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a reading notes blog in rhetoric/composition and postcolonial feminist/antiracist theory

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. “The Language of African Literature.”

from Decolonising the Mind.

In this excerpt, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o makes the call to African writers to begin writing literature in
their own languages, and to make sure that literature is connected to their people’s revolutionary
struggles for liberation from their (neo)colonial contexts. Echoing Fanon, he claims that this
amalgam makes writers most dangerous to colonial powers, when they begin to speak to the
people rather than trying to gain cultural creedence in the colonizer’s language of a European
tongue.

Broken into nine sections, he discusses the power of writing in African languages and the
crippling nature of continuing to write in Euro-American languages (call this Afro-European
literature, not African literature) while trying to decolonize through a mixture of personal
memoir and theoretical treatise:

I: To discuss African literature, we need to understand the dual context of imperialism and
resistance to imperialism, decolonization and self-determination. Ngugi puts language at the
center of this contentious collision: “The choice of language and the use to which language is put
is central to a people’s definition of themselves in relation to the natural and social environment,
indeed in relation to the entire universe…writers who should have been mapping paths out of
that linguistic encirclement [by colonialism] of their continent also came to be defined and to
define themselves in terms of the language of imperialist imposition. Even at their most radical
and pro-African position in their sentiments and articulation of problems they still took it as
axiomatic that the renaissance of African cultures lay in the languages of Europe” (4-5).

II: He gives a personal example of this dynamic, which is reminiscent of Fanon’s critique of the
early stage of the native intellectual. Ngugi refers to the 1962 African writers conference at
Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda: “A Conference of African Writers of English
Expression.” Excluding writers who wrote in African tongues, it proceeded to discuss questions of
what African literature is or could be, while accepting that it must be in English.  This cruel
poisonous paradox is summed up this way: “The bullet was the means of the physical
subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation” (9).

III: Ngugi discusses his early childhood experience of language education. He contrasts his village
lessons via stories in his native tongue, Gikuyu, wherein language was magical and powerful and
musical. Then he speaks of school, wherein he was forced to learn English and witness as English
was used to sort students into a pyramid hierarchy. No matter how smart you were, you didn’t
continue if you couldn’t use English well. At the same time, you were banned from using your
own language.

IV: This is Ngugi’s theoretical section on the “relationship of language to human experience,
human culture, and the human perception of reality” (13). He first divides language into a “dual
character: it is both a means of communication and a carrier of culture” (13). As communication,
he divides it into 3 aspects: 1.”language of real life,” following Marx to denote basic relationships
of labor and cooperation that form a community; 2. Speech – “imitates the language of real life…
as a system of verbal signposts” (13-14)…speech is to humans-humans as the hand is to humans-
nature in the language of real life; 3. Writing – “Imitates the spoken…representation of sounds
with visual symbols.” (14). Ngugi notes that, in most societies, the written and the spoken are the
same. They are in harmony. As such, Ngugi notes, language forms the “basis and process of
evolving culture” (14). “Language as culture is the collective memory bank of a people’s
experience in history. Culture is almost indistinguishable from the language that makes possible
its genesis, growth, banking, articulation and indeed its transmission from one generation to the
next” (15). Ngugi splits language-as-culture into three aspects: 1. Product of a particular history;
2. “Image-forming agent in the mind of a child” 3. Culture mediates through language in its
spoken and written aspects.

V: In this section, Ngugi applies those insights above to the scene when an imperialist imposes a
foreign language on children. First of all, they are seeking to dominate the language of real life,
“to control people’s wealth” (16). To do so, they had to undervalue the home culture and elevate
the “language of the coloniser” (16). This divorced the child from their home language in school,
breaking the harmony between spoken and written. This–coupled with “cultural” language in its
three aspects–is the vehicle of alienation. This reminded me of DuBois’ double-consciousness.
Ngugi is showing us how it happens. At its apex, it creates native intellectuals such as Senghor or
Achebe or Banda (in Malawi) who sing the praises of the colonizer’s language to the detriment of
their own. It is the highest proof that the pogrom has accomplished its work, and explains a
conference such as the one in 1962.

VI: Ngugi describes the fallout of this state of affairs in much the same way that Fanon does,
though with what seems a greater compassion and level of clarity. Fanon seems to be writing
with angst, whereas Ngugi is writing to describe the situation so that we can understand Fanon’s
angst. What’s created here is a “literature of the petty-bourgeoisie born of the colonial schools
and universities. This class ranges from the “comprador bourgeoisie” who want to sidle up with
the imperialist powers to the “nationalistic or patriotic bourgeoisie” who wanted independence
(20). This literature, though helping to create resistance, never connected with the people (this is
where Fanon is apropos), and it leads the intellectuals to despair. But the language choice always
signals the wrong audience. (GO BACK TO THIS SECTION and COMPARE WITH FANON).

VII: But the peasants continued to carry the home language, unapologetically, keeping it alive.
They raised their own singers and writers. And some of the petty bourgeoisie joined them. And
then even some who originally wrote in European languages came around, such as David Diop
from Senegal and Obi Wali (who critiqued the 1962 conference in a polemical article the next
year).

VIII: “What is the difference between a politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism
and the writer who says African cannot do without European languages?” (26). While we were
haranguing enemies in European tongues, imperialists have continued to spout their lies in our
native tongues (such as translating the Bible into all African languages). So, we’re losing the
battle because we haven’t been fighting. And the literature that’s been created should be called
Afro-European, not African.

IX: In this final section, he details his switch to writing in his mother-tongue of Gikuyu from 17
years writing in the Afro-European tradition. He was met with sadness and feelings of
abandonment in academic circles, to which he replies:

“The very fact that what common sense dictates in the literary practice of other cultures [to write
in your own spoken language] is being questioned in an African writer is a measure of how far
imperialism has distorted the view of African realities. It has turned reality upside down: the
abnormal is viewed as normal and the normal is viewed as abnormal. Africa actually enriches
Europe: but Africa is made to believe that it needs Europe to rescue it from poverty. African’s
natural and human resources continue to develop Europe and America: but Africa is made to
feel grateful for aid from the same quarters that still sit on the back of the continent. Africa even
produces intellectuals who now rationalise this upside-down way of looking at Africa” (28).

Writing in his own language, then, is hugely important to anti-imperial struggle. But only if that
writing is also coupled with “carry[ing] the content of our people’s anti-imperialist struggles to
liberate their productive forces from foreign control” (29).

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~ by timrdoc on February 2, 2011.

Posted in (Post)(de)Colonial Theory, Agency, Imperialism, Indigenous Rhetoric, Literacy,

Rhetorical Pedagogy, Social Movements, Tradition, WGS 652 - Fems and Postcolonial Theory,
Writing Pedagogy

5 Responses to “Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. “The Language of African

Literature.” from Decolonising the Mind.”