Sacrilege as Commerce: Materialism, Modernity and the Changing Igbo Metaphysics in Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc.

Abstract

In traditional African thought, the concepts of sacredness and sacrilege are associated with metaphysical objects, spaces and personalities. These objects, spaces and personalities receive reverence and paranormal value from their association with forces and beings that are thought of as supernatural. Emmanuel Edeh (1985), posits, particularly concerning Igbo metaphysical thought, that “for all beings in the material universe, existence is a dual and interrelated phenomenon” (17). J. O. J. Nwachukwu-Agbada (2000) adds that even when the “physical is often taken for granted by the people, the intangible, comprising the spiritual and the abstract, is given an even greater focus” (158). This explains why totems, carvings, stools, and the generality of objects found in the shrine of the gods are considered sacred. However, the advent of European colonialism, and by corollary, the presence of Christianity, and the heightened taste for materialism in the modern era has brought into question long-held views of the value of religious and cultural objects and artifacts, hitherto, thought to hold metaphysical essence. In this paper, I focus on Okey Ndibe’s novel, Foreign Gods, Inc. to conceptualize the relationship between materialism, modernity and the recent changes in African metaphysical thought about what constitutes the sacred. I point to the quest to acquire material wealth as the main cause of the main character’s loss of appreciation of the metaphysical significance of the objects in Ngene’s shrine in the novel. I conclude by drawing on contemporary incidences of the stealing of objects in some African societies to show that the conceptual changes Ndibe presents in his novel project the current depletion and decay of the moral, cultural and religious sense of the African in the modern era.