Meditations on the Sacrificial Egg

Abstract

This text-mediated meditation on colonialism, ethnological reason, and the dynamics of encounter and recognition proceeds through a reading of Chinua Achebe’s short story The Sacrificial Egg alongside a series of philosophical, fictional, and ethnological texts. Heeding how Achebe treats questions of conversion, immunity/community ,the passage of beliefs , curses, and knowledge from one generation to another (or even to a strangers), I also offer some reflections on the politics of knowledge, genre, citation/attribution, and ethics of co-habitation.