I took a class this semester called Global Engagement in Practice. As part of our curriculum, we engaged with some of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s work on decolonial theory. We specifically read a chapter from Decolonizing the Mind that focused on the discourse surrounding which language should be used to write African literary works (Wa Thiong’o, 1986). I have previously encountered Wa Thiong’o’s work in another class, Imperial Education, so I was quite familiar with his ideas and theories. He posits that African Literature written in colonial languages is an inherent contradiction, and authors should revert to writing in indigenous languages if they wish for this to be an authentic genre. In this chapter, he also offers insight into how colonial forces used education as a tool for acculturation.
I deeply resonate with Ngugi’s emphasis on school as a site for psychological oppression. I had a similar experience in high school. We were scolded and punished for speaking our local languages (vernacular) and praised for speaking English. I felt deeply decentered in my learning experience, and Wa Thiong’o gives me the vocabulary I lacked to describe it: “the language of my education was not the language of my culture.” There was a deep dissonance I had to live with throughout my educational journey, and Wa Thiong’o captured it perfectly in his writing
He also repeatedly returns to this phrase: “the fatalistic logic of the unassailable position of English in our literature.” After reading this for the first time, I was left with the question: Is it too fantastical or idealistic to imagine completely ridding ourselves of colonial languages? But now that I’m reading it for the second time, I realize that Ngugi’s response to this would probably be that he is not arguing for that. Instead, he argues that we restore our central focus to our own cultures and indigenous languages, and then we can begin to appreciate other languages from the framework of being already deeply rooted in our own cultures. This would create a healthier dynamic and curb the risk of internalizing ideas of inferiority.
Reference
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. (1986). The language of African literature. In Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (pp. 4–33). Heinemann.
