Keywords
lenguaje
África
violencia
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Postcolonial
Language
Africa
Violence
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
How to Cite
Abstract
The Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o through his book Decolonizing the Mind (1986) has invited his colleagues of African origin to abandon European languages, recovering African ones in their writing gesture. The intention of this essay is to read this book from the meditation elaborated by various philosophers of language and postcolonial thinkers, in order to analyze the implications that language itself has for the colonization and decolonization of consciences, for the violent establishment of a Euro-American centrism or for its dislocation in pursuit of a postcolonial reaffirmation of African values. There are different ways by which thought is predisposed linguistically; the western imperialism has focused its attention into enthroning itself as the only canon of reasoning. Is it possible, then, to assume a counter-position through language?
References
Aguirre Rojas, Carlos Antonio (2002), Antimanual del mal historiador o cómo hacer una buena historia crítica. México, La Vasija.
Alonso, Pedro (2019), «Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o: “Yo quiero competir con Cervantes”», en El País, 19 de abril. <https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/04/16/africa_no_es_un_pais/1555409123_289052.html>. [11/05/2023]
Beukelaer, Christiaan de (2017), «Toward an “African” take on the cultural and creative industries?», en Media, Culture & Society, vol. 39, i. 4, pp. 582-591.
Butler, Judith. y Spivak, G. (2009), ¿Quién le canta al Estado-Nación? Argentina, Paidós.
Cejas, Mónica (2000), «Pensar el desarrollo como violencia: algunos casos en África», en Susana B. C. Devalle (comp.), Poder y cultura de la violencia. México: El Colegio de México. pp. 69-118 <https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv512rk7.6> [05/03/2023].
Certeau, Michel de (2010), La escritura de la historia. México: Universidad Iberoamericana.
Danius, Sara y Jonsson, Stefan (1993), «An interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak», en Boundary, 20.2, pp. 24-50.
Deleuze, Gilles (2005), La isla desierta y otros textos. Textos y entrevistas (1953-1974). Valencia, Pre-Textos.
Deleuze, Gilles y Guattari, Félix (2000), Mil Mesetas. Capitalismo y esquizofrenia. España, Pre-Textos.
Demaria, Federico; Kallis, Giorgos y Bakker, Karen (2019), «Geographies of degrowth: Nowtopias, resurgences and the decolonization of imaginaries and places», en Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2 (3), pp. 431-450. <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335312204_Geographies_of_degrowth_Nowtopias_resurgences_and_the_decolonization_of_imaginaries_and_places> [06/03/2023].
Derrida, Jacques (2000), De la gramatología. México, Siglo XXI.
Derrida, Jacques (1989a), Márgenes de la filosofía. Madrid, Cátedra.
Derrida, Jacques (1989b), La escritura y la diferencia. Barcelona, Anthropos.
Dorfman, Ariel (2018), «A Kenyan Writer and Dissident on His Year in Prison», en The New York Times, 27 de abril. <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/books/review/wrestling-with-the-devil-ngugi-wa-thiongo.html> [07/07/2023].
Dussel, Enrique D.; Krauel, Javier y Tuma, Virginia C. (2000), «Europe, modernity, and eurocentrism», en Nepantla: Views from South, 1. 3, pp. 465-478. <http://www.iheal.univ-paris3.fr/sites/www.iheal.univ-paris3.fr/files/03.1%20Europe%20,Modernity,%20Eurocentrism.pdf> [25/03/2023].
Fanon, Frantz (1983), Los condenados de la tierra. México, F. C. E.
Foucault, Michel (2019), El orden del discurso. México, Tusquets.
Gugler, J. (1994), «How Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Shifted from Class Analysis to a Neo-Colonialist Perspective», en The Journal of Modern African Studies, 32 (2), pp. 329-339.
Hamadi, Lutfi (2014), «Edward Said: The postcolonial theory and the literature of decolonization», en European Scientific Journal, 2, pp. 39-46. <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Irna-Van-Der-Molen-2/publication/281097174_Trust_and_cooperation_relations_in_environmental_management_of_Lebanon/links/55d4867f08ae0a34172480f5/Trust-and-cooperation-relations-in-environmental-management-of-Lebanon.pdf#page=49> [16/03/2023].
Heleta, Savo (2016), «Decolonisation of higher education: Dismantling epistemic violence and Eurocentrism in South Africa», en Transformation in Higher Education, 1 (1), pp. 1-8. <https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1187109.pdf> [17/03/2023].
Hobsbawm, Eric y Ranger, Terence (eds.) (2012), The invention of tradition. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Lambropoulos, Vassilis (1993), The rise of Eurocentrism: anatomy of interpretation. New Jersey, Princeton University Press. <https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/149463/1993_Lambropoulos_TheRiseofEurocentrism.pdf?sequence=1> [16/03/2023].
Lumumba, Patrice (1961), The Truth about a Monstrous Crime of the Colonialists. Moscú, Foreign Languages Publishing House.
Mamdani, Mahmood (1998), Ciudadano y súbdito: África contemporánea y el legado del colonialismo tardío. México, Siglo XXI.
Marchart, Oliver (2009), El pensamiento político posfundacional. La diferencia política en Nancy, Badiou, Lefort y Laclau. Buenos Aires, F. C. E.
Marramao, Giacomo (2015), «Spatial turn: espacio vivido y signo de los tiempos», en Historia y Grafía, 45, pp. 123-132.
Mbembe, Achille (2015), «Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the Archive», en Wizer, 29 pags. <https://wiser.wits.ac.za/sites/default/files/private/Achille%20Mbembe%20-%20Decolonizing%20Knowledge%20and%20the%20Question%20of%20the%20Archive.pdf> [05/03/2023].
Mbembe, Achille (2001), On the postcolony. EUA, University of California Press.
Mendiola, Alfonso (2019), Michel de Certeau. La ficción: escuchar la voz del otro. México, Navarra.
Mignolo, Walter (2010), Desobediencia epistémica: retórica de la modernidad, lógica de la colonialidad y gramática de la descolonialidad. Argentina, Ediciones del Signo.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. (2014). «Eurocentrism, coloniality and the myths of decolonisation of Africa», en The Thinker, 59, pp. 34-39. <https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/esploro/fulltext/journalArticle/Eurocentrism-coloniality-and-the-myths-of/9913414707691?repId=125335900007691&mId=135574170007691&institution=27UOJ_INST> [17/03/2023].
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. (2013), «The entrapment of Africa within the global colonial matrices of power: Eurocentrism, coloniality, and deimperialization in the twenty-first century», en Journal of Developing Societies, vol. 29 (4), pp. 331-353. <https://www.blacfoundation.org/pdf/Ndlovu-Gatsheni-20.pdf> [16/03/2023].
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1995), «On the abolition of the English department», en B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths y H. Tiffin (eds.), The postcolonial studies reader. Londres y Nueva York, Routledge, pp. 438-442.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1987), Decolonising the mind. The Politics of Language in African Literature. Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Publishing House.
Pacheco, José Emilio (2014), El silencio de la luna. México, ERA.
Rao, D. V., y Ngũgĩ W. T. (1999), «A Conversation with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o», en Research in African Literatures, 30, 1, pp. 162-168.
Sollers, Philipp (2000), «Introducción: un paso sobre la luna», en Jacques Derrida, De la gramatología. México, Siglo XXI, pp. VII-XIX.
Spivak, Gayatri (2003), «Can the subaltern speak?», en Die philosophin, 14.27, pp. 66-111. <https://efai.net/s/Can_the_subaltern_speak.pdf> [15/03/2023].
Spivak, Gayatri (1999), A critique of postcolonial reason: Toward a history of the vanishing present. Estados Unidos, Harvard University Press.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2023 Eikasía Revista de Filosofía