomènes révèle la réalité de l’idée de l’Afro-pessimisme. L’indépendance de l’Afrique telle que perçue à travers ces trois phénomènes littéraires que sont les personnages, la spatialité et la temporalité, est un échec total sur tous les fronts, un concept vide de substance. Par conséquent, l’étude conclut que la mort tragique de Fama, le protagoniste du texte, dans sa tentative de reconstruction de sa dignité et humanité perdues sous « les soleils des indépendances » est une évidente manifestation et concrétisation du pessimisme dans ce texte romanesque d’Ahmadou Kourouma.This paper examines the theme of pessimism as a dominant view in Ahmadou Kourouma’s novel, Les Soleils des Indépendances (The Suns of Independence). The paper traces the theme of pessimism through characterization, setting and time indicators as deployed by Kourouma in the text. In this regard, the paper examines some key characters, the various environments or locations where they are found and the various moments, periods and time at which they evolve. The examination of these phenomena points to the reality of the idea of Afro-pessimism. The Independence of Africa as perceived through the three literary phenomena is a complete failure, an empty concept without substance.The study concludes that the tragic death of Fama, the protagonist of the novel, in his attempt to reconstruct his lost dignity and humanity under the ‘suns of independence’ is the clear manifestation and concretization of pessimism in the novel Les Soleils des Indépendances

Combustion in a spark-ignition engine

This paper describes a simple analysis for the prediction of pressure within a spark ignition engine. This is done by modelling the combustion process using the Wieb function approach, which is an exponential function in the form y=1-e-axm, to calculate the rate of fuel burned. By careful selection of a and m, any spark ignition engine with any combustion chamber shape and any specified dimensions can be assessed by this model. The validity of the model has been tested by comparing the model results with those obtained from running the engine under the same operating conditions. The results obtained from the theoretical model when compared with those from the experimental ones show a good agreement. Also, the effects of the many operating conditions, such as compression ratio, engine speed, and spark timing have been studied.