Decolonizing the Word: Language, Culture, and Self in the Works of Ngũgĩwa Thiong'o

and Gabriel Okara

Author(s): Katherine Williams
Source: Research in African Literatures , Winter, 1991, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Winter, 1991),
pp. 53-61
Published by: Indiana University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3820357

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Research in African Literatures

This content downloaded from

134.76.61.232 on Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:00:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Decolonizing
Kthe Word:
g gg Langu age,
Culture, and
g is t Self in the
Works of
I Ngugi wa
to polis Thiong'o and
Gabriel
Okara
Katherine Williams

r Ngigi wa Thiong'o, at one time the premier Kenyan novelist in the

English language, began to publish in his native Gikuyu in the early 1980s. His
most recent novels, Devil on the Cross and Matigari, ar available in English not
as original English language works, but as translations. Ngdgi's decision to
write in a native language is by no means unique; African literature is produced
in all of the tongues of the continent. In returning to his native language,
Ngfigi is taking part in the widespread reconceptualization of language and in
the reconstitution of African literature studies that has characterized the post-
colonial era. He is also commenting on the nature of language and its relation
to politics and culture.
In this essay, I propose to examine particular issues of language in several
works by Ngigi and in the controversial novel, The Voice, by the Nigerian
novelist and poet Gabriel Okara. Both Nggig and Okara address the problem
of how culture relates to language and of how the self participates in this rela-
tion. Other African writers have explored such issues within colonial and post-
colonial contexts: Frantz Fanon, Chinua Achebe, Es'kia Mphalele, Wole
Soyinka. Indeed, debates on language have been particularly acute in post-
colonial Africa, largely because, as Fanon argued, language is a technology of
power. Ngigi and Okara raise specific and historically significant questions
about language theory as well as questions about aesthetic policy. My discus-
sion explores the interrelations of language and culture in the development of
authorial and national identity in their works.'

This content downloaded from

134.76.61.232 on Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:00:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
54 I Research in African Literatures

The central difficulty for both Ngfgi and Okara is how to write in the lan-
guage of the oppressor-and why, in Ngugi's case, it is necessary to abandon
that language and the appeal of its supposed universality. Deprived of a native
language, the African writer is deracinated and decultured. And, if forced to
write in the imperialist's language, the African writer risks absorption into the
imperialist's culture. As a practical problem, choice of language is obviously
crucial to all writers working in a multilingual colonial or post-colonial envi-
ronment. In Africa, the debate over the choice of language has raged for
decades; among others, Achebe and Okara have been seen as developing a
"hybrid language," that is, "English that is purely local... which expresses the
experience of the African... authentically" (Nichols 124). Many writers, like
Ngigi, have completely rejected European tongues in favor of African vernacu-
lar languages.
The primary theoretical issue for post-colonial writers like Ngugi and
Okara is the relation of linguistic displacement to cultural displacement. Both
writers attempt to fight their way out of psychological and political alienation
by examining the nature of language and by raising the question of whether lan-
guage constructs culture or is constructed by it. Okara does so implicitly in his
experimental novel, The Voice. Ngiug does it explicitly in Decolonising the
Mind, where he rejects English as the language of choice for the African writer.
Both writers craft their strategies for disengagement from an imperialist lan-
guage out of the social and political contexts of their own existence. These
strategies offer an important historical commentary on European language the-
ories. In asserting this connection, I do not wish to propose that Western lan-
guage theorists have influenced Ngigi or Okara either directly or indirectly.
Craig Tapping, in a recent discussion of orality and African literature, chastizes
Western critics for re-inscribing a modem Western position on so-called Third
World literature (74). I cannot altogether avoid this move, but my argument is
that Nguig and Okara theorize about language in such a way that they clarify
the imperialism underlying Enlightenment language theories. They serve as
readers and explicators of (rather than thinkers dependent on) language theo-
ries developed during the height of European expansionism.
The question the two African writers raise-whether language constructs
culture or is constructed by it-was hotly debated in 18th and 19th century
Europe. As a result of this debate, a notion of linguistic relativity emerged. In
short, linguistic relativity followed from the idea of the cultural construction
(as opposed to the god-givenness) of language. If people make language, then
different people with different cultures will make different languages. Wilhelm
von Humboldt was one of several inheritors of Enlightenment language philos-
ophy to explore the notion of linguistic relativity. Ironically, this concept
seems to have invited Humboldt to hierarchize languages along racist and
Western imperialist lines. His desire was to valorize European language as the
most "evolved"-that is, the most complex-and he equated complexity with

This content downloaded from

134.76.61.232 on Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:00:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Katherine Williams I 55

synthesis, which he associated with inflection in language. Relativity was thus

transformed into its seeming opposite: absolutism and hierarchy.2 Not sur-
prisingly, Humboldt was forced to strain his data to discover the "natural"
superiority of European languages, which had become less inflected in
their development, and were certainly less inflected than, for instance,
modem Swahili.
The debate was joined in the 20th century by, among others, Voloshi-
nov, whose Marxist language theory draws on Humboldtian linguistics to dem-
onstrate the subjective and particular aspect of language. Voloshinov posits a
dialectic between the subjective, individually constituted aspect of language
and the objective, social, structuralist aspect of language. A similar dialectic is
discussed in Decolonising the Mind, but Ngfigi's interest lies not simply in the
binary opposition between the individual and the social, but in multiple rela-
tions: "Language as culture is thus mediating between me and my own self;
between my own self and other selves; between me and nature" (15).
None of the various European schools of thought on language theory cor-
responds exactly to Ngfig's and Okara's views. Indeed, Ngigi and Okara both
want to avoid reducing their terms to those of Voloshinov's binary view of lan-
guage. For Voloshinov, the historical opposition between personal and social
expression is an essential Western dialectic. He opposes Humboldt's romantic
theory of the expressive and constitutive power of language by advancing a
rationalist and materialist theory which posits that language emerges from and
is constituted by the environment. Although this opposition is offered as a
clear division in Voloshinov, the distinction seems to depend upon where one
begins the tale. Humboldt's theory explains what happens after language (that
is, a language) is created. It shapes culture. But how does language acquire the
cultural genetic code to pass on its constitutive process? Humboldt's answer is
rather mystical: the energia of language springs from an explosion of relative
force at the beginning of its development. This is a "big bang" theory of lan-
guage origin. Structuralists would present a more rational approach to the ques-
tion of language origin (although not to the question of culture origin).
For them, language, being humanly constructed, develops out of culture. For
Ngfgi, the opposition between the expressive and the structuralist points of
view can be easily negotiated, because he believes that language can emerge
from culture while at the same time constructing it.
For the Marxist Ngugi, this circular definition represents the virtue of not
only instituting a dialectic between subject and object (i.e., between speaker
and spoken word), but also introducing a complementary dialectic that links
speaker, listener, and language. When he states that "Language, any language,
has a dual character: it is both a means of communication and a carrier of cul-
ture," he outlines a dialectic of language process that is both historical and
communal. "Language as communication and as culture are then," he contin-
ues, "products of each other. Communication creates culture: culture is a

This content downloaded from

134.76.61.232 on Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:00:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
56 I Research in African Literatures

means of communication. Language carries culture, and culture carries, partic-

ularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which we
come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world" (Decolonising 13-16).
Ngugi and Okara seem to reject the neat divisions suggested by European
Enlightenment language theories: Humboldtian subjectivity as opposed to
rationalist structuralism. Nevertheless, some parallels do exist. Okara might
agree with Humboldt that language is energia, a force born out of the peculiar
energy of each culture, an unceasingly creative process that has been indelibly
marked by the culture that created it. If Ngfgi fears the imposition of another
culture's values on the individual writer, Okara suggests the possibility that a
writer can recreate linguistic energia by infusing the expressions and syntax of
one language into another. His experiment in The Voice is unique only in the
degree to which he infuses the English of his novel with African-language pat-
terns and syntax. From Achebe to Ngugi, African writers have long attempted
to marry African-language phrasing with English.
Published in 1964, The Voice is one of the most radical of these marriages.
In a 1974 interview, Okara described the complex process by means of which he
thought his way into a revitalized English by abandoning it altogether: "In order
to capture the vivid images of African speech, I had to eschew the habit of
expressing my thoughts first in English" (quoted in Scott 78). This method pro-
duces an English in which idiom and syntax are radically altered. As Patrick
Scott notes, the literal translation of Ijo idiom into English brings metaphors
alive (79). At the same time, the reordered syntax tends to veil literal meaning
and to force an allegorical reading.
Clearly, the novel is an allegory that works on three levels: religious,
political, and cultural. The story focuses on a central character, Okolo, who,
returning from school to his native village, begins to search for what is called
throughout the novel "it," an unnamed thing or idea variously and implicitly
attached to a value--perhaps religious, perhaps cultural--that has been lost
with the coming of colonialism and remains lost in the neo-colonial world. He
attempts to convince his fellow villagers to join him in his search, but they per-
secute him and eventually banish him from the village. In his search for "it," he
travels upriver and then returns to the village, where he will be condemned to
death. Okolo is caught in the dialectics of old and new, religious and secular,
pre-colonial and post-colonial, African and Western.
If Okolo is caught up in an historical dialectic, and if his search is an
attempt to reconcile that dialectic, then Okara's prose is an attempt to explore
a parallel linguistic dialectic. The two poles of Okara's expression are Ijo and
English. By infusing Ijo into English, he hopes to abstract the culture-laden
ideas and atmosphere that were contained in the former language and to place
them into the form or outward crust of the latter (Killam 137).
Such a practice assumes that language is by nature bifurcated, with a dis-
tinct interior and exterior. It also suggests the desirability of an ideal universal

This content downloaded from

134.76.61.232 on Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:00:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Katherine Williams I 57

language-that is, a perfect language by means of which meaning (truth) cou

become at one with expression. In the novel, Okara often characterizes fallen
language as the conveyor of duplicity. A brief passage illustrates this theme
Okolo is on a boat, surrounded by contentious, jabbering fellow passengers-"
microcosm of Amatu and Sologa society" (Iyasere 15). He has been accused o
defiling a girl whom he touched while sheltering her from the rain. To his sing
defender, the engine man, he says:

Listen to me, my man. You only entered my side, so I thank you. This
thanks that I am thanking you comes from my inside. So I will with all my
inside speak some teaching words to you. This world is very big. To every
person's said-thing listen not. If you listen to every said-thing in this
world, you cannot achieve anything or you the wrong thing will do. If your
inside says this is a straight thing, do it. Let not people's said-things your
inside spoil.... (70)

Given the relative obscurity of meaning in The Voice (see Scott 86), the poss
bility of attaining a universal, transparent language might seem chimerica
Nevertheless, Okara appears to be looking for just such a language in his "tran
linguistic" experiment. The opposition between speech and truth ("said
thing" vs. "straight thing") is an opposition between the jabbering, fragment
public voices and a unified private voice. This single, oppositional voice final
reveals the linguistic confusion of the elders: in the debate over Okolo's fate
Chief Izongo notes that "[h]e had never heard two different words before at an
of his meetings with the Elders. They had every time acted with their insides a
as one" (125).
Rising above this linguistic confusion are Okolo's "spoken words,"
phrase that is given particular weight because its definition is developed duri
Okolo's return to his village, where his fellow villagers will attempt to "clos
his mouth.

What of spoken words? Spoken words are living things like cocoa-beans
packed with life. And like cocoa- beans they grow and give life. So Okolo
tured in his inside and saw that his spoken words will not die. They will
enter some insides, remain there and grow like the cor blooming on the
alluvial soil at the river side. (110)

The organic metaphors throughout this passage suggest energia. But in

this case, energia does not emerge from an originary "folk" (as in Humboldt
formulation); rather, it arises out of a reunification of the spiritual division
between the interior self and the exterior world.
In the search for truth, Okara begins with the individual and sees th
social development of a unified language as a creation that arises out of indivi
ual experience. The individual who represents truth-value on the linguistic
plane-Okolo-is also an Adamic figure whose language has authority because
it voices spiritual value. Okolo is an outcast not just because colonialism ha
stolen a shared language from the Nigerian villagers who inhabit his world, b

This content downloaded from

134.76.61.232 on Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:00:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
58 I Research in African Literatures

because it has stolen a spiritual value that is ineffable, unspeakable. No lan-

guage, except a perfect universal language, can speak this truth. In the end,
Okara sees the displacement of self in society as a consequence of the displace-
ment of truth value in language. Universalizing becomes a way of overcoming
the implicit flaws of a particular, humanly constructed language-flaws that
Locke called the "cheat of words." Okara's linguistic experiment attempts to
universalize language by replacing the energia of English with the energia of Ijo,
thus reconstituting the flawed body of one language with the living soul of
another and creating an amalgam that overcomes cultural particularity.
In this way, Okara tries to resolve the language/audience opposition that
bedevils every African writer. In The African Image, Es'kia Mphahlele argues
that the reality of the relation between the African writer and his or her audi-
ence forces the writer to make an untenable choice: either accept a limited
audience speaking a particular African language or strive to reach a larger but
linguistically and politically compromised audience that speaks the language of
the colonizers. Within the context of this choice, Mphalele has recently
endorsed the notion that African languages should play a role in the develop-
ment of African literature (see Nichols 120).
Ngufgi has chosen to write for Glkuyui speakers, although the impact of his
decision has been mitigated by the fact that his Glkiiyf language novels are
readily available in English versions authorized or even translated by Ngfigi
himself. His linguistic choice is especially interesting because he has clearly
spelled out the motivations for it in his theoretical essays. Furthermore, his lan-
guage theories cannot be separated from his politics. Indeed, his awareness of
the political implications of language should remind us that European language
theory is also rooted in politics.
Like European Enlightenment theorists, Ngugi seizes on the question of
origin to articulate insights into the problem of language. In Petals of Blood, for
instance, effective language is conceived as that which existed harmoniously
with song and dance in a prelapserian, precolonial age. As one character points
out, "There was a time when things happened the way we in Ilmorog wanted
them to happen. We had power over the movement of our limbs. We made up
our own words and sang them and we danced to them. But there came a time
when this power was taken from us. We danced yes, but somebody else called
out the words and the song" (115). Language origin provides an historical site
for utopian aspirations. If the moment of origin can be recreated, then lan-
guage and society can be freed from the post-lapserian imperialist conventions
that have shattered Glkfiyf culture.
Petals of Blood is set in a Kenyan village after the Mau Mau revolution.
Independence has not liberated the peasantry from the capitalist legacy of colo-
nialism. Thus, the inhabitants of the village are doubly alienated: from their
precolonial past and from their present community. The central plot revolves
around the murder of three entrepreneurs who represent the village's transfor-
mation from an agrarian to a capitalist economy. Told primarily through a

This content downloaded from

134.76.61.232 on Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:00:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Katherine Williams 59

series of reminiscences, the narration is relatively complex, like a m

mystery, moving from present to past to reveal motivations and to d
moment of revelation.
In the era of neo-colonial corruption and deracination, language
fallen from its original grace in the wider political realm, just as the
character of the novel has fallen by refusing to acknowledge the political
cations of his actions as a teacher, a lover, and a son. The villagers of I
are linguistically isolated from the post-colonial government that, al
dimly perceived, determines the general outlines of life in this part of the
Two characters in the novel act as "translators" who intercede betwe
African speakers and the Anglicized and Anglophone government. The
an idealistic lawyer, who is finally exhausted and overcome by his futile a
to balance two cultures. The second is a corrupt political representative
contact with his electorate is grudging and minimal until he discovers tha
orog is ripe for entry into the capitalist market system that offers oppor
for the exploitation of its inhabitants and its land. These two men are obv
inadequate translators. With no hope of communicating their plight, t
lagers fall into a fragmented, fruitless resistance-an inchoate mumblin
face of an overpoweringly alien neo-colonial experience.
With Gikiiyfi speakers as his fictional subjects and the Gikuiyi langu
a central issue in his novels, it seems appropriate that Petals of Blood was
last English-language novel. Imprisoned by the Kenyan government i
he began his first Glkuiyi language novel, Devil on the Cross, in confin
Later, in Decolonising the Mind, he announced his intention to abandon
altogether. Paralleling the development of this linguistic shift, there o
a related shift in the narrative forms of his novels. Ngugi himself notes t
desire to transcend the linear narrative of his earlier novels (and of the
novelistic tradition) had led him to the complex narrative structure of P
Blood. What he hoped to achieve was a development of Conrad's narra
technique of "multiple voices," a phrase which aptly delineates the co
rence of Ngfigi's progress in narrative and linguistic theory. The wish
multiple voices rather than a single one induced Ngfigi to embrace the l
he uses in Devil on the Cross and Matigari. Although he returns to a re
straight-forward chronological narration in these Glkfiyfi-language nov
complex voicing in them is heightened by his recourse to a form of
realism.
Written during Ngfgi's detention, Devil on the Cross is a savage sa
neo-colonial capitalism. Its central allegory is the gathering of disparat
acters representing the different class and cultural interests in Kenyan
Their meeting takes place at a "Devil's Feast" where a series of competiti
reveal capitalism's depraved face. Using various genres and narrative
niques, Ngfigi attempts to incorporate orality both as an ideal dialog
and as a political instrument. In a choral epic, Gatuiria (a student intell

This content downloaded from

134.76.61.232 on Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:00:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
60 I Research in African Literatures

who ultimately displays a failure of revolutionary courage) imagines the histori-

cal progression of his people from pre-colonial through colonial into a dimly
seen future where "Sounds and voices of a new struggle/<Will> rescue the soul
of the nation" (229). Gatuiria also serves as the mouthpiece for Nguig in plead-
ing for a literature written in the "alphabets of our national languages" (58).
In both Devil on the Cross and Matigari, Ngufgi circumscribes the power of
language. Words can serve as political tools, as they do in the song that cele-
brates Matigari and exaggerates his prowess. But they cannot replace revolu-
tionary action in the battle against neo-colonial oppression. The prototypical
revolutionary hero, Matigari, must ultimately abandon his attempts to chal-
lenge the current system peacefully: "It dawned on him that one could not
defeat the enemy with arms alone, but one could also not defeat the enemy with
words alone. One had to have the right words; but these words had to be
strengthened by the force of arms" (131). The power of language is inevitably
diminished in the post-lapserian world that colonialism engendered. Yet when
it participates in an oral tradition that reaches back to pre-colonial times, as it
does in the act of singing, then language works both prophetically and dialec-
tically, mediating between revolutionaries and their deeds. The final words in
Matigari consist of a chant that, we assume, will embolden Muriuki, the boy
who has inherited Matigari's AK47, to continue the battle: "Victory shall be
ours!" (175).
I have sketched two different linguistic answers to the vexed problem of
language in a neo-colonial environment. Ngigi's energetic--and in its own
way very optimistic-embrace of his native language reflects the historicism
and valorization of the concrete that distinguishes post-structuralism from the
essentializing program of Enlightenment philosophies that inform the modern-
ist movement. For Ngfigi, returning to his native tongue represents a reasser-
tion of self in a multilinguistic, multicultural world. For Okara, by contrast, the
struggle to maintain the myth of universal language and to translate it into lin-
guistic practice seems like a nearly impossible task.
To bridge the gap between particular languages and universal language,
Ngugi simply dismisses one of the primary tenets of linguistic relativity: that of
the untranslatability of languages. In Decolonising the Mind, he calls translation
a "dialogue between the literatures, languages and cultures of the different
nationalities within any one country- forming the foundations of a truly
national literature and culture, a truly national sensibility!" (85). By arguing
passionately for the mediating tool of translation and by assuming that transla-
tion is possible, Ngugi is propounding a double-edged solution to the opposi-
tion between relativity and universality. He preserves his particular culture by
preserving his language, but he can also tap into a perfectly workable mode of
"universal" communication by calling for a vital community of translators. In
translation lies the dialectical means to resolve the conflict between particular
language and universal communication.

This content downloaded from

134.76.61.232 on Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:00:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Katherine Williams I 61

This practical version ofheteroglossia, where translations produce differ

ent "voices" for different readers, is also reflected in Ngugi's use of mixed genr
in his later fiction. His Gikiuyu-language novels are rich examples of magica
realism and allegory with clear debts to a variety of European and African liter-
ary traditions. Historically, literature borrows across linguistic boundaries
Ngigl's reconceptualization of African studies is a useful counter to the bound
ary-drawing that accompanies linguistic imperialism and continues to occu
when certain works are included or excluded from the realm of "English" stu
ies. In Ngugl's translation model, the linguistic effects of colonialism's dis-
placement of the self are resolved in theory and in practice- not through
subservience to one language but through an embrace of many.

NOTES

'This article grows out of discussions in an NEH seminar on "Language and t

Nature of Man," and it makes use of material presented by Hans Aarsleff, who an
theories of language origin in England and on the continent during the eighteenth
nineteenth centuries.
ZHumboldt conceived of language as an expression of synthesis. As Aars
points out, Humboldt argued that "language must be capable of recreating the sim
neity of thought in the grammatical fixity and mental synthesis of the sentence.... O
the polysyllabic inflected languages are truly organic, and their organization (or
being organisms) is the response of high mental power to the need for recreating sim
neity of thought from the discrete lexical forms that analysis keeps making in the flo
time" (Humboldt xxxi). Sanscrit is a synthetic language that perfectly expresses si
taneity. As Aarsleff astutely suggests, the result of this valorization of Sanscrit
transform relativism into absolutism-languages are "measured on the absolute sca
Sanscrit" (xxxii).

WORKS CITED

Humboldt, Wilhelm von. On Language. Trans. Peter Heath. Intro. by Hans A

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.
lyasere, Solomon. "Narrative Techniques in Okara's The Voice." African Lite
Today 12 (1982): 5-21.
Killam, G.D., ed. African Writers on African Writing. Evanston: Northwest
1973.
Mphahlele, Ezekiel. The African Image. London: Faber and Faber, 1962.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Decolonising the Mind. London: James Currey, 1986.
.Devil on the Cross. London: Heinemann, 1982.
Matigari. London: Heinemann, 1989.
Petals of Blood. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978.
Nichols, Lee. African Writers at the Microphone. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents
Press, 1984.
Okara, Gabriel. The Voice. New York: Africana, 1970.
Scott, Patrick. "Gabriel Okara's The Voice: The Non-Ijo Reader and the Pragmatics of
Transilingualism." Research in African Literatures 21 (1990): 75-88.
Tapping, Craig. "Voices Off: Models of Orality in African Literature and Literary Criti-
cism." Ariel 20 (1990): 73-86.
Voloshinov, V. N. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Trans. Ladislav Matejka and
I. R. Titunik. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1973.

This content downloaded from

134.76.61.232 on Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:00:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms