Books

The politics of language and memory; from dismembering to re-membering Africa

Title: Re-membering Africa
Author: Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Published: 2009
Publisher: East Africa Educational Publishers

Ngugi has for a long time decried the colonial and neo-colonial influences on the Language of African literature and his book, Re-membering Africa is no different, harping on his favourite theme, the politics of Language in African literature.

Re-membering Africa comes across in two dimensions, that of remembering and re-membering our dismembered language and cultural heritage. The book is divided into four chapters all dealing with different progressive elements of the dismembering practices by the European colonisers through to re-membering and remembering which is the restoration of this dismembered past. The final chapter, From Colour to Social Consciousness looks at the South African experience as a microcosm of the African experience.

In the first chapter, Dismembering Practices, the author examines the practices of the white colonisers which served to bury and as the title implies dismember the African memory and replace this with what the conqueror thought ought to be. This of course stirs up the debate of Eurocentric judgement of African socio-cultural practices an angle that Ngugi has previously tackled extensively in both Moving the Centre and De-colonising the Mind.

In this section the text looks at this dismembering as both physical and psychological from the burying of Waiyaki alive and beheading of King Hintsa to the beheading and burying of African culture and languages. Ngugi argues that this occurs first with the division of the African person into two, the continent and diasporic. The movement of slaves from Africa to work in slave plantations served to double alienate them. Even those who remained were forced to work on land formerly their own ironically one and yet separated from their heritage a theme seen clearly in his earlier text Weep Not, Child where Ngotho’s family is seen as the typical African alienation, a servant on his ‘own’ land.

Then there is of course the infamous Berlin conference and it physical subdivision of the African land in total disregard of communities.

One of the author’s key concerns however is dismemberment at the level of language. With the coloniser renaming regions and landmarks in total disregard of the fact that they already had names in what Ngugi calls linguistic genocide, linguicide or linguistic famine, linguifam, the African memory is replaced by the European one through language. Kirungii becomes Karen, Lake Namlolwe becomes Lake Victoria. “A European memory becomes the new marker of geographical identity…burying the native memory of place.” At stake here is the ability of language to create memories and erase existing ones. This naming does not only end with physical features but is also imposed on bodies as well with “Ngugi becoming James”.

In the second section, Re-membering Visions, the author turns to the Egyptian myth of Osiris to show the dismemberment suffered and the re-membering of this memory through painstaking sacrifice and commitment where “out of the observance of proper mourning rites comes the wholeness of a body re-membered with itself and with its spirit.” The author argues that re-membering Africa world have to start with proper mourning of African lives lost to the slave trade and the battle for freedom as well as a dismembered heritage.

The question of language as a medium of memory is extensive. Ngugi argues that such languages as Creole, Partois and Ebonics became the diasporic African’s means of survival. The case of the corpse talking back. He praises such writers as Martinique’s Aime Cesaire who despite having no African language strove to emancipate his consciousness by plunging back to Africa. Negritude’s other big name Leopold Senghor is seen as having cannibalised African Languages to enrich French despite having an African language.

Talking about African renaissance, Ngugi says that fully-fledged African renaissance is yet to flower. However it has already started. He tries to draw parallels between European renaissance and African renaissance; here while European languages shook off Latin, African languages are up against the shadow of these European languages. Ironically, the re-membering of Europe was the dismemberment of Africa. Now Africa is described as Anglophone, Francophone or Lusophone.

Critics of African writers who have switched to writing in African language have always pointed to the limited reach of such languages. Ngugi’s solution to this is translation, which he calls the language of languages. Ironically, To translate from one African language to another would have to go though a third language, European, which ideally points to the fact that Africa is saddled with this aspect of its dismembering.

Finally Ngugi draws a parallel between the South African case as a pointer to the African re-membering, both continental and diasporic. What comes out clearly is Ngugi’s assertion of the place of writers and artists as keepers of memory.

Interestingly in this text, Ngugi puts forward the difference between the Continental and Diasporic African as follows; ‘Forced into a crypt, the African in the Diaspora tries to break out of the crypt…. On the continent, the reformed African tries to enter the crypt and store his inventions there.” Which brings forth another debate, is the Diasporic African, of which Ngugi is, fit to pass this judgement while he himself prefers the solace of the Diaspora, the dismembering powers, and look on from the sidelines? Is it a case of the passers-by shouting louder than the bereaved?

Ngugi has ideally embraced his convictions by turning to writing in the Gikuyu language with such texts as Caitani Mutharabaini (Devil on the Cross) Matigari and Murogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow). As such his believe in the use of African languages cannot be brushed aside as merely academic.

All in all however, Re-membering Africa offers a comprehensive look, from dismembering to re-membering Africa and makes a good case for Afro-centrism.