Download Language and Culture

Colonial, Post-Colonial, and
Transnational Studies
Bandar Otayf
ENGL 956
Prof. Comfort
29 March 2016
Concepts
o Decolonization: “the process of revealing and dismantling colonialist
power in all its forms” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 56).
o Eurocentrism: “the conscious or unconscious process by which Europe
and European cultural assumptions are constructed as, or assumed to be,
the normal, the natural or the universal” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin
84).
o Hegemony: “initially a term referring to the dominance of one state
within a confederation, is now generally understood to mean domination
by consent… It is the power of the ruling class to convince other classes
that their interests are the interests of all” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin
106).
o Imperialism: “refers to the formation of an empire, and, as such, has
been an aspect of all periods of history in which one nation has extended
its domination over one or several neighbouring nations” (Ashcroft,
Griffiths, and Tiffin 111).
o Neo-colonialism: “refers to the last stage of imperialism, and it suggests
that although countries … had achieved political independence, the excolonial powers and the newly emerging superpowers… continued to play
a decisive role in their cultures and economies through new instruments
of indirect control” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 146).
o Postcolonialism: “deals with the effects of colonization on cultures and
societies” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 168) since “the moment of
colonization” (Childs and Williams 3). “Post-colonial had a clearly
chronological meaning, designating the post-independence period.
However, from the late 1970s the term has been used by literary critics to
discuss the various cultural effects of colonization” (Ashcroft, Griffiths,
and Tiffin 168)
Thesis
o
Colonialism/postcolonialism theory is a theory that tends to deal with the effects
(political, cultural, economic effects, etc.) of colonization on a nation since the moment
of the colonization. However, these effects cannot be completed or be effective
without having the colonized people to be mentally controlled (being unconscious of
what imperialism has done to them and their culture). Replacing the colonized nation’s
language and culture with the colonizer’s language and culture can be one way to
colonize people’s minds. In this paper, I would like to specifically focus on how ‘mental
control’ can be done by colonial powers, its consequences or effects on a nation and its
people, what happens if colonization process lacks ‘mental control,’ and how
colonized/ex-colonized people can get free of such control.
• To deal with and support the thesis:
 How can ‘mental control’ be done?
 What are some of its consequences on the colonized/ex-colonized nations’ language, culture,
and people?
 What would happen if ‘mental control’ did not succeed?
 How can colonized/ex-colonized people get rid of it?
How can Mental Control be done?
o Imposing a foreign language (the colonizer’s language) plays an important
role in colonizing the minds of people of a colonized nation
• To explain how a foreign language used in a nation can be either a tool of
imperialism that tends to separate a culture from its people or as a tool of
communication, Thiong’o, in his Decolonsing the Mind, sheds light on the
duality of language.
According to him, language is “both a means of communication and a carrier of
culture” (1132).
A foreign language becomes a carrier of a foreign culture when, for example, it is
used by colonized/ex-colonized people for education as a must; when it moves
from one generation to another while the native language is ignored; and when
it becomes a part of their identity (Thiong’o 1131-4).
o Imposing colonizer’s language, as a culture carrier, causes the
colonized/ex-colonized nations to have no choice but to accept it as the
language of education. (schools are perfect places to start colonizing the
minds, particularly children’s minds)
• Thiong’o states that the foreign (colonizer’s) language becomes the language
of “formal education” and becomes “more than a language…, and all the
others [have] to bow before it in deference” (1131).
o Without learning and using the imposed foreign language, students
would have difficulties to step further in their education journeys, to get
rewards, or even to have his or her intelligence measured.
• Regarding this, Thiong’o gives examples of how English, the colonizer’s
language, became a must in African countries. He states,
 “English became the measure of intelligence and ability in the arts, the sciences,
and all the other branches of learning” (1132).
 “Any achievement in spoken or written English was highly rewarded” (1132).
 “All the papers [papers of examinations] were written in English. Nobody could
pass the exam who failed the English language paper no matter how brilliantly
he had done in the other subjects.” (1132)
 “Nobody could go on to wear the undergraduate red gown, no matter how
brilliantly they had performed in all the other subjects unless they had a credit
- not even a simple pass! - in English.” (Thiongo 1132)
 Conclusion:
Imposing a foreign language in a nation and setting it as a requirement
or as a must can cause the people of that nation to adopt it and use it
since they cannot achieve anything without it. Adopting and accepting
the foreign language and suppressing/ignoring the native one gradually
leads the people, particularly the new generation, to adopt the foreign
culture. In other words, accepting the colonizer’s language and culture
is/causes a mental control.
Consequences of Mental Control on
Colonized/Ex-Colonized people and Nations
o “Mental control” means that the nations and people under colonization
lose control of everything: culture, politics, economy, etc.
• “Imperialism continues to control the economy, politics, and cultures,” and
such controls cannot occur without “mental control” (Thiong’o 1126, 1135).
• Edward Said, in his Orientalism, also states that “because of Orientalism the
Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action” (44).
• Rivkin and Ryan, in their English Without Shadows: Literature on a World
Scale, describe them after being colonized as “less civilized or less capable
and as needing… paternalist assistance” (1072).
o People and nations lose their identity. They come “to be defined
and to define themselves in terms of the languages” and the
cultures of the colonizers and ex-colonizers (Thiong’o 1127).
• Thiong’o states that African countries, as colonies and neo-colonies, came to
define themselves as: “English-speaking, French-speaking or Portuguesespeaking African countries” (Thiong’o 1127).
• As for the children, “The colonial child was made to see the world and where
he stands in it as seen and defined by or reflected in the culture of the
language of imposition” (Thiong’o 1136).
• He adds that “African children who encountered literature in colonial schools
and universities were thus experiencing the world as defined and reflected in
the European experience of history. Their entire way of looking at the world,
even the world of the immediate environment, was Eurocentric.” (1142)
o Native cultures, histories, values, and languages are ignored and
distorted, whereas the foreign language and culture gain strength.
• Hamadi, in his Edward Said: The Postcolonial Theory and the Literature of
Decolonization, says,
[Edward] Said believes that a powerful colonizer has imposed a language and a
culture, whereas cultures, histories, values, and languages of the Oriental
peoples have been ignored and even distorted by the colonialists. (40)
• One the other hand, Said, in his Orientalism, says that colonizing culture
“gained in strength and identity by selling itself off against the Orient as a sort
of surrogate and even underground itself” (44).
• Jinadu, in his Language and Politics: On the Cultural Basis of Colonialism,
states that Fanon, when he discussed the role of language in the colonial
situation, reached a conclusion, or a hypothesis, which “asserts that in
adopting and using the language of the colonizer, the colonized subject
thereby not only assumes the culture of the colonizer but also rejects his own
culture” (607).
o When the ruling government, either before or after the political
independence, starts to use the foreign language as a formal language,
some of the colonized/ex-colonized people, who have issues to learn the
language or who are not mentally controlled yet, will have
miscommunications and misunderstandings with both the government
and those who have adopted the foreign language and ignored the native
one. In other words, a gap between different classes within the nation is
created.
• Bullitt, in The Old Ills of Modern India, mentions,
“The people of India speak 15 different principal languages and 210 minor
languages. They cannot understand each other’s language. In consequences,
debates in Indian Parliament are carried on in English. In Indian Army, orders are
given in English. All state papers are prepared in English. When the Prime
Minister broadcast an eloquent appeal to the peasant to contribute for grain
famine sufferers, he used English which not one out of 10,000 peasants cannot
understand.” (111)
o People who are mentally controlled feel more grateful and/or attached to
the imposed language than to their native language.
• Examples are Leopold Sedar Senghor and Chinua Achebe.
Even though Chinua Achebe believes that abandoning a mother tongue “looks
like ‘a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling,” he declares that “there is
no other choice. I have been given the language and I intend to use it” (Thiong’o
1128).
As for Senghor, he states, “We express ourselves in French since French has a
universal vocation and since our message is also addressed to French people and
others” (Thiong’o 1136). He adds, “In our languages [i.e. African languages] the
halo that surrounds the words is by nature merely that of sap and blood; French
words send out thousands of rays like diamonds” (Thiong’o 1136-7). As a
response, Thiong’o says, “if he [Senghor] had been given the choice he would
still have opted for French,” and “he becomes lyrical in his subservience to
French” (Thiong’o 1136).
o One the other hand, people under colonization/under mental control,
particularly children, begin to believe that they would be inferior,
classified, and discriminated if they did not have, use, and adopt the
colonizer’s language and culture.
• If a person was caught speaking his or her mother tongue, he or she would be
seen as a culprit and would be “given corporal punishment - three to five
strokes of the cane on bare buttocks - or was made to carry a metal plate
around the neck with inscriptions such as I AM STUPID or I AM A DONKEY”
(Thiong’o 1131).
• In Africa, for example, the kinds of literary texts available for the children,
either in schools or libraries, during the colonization were in the colonizer’s
language, and such texts glorified the colonizer’s traditions as well as their
authors. They also glorified those native citizens who co-operated with the
colonizer, and negatively portrayed those native citizens who offer “resistance
to the foreign conquest and occupation of his country” (Thiong’o 1140-1).
What happens if mental control is missing
o The colonial power will have less stability and show more violence to
keep controlling.
• “Economic and political control can never be complete or effective” (Thiong’o
1135)
• The relationship between the colonized and the colonizer becomes “a
relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex
hegemony” (Said 45).
How to Get Rid of Mental Control
o Thiong’o comes up with what is called “the quest for relevance” (1137)
which can help colonized/ex-colonized people to decolonize their minds
and to restore and regain the native language and culture.
• The Quest for Relevance is “the search for a liberating perspective within
which to see ourselves clearly in relationship to ourselves and to other selves
in the universe” (1138).
• He also says, “how we view ourselves, our environment even, is very much
dependent on where we stand in relationship to imperialism in its colonial
and neo-colonial stages,” so, if there is anything needs to be done about “our
individual and collective being today, we have to coldly and consciously look
at what imperialism has been doing to us and to our view of ourselves in the
universe” (1138-9).
o Thiong’o explains how the quest for relevance started in African
countries. He states that
• The recognition and consciousness of the seriousness of such an issue began
when a rejection was declared in 1968 by African lecturers and researchers in
regard to “the underlying notion that Africa was an extension of the West.”
Later on, they said, “if there is a need for a 'study of the historic continuity of
a single culture', why can't this be African? Why can't African literature be at
the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it?” (Thiong’o
1139).
• Some other lecturers state,
“We reject the primacy of English literature and cultures. The aim, in short,
should be to orientate ourselves towards placing Kenya, East Africa and then
Africa in the centre. All other things are to be considered in their relevance to
our situation and their contribution towards understanding ourselves... In
suggesting this we are not rejecting other streams, especially the western
stream.” (qtd. in Thiong’o 1142-3)
o Rejections without actions are not enough to get the native language and
culture back, or to keep it resisting and alive. One of those actions is
producing literature.
• Rivkin and Ryan, in their English Without Shadows: Literature on a World
Scale, state that “each colonized nation,” in the past, “produced its own body
of literature that dealt with the imperial experience or attempted to define a
post-imperial sense of national and cultural identity” (1072).
• Edward Said, in his Orientalism, explains the solid connection between literary
culture and society. Changing or replacing one of them influences the other.
Said says, “society and literary culture can only be understood and studied
together” (51).
Essop’s The Hajji
o Essop’s The Hajji to show how a culture can be lost and how it can be
regained if there is consciousness and quest for relevance.
• Is there any moment(s) in the story when people are separated from their
culture?
• Is there any moment(s) in the story when people reject their culture because
of the long period of separation between them and their lost culture and
because of ‘mental control’?
• Is there any moment(s) of consciousness of what has been happening to the
native people and their culture? Does the consciousness lead them to quest
for relevance?
o Three characters:
• Hassen (non-white): represents his family, or native people, who have lost
their native culture after being colonized and mentally controlled.
• Karim (Hassen’s brother): represents the native culture.
• Catherine (white woman): represents the power (colonizer) who separates
the native culture from its people.
• When Catherine (the white woman; the colonizer) says to Hassen, “Please
understand that he [Karim]’s not to blame for having broken with you. I am to
blame. I got him to break with you. Really you must blame me, not Karim” (163).
This moment shows the idea that Hassen (who represents the colonized and
mentally controlled people who have lost their culture) has been separated from
his brother Karim (who represents Hassen’s native culture) for 10 years (162),
because of the white woman whose culture is different from that of Hassen and
Karim.
• Since Karim (the native culture) is weak, dying, and seems to bring no risks to the
colonizer after being completely lost for 10 years, the colonizer seems to have no
fear of telling or reminding the fully colonized and controlled people (Hassen)
about their lost culture (162).
• To restore the culture, some consciousness from its people (Hassen) is needed.
However, at this moment, the moment when Karim (the native culture) is dying,
the culture is rejected several times since there is no consciousness yet from the
native people (Hassen) (162, 166, 169).
• Hassen (the colonized and mentally controlled people) feels something wrong going on when he
keeps rejecting his brother Karim (the native culture); however, because of the lack of the
consciousness of his situation, Hassen does not exactly know what is wrong with his rejections.
So, to feel relaxed, he hopes that his brother (the native culture) could die so he, Hassen, would
enjoy the current situation, being colonized and mentally controlled, and feel relieved of what has
been trying to get back to him suddenly after being absent for 10 years (168).
• Hassen’s brother Karim (the native culture) dies (169). However, since a dead person can still be
remembered, the culture can be also remembered. The only difference is that remembering a
thing can help to restore and bring that thing back while remembering a dead person can bring
memories and what the dead person represents back but not the person him/herself.
• The element, or the requirement, needed here is the quest for relevance, and such a quest needs
consciousness. Hassen (the colonized people) has his consciousness back when he remembers his
brother sitting next to him during their youth and doing beautiful things (before Karim left with
Catherine, or before the colonizer took the native culture) and then cries. Hassen’s crying at the
end of the story shows that what has come to his mind (the colonized people’s minds) is a quest
for relevance which is a result of consciousness.
Discussion Questions
o If there is any, what kind of relationships do some theories, like Marxism,
Psychoanalysis, and feminism, have with postcolonial studies?
o To what extent do you agree/disagree with a nation teaching its students
its ex-colonizer’s language and literature?
o Do you believe that a person being mentally controlled (not conscious of
what imperialism had done to you) makes him/her different from those
whose minds are not controlled yet (still conscious of what has been
going on) in term of the treat they receive from their colonizer, etc?
Resources
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Thiong’s Decolonising the Mind
Said’s Orientalism
Rivkin and Ryan’s English Without Shadows: Literature on a World Scale
L. Adel Jinadu’s Language and Politics: On the Cultural Basis of Colonialism
William Bullitt’s The Old Ills of Modern India
Lutfi Hamadi’s Edward Said: the Postcolonial Theory and The Literature of
Decolonization
• Essop’s The Hajji from One World of Literature
• For the definitions of the concepts/terms:
• Post-Colonial Studies: the Key Concepts, 2nd ed., by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths,
and Helen Tiffin
• Childs and Williams’ An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory