Understanding Colonialism and Identity Categories by Building on Cognitive and Affective Science
The Case of Biyi Bandele's Half of a Yellow Sun
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Abstract
Complex, historical events such as the Nigerian Civil War emerge from countless, partially converging causes. In order to make cognitive and emotional sense of such events, novelists, filmmakers, and other storytellers stress a limited number of such causes. One central source of the antagonisms driving the Nigerian Civil War was the operation of sub-national identity categorization. Adichie (in the original novel) and Bandele (in his film adaptation) both treat such categorization, but it is more systematically and consistently developed by the latter. This is closely connected with some of the key changes that Bandele undertakes in his adaptation. After a discussion of identity categorization, ethnocentrism, racism, and “tribalism,” this article examines three key sections of the film in relation to identity categorization and their associated, political implications.
Contributor Notes
Patrick Colm Hogan is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Department of English and the Program in Cognitive Science at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of some twenty-five scholarly books, including Understanding Indian Movies: Culture, Cognition, and Cinematic Imagination (2008). In 2009, he and Lalita Pandit Hogan co-edited the special issue of Projections on Hindi cinema. His novel (A People Without Shame), treating a fictional British colony in the early twentieth century, was published by Blackwater Press in 2023. Email: patrick.hogan@uconn.edu