Clarification on Critical Reading of Ngugi’s ‘Re-membering Africa’

[Chambi Chachage]

Thanks for your response. Just a couple clarifying points. The argument is not that the book will be more available to Africans if it is published by a non-African press, rather, it is an observation and, if I may add, promotion. For example, after sending that review a friend in Uganda wrote this: "Chambi, thank you for the critque ... however, I am one of the Africans who is still trying to get my hands on a copy of the book ... will check with the Makerere University bookshop sometime this week.  In the meantime I will complete reading Ngugi's "Decolonising the Mind - The Politics of Languagein African Literature". So, yes, the responsibility of knowing and getting the book should be shared by both the publishers and the readers.

 

In regard to the language issue, Ngugi's 'new' argument is not simply about European versus African language. As I said, in this case his argument seems novel due to his research finding from the Irish experience; so, even Achebe's response that you referred to may not be adequate. That is why I urge that we get hold and read it for ourselves. What I have addressed is only a fraction of the facts that Ngugi provides. In fact since I didn't explain one of my claims about his 'racialysis', I intend to write a follow-up review, to be titled Whither African Renaissance? which will critic his Euro-centric-cum-Afro-centric analysis of modernity. In the meantime let me leave you with this quote which explains why African language matters:

 

"The salient features of European Renaissance are discovery and recovery. By discovery I don't mean the voyages of exploration and conquests or the creation of colonial otherness but, rather, Europe's encounter with its own languages. Eric Auerbach describes the European Renaissance as "the movement through which literary languages of various European peoples finally shook off Latin." Before this, Latin had occupied a position not so dissimilar from that occupied by European languages in Africa today: "...[I]t was virtually the sole vehicle of intellectual life and written communication...a foreign language that had to be learned...cut off from the spoken language."...Overwhelmed by the pervasive presence of Latin, pioneers of this shift were at first apologetic, time and again finding it necessary (much like Nuala Ni Dhomhnail in the case of her choice of Irish] to answer the question as to why they wrote in the vernacular...In time, European intellectuals of every nation embrace their own languages with pride. By 1518, Martin Luther could look to his fellow native Germans and thank God "that I hear and find my God in the German language in a way which I have not found Him up to now in the Latin, Greek, or Hebrew tongues"...And speakers of English went from seeing the language as ineloquent, raw, crude, barbarous...and incapable of expressing scientific and literary thought with the precision and elegance of Latin to embracing it as elegant, eloquent and capable of handling all thought (Ngugi wa Thiong'o on Re-membering Africa pp. 63-64)

---

From: kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, June 14, 2010 10:19:31 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Which Pan-Africanism? A Critical Reading of Ngugi’s ‘Re-membering Africa’

dear chambi
these are some reflections on your excellent reading of ngugi's text. as i have not yet read the ngugi tex.t, i am responding to your reflections--which i greatly appreciated
]
first, in response to the complaint about the book's availability being limited due to its being published by an east african press, that seems more than odd to me since ngugi's own longterm claim for the need to establish an authentic african mind entailed liberation from the west and its languages, as did authentic cultural identity. i do not believe in authentic anything, african or any other, nor that english and french are alien languages that engage africans in alien values. i do agree that languages change, especially in reaction with other languages, and that wolof and arabic are filled with french or other words, and that french in africa is vastly different from french in paris or canada, say. etc. achebe answered ngugi years ago on this point, but it somehow remains a sticking point, not worth going over very much.
so, if getting the book to a wider african audience entails using a better known, non-african press, this argument undercuts ngugi's claims about the need to publish in african languages

more interesting is the claim that modernity depended on colonialism. this is the argument of gikandi in Maps of Englishness, the argument that Englishness needed its antithesis to define itself against; that modernity needed its traditionalism, its barbarism, to define itself against, and thus invented tradition, as ranger says, invented africanness, just as SOAS invented its Orientalism. this is mudimbe, using foucault, to argue the relationship between a knowledge and a power. i couldn't agree more. gikandi's reading is the most brilliant, as far as i am concerned. ngugi is right to reiterate the claim, and i celebrate its innovativeness, turning western arrogance and blindness on its ear.
i don't dispute the use of irish, but was it catholic irish? go view The Wind and the Barley, where ken loach describes how the blacks and tans abused the irish; their ugly racist prejudice was unbelievable, and the conservative english are still exercised about the demand that they pay (REPARATIONS) for their previous crimes against the irish, as in the massacre on bloody sunday. this issue has arisen again with a report coming out showing the  guilt of british soldiers in slaughtering 12 irish peace marchers. the brits' attitudes toward the irish resembled those toward other african subjects; we all know the cartoons that showed irish depicted as resembling apes, or africans. the brits hated the irish catholics, not protestants. yeats was protestant. kim wasn't catholic, was he? (don't remember)

the part i have trouble with is this notion that the african's encounter with the west was a one-way street in which europeans brainwashed and imposed on africans an alien culture. i both agree and disagree. sure, christianity was alien. but as bhabha argues, in location of culture, the bible was reterritorialized by the indians. in africa christianity became an african faith; the appropriation of evangelicalism is not blind obedience to the other; it is exactly the same as ALL religions everywhere spread and underwent change; mouridism no less than catholicism. and it wasn't that ngugi became james, it was that james became ngugi wa thi'ongo; that leroy jones became amiri baraka, that cassius clay became mohammed ali, that malcolm little became malcolm x became el hadj malik el-shabazz. my grandfather too changed names, twice. reinvention in response to interreaction with the other.
at the same time, i agree that the interaction was marked by all the horrible things ngugi mentioned. as i write, i am in edinburgh. there is a road through the center of town called the royal mile, at the top of which sits the queen's scottish residence, a huge palace, with cannon encampments, that dominates the entire city. if it could speak, it would say one word, POWER--i am the god that rules you inferior beings, and the mouths of the cannons look down on the happy tourists who buy it all up.
i can agree then with ngugi that there are multiple ways to fight back, not least of which is to change or subvert the dominant discourse. if that means reinstituting gaelic as a national language (across the irish sea), so much the better. but it isn'[t a question of an authentic gaelic, but a cultural resistance. the argument that languages were killed off as a result of foreign rule, well how did french, a latin language, come to prevail over the franks' germanic tongue? there is more than conquest needed to explain the prevalence of languages. and as american english spreads, french fades, despite the french's best efforts. it fades in w africa, iin our own schools here in the states. explain that. our own schools in which the fastest growing languages are chinese and arabic; explain that.

anyway, the key for me is change, which comes, want it or not. the oppression we can fight; the holding on to an old, pure model, be it language or thought, is ultimately reactionary, not liberatory.  there will certainly come the time when race will mean different things in different places. it already does. what are turks in germany? what are arabs in the u.k.? what are "black britains," a concept forging a black alliance between "pakis" and "africans" and caribbean peoples, and especially especially the in-between people who seem to be, now as i just spent 3 weeks in london, the situation that defines most people in the capital.
there are white scots and infinite waves of tourists here in edinburgh; but the people of color often speak with a scottish accent; the white, somewhere between poland and lithuania. where are we? who are we? what does this culture do to address the berlin conference, especially now that bloody sunday has opened the real crevice in their culture. they hate acknowledging their historical crimes against humanity because it shatters the basis for a conservative priority placed on british culture--read european culture. they feel threatened by foreigners, so wink at the abuses suffered by millions of people at their hands. bhopal, wink; BP, wink. there is only one place for mnemosyne now to have the right to speak, and that is through the voice of their immigrants, which is why the grand opening of john akomfrah's film of the same name, mnemosyne, will be the only voice really that we ought to attend to.
ken harrow



hich Pan-Africanism? A Critical Reading of Ngugi’s ‘Re-membering Africa’<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

“The Pan-Africanism that envisaged the ideal of wholeness was gradually cut down to the size of a continent, then a nation, a region, an ethnos, a clan, and even a village in some instances… But Pan-Africanism has not outlived its mission. Seen as an economic, political, cultural, and psychological re-membering vision, it should continue to guide remembering practices” – Ngugi wa Thiong’o

 

A quote from Ngugi wa Thiong’o (2009) book Re-membering Africa that was recently posted online sparked an interesting query from his compatriot: ‘Has this book arrived here in Kenya? Is it available in Africa? Or should we wait until it is savoured exhaustively in Euro-America!’ Needless to say information on how to get hold of it was appreciated to the extent that another Kenyan thus exclaimed just after reading its launching review: ‘It has really awakened me!’

 

This quest for a book that was published a year ago reveals in a ironic way the twin tragedy that Ngugi has been attempting to transcend over the years – the limited (and lack of) access to knowledge produced in and on Africa among and by Africans. Apparently this book is published by East African Publishers Limited based in Nairobi, Kampala and Dar es Salaam. Interestingly, it was launched at the University of Dar es Salaam among, I presume, other places in Africa.

 

It is this ironic background – the story of a very important book published in Africa yet not widely, as in adequately, known among Africans – that has prompted me to pen this critique. The book constitutes four chapters, three of which are based on the 2006 McMillan-Stewart Lectures at Harvard University. The other is primarily based on a lecture I was privileged to attend and which left a lasting impression on my mind – The 2003 Steve Biko Memorial Lecture at the University of Cape Town. As such the book has varying themes but they are all tied with a common thread – the importance of memory in explaining and renewing contemporary Africa.

 

Ngugi’s preface categorically states that this “book speak about the decolonization of modernity” as there is “no region, no culture, no nation today that has not been affected by colonialism and its aftermath.” The author is so convinced of this to the extent that he affirms that “modernity can be considered a product of colonialism.” Now to those who have been following Ngugi’s consistent works this claim may not seem new. But what makes it novel is this research finding:

 

It was astonishing to discover, in writing them, the centrality of the Irish experience to the colonial question, especially as it relates to language, culture, and social memory. Ireland was England’s first colony, and it became a prototype for all the English colonies in Asia, Africa, and America. Irish missionaries, army officers, and administrative officials were often considered part of the British empire, thus possibly explaining why Rudyard Kipling chose to make Kim, the eponymous hero of his novel, both Irish and working class, as if to show both the British proletariat and the colonized alike were willing servants of the empire. Anglo-Irish literature was certainly used in the service of the cultural self-image of the empire: It was integral component of the English canon in schools and colleges in Africa, often taught as the empire’s “gift to the world.” But colonial context of the Irish writers’ texts was erased from their artistic being (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: vi - vii).

 

On the basis of this finding Ngugi aptly entitles chapter one of the book ‘Dismembering Practices: Planting European Memory in Africa.’ Therein he provides two individual cases that highlight how Euro-American colonial-cum-capitalist modernity could not really thrive without first trying to erase the memories of those it sought to colonize and capitalize in ‘new lands’.

 

The first case is that of Waiyaki wa Hinga who resisted British military occupation in the 19^th Century. When the British captured him they removed him from his region, that is, the base of his power. In the realm of military tactics this is quite understandable. Even killing him is logically explainable. But they didn’t just kill him – they buried him alive with his head facing the bowels of the earth. Why such a strange form of burial? Ngugi’s explanation underscores the fact that this was an act of cultural imperialism aimed at making a statement against the cultures of those who were resisting colonialism. To Ngugi, the British applied this cultural-cum-military tactic in “opposition to the Gikuyu burial rites’ requirement that the body face Mount Kenya, the dwelling place of the Supreme Deity.” It is indeed an old tactic that even features in Biblical narratives of conquests whereby the vanquished’s names, bearing their God, were changed. “Similarly”, he notes, “in Xhosaland, the present-day Eastern Cape of South Africa, the British captured King Hintsa of the Xhosa resistance and decapitated him, taking his head to the British Museum, just as they had done with the decapitated head of the Maori King of New Zealand.”

 

Yes, if I may add, the Germans did the same with Mtwa Mkwawa of Uhehe – who successfully defeated them in the famous battle of Lugalo – and went on to hang in public the consortium of leaders who were inspired my Kinjeketile Ngwale of Ngarambe to resist German occupation in the legendary Maji Maji War (1905 – 1907). “The relationship between Africa and Europe”, as Ngugi aptly observes, “is well represented by the fate of these figures” since a “colonial act – indeed, any act in the context of conquest and domination – is both a practice of power, intended to pacify a populace, and a symbolic act, a performance of power intended to produce docile minds.” This relationship is characterized by what the author refers to as dismemberment and defines as an “act of absolute social engineering” that occurred in two stages. In the first stage “the African personhood was divided into two halves: the continent and its diaspora.” Then, in the second stage, the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 “literally fragmented and reconstituted Africa into British, French, Portuguese, German, Belgian, and Spanish Africa.” This tragedy and what followed afterwards is what Ngugi’s Re-membering Africa aims to undo:

 

The result was an additional dismemberment of diasporic African, who was now separated not only from his continent and his labour but also from his very sovereign being. The subsequent colonial plantations on the African continent has led to the same result: division of the African from his land, body, and mind…Whereas before he was his own subject, now he is subject to another (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: 3 - 4).

 

Thus, both generally and specifically, the African mind/memory has been colonized and neo-colonized by Euro-American “capitalist modernity”. Invoking, albeit not entirely agreeing with, V. Y. Mudimbe’s Idea of Africa, Ngugi’s reaffirm that wherever “they went, in their voyages of land, sea, and mind, Europeans planted their own memories on whatever they contacted.” He then narrates the way this was done, from how our places – such as Kirungii and Namlolwe – were renamed Westlands and Victoria respectively and our names – such as Ngugi –  was changed to James to submit Africa to Euro-American memory and identity. It is this submission that stamped and continues to stamp Euro-America’s sense of ownership of Africa. Predictably, Ngugi moves to, and concludes with, his favourite subject of language to unmask this process:

 

If the planting of its memory on the body was effected through names, the one on the mind was accomplished through the vast naming system of language… Africans, in the diaspora and on the continent, were soon to be recipients of this linguistic logic of conquest, with two results: linguicide in the case of the diaspora and linguistic famine, or linguifam, on the continent. Linguicide…is the linguistic equivalent of genocide. Genocide involves conscious act of physically massacre, linguicide, conscious acts of language liquidation…This is precisely the fate of African languages in the diaspora…On the continent, languages are not liquidated in the same way. What happens to them, in this post-Berlin Conference era of direct colonialism, is linguistic famine. Linguifam is to languages what famine is to people who speak them – linguistic deprivation and, ultimately, starvation… In the African continent, African languages – deprived of the food, water, light, and oxygen of thought, and of the constant conceptualizing that facilitates forging of the new and renewal of the old – underwent slow starvation, linguifam (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: 11 - 14).

 

Since language is indeed “a communication system and carrier of culture by virtue of being simultaneously the means and carrier of memory” that bears “the weight of a civilization”, the ultimate result of this dismemberment through linguifam, and thus, culturefam, is a “destruction of the base from which people”, in this case, us, Africans, “launch themselves into the world.”

 

Thus far, I agree with Ngugi. As far as re-membering our African languages is concerned I have no qualms with him. The problem starts when he invokes a global version of ‘Pan-Africanism’ and a Euro-American conceptualization of ‘African Renaissance’ and ‘Afro-modernity’. I have already addressed the racialist pitfalls of the former in my online discussion with champions of such a version so I won’t dwell so much on it. Here it is important to observe that Ngugi’s apt premise that Africa has been dismembered between the continent and diaspora logically leads to his conclusion that re-membering such an Africa is to bring back these two halves together. This is how he puts it in the second chapter entitled ‘Memory, Restoration and African Renaissance’:

 

Political Pan-Africanism should make the continent a base where African peoples, meaning continentals and people of African descent, can feel truly at home – a realization of the Garveysian vision of Africa for Africans, both at home and abroad. Such an Africa would be a secure base where all peoples of African descent can feel inspired to visit, invest, and even live if they so choose (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: 68).

 

Inherent in such a conceptualization is the idea of ‘race’ – the African/Black race to be precise – as a tie that visibly bind what has been referred by Chinweizu, in an online discussion, as “the Pan-African constituency.” The Julius Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan-African Studies who presented the book’s launching review referred to above thus captures this race-cum-cultural dilemmatic which, intentionally or unintentionally, reduces Pan-Africanism to a racial project:

 

Often both the ideologues and detractors present pan-Africanism as a racial construct… Yet, the notion of the African nation, even among Pan-Africanists, is a fiercely contested concept. It is, unfortunately in my view, formulated in a rather fruitless question: ‘Who is an African?’ Are the Arabs in North Africa part of the African nation and therefore included in the Pan-Africanist project? Are the Indians in East and Southern Africa, the Lebanese in West Africa, the Boers and Malays in South Africa etc. Africans? (Issa G. Shivji, 2010, on Kwame Nkrumah’s Thought in the Evolution of Pan-African Ideology)

It is my contention that by invoking the essentialist term ‘African descent’ Ngugi falls into this pitfall of presenting Pan-Africanism as a racial construct. If I were to rewrite his call above I would invoke Mwalimu Nyerere’s no-racial clarion call for an inclusive continental Africanity by declaring that Political Pan-Africanism should make the continent a base that “will belong to Africans” whereby “this word ‘Africans’ can include all those who have made their home in the continent, black, brown, or white” (Julius K. Nyerere, June 1961, on The Future of Africa).

 

This conceptualization of Pan-Africanism is local in a continental sense, rather than global in a diasporic sense, and in a significant way it augurs well with Ngugi’s own call that “Economic Pan-Africanism will translate into a network of communications – air, sea, land, telephone, Internet – that ease intra-continental movements of peoples, goods, businesses, and services” whereby “Africa becomes a power bloc able to negotiate on an equal basis with all other global economies (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 2009: 67 - 68). Such a Pan-Africa, I still assert, is post-racial.

 

© Chambi Chachage

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Kenneth W. Harrow
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Distinguished Professor of English
Michigan State University
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517 803-8839
fax 517 353 3755

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[kenneth harrow]

dear chambi
latin wasn't a spoken language by the early middle ages, by the end of roman rule even. anyway, the question of vernacular lits is an interesting one; dante preceded luther by 2 centuries.
i can accept one part of the argument, and reject another. the part i accept comes from the mouth of boris boubacar diop who sang of the inspiration of turning to wolof for his novels. even there, he turned back to french again. my rejection comes in here: french or english are not foreign dead languages in africa; african authors are often, usually, completely fluent in those languages, and completely creative. even beyond europeans when it comes to rendering african sensibilities, as our great soyinka and achebe have demonstrated over and over. consider the poetry of okigbo to osundare. there is nothing whatsoever in ngugi's argument to account for their mastery of the art, and language. we would be infinitely diminished by their exclusion; it is meaningless to reject bodies of creative works that suited their creators on the ground that their ancestors had been colonized by those whose language they are using. if that were the case, vast quantities of culture would be lost everywhere around the world.
ok, there is such a thing as blind assimilationism; but anti-assimilationism can't be used to disarm the weapons that made soyinka a truly great anglophone author.
maybe i am missing the point here?
you see what i am saying: it isn't a question of rejecting african languages: when that happens, the rejection must be opposed. but rather of rejecting any tool, not only language, from the armament of the thinker. i resent it when i turn to a european theorist and analyze african literature, and then am told i am applying a foreign way of thinking on african texts. this exclusion weakens my arguments, and weakens anyone's arguments, by putting a barrier around what constitutes permissible thinking. it is debilitating and hurts everyone's production of intellectual thought. when i read that there is an african religious aspect to be considered in reading a given text, i celebrate it. often i read the jewish bible in such terms; for instance, jacob is a classic trickster, in african terms.
i could say that hebrew is an afro-asiatic language, that the ancient hebrews were no doubt influenced by african social and cultural patterns. and even that "african" was all over the place, just as ancient jews were all over the place, from mali to southern yemen, with the issue of constructing acceptable canons and barriers being fought out in the ancient texts. all people organize around this struggle; the notion that we must conclude it with a fence called authentic strikes me as a failure of the intellect, in all cases.
in a way ngugi makes my case. he creates a weak analogy citing auerbach because, in my view, the situations were dissimilar. but there is a deep irony that ngugi must turn to the canonical auerbach to make his case concerning africa. why not speak to the realities in africa. on the list there is often a turn to nigerian english, to nigerian languages, and i take it that this is because it enriches the dialogue. we do not insist that the discussion be conducted in yoruba, however,or that by discussing things in english we have somehow lost our intellectual capacities to think in african terms. that is the real issue.
ken
ken

At 08:32 AM 6/15/2010, you wrote:

Thanks for your response. Just a couple clarifying points. The argument is not that the book will be more available to Africans if it is published by a non-African press, rather, it is an observation and, if I may add, promotion. For example, after sending that review a friend in Uganda wrote this: "Chambi, thank you for the critque ... however, I am one of the Africans who is still trying to get my hands on a copy of the book ... will check with the Makerere University bookshop sometime this week.  In the meantime I will complete reading Ngugi's "Decolonising the Mind - The Politics of Languagein African Literature". So, yes, the responsibility of knowing and getting the book should be shared by both the publishers and the readers.
 
In regard to the language issue, Ngugi's 'new' argument is not simply about European versus African language. As I said, in this case his argument seems novel due to his research finding from the Irish experience; so, even Achebe's response that you referred to may not be adequate. That is why I urge that we get hold and read it for ourselves. What I have addressed is only a fraction of the facts that Ngugi provides. In fact since I didn't explain one of my claims about his 'racialysis', I intend to write a follow-up review, to be titled Whither African Renaissance? which will critic his Euro-centric-cum-Afro-centric analysis of modernity. In the meantime let me leave you with this quote which explains why African language matters:
 
"The salient features of European Renaissance are discovery and recovery. By discovery I don't mean the voyages of exploration and conquests or the creation of colonial otherness but, rather, Europe's encounter with its own languages. Eric Auerbach describes the European Renaissance as "the movement through which literary languages of various European peoples finally shook off Latin." Before this, Latin had occupied a position not so dissimilar from that occupied by European languages in Africa today: "...[I]t was virtually the sole vehicle of intellectual life and written communication...a foreign language that had to be learned...cut off from the spoken language."...Overwhelmed by the pervasive presence of Latin, pioneers of this shift were at first apologetic, time and again finding it necessary (much like Nuala Ni Dhomhnail in the case of her choice of Irish] to answer the question as to why they wrote in the vernacular...In time, European intellectuals of every nation embrace their own languages with pride. By 1518, Martin Luther could look to his fellow native Germans and thank God "that I hear and find my God in the German language in a way which I have not found Him up to now in the Latin, Greek, or Hebrew tongues"...And speakers of English went from seeing the language as ineloquent, raw, crude, barbarous...and incapable of expressing scientific and literary thought with the precision and elegance of Latin to embracing it as elegant, eloquent and capable of handling all thought (Ngugi wa Thiong'o on Re-membering Africa pp. 63-64)

[Chambi Chachage]

The point is that Latin was the language of learning that was not accessible to a 'critical mass' responsible for ushering 'enlightenment' in a wider scale - even  Bible knowledge became truly accessible to the masses when it started being translated into the LatinVulgate then English and other languages that the 'common people' of Europe could understand. We can't claim that English and French in Africa are doing the same when we know the masses, that is, the majority of Africans do not use them to generate knowledge sufficient enough to propel Africa into 'enlightenement' or 'renaissance' if I may appropriate Ngugi's comparative analysis of Afro-modernity & African Renaissance. One of he most fundamental question that Ngugi's critics shy away from is: Is the knowledge stored in European Languages accessible and useful to the majority of Africans in Africa?

---

From: kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Tue, June 15, 2010 11:50:23 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Clarification on Critic al Reading of Ngugi’s ‘Re-membering Africa’

[kenneth harrow]

hi chambi
i think some of the comparison that makes sense to me turns on education. i've long been told by linguists that children learn better in their home languages. so i believe strongly in education in indigenous languages, at least through middle school.
i also approve of bilingual education and its benefits. when the second language is not automatically tied to prestige and power, as under colonialism, it is an enhancement. probably it is always something of an enhancement to us all to know more than one language.
i have the impression that those educated in english or french, from the early years, are not encountering "knowledge stored in european languages," as ngugi would have it, nor that they are being europeanized or whatever. i believe the language becomes their property, as it is the property of people who speak it, wherever they come from. and if acheve had been reading conrad and greene now it is achebe whom schoolchildren are reading. whose knowledge is that?
as for the majority: there is a distinction one might make between formal and informal education. between knowledge held in the memories of people who grew up in africa and those elsewhere; and between communication of that knowledge through published books and other forms of publication, like oral transmission.
my real objection is the notion that there is an automatic transmission of something called european knowledge through european languages. i just don't believe in that. having lived in francophone africa for a number of years, i don't find the spoken french, its usage, its tonality, its feel, the same in africa as in the metropole; and i know in france it differs widely from region to region; that it is almost incomprehensible to me when spoken with a real quebecois accent in canada; that it has morphed in its various creoles in the caribbean, grown and developed in new and wonderful ways. many in cameroon feel the same about pidgin. and when i real much nigerian lit, it seems to have been the same there as well
what is the knowledge stored in saro-wiwa's "rotten english"?
ken

At 04:39 AM 6/16/2010, you wrote:

The point is that Latin was the language of learning that was not accessible to a 'critical mass' responsible for ushering 'enlightenment' in a wider scale - even  Bible knowledge became truly accessible to the masses when it started being translated into the LatinVulgate then English and other languages that the 'common people' of Europe could understand. We can't claim that English and French in Africa are doing the same when we know the masses, that is, the majority of Africans do not use them to generate knowledge sufficient enough to propel Africa into 'enlightenement' or 'renaissance' if I may appropriate Ngugi's comparative analysis of Afro-modernity & African Renaissance. One of he most fundamental question that Ngugi's critics shy away from is: Is the knowledge stored in European Languages accessible and useful to the majority of Africans in Africa?

[Chambi Chachage]

Ken I don't know much about 'Francophone Africa'. All I know is that here in 'Anglophone' Tanzania foreign investors are grabbing large tracts of land from villagers because villagers do not know what the laws really say about the transfer of village land to investors. Why? Because the laws are written in a language they can't understand, that is, English. To me this is a case of knowledge - about land transfer - being stored in a foreign tongue as Ngugi would argue. To some of us this problem is real. We have experienced it in school and at work. Recently I talked again about this personal experience on a public TV and when I visited Kilwa in South-Eastern Tanzania I met someone who saw the talk and said he had a similar experience:

 

One day my teacher wrote this definition on the blackboard: “Species are groups of organisms that can interbreed to produce fertile of spring.” I knew the meanings of fertile and spring. But I couldn’t figure out how they fit in. Anyway, I memorized and reproduced it in the examination. As you can guess, I got it right.It was only later, much later, when I came to know what species are. Actually, they produce fertile offspring. I don’t know whether it was my teacher’s fault or mine. What I know is that as a boy I frustratingly tried to breed fish. But, alas, they produced infertile offspring! I didn’t know why. What a missed opportunity to relate what I was taught with what I practiced! I wonder if my teacher taught what she knew.Teaching is primarily about imparting knowledge. When you teach someone to cook ugali what matters mostly is that s/he ends up knowing how to cook ugali. Language is only a medium to facilitate knowledge exchange. And the efficient medium is the one that knowledge users know reasonably well. Could it be that we have politicized language at the expense of professionalizing it. Are we trying too hard to know the form to the extent that we ignore the content?

 

So, I still insist, we cannot have an 'African/Tanzanian Renaissance' similar to that experienced through 'Swahili Civilization/Modernity' unless our 'critical mass' generate, store and disseminate a lot of knowledge in our local language(s) which can easily be understood, adapted and cross-fertilized within our local communities so as to ignite a social/cultural, developmental/economic and scientific/technological revolution in all spheres of our lives.

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From: kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Sat, June 19, 2010 1:27:05 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Economy of Scale of Knowledge produced in European Languages in, by and for Africa(ns)