Work · African & Africana Philosophy
Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
Four lectures and a statement of farewell to English: language carries a people’s culture and memory, and colonial schooling, which punished children for speaking Gikuyu, separated thought from the language of daily life; African writers must write in African languages for their own peoples.
Introduction
“Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature” appeared in 1986 and grew out of Ngũgĩ’s Robb Lectures at the University of Auckland in 1984. It opens with a statement: this is his last book in English, and he will henceforth write in Gĩkũyũ and Kiswahili. The four essays treat the language of African literature, theatre and fiction and the “quest for relevance” in teaching. Ngũgĩ recalls his own schooling, where children were punished for speaking Gĩkũyũ and the African languages of home were cut off from the language of learning, and argues that language carries a community’s culture and memory, so that colonial languages colonise the mind. He criticises the Makerere conference of African writers of 1962 for defining African literature in European languages, describes the Kamiriithu theatre project and its suppression, and calls for literature in African languages addressed to the people. The book became a central text of postcolonial studies.
Connections
Builds on
- The Wretched of the Earth1961 · Frantz Fanon
More works by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
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