The politics of Linguistic Recycling and Cultural Regeneration:
Comparative literature studies the circulation of movements, genres, ideas, themes, images, archetypes, and also language since language is a fundamental constituent of the literary work.
According to Bill Ashcroft:
Language is
a fundamental site of struggle for post-colonial discourse because the colonial
process itself begins in laguage. The control over language by the imperial
centre – whether achieved by displacing native languages, by installing itself
as a ‘standard’ against other variants which are constituted as ‘impurities’,
or by planting the language or by planting the language of empire in a new
place – remains the most potent instrument of cultural control. Language
provides the termes by which reality may be constituted ; it provides the
names by which the world may be ‘known’. Its system of values – its
suppositions, its geography, its concept of history, of difference, its myriad
gradations of distinction – becomes the system upon which social, economic, and
political discourses are grounded.
One of the
most subtle demonstrations of the power of language is the means by which it
provides, through the function of naming, a technique for knowing a colonised
place or peaople. To name the world is to ‘understand’ it, to know it and to
have control over it. […] To name reality is to exert power over it, simply
because the dominant language becomes the way in which it is known .
There are
several responses to this dominance of the imperial language, but two present
themselves immediately in the decolonizing process – rejection and subversion.
The process of radical decolonisation proposed by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o is a good
demonstration of the first alternative. Ngugi’s programme for restoring an
ethnic or national identity embedded in the mother tongue involves a rejection
of English, a refusal to use it for his writing, a refusal to accede to the
kind of world and reality it appears to name, a refusal submit to the political
dominance its use implies. This stance of rejection rests upon the assumption
that an essential Gikuyu identity may be regained, an identity which the
language of the coloniser seems to have displaced or dispersed.
However,
many more writers have felt that this appeal to some essential cultural
identity is doomed to failure, indeed, misunderstands the heterogeneous nature
of human experience. […]The appropriation of the language is essentially a
subversive strategy, for the adaptation of the ‘standard’ language to the demands
and requirements of the place and society into which it has been appropriated
amounts to a far more subtle rejection of the political power of the standard
language. In Chinua Achebe’s words this is a process by which the language is
made to bear the weight and texture of a different experience. In doing so it
becomes a different language. By adapting the alien language to the exigencies
of a mother grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and by giving a shape to the
variations of the speaking voice, such writers and speakers construct an
‘english’ which amounts to a very different linguistic vehicle from the
received standard colonial ‘English’. […]
The process
of language adaptation is linguistically profound because it establishes a
medium which fractures the concept of a standard language and installs the
‘marginal’ variations of language use as the actual network of a particular
language. (The Post-colonial Studies Reader, P283-4)
Subversive Strategies of Adaptation / Appropriation:
• Relexification: (not to be confused with other concepts like translation, loan translation, transference, transmutation, nativization, indigenization, interference, calquing or calking…)
According to Chantal Zabus: Loreto Todd's felicitous formulation - 'the relexification of one's mother tongue, using English vocabulary but indigenous structures and rhythms' - best describes the process at work when the African language is simulated in a Europhone text. […] The making of a new register of communication out of an alien lexicon. […]
Whether Alfred Sauvy meant it or not when he coined the phrase - le tiers monde - after the French tiers état, the 'Third World' has become the site of the 'third code' … This new register of communication, which is neither the European target language nor the indigenous source language, functions as an 'interlanguage' or as a 'third register' (P314-5)
• Deterritorialization / Reterritorialization of language:
A terminology coined by Deleuze and Guattari in their Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature. Defining Minor Literature as a literature written in a major language (dominant / imposed language). As language is the product of its native socio-cultural context, its use by minority writers who belong to different socio-cultural contexts causes them to deterritorialize the major language from its original territory. The way the will deal with the impossibility of writing in that major language leads to a reterritorialization of language.
According to Chen Yongguo: "[…] minor use of language may result in
both deterritorialization and reterritorialization of English as the major language at the same time
which will usher in a new era not only of minor languages but also of minor literatures in new
englishes." (The Politics of Minor Language, P 01)
Study Case:
• Recycling / Revising / Subverting his-story through the Step-Mother Tongue:
Columbus Ghost
i am Christopher columbus
just call me cris
i am de who
did miss the
land
india
i thought i'd discover
that which was never
how clever of me to see
the land
beyond
i came to tame
and claim
in the name of spain
i am cris
dont dis
my his-story
i inspired hawkins
livingston
musolini botha
bush
i exterminated
perpetuated
hatered
against redmen
yellowmen
with blackmen i make no friend
i attack arawak
cut off their head
wrote instead
that the caribs ate them like bread
i never told you this before
but my chief navigator was a
MOOR
you know the moors
they discovered spain
those blacks who came from the
afrikan terrain
the idea that the world was round
i got from these same b acks in
some little
spanish town
now you may ask what was
blacks doin
there
but they ruled us for over 700
years
they made a great mistake then
instead of enslavin us they made
us their friend
some survived
stayed alive
fought the invasion
european division
english agression
the fight between europe and
european
expansion
i wrote your history for you
did not tell you
true
not all blackmen came as slaves
listen you will know the truth in
the waves
that brought the ships
lips lie
to keep intact
oppression of black skin
a sin
a myth
i am cris
the church perch on the
opportunity to
spread
the religion of the dead
through misconception
the assumption
that this world was new
the wind blew us to save the
earth
from beast like
men
friend i am not
blot out the spot
that claim they are men like us
i am Christopher columbus
i gave europe pwer over all the
earth
500 years of your blood sweat
and tears
now you celebrate
recreate your death
let the glasses
touch
with the blood of your fathers and
mothers
give a toast
HOST
my arrival
your dyin my
survival
the land is sti I mine
the pope is still the divine
yes
drink your
own blood
call it wine
nothin in the pages of my history
will blot out your
misery
you shall celebrate my victory
your children praise
me
i am their only history
i am Christopher columbus
i died
but you made me live
give me the sea once more
let me discover you again
the stain
my fathers sons rule
fool
you celebrate my
comin
i will not go
not from your mind
restore me for all to
see
keepers of life
shepherds of my
people
lead them to the altar of lies
your ancestors cries will not be
heard
word after word
pages of
history written
the victims are once more bitten
1492 to you the beginnin of
western world
democracy
1492 to me the beginnin of white
supremacy
• Recycling Caliban’s Curse From the Caribbean:
You taught
me language ; and my profit on’t
Is, I know
how to curse : the red-plague rid you
For learning
me your language !
William Shakespeare,
The Tempest, I, ii
[…] And so
all this fuss over empire – what went wrong here, what went wrong there –
always makes me quite crazy, for I can say to them what went wrong : they
should never have left their home, their precious England, a place they love so
much, a place they had to leave but could never forget. And so everywhere they went
they turned it into England ; everybody they met they turned English. But
no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look exactly like
them would ever be English, so you can imagine the destruction of people and
land that came from that […]
In the
Antigua that I knew, we lived on a street named after an English maritime
criminal, Horatio Nelson, and all the other streets around us were named after
some other English maritime criminals. There was Rodney Street, there was Hood
Street, there was Hawkins Street, and there was Drake Street. There were
flamboyant trees and mahogany trees lining East Street. Government House, the
place where the Governor, the person standing in for the Queen, lived, was on
East Street. Government House was surrounded by a high white wall – and to show
how cowed we must have been, no one ever wrote bad things on it ; it
remained clean and white and high. […]
Do you ever
try to understand why people like me cannot get over the past, cannot forgive
and cannot forget ? […]
[W]hat I see
is the millions of people, of whom I am just one, made orphans : no
motherland, no fatherland, no gods, no mounds of earth for holy ground, no
excess of love which might lead to the things that an excess of love sometimes
brings, and worst and most painful of all, no tongue. For isn’t it odd that the
only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the
criminal who committed the crime ? And what can that really mean ?
[…]
Jamaica
Kincaid, A Small Place
• Prison language vs nation language
Ashanti,
Congo, Yoruba, all that mighty coast of western Africa was imported into the
Caribbean. And we had the arrival in our area of a new language
structure. It consisted of many languages but basically they had a common
semantic and stylistic form. What these languages had to do, however, was
to submerge themselves, because officially the conquering peoples -- the
Spaniards, the English, the French, and the Dutch -- insisted that the language
of public discourse and conversation, of obedience, command and conception
should be English, French, Spanish, or Dutch. They did not wish to hear
people speaking Ashanti or any of these Congolese languages. Its status
became one of inferiority. Similarly, its speakers were slaves.
They were conceived of as inferiors -- non-human, in fact. But this very
submergence served an interesting interculturative purpose, because although
people continued to speak English as it was spoken in Elizabethan times and on
through the Romantic and Victorian ages, that English was, nonetheless, still
being influenced by the underground language, the submerged language that the
slaves had brought. And that underground language was constantly
transforming itself into new forms. It was moving from a purely African
form to a form which was African but which was adapted to the new environment
and adapted to the cultural imperative of the European languages. And it
was influencing the way in which the English, French, Dutch, and Spaniards
spoke their own languages. So there was a very complex process taking
place, which is now beginning to surface in our literature […]
People were
forced to learn things which had no relevance to themselves. Paradoxically,
in the Caribbean (as in many other 'cultural disaster' areas), the people
educated in this system came to know more, even today, about English kings and
queens than they do about our own national heroes, our own slave rebels, the
people who helped to build and to destroy our society. We are more
excited by their literary models, by the concept of, say, Sherwood Forest and
Robin Hood than we are by Nanny of the Maroons, a name some of us didn't even
know until a few years ago. And in terms of what we write, our perceptual
models, we are more conscious (in terms of sensibility) of the falling snow,
for instance [...] than of the force of the hurricanes which
take place every year. In other words, we haven't got the syllables, the
syllabic intelligence, to describe the hurricane, which is our own experience,
whereas we can describe the imported alien experience of the snowfall. […]
the language
which is influenced very strongly by the African model, the African aspect of
our New World/Caribbean heritage. English it may be in terms of some of
its lexical features. But in its contours, its rhythm and timber, its
sound explosions, it is not English, even though the words, as you hear them,
might be English to a greater or lesser degree.
Kamau Brathwaite, The Story of the Voice
Bans a Killin
So yuh a de man me hear bout! Ah yuh dem seh dah teck Whole heap a English oat seh dat yuh gwine kill dialec! Meck me get it straight, mas Charlie, For me no quite understand – Yuh gwine kill all English dialec Or jus Jamaica one? Ef yuh dah equal up wid English Language, den wha meck Yuh gwine go feel inferior when It come to dialec? Ef yuh cyaan sing 'Linstead Market' An 'Water come a me yeye’ Yuh wi haffi tap sing 'Auld lang syne’ An ‘Comin through de rye'. Dah language weh yuh proud a, Weh yuh honour an respec – Po Mas Charlie, yuh no know se Dat it spring from dialec! Dat dem start fi try tun language From de fourteen century - Five hundred years gawn an dem got More dialec dan we! Yuh wi haffi kill de Lancashire, De Yorkshire, de Cockney, De broad Scotch and de Irish brogue Before yuh start kill me! Yuh wi haffi get de Oxford Book A English Verse, an tear Out Chaucer, Burns, Lady Grizelle An plenty a Shakespeare! When yuh done kill 'wit' an 'humour', When yuh kill 'variety', Yuh wi haffi fine a way fi kill Originality! An mine how yuh dah read dem English Book deh pon yuh shelf, For ef yuh drop a 'h' yuh mighta Haffi kill yuhself! | So you’re the man I hear about! You’re the one that’s made A whole lot of English oaths that say You’re gonna kill dialect! Let me get it straight, Mr. Charlie, For I don’t quite understand – Are you gonna kill all English dialects Or just the Jamaican one? If you’ve examined the English Language, Then what makes you feel inferior when it comes to dialects?If you can’t sing ‘Linstead Market’ And ‘Water come a me yeye’ Then we have to stop singing ‘Auld lang syne’ And ‘Comin through de rye’. The language you are so proud of, Which you honor and respect— Poor Mr. Charlie, don’t you see that It springs from dialects! They've tried to turn it into a language From the fourteenth century – Five hundred years have passed and now They’ve got more dialects than we do! You would have to kill the Lancashire,The Yorkshire, the Cockney, The broad Scotch and the Irish brogue Before you start to kill me! You would have to get the Oxford Book Of English Verse and tear Out Chaucer, Burns, Lady Grizelle And lots of Shakespeare! When you’ve finished killing ‘wit’ and ‘humor’, When you’ve killed ‘variety’, You will have to find a way to kill Originality! And how are you gonna read those English Books there upon your shelf, ‘Cause if you drop a ‘h’ you might Have to kill yourself! |
Louise Bennett
• Colonizing the Colonizer's Language
Wat a joyful news, miss Mattie,
I feel like me heart gwine burs
Jamaica people colonizin
Englan in Reverse
I feel like me heart gwine burs
Jamaica people colonizin
Englan in Reverse
By de hundred, by de tousan
From country and from town,
By de ship-load, by de plane load
Jamica is Englan boun.
From country and from town,
By de ship-load, by de plane load
Jamica is Englan boun.
Dem a pour out a Jamaica,
Everybody future plan
Is fe get a big-time job
An settle in de mother lan.
Everybody future plan
Is fe get a big-time job
An settle in de mother lan.
What an islan! What a people!
Man an woman, old an young
Jus a pack dem bag an baggage
An turn history upside dung!
Man an woman, old an young
Jus a pack dem bag an baggage
An turn history upside dung!
Some people doan like travel,
But fe show dem loyalty
Dem all a open up cheap-fare-
To-England agency.
But fe show dem loyalty
Dem all a open up cheap-fare-
To-England agency.
An week by week dem shippin off
Dem countryman like fire,
Fe immigrate an populate
De seat a de Empire.
Dem countryman like fire,
Fe immigrate an populate
De seat a de Empire.
Oonoo see how life is funny,
Oonoo see da turnabout?
jamaica live fe box bread
Out a English people mout’.
Oonoo see da turnabout?
jamaica live fe box bread
Out a English people mout’.
For wen dem ketch a Englan,
An start play dem different role,
Some will settle down to work
An some will settle fe de dole.
An start play dem different role,
Some will settle down to work
An some will settle fe de dole.
Jane says de dole is not too bad
Because dey payin she
Two pounds a week fe seek a job
dat suit her dignity.
Because dey payin she
Two pounds a week fe seek a job
dat suit her dignity.
Me say Jane will never fine work
At de rate how she dah look,
For all day she stay popn Aunt Fan couch
An read love-story book.
At de rate how she dah look,
For all day she stay popn Aunt Fan couch
An read love-story book.
Wat a devilment a Englan!
Dem face war an brave de worse,
But me wonderin how dem gwine stan
Colonizin in reverse
Dem face war an brave de worse,
But me wonderin how dem gwine stan
Colonizin in reverse
Louise Bennett
• Caliban's Curse from UK:
Linton Kwesi Johnson - Inglan Is A Bitch
Original Text in Jamaican Creole (“Patois”)
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Version in Standard English
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w´en mi jus´ come to Landan toun
mi use to work pan di andahgroun
but workin´ pan di andahgroun
y´u don´t get fi know your way around
Inglan is a bitch
dere´s no escapin it
Inglan is a bitch
dere´s no runnin´ whey fram it
mi get a lickle jab in a bih ´otell
an´ awftah a while, mi woz doin´ quite well
dem staat mi aaf as a dish-washah
but w´en mi tek a stack, mi noh tun clack-watchah
Inglan is a bitch
dere´s no escapin it
Inglan is a bitch
no baddah try fi hide fram it
w´en dem gi´ you di lickle wage packit
fus dem rab it wid dem big tax rackit
y´u haffi struggle fi mek en´s meet
an´ w´en y´u goh a y´u bed y´u jus´ can´t sleep
Inglan is a bitch
dere´s no escaping it
Inglan is a bitch, fi true a noh lie mi a tell, a true
mi use to work dig ditch w´en it cowl noh bitch
mi did strang like a mule, but bwoy, mi did fool
den awftah a while mi jus´ stap dhu ovahtime
den awftah a while mi jus´ phu dung mi tool
Inglan is a bitch
dere´s no escapin it
Inglan is a bitch
y´u haffi know how fi survive in it
well mi dhu day wok an´ mi dhu nite wok
mi dhu clean wok an´ mi dhu dutty wok
dem seh dat black man is very lazy
but if y´u si how mi wok y´u woulda sey mi crazy
Inglan is a bitch
dere´s no escapin it
Inglan is a bitch
y´u bettah face up to it
dem a have a lickle facktri up inna Brackly
inna disya facktri all dem dhu is pack crackry
fi di laas fifteen years dem get mi laybah
now awftah fifteen years mi fall out a fayvah
Inglan is a bitch
dere´s no escapin it
Inglan is a bitch
dere´s no runnin´ whey fram it
mi know dem have work, work in abundant
yet still, dem mek mi redundant
now, at fifty-five mi gettin´ quite ol´
yet still, dem sen´ mi fi goh draw dole
Inglan is a bitch
dere´s no escapin it
Inglan is a bitch, fi true
is whey wi a goh dhu ´bout it? |
when I’d just come to
I used to work upon the underground
but working upon the underground
you don’t get to know your way around
there’s no escaping it
there’s no running away from it
I got a little job in a big hotel
and after a while, I was doing quite well
they started me off as a dishwasher
but when I took a stack, I didn’t turn clock watcher
there’s no escaping it
no bother trying to hide from it
when they give you a little wage packet
first they rob it with their big tax racket [fraud]
you have to struggle to make ends meet
and when you go to your bed you just can’t sleep
there’s no escaping it
it’s no lie that I’m telling, a truth
I used to work digging ditches when it was cold
no bitching [no lie]
I was strong like a mule, but boy, I was foolish
then after a while I just stopped doing overtime
then after a while I just put down my tool
there’s no escaping it
you have to know how to survive in it
well I did day work and I did night work
I did clean work and I did dirty work
they say that black man is very lazy
but if you had seen how I worked you would
have said I was crazy
there’s no escaping it
you had better face up to it
They have a little factory up in Brackly
in this here factory all they do is pack crockery
for the last fifteen years they have got my labour
now after fifteen years I’ve fallen out of favour
there’s no escaping it
there’s no running away from it
I know they have work, work in abundance
yet still, they make me redundant
now at fifty-five I’m getting quite old
yet still, they send me to go draw dole [unemployment benefit]
there’s no escaping it
It’s what are we going to do about it?
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