Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1986

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Theatre

The role that theatre and performance play throughout Ngũgĩ’s text is tied to how he views the nature of pre-colonial African societies and to his vision of how African peoples can emancipate themselves in the face of Western imperialism. Ngũgĩ, finds all of the key elements of theatre in pre-colonial societies and particularly in the months-long celebration that signaled the handing over of political leadership from the older to the younger generation. It is because one can find all the elements of theatre in pre-colonial societies that Ngũgĩ writes: “[D]rama has its origins in human struggles with nature and with others” (36). Later, he adds, “[T]heatre is not a building. People make theatre. Their life is the very stuff of drama” (42).

In Ngũgĩ’s era, theatre serves to recapture those pre-colonial traditions amid the European cultural hegemony that threatens them. On the most basic level, theatre does so by reflecting those cultural and ceremonial traditions back to the local audiences. Yet Ngũgĩ takes the power of theatre a step further by directly incorporating it into community organization and unification efforts. This is seen most dramatically when Ngũgĩ opens his rehearsals up to the public, allowing everyday community members the chance to observe and even collaborate in the creative process.’

Schools and Universities

The school and university are recurring settings for many of Ngũgĩ’s stories and arguments, and not only because of his time spent as a professor of English at the University of Nairobi. One of the main reasons that Ngũgĩ returns to academia is its role in developing the consciousness of the colonized. He maintains that the colonized are made to believe that Europe is equivalent to the birthplace of civilization and that Africa is thus backwards and must do everything it can to emulate and become more like European peoples.

For Ngũgĩ, the colonial school system was a way for European colonizers to internalize the hatred they held for African peoples within the colonized populations themselves. Thus, argues Ngũgĩ, the school and the university are a battleground for the liberation of African peoples from the lasting effects of European and Western imperialism. In the most concrete and striking example, Ngũgĩ relates the story of an excellent student who nevertheless did not distinguish himself in English classes. As a result, the boy had few economic opportunities greater than those of a bus driver’s assistance. By contrast, Ngũgĩ’s English credit was enough to earn him a spot at the Alliance High School, “one of the most elitist institutions for Africans in colonial Kenya” (12) despite average grades.

The Cultural Bomb

Ngũgĩ defines the cultural bomb as a weapon of cultural imperialism that is every bit as destructive to Indigenous cultures as real bombs are to Indigenous lives. He writes, “The effect of the cultural bomb is to annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their environments, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves” (3). By creating “wastelands of non-achievement,” the cultural bomb leads some to abandon their cultural traditions or even their homeland altogether. For others, it leads to a sense of “colonial alienation,” a state in which one dissociates from his or her cultural identity as that person tries to navigate new circumstances shaped by colonial and neocolonial forces. While much of the middle and upper classes are dearly impacted by the cultural bomb, Ngũgĩ hopes that large swaths of the peasantry remain immune to its effects.