Sunday, December 30, 2018
Response to Decolonizing the Mind
In Decolonising the look Ngugi Wa Thiongo makes the call to African savers to demoralise writing books in their admit linguistic communications, and to make sure that publications is attached to their messs revolutionary struggles for liberty from their colonial regimes. He begins with the historical run across he was invited to with his fellow African writers in Kampala, Uganda. In this conference, writers who wrote their stories in African addresss were automatically neglected.He also continues to point out about(predicate) how English and other European languages argon assumed, until today, to be the natural languages and unifying forces in twain books and political passels among African people. For instance, to explain his point, Ngugi uses Chinua Achebe, peerless of the major African writers, who embraces the use of an English manner of speaking in his works. Ngugi quotes For me (Achebe) thither is no other choice, I have been given the language and I intend to use it (Achebe, 62).Finally, Ngugi concludes that writing in African languages is a necessary maltreat toward cultural identity and liberation from centuries of European exploitation. Firstly, I support Ngungis admit that an teachingal system that focuses and embraces wholly external works, such as language and purification is destructive Thus language and literature were taking us that and further from ourselves to other selves, from our world to other worlds(266). Obviously, there is a pick out to create a literature that embraces the real African generate starting from the perspective of the local anaesthetics, not the intruders.The local language is an integral part of transferral that experience, this is simply because much of the local customs is preserved in that language. For example, Ngugi insists that stories and songs be effectively passed down from one generation to the neighboring through oral (story-telling), and the fact that both the story teller an d the listener atomic number 18 interested and involved in the conversation. Therefore, the benefits of include and working in the local language and within the local traditions bring the accurate community together.Secondly, I support Ngugis view that colonialism has deemed African languages unworthy of use both by the colonizers and the colonized. He explains how a cultural bomb was dropped on Africa so the minds and consequently the resources of Africans were controlled. In my view, not only colonizers understand that it is not enough to pass water over Africa with guns alone, precisely they also need to take over the mind of its people through language and the fine facts of life they offer through that language.This is seen in the schools where European languages are idolized, in the streets where African languages move synonymous with the language of the peasantry, and at the prison cells were those African writers who choose to stay uncoiled to their bring forth to ngue are held. I strongly check about Ngugis choice to write only in Gikuyu sort of than English language I believe that my writing in the Gikuyu language, a Kenyan language, an African language, is part and megabucks of the anti-imperialist struggles of Kenyan and African peoples (267).He reminds me my native country, Kenya, and Kamba is my mother tongue, so if I choose to write in Kamba as Ngugi did, I entrust not be doing something ab blueprint. It true that imperialism has dour African peoples minds crown down African people view abnormal as normal and normal as abnormal. For example, Europe and the States became teeming and continue to get rich from employ both Africas natural and humanity resources, but African people are made to believe that they cannot become destitution free without European and American intervention.Therefore, Ngugis decision to abandon English all in his writings and embrace Gikuyu in attempt to align himself with the people (Gikuyu-speaking pop ulation) is one step toward cultural identity and freedom from European exploitation. I also agree with Ngugi that resolution is not simply a process of physical force rather the bullet is the means of physical subjugation, and talking to is the means of the spiritual subjugation(265).In Kenya, colonization propagated English as the language of education as a result, oral literature in Kenyan indigenous languages little by little faded away. This is devastating to African literature because, as Ngugi writes, language carries agriculture and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire physical structure of values by which we perceive ourselves and our tail in the world(267).This means that Language as culture, it expresses and carries the culture of people therefore, it becomes the fund of its images, ideas, wisdom, experience and history. It ties me to my people and becomes part of who I am. And finally, language as culture, it shapes how I pick up at the world and myself. Lastly but not least, I think Decolonising the see is an integral to understanding an anti-colonialist struggles. Europe and America view colonialism in terms of the virtually visible aspects of a nation, namely its leadership.People go bad to see and recognize the long-term cause of colonialism, such as the widespread poverty. Decolonizing the Mind reminds me of another aftereffect, specifically, the domination of language by the westerly World. In a sense, the language barrier enables hearty apartheid where legal legal separation is considered anachronistic. By dominating African languages, and maintain the superiority of European ones over them, Western nations, including some African nations, do bear on a system where educated whites wind to the highest.As a result, native Africans resign to the working classes and peasantry. This domination of language effectively prevents each native African from rising into apt ranks because, as Ngugi puts it, the use of European languages splits African soul in two, forcing him to give up his roots if he wishes to climb the social ladder. Work Cited Currey, James. The Language of African belles-lettres Decolonising the Mind The politics ofLanguage in African Literature. London 1981. 263-267
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