''Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature'' (Heinemann Educational, 1986), by the
Kenyan
)
, national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"()
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, capital = Nairobi
, coordinates =
, largest_city = Nairobi
, ...
novelist and post-colonial theorist
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (; born James Ngugi; 5 January 1938) is a Literature of Kenya, Kenyan author and academic who writes primarily in Gikuyu language, Gikuyu and who formerly wrote in English language, English. He has been described as having bee ...
, is a collection of essays about language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity. The book, which advocates linguistic decolonization, is one of Ngũgĩ's best-known and most-cited non-fiction publications, helping to cement him as a preeminent voice theorizing the "language debate" in
post-colonial studies
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...
.
Ngũgĩ describes the book as "a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism, and in teaching of literature". ''Decolonising the Mind'' is split into four essays: "The Language of African Literature," "The Language of African Theatre," "The Language of African Fiction," and "The Quest for Relevance." Several of the book's chapters originated as lectures, and apparently this format gave Ngũgĩ "the chance to pull together in a connected and coherent form the main issues on the language question in literature."
The book offers a distinctly
anti-imperialist
Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is a term used in a variety of contexts, usually by nationalist movements who want to secede from a larger polity (usually in the form of an empire, but also in a multi-ethnic so ...
perspective on the "continuing debate … about the destiny of Africa" and language's role in both combatting and perpetrating
imperialism
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
and the conditions of
neocolonialism
Neocolonialism is the continuation or reimposition of imperialist rule by a state (usually, a former colonial power) over another nominally independent state (usually, a former colony). Neocolonialism takes the form of economic imperialism, gl ...
in African nations. The book is also Ngũgĩ's "farewell to English," and it addresses the "language problem" faced by African authors. Ngũgĩ focuses on questions about the African writer's linguistic medium (should one write in one's indigenous language, or a
hegemonic
Hegemony (, , ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states. In Ancient Greece (8th BC – AD 6th ), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of the ''hegemon'' city-state over other city-states. ...
language such as French or English?), the writer's intended audience, and the writer's purpose in writing.
''Decolonising the Mind'' is a meld of autobiography, post-colonial theory, pedagogy, African history, and literary criticism. Ngũgĩ dedicated ''Decolonising the Mind'' "to all those who write in African languages, and to all those who over the years have maintained the dignity of the literature, culture, philosophy, and other treasures carried by African languages."
Background
The language debate in post-colonial studies
Language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
is a central question in
post-colonial studies
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...
. Many post-colonial scholars and writers detail the colonial practice of imposing the colonizer's languages onto the peoples they colonized, even forbidding the use of the colonized people's native tongue. They examine this practice as part of the systematic oppression of imperialism in neocolonial societies, and they investigate its ramifications on the psychological, physical, and cultural well-being of colonized peoples. In the context of post-colonial studies, language is a weapon and a site of intense neocolonial conflict.
Some post-colonial theorists advocate, if not a complete abandonment of the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
, at least a conscious and pronounced preference of indigenous languages as a literary or scholarly medium. Ngũgĩ sits firmly on this side of the debate. Others, however (
Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Wes ...
, for example), see the practicality of utilizing hegemonic languages like English and French as too immediate to permit the abandonment of such languages. On this side of the argument, writers and activists see using the colonist languages as a practical alternative which they can employ to improve conditions of colonized peoples. For example, a colonist language can be used both to enhance international communication (e.g. people living in Djibouti, Cameroon, Morocco, Haiti, Cambodia, and France can all speak to one another in French). This side also views the subversive potential of the appropriation of a colonist language by an
indigenous people
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
; it is seen as a “counter to a colonial past through de-forming a 'standard' European tongue and re-forming it in new literary forms.”
As
Jennifer Margulis, a scholar of post-colonial studies at
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...
, outlines, the issue of languages raises several polemical questions for consideration in the study of literary texts:
Thus, the question of whether or not to write in African languages is a serious one for the African writer, as Oliver Lovesey, a scholar of
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Ngugi or Ngũgĩ is a name of Kikuyu people, Kikuyu origin that may refer to:
*Ngugi wa Mirii (1951–2008), Kenyan playwright
*Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (born 1938), Kenyan writer
*David Mwaniki Ngugi, Kenyan politician and member of the National Assemb ...
, notes. In his book on Ngũgĩ and his work, Lovesey quotes
Albert S. Gérard Albert Stanislaus Gérard (1920-1996) was a Belgian scholar of comparative literature, specializing in African literature. His ''African Language Literatures'' was praised by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (; born James Ngugi; 5 January ...
on this topic:
Ngũgĩ's contribution to the language debate is widely known and studied, and he has theorized on the topic extensively. He passionately advocates the overall development of
African languages
The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families:
* Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Southern A ...
and their use in
African literatures—in 1992 he founded the
Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩri, and continues to edit it—and he famously renounced writing in English. First, he committed to abandoning English in his fiction writing, and in a note on ''Decolonising the Mind'', he bids a final "farewell" to English in all of his writings.
Imprisonment and exile
In December 1977, following the production of the controversial play ''
Ngaahika Ndeenda
''Ngaahika Ndeenda'' (''I Will Marry When I Want'') is a controversial play that covers post-colonial themes of class struggle, poverty, gender, culture, religion, modernity vs. tradition, and marriage and family.
The play was written by Ngũgĩ w ...
'' (''I Will Marry When I Want''), which he co-wrote with Ngugi wa Mirii, and the publication of his highly politicized novel ''
Petals of Blood
''Petals of Blood'' is a novel written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and first published in 1977. Set in Kenya just after independence, the story follows four characters – Munira, Abdulla, Wanja, and Karega – whose lives are intertwined due to the ...
'' (1977), Ngũgĩ was imprisoned without trial or charges in
Maximum Security Prison Maximum security prisons and supermax prisons are grades of high security level used by prison systems in various countries, which pose a higher level of security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is ...
by the authoritarian Kenyan regime. The play was performed in his native tongue
Gikuyu in an open-air theatre in
Limuru
Limuru is a town in central Kenya. It is also the name of a parliamentary constituency and an administrative division. The population of the town, as of 2004, was about 4,800. In a census taken in 2019 the population had increased to 159,314.
Loc ...
, with actors who were peasants and workers in the village. Both ''Petals of Blood'' and ''Ngaahika Ndeenda'' were openly critical of neocolonial life in Kenya, and they garnered Ngũgĩ a reputation with the Kenyan regime as a political dissident.
Ngũgĩ was denied employment at the University of Nairobi upon his release, and he was imprisoned again in 1981 and 1982. He published several works while he was shifted in and out of imprisonment: ''Caitaani Mũtharaba-inĩ'' (''Devil on the Cross''), which he had written on toilet paper in prison, and ''Writers in Politics'' in 1981, and ''Detained'', an account of his experiences in prison, in 1982.
Upon his release from prison, Ngũgĩ continued to write and produce activist literature and theatre, and he remained critical of the situation in Kenya. Another play Ngũgĩ had helped write, ''Maitũ Njugĩna'' (''Mother, Sing for Me''), was suppressed by the government.
Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government, Ngũgĩ and his family received threats of violence and death, and were forced to live in exile. Ngũgĩ lived out his exile in the United Kingdom (1982–1989) and in the United States (1989–2002). While he was in exile, the Kenyan regime continued to harass him, and attempted to get him expelled from England. The regime also continued to repress his literature in Kenya: from 1986–1996, ''Matigari'' could not be sold in Kenya, and the regime removed all of Ngũgĩ's work from all educational institutions. Only after Arap Moi was voted out of office, 22 years later, was it safe for him and his family to return.
Ngũgĩ experienced acute repression, but he was also intensely creative during this earlier period of his exile. Between 1982 and 1984, he widened the scope of his writing and released three children's books in
Gikuyu. He published ''Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Oppression in Neo-Colonial Kenya'', a collection of essays about Kenya's hostile political atmosphere, in 1983. ''Decolonising the Mind'' and ''Matigari'' were both published in 1986.
In their book on Ngũgĩ and his works, David Cook and Michael Okenimkpe write that Ngũgĩ's works from 1979 onward reveal his renewed determination and mental resilience, and demonstrate that his prison ordeal "strengthened his will to continue the battle for social justice." The works of social and literary criticism Ngũgĩ published since his exile in 1982—''Barrel of a Pen'' (1983), ''Decolonising the Mind'' (1986), and ''Moving the Centre: The Struggle of Cultural Freedom'' (1993)—are often studied together because they share an interest common themes like imperialism, culture, African languages, African literature, African theatre, education, and religion, and they each articulate his commitment to revolutionary socialist ideology. "Individually these volumes add new dimensions to his writing," Cook and Okenimkpe write, "and together they document a transition in his campaign towards rousing his countrymen to act in practical ways against exploitation and inequality."
Themes, ideas, and structures
Language and culture
Central to ''Decolonising the Mind'' is Ngũgĩ's "theory of language", in which "language exists as culture" and "language exists as communication":
Communication between human beings propels the evolution of a culture, he argues, but language also carries the histories, values, and aesthetics of a culture along with it. As he puts it, "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).
Furthermore, in ''Decolonising the Mind'', Ngũgĩ sees language, rather than history or culture, as the enabling condition of human consciousness: "The choice of language and the use of language is central to a people's definition of themselves in relation to the entire universe. Hence language has always been at the heart of the two contending social forces in the Africa of the twentieth century" (4).
Imperialism
Imperialism can be said to over-arch nearly everything Ngũgĩ wrote in his exile writings, particularly ''Decolonising the Mind''. He gives imperialism many definitions in his writings which typically implicate
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...
, as well, including: "the rule of consolidated finance capital" (''Decolonising the Mind'', 2); "the conquest and subjugation of the entire labour force of other countries by concentrated capital"; and so on. Cook paraphrases Ngũgĩ's understanding of imperialism as he articulates in his work: "Imperialism disrupts the entire fabric of the lives of its victims: in particular their culture, making them ashamed of their names, history, systems of belief, languages, lore, art dance, song, sculpture, even the colour of their skin. It thwarts all its victims' forms and means of survival, and furthermore it employs racism."
Imperialism and the "cultural bomb"
These discussions intersect as Ngũgĩ grapples with language as both an insidious tool for imperialism as well as a weapon of resistance for colonized peoples. In his introduction, Ngũgĩ asserts, "The study of African realities has for too long been seen in terms of tribes" (1). This is problematic for Ngũgĩ because this perspective ignores imperialism's historical and contemporary role in the problems in Africa. And so, Ngũgĩ proposes a different approach: "I shall look at the African realities as they are affected by the great struggle between the two mutually opposed forces in Africa today: an imperialist tradition on one hand, and a resistance tradition on the other" (2).
Ngũgĩ considers English in Africa a "cultural bomb" that continues a process of wiping out pre-colonial histories and identities: "The effect of the cultural bomb is to annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their environments, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves" (3). He argues that it leaves colonized nations "wastelands of non-achievement," and leaves colonized peoples with the desire to "distance themselves from that wasteland" (3). He determines that "colonial alienation" is enacted by the "deliberate disassociation of the language of conceptualisation, of thinking, of formal education, of mental development, from the language of daily interaction in the home and in the community" (28).
In ''Decolonising the Mind'', Ngũgĩ considers "colonial alienation," ultimately an alienation from one's self, identity, and heritage, vis-a-vis linguistic oppression to be imperialism's greatest threat to the nations of Africa.
However, due in large part to his faith in the working classes and "peasantry," Ngũgĩ remains hopeful. He insists that while indigenous African languages have been attacked by imperialism, they have survived largely because they are kept alive by the workers and peasantry, and he maintains that change will only happen when the proletariat is empowered by their own language and culture.
African authors
For Ngũgĩ, because he theorizes language as the foundation and carrier of culture, the role of the writer in a neocolonial nation is inherently political. To write fiction in English is to "foster a neocolonial mentality." On the other hand, writing in African languages is a blow to imperialism's systematic oppression.
He advocates for African writers to reconnect with their "revolutionary traditions" of anti-imperialism in Africa (28).
Ngũgĩ also engages with this issue on a distinctly personal level; when he chose to abandon English, he chose to enact out his own theory in practice. As one biographer points out, "Writing in Gikuyu, then, is Ngugi’s way not only of harkening back to Gikuyu traditions, but also of acknowledging and communicating their present."
Fanonean and Marxist influence
Ngũgĩ is regarded as one of the most significant interpreters of
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961), also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have be ...
, an influential figure in the field of post-colonial studies.
Fanon gave careful attention to the violent ramifications of colonialism on the psyches of the colonized, and that the colonized individual was “stunted” by a “deeply implanted sense of degradation and inferiority.” Ngũgĩ builds upon Fanon's post-colonial
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
by proposing art as a means of healing the trauma of colonialism. In ''Decolonising the Mind'', Ngũgĩ discusses, true to Fanon's form, the negative ramifications on the national consciousness as a result of racism, legalized bigotry, and dispossession.
Lovesey notes that while Ngũgĩ's continuing “advocacy of African languages and their use in aiding the process of decolonization has roots in Fanon’s thinking,” his interests have ultimately moved beyond Fanon. Ngũgĩ remains "sincerely committed" to the works of
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
and
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ,["Engels"](_blank)
'' Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
roots. As Ngũgĩ once said in an interview: "The political literature of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was important and soon overshadowed Fanon. Or rather, Marx and Engels began to reveal the serious weaknesses and limitations of Fanon, especially his own petit bourgeois idealism that led him into mechanical overemphasis on psychology and violence, and his inability to see the significance of the rising and growing African proletariat."
Throughout ''Decolonising the Mind'', Ngũgĩ stores great faith in the African "peasantry." He credits them with keeping native African languages alive, and maintains throughout the book that it will be the empowerment of the lower classes alone that will be able to "bring about the renaissance in African cultures" and ultimately uplift African nations from their neocolonial conditions of oppression (23).
In ''Decolonising the Mind'', while he runs with Fanon's idea that a rejection of the colonizers’ linguistic and cultural forms is a precondition for achieving "true" freedom, Lovesey points out that “Ngũgĩ would always add that material circumstances must also change," in keeping with the Marxist tradition of paying careful attention to material history.
Autobiographical elements
The autobiographical impulse of ''Decolonising the Mind'' allows for Ngũgĩ to elegantly intertwine personal and national politics. The anecdotal perspective in ''Decolonising the Mind'' lends a certain accessibility to readers on political or theoretical issues that is missing from much of the typical and more disengaged academic discussions of linguistic imperialism and
post-colonialism
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is ...
. For example, in "The Language of African Literature," he details the trajectory of the 1884 Berlin Conference's evolution into the
1962 Makerere University College Conference on the Writers of English Expression as a way of illustrating how imperialism was able to indoctrinate even those who were conscious of and active in African literature. He had come to accept the Makerere conference as genuinely African, but he recounts how years later he was struck by his and others' blithe omission of many famous African language writers. He determines that in the 1962 Makerere conference, after "all the years of selective education and rigorous tutelage," he and his contemporaries had been led to accept the "fatalistic logic of the unassailable position of English in our literature" (20). "The logic was embedded deep in imperialism," he says. "And it was imperialism and its effects that we did not examine at Makerere. It is the final triumph of a system of domination when the dominated start singing its virtues" (20).
Furthermore, as Gikandi discusses, Ngũgĩ places his own childhood and youth in a trajectory "that moves from linguistic harmony with his African community to a disjunctive relationship under the grip of the colonial language" in order to support his theory of language, part of which maintains that the native tongue promotes a view of the world that is shared by all members of the linguistic community. In the book, the anecdote operates as a bridge between the reader and the content, and it's part of what made it so popular.
As one critic puts it, "Ngũgĩ is a voice emanating from the heart of Africa and, more than a voice, a person suffering the price of exile for exercising freedoms of people in the West and elsewhere take for granted."
Reception and criticism
In a short essay titled "Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: In Praise of a Friend",
Gayatri Spivak
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 24 February 1942) is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative Lite ...
, a fellow pioneer in post-colonial studies, remembers that Ngũgĩ was a "hero" at the time of the appearance of ''Decolonising the Mind'', which instantly became the "controversial classic it remains to this day": "His political commitment and courage, his imprisonment and exile, had given him an aura."
''Decolonising the Mind'' was perfectly suited to its moment in Africa and relevant to neocolonial struggles in other nations, and it was quickly adopted to the canon of post-colonial studies in language.
While ''Decolonising the Mind'' is in large part a reiteration of much Ngũgĩ's previous work on the topic, several critics commented that the book finally concentrates his work on language and imperialism, as much of it had previously existed fragmentarily in the form of lectures, interviews, and scattered articles.
As far as a more critical reception is concerned, many critics have argued, most prominently
Simon Gikandi
Simon may refer to:
People
* Simon (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name Simon
* Simon (surname), including a list of people with the surname Simon
* Eugène Simon, French naturalist and the genus ...
, that Ngũgĩ's theory of language as purported in ''Decolonising the Mind'' “fetishizes language as an ahistorical repository of an innate, romantic and cultural harmony.
Gikandi asserts that despite Ngũgĩ’s attempts to construct a theory of language that both defines communities and structures experiences, he is left with a forced harmonization: "no language can exist independent of the social ambition of its speakers or the ideological presuppositions behind the institution in which it is taught." According to Gikandi, Ngũgĩ proposes a theory of language that runs up against "all historical evidence" so that he may “reconcile three conflicting perspectives on language: the materialist, the romantic, and the phenomenological." Gikandi does concede, however, that the "real" value of Ngũgĩ's discourse on language “lies in its reconceptualization of national identity and of the institutions of literary and cultural production as vehicles of this identity.”
Influence
On his own authorship and the language debate
Gayatri Spivak
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 24 February 1942) is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative Lite ...
, a pioneer of the
subaltern studies
The Subaltern Studies Group (SSG) or Subaltern Studies Collective is a group of South Asian scholars interested in the postcolonial and post-imperial societies. The term ''Subaltern Studies'' is sometimes also applied more broadly to others who sha ...
school, notes the "timeliness" that Ngũgĩ's book manages to maintain in the debates among post-colonial scholars, both 1) about the emerging discussion on language and
cultural globalization
Cultural globalisation refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings and values around the world in such a way as to extend and intensify social relations. This process is marked by the common consumption of cultures that have been diffused by the ...
, as well as 2) the continuing "language question" for authors who write in "
subaltern
Subaltern may refer to:
*Subaltern (postcolonialism), colonial populations who are outside the hierarchy of power
* Subaltern (military), a primarily British and Commonwealth military term for a junior officer
* Subalternation, going from a univer ...
" languages.
Speaking to Ngũgĩ's relevance to the first debate, Spivak notes that while globalization requires a few hegemonic languages in order to maintain international communication, in order to nurture "the impossible dream of a welfare-world globalization (by which she means 'using capital as socialism would'), this requirement must be supplemented by a deep immersion in that world's richness of language." In other words, English has its uses, but nurturing and proliferating indigenous languages will only help to improve the more egalitarian projects of globalization. Spivak insists that Ngũgĩ's ''Decolonising the Mind'' paved the way for this perspective on globalization: "Ngũgĩ was not simply arguing for his mother tongue, as his subsequent career has shown. He was also arguing for inhabiting non-hegemonic languages with the depth of imaginative use, while retaining English... as 'the first language of international communication'."
In approaching the second debate, Spivak reiterates Ngũgĩ's relevance to "language question" that has been facing post-colonial writers for decades: 'Decolonising the Mind'' has had a long history in a somewhat specific debate among African and Indian writers. Should one write in one's native language and achieve a small yet culturally prepared audience, or should one write in English and claim an international readership—become world literature instantly, as it were?". She adds, however, that "for Ngũgĩ there was the additional desire to produce for a
subaltern
Subaltern may refer to:
*Subaltern (postcolonialism), colonial populations who are outside the hierarchy of power
* Subaltern (military), a primarily British and Commonwealth military term for a junior officer
* Subalternation, going from a univer ...
audience in the native language." Ngũgĩ, she notes, is caught in a "double bind"—bound by his desires to reach a global audience and to write to a "subaltern" language.
Briefly in the 1980s, Ngũgĩ made conference presentations in Gikuyu and published a significant critical essay in his mother tongue in the prestigious ''Yale Journal of Criticism''. Ngũgĩ did not keep his promise to never again write in English, however. He returned, without explanation, "to his familiar role as a critic of imperial European languages writing in English." Gikandi notes that by the time Ngũgĩ accepted a fellowship in the mid-1990s at New York University, "it was clear that Ngũgĩ's effort to use Gikuyu as the language of both his fiction and critical discourse had been defeated by the reality of exile and American professional life." Gikandi notes that the "more complicated" problem with Ngũgĩ's unexplained return to English for students of his work is contextualizing and rectifying the decision with his politics of language.
''Decolonising the Mind'' as pedagogy
''Decolonising the Mind'' provides an empathetic pedagogical framework, as some critiques have noted.
One critic of Ngũgĩ's work, who is also an
English as a second language
English as a second or foreign language is the use of English by speakers with different native languages. Language education for people learning English may be known as English as a second language (ESL), English as a foreign language (EF ...
teacher, notes that exposure to texts like Ngũgĩ's cultivates empathy for the experiences and cultural contexts of people learning English as a second language, and those most affected by the "globalization of English as an industry." Furthermore, Ngũgĩ offers a "useful resource" for the growing use of narrative and autobiographical methods in
TESOL research, and can be used to work to correct the "glaring absence" of non-Western authors, subjects, and publications.
See also
*
Decolonization of knowledge
Decolonization of knowledge (also epistemic decolonization or epistemological decolonization) is a concept advanced in Decoloniality, decolonial scholarship that critiques the perceived hegemony of Western knowledge systems. It seeks to construc ...
*
Language ideology
Language ideology (also known as linguistic ideology or language attitude) is, within anthropology (especially linguistic anthropology), sociolinguistics, and cross-cultural studies, any set of beliefs about languages as they are used in their soc ...
*
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (; born James Ngugi; 5 January 1938) is a Literature of Kenya, Kenyan author and academic who writes primarily in Gikuyu language, Gikuyu and who formerly wrote in English language, English. He has been described as having bee ...
*
Kenyan literature
Kenyan literature describes literature which comes from Kenya. Kenya has a long oral and written literary tradition, primarily in English and Swahili, the two official languages of the country.
__NOTOC__ History
Kenya has a strong tradition of o ...
*
World Literature
World literature is used to refer to the total of the world's national literature and the circulation of works into the wider world beyond their country of origin. In the past, it primarily referred to the masterpieces of Western European lit ...
*
Post-colonial literature
Postcolonial literature is the literature by people from formerly colonized countries. It exists on all continents except Antarctica. Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country, especia ...
References
Further reading
* ''Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics'' (1972), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
* ''Writers in Politics: Essays'' (1981), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
* ''Education for a National Culture'' (1981), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
* ''Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya'' (1983), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
* ''Writing against Neo-Colonialism'' (1986), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
* ''Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom'' (1993, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
* ''Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa'' (1996), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
{{Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Works by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
1986 books
Linguistics books
Books about cultural geography
Books about imperialism
Postcolonial literature
Sociolinguistics works
Works about writing
Linguistic controversies
Identity politics