 Welcome back to everyone. We've had a bit of an extended theatre from the seminar series, so I hope everyone had a nice break. Welcome especially to all the visitors from the African department. We're happy today to have a bit of an interdepartmental exchange. We have today from the African department, Dr Kwajo Oseinyani Jr. In the African department he teaches, for those of you who don't know him, he teaches African literature, languages, culture and diaspora studies here at SAAS. In particular, his teaching and research areas include African literature, African American literature, African Caribbean literary and cultural discourses, narratives and memorialisations of the African diaspora experts in literature, film and music, African diaspora oral literature, nationalism and pan-Africanism in literature, modability agenda in literary cultural studies, and additionally he's interested in using teaching and in particular literature, music and film as a transformative practice in the classroom, and in the wider scene as we go towards the context of African historical self rehabilitation. He's here today to talk to us about African literature and African linguistics, proverbial, poetic and philosophical language as the ideological interface of the new historic paradigm. Thank you very much, Rachel, and thanks very much to the linguistic department for hosting me and allowing me to present my paper here, and thank you all for being here to listen to. I guess you've already seen the abstract that was circulated, but just before I start I just want to add that what I'm trying to do in this paper and in this research, which is part of a bigger project, is to draw our attention to the fact that when we read our literatures and our cultures in translation, especially in English for example, because the writers who have produced these works inevitably are connected to Africa or come from Africa somehow, there's a kind of subterranean language which is not always very visible in the translations as we read them, and that sometimes you need some kind of extra knowledge in terms of a little bit of knowledge in terms of the linguistics, the language and the structure and the proverbial cultural philosophical context arrive at a better understanding. So the interface between literature and linguistics that I'm talking about here is simply to kind of affirm a deeper notion of looking closely at language and what it means so that when you're reading and interpreting according to the themes of the novel or whatever, you know that you haven't got it all as it is, but that there could be some more layers to it. Okay, so I'll start at this point, and I'm going to speak for about an hour roughly. I'll make sure I don't speak for more than an hour, and then we'll have at least about half an hour for questions, which is what Rachel and I agreed. While the field of African linguistics is a broad, all-encompassing subject area, that theoretically may be said to refer to any academic subject matter that deals with the detailed study of African languages in terms of their structure and meaning, there is an easily identifiable substruct of this intellectual arena that has to do specifically with the ways and means by which the language of African literature and in particular of African creative fiction dwells on the culturally significant or specific meanings that form an important part of contemporary African narratives. In this type of writing, artists self-consciously formulate linguistic patterns and thought systems that they project and translate into their work. Consecrated, for example, one occasionally encounters a glossary of words in African fiction with translations from one African language or the other into English or some other European language as a form of explanation for the uninitiated reader, and you see this sometimes when you see books of African fiction. Aside this, a host of African writers have attempted to address the question of the connection between their consciously formulated and ideologically-laden thought patterns in their extra-fictional works and interviews and through all kinds of statements and pronouncements. Kenyan novelist and prolific essayist in Gugirwa Theongo, for example, famous for his countless dispositions on the role of language in identity formation and the role of European cultural imperialism in African self-subjugation and alienation makes the following poignant observation in his essay titled Imperialism of Language English as a Language for the World with a question mark. He says, every language has two aspects. One aspect is its role as an agent that enables us to communicate with another in our struggle to find the means of survival. The other is its role as a carrier of the history and culture built into the process of that communication over time. I'm interested here specifically in teasing out the full ideological significance of Ngugi's view that language acts as a carrier of the history and culture built into our communicative processes. Four questions on this is important because there seems to me to be a glaring lack of detailed attention to the uses and significance of African and African-inflected languages, whether dealing with original African mother tongues as represented in the numerous literatures from the continent and their translation and transliteration into English or any other of the major globally dominant European languages or whether examining the different reformulated uses of even originally European languages by writers of African descent. Let me briefly point out that by African-inflected languages I refer for example to an English which is spoken with an African flavour precisely of the sort that let Chino Achebe to state for example at the conclusion of his essay the African writer in the English language that, and I'm quoting Achebe, I feel that the English language will be able to carry the African experience but it will have to be a new English still in full communion with his ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings. What I refer to as self-consciously formulated linguistic patterns and thought systems operates within the literature in a myriad of ways. In some instances the African or African descent writer having more facility with the European language of his Western education my deal for example with the deleterious effects of language education at the same time as that kind of education is presented to us even to this day as the only means for attaining personal and even communal development in our increasingly globalised world. That's for example in Zimbabwyan, Titi Ddangarema's Nevers Conditions linguistic aphasia in relation to Shona is presented in a number of interesting ways and what I'm going to do is I'm going to quote about three passages from the novel and then explicate. Unhamu is a member of a family in which boys are privileged over girls in terms of education in Shona society and he's about to get the opportunity to go to school. Unhamu began school in the year that he turned seven. This was the age at which the government had declared that African children were sufficiently developed cognitively to be able to understand the abstractions of numbers and letters. One plus one equals two. K-I-T-S-I equals kitsi. Unhamu was one of the youngest peoples in his class. Perhaps other parents believing that we really were a retarded lot thought it best to let their children's abilities mature a little before exposing them to the rigors of formal education. And then another passage which I will explicate later. So Unhamu has now been to school he started his process of school and he returns to the homestead to go to the urban area of the city from the village or the homestead. But he comes home on a vacation. Then when Unhamu came home at the end of the first year with Baba Mukuru you could see he too was no longer the same person. The change in his appearance was dramatic. He had added several inches to his height and many to his width so that he was not little and scrawny anymore but fit and muscular. Vitamins had nourished his skin to a shiny smoothness several tones lighter in complexion than it used to be. His hair was no longer arranged in rows of dusty wild cucumber tuft but was black shiny with oil and smoothly combed. All this was good but there was one terrible change he had forgotten to speak Shona. A few words escaped heartily ungramatically and strangely assented when he spoke to my mother but he did not speak to her very often anymore so there's a process of alienation going on. He talked most fluently with my father they had long conversations in English which Unhamu broke into small irregular syllables in which my father chopped into smaller and even rougher phonemes. Father was pleased with Unhamu's command of the English language. He said it was the first step in the family's emancipation since we all could improve our language by practicing on Unhamu but he was the only one who was impressed by this inexplicable state my brother had developed. The rest of us spoke to Unhamu in Shona to which when he did answer he answered in English taking a point of speaking slowly deliberately initiating each syllable clearly so that we could understand this restricted our communication to mundane insignificant things. Then the last one that I want to quote in relation to this particular novel before I begin to break it down is Unhamu has a sister called Nyasha and they have cousins they have cousins called Nyasha and Chido to go educated in England for a while and then they come back and before they go to England they can speak Shona fluently. They are Africans, they are Shonans, they are Zimbabwe but they come back and there is a kind of family meeting and there is a dance going on and Tambujai is trying to invite his cousins who have been to England to study to come and join the dance and what happens here is interesting. We are dancing and I invited Nyasha who took a long time to understand. They don't understand Shona very well anymore her mother explained that most of their Shona has gone. What my guru said was bewildering and offending. I had not expected my cousins to have changed certainly not so radically simply because they had been away for a while besides Shona was our language. What did people mean when they forgot it? Standing there trying to digest these thoughts I remember speaking to my cousins freely and fluently before they went away eating wild foods with them making clay pots and swimming in Nyamarira. Now they are tending to strangers I stopped being offended and was sad instead. As their my guru I urged even if they don't understand they wouldn't refuse would they? Things like that I continued vaguely but earnestly would bring their speech back more quickly. Nyasha talked to her mother eagerly in an English whose accent was so strange I could not understand a word of it co-opting Chido into the discussion and talking in very definite tones. I was sure that my cousins wanted to join the merry making but my guru was not encouraging. I could tell from her voice which was flat and passive and from the odd word that I picked up like dirty and sleep. It was odd that my guru preferred her children not to dance. If they could not enjoy themselves with us there was no reason for them to have come home. I think Nyasha was saying similar things to my guru because in the end her irritation became so open that my aunt stopped their lively conversations to find out what was going on. Now what's the problem my guru asked the tithid pladdys. You are not forbidding your children to join the others are you? Why should I do that? Tithid my guru replied evenly. I'm only saying they should rest. You know a flight is very tiring. But if you say they should dance they shall. Tithid has told you to go to the dance. She informed the children in her uninflected voice. Chido declined politely one of the children. It's all right mom. I'm a bit tired anyway. Her tank's conflict has reached herself off. It was very abrupt the way she did it. Okay now the breakdown. What is significant here in the passages that I've just read and especially in this very last one is that the alienation of Tambujae's cousins from her is simply as a result of their immersion in the newly acquired language of English and the acquisition of a new culture. A culture which also comes with what Tambujae considers a domineering attitude. The cousins refuse out to participate in the family dance aided by their disapproving mother is a key strategy in the dominant colonial metropolitan English language and its culture subversion of African communal self-identification. This representation of African cultural alienation takes the form of a self-conscious representation in the narrative in the passages I've just read of the adverse effects of the newly acquired culture. It is an affirmation of the superior sense of knowledge of the way things are in a rapidly changing world. My guru, in turn, intimates a better and higher knowledge of the way of the world of the newly acquired culture in a recourse to a kind of language that appears as normal kind of discourse, even conversational. Casually, she informs us I'm only saying they should rest, you know a flight is a very tiring thing but if you say they should dance however, these statements by my guru articulate a psychological erasure of self-certitude in the African that is also explicitly coded as both dominant and as more progressive than the language and the culture associated with Shona. In being gradually separated from the Shona family dance Nyasha and Chido, children who ultimately grow into adults, are also being primed for looking down on African cultural practices and norms. This explains the bizarre attitude of Nghamo, cited earlier when he comes back home and suddenly he cannot speak Shona. Nervous conditions is an example of a narrative that foregrounds the different modes of socialisation a direct result of the diverse linguistic heritages and backgrounds of the characters the British English of Nyasha Chido and my guru the more African English of Tambu Jai the Shona of Tambu Jai's elineated mother Mashengai who sees the loss of language by her western educated educated children as a crisis of identity and I'm quoting their mother who does not speak English who is not western educated and then this is what she says in the novel it's the Englishness she said it'll kill them all if they aren't careful and she's snorted look at them that boy Chido can hardly speak a word of his own mother tongue and you'll see his children will be worse his children will disgrace us this affirmation of a crisis of identity is not exaggerated Mashengai Tambu Jai's mother like AC Com the elineated mother of Amaterdus play the dialogue of a ghost which we shall encounter a little later is an uneducated African woman uneducated that is by the standards of western education and the point that I'm making here is that we talk about being uneducated because you are not western educated but that doesn't really mean that in other terms and according to other concepts you are not educated so I'm specifying the westernness of the education okay Nyasha Chido, my guru, the patriarch of the family Baba Mukru are all western educated having spent time in England what should not be lost on us as readers and critics is that by calling into question the mode of English our culture of the others the text also establishes through Mashengai a self-consciously critical voice and language and the resistant African character who defines himself very much in position to the colonial culture and the dominant culture however there is also a problem of sorts in this representation because to arrive at what I've described as a critical and ethical approach that articulates and sustains a more coherent sense of self-understanding which it's in my abstract especially in relation to the historic situation of Africans today we must remember that the African writer has also been largely constrained as in this case by historical circumstances to somewhat inadequately capture and hence partially misrepresent the separation of cultural and ideological spheres of the African and the western by presenting a somewhat unisonant but problematic narrative written in an European language this point requires some careful elaboration as readers of Nevers Conditions the novel from which I've just read for example we presume that the protagonists we encounter are speaking the same language and in a sense operating within the same cultural ideological realm but Mashingai identified as deeply rooted and aligned to the homestead to the Shona homestead that clearest of symbols of Chishona life and I'm indebted to my senior brother here for telling me that the language is actually Chishona and not Shona Mashingai identified as deeply rooted and aligned to the homestead in that clearest of symbols of Chishona life is in real life uneducated in western terms while the novel and the passage that I've just read represents her and all the other characters are speaking English she's in real life terms meant to be speaking Shona or more appropriately Chishona as for instance in the passage just cited when she talks about the Englishness killing them in which she castigates the Englishness of the other characters and the loss of their mother tongue the point, my point what am I trying to say in such fictionalised historical narratives as Nevers Conditions and several other works there are dimensions of language and culture that are either overlooked or underrepresented in which emanates from a character like Mashingai consequently, emotions expressed through language significant verbal gestures exclamations of disgust, inflections of tone and anger and bewilderment etc etc the list goes on and on at infinitum are significantly crossed by their absence from the translated English version of the Shona that she speaks so what I'm saying is that we've been able to surmise a bit of the critique of the English colonial culture saying is the Englishness is the Englishness and it has been presented to us in the English language but what I'm saying is that in reality the woman is actually speaking Chishona and were we to hear her speak in Chishona and were we to be sitting here and to comprehend Chishona the ideological valence and the repercussions of what exactly she is saying would be more powerful because it would involve a lot more other things in terms of her dissatisfaction with the Englishness and what is it doing to her children ok it bears noting here that it is virtually impossible to disconnect literature from the culture and the language that define it while the Chishona may have been translated and translated into English by the Zimbabrian author the Chishona spoken by Tambuja's mother Mashaengai as represented in the novel loses some of its vibrant dynamic and ultimately essential attributes attributes that cannot cross the linguistic and cultural barriers that writing in English presents for the Shona writer speaking in English whereas these thoughts and emotions expressed in the same mother tongue of Chishona, that Mashaengai lambastido for not knowing a deeply central to our analysis of the present the historical situation of the alienation of the African she is herself presented as speaking English this is an anomaly that reminds one here of the poem migrations by Abnabuja where she observes how Africans communicate this is an extract from this poem in the half life half light of alien tongues in the uncanny fluency of the other's language we relive the past in rituals of revival unraveling memories in slow time gathering the present Bhuja's reference to the uncanny fluency of the other's language the half life half light of alien tongues suggests that despite the most consumable ability we may have to think in the other's language in English in French in German in Spanish in Portuguese and so on and so forth such reflections also trigger incomplete thought processes and perhaps Barbadian writer Kamal Brathway puts it more supposedly when he asserts in his essay English in the Caribbean that the imperial English education made the people of the Caribbean more familiar with Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood than it did with sister Quinani of the Maroons what I'm suggesting therefore is that our real appreciation of the real real historic situation of the African is potentially profoundly misshaped given that our understanding of the presentation of culture of our history is incomplete so as much as we examine our literature and enforce amnesia of Africans of their languages and the multiple disenabling cultural consequences of this syndrome are still to be properly addressed. I want to add further that this fact is so highly linked with the present so-called underdevelopment poor, the other development this fact is so highly linked with the present so-called underdevelopment poor and third world state of Africa to make reference to but not to affirm I'm just using terms that I use but I'm not affirming them but I use to describe the continent the link between this linguistic malaise and our development has been grossly underplayed the loss of language is also in effect the loss of developmental potential whatever development takes place in our world today is tilted in favor of those with a western education and I'm suggesting that is why in Africa people complain about poverty about whatever whatever but the elite and the acculturated who have the western education and the English and the French and the Portuguese and the da da da da da da da da da da I think that no problem You understand? Okay but let me move on Amaterdu Eganian, okay so let me cite in the illustration of that, let me just cite one thing This is an interview with Amaterdu and the interviewer is Adiola James a Nigerian and Adiola says well it is definitely a very important issue it's connected to the point I just made I have just come from Dar es Salaam where I interviewed Penina Mohondo who has written eight plays in Kiswahili yet hardly anyone outside Tanzania knows about her She herself says that she has never been invited to any African Writers Conference so that she feels isolated yet this is a person who is writing for her public and is very highly thought of in Tanzania I'm sure that other Africans would also like to share whatever she has to say because it has relevance for all of us isn't this difficulty of okay so then Amaterdu the Ghanaian playwright, novelist and short story writer has observed and I'm quoting Amaterdu and then again this quotation is in relation to the points that I've made previously I have reflected on it I don't know how often I think that the whole question of the writer's relationship to her society has to do with language I don't know whether you thought of it that way when you were asking the question but here we are writing in a language that is not even accessible to our people and one does not worry about that you know for instance writing in English makes it possible for me or any African writer to communicate with other people throughout the continent who share that colonial language on the other hand our relationship to on the other hand once relationship to one's own immediate environment is fairly nonexistent or rather controversial these are some of the ideas that I've come up with okay so Amaterdu's play, the author that I just read her play The Dialogue of a Ghost will help illuminate another dimension of my argument further this play The Dialogue of a Ghost is a story about a Ghanaian Artur Yosin who travels through the US to study and meet and marries an African American woman and brings her home the couple face all kinds of difficulties and problems not only because of cultural differences but also because Artur suffered psychologically from having lived in America his newly acquired American ways have become strained to his folk when he returns home and his mother Isicom a woman unfamiliar with western ways and in this sense Isicom is very much like the woman that we talked about before the uneducated by western standards marching guy Isicom a woman unfamiliar with western ways because she has not experienced western education and who in her own words and I'm quoting her from the novel did not hear the school bell when it rang she ends up being distressed by the thoroughly transformed and almost unrecognizable character of a son and think for a moment of unharmless transformation when he goes to the school to learn English and comes back to the Shona homestead and think of Artur when he comes home having studied in America so there's something in there in terms of self eurasia language culture identity etc etc while admittedly Artur's people have their own stereotypes of Yleli the formerly enslaved Africans his African American wife Yleli Rash is very disrespectful of Ghanian culture and of her husband Artur's relatives something illustrated in the following extract from the play and I'm going to read briefly again from the play and I'm starting with the the play's stage directions two hours later Isicom that is the mother of this woman this guy who's travelled abroad enters from the door on the right carrying two bundles wrapped in sack cloth she opens the door to Artur's apartment she puts the bundles in her in the outer room comes out and is closing the door when Artur and Yleli enter the courtyard from the path so Yleli says she sees the woman she sees Artur's mother I say she glares at Isicom for a second or two and then turns on Artur would you care to ask your mother what she wants in our room and of course something is happening here because Artur is in an African cultural context where there's more proximity between your mother can enter your room at any time because there's that kind of close connection and this African American woman is thinking a sense of privacy and individualism etc so something interesting is going to happen here Artur he hesitates talking to his mother his wife is saying could you ask your mother but under normal circumstances Artur wouldn't even dare ask the mother why you are in my room so Artur mommy were you looking for us and then Artur's mother they told us when we arrived from the farm that you and your wife have come to spend today and tomorrow with us so I thought I would bring you one or two things for I hear food is almost unbiable in the city these days and your nephews are so nutty that I knew if I did not bring them here they would steal the snails and roast them all in an hours time so Artur's mother has bought this her son and his wife snails which is a delicacy within Fanti culture and Yleli what she's saying and notice that when Yleli asked Artur what she's saying at this point we realize that Artur's mother is actually speaking Fanti but here we are having the translation in English and so again this is part of the problem that I initiated earlier with Mashingai speaking Shona but we've been told speaking English then Artur says oh she only bought us food to take back with us what kind of food then Artur says mommy what did you bring then Artur's mother is he says can your wife herself go and see after all these are all women's affairs or do not our masters scholars know what goes on in their wife's kitchen then Artur says persuasively to Yleli darling will you go and check her please Yleli walks rather puzzled into the room as she enters she exclaims sweet Jesus and rushes out closing the door behind her and asks darling what is it and then Artur says mommy my wife says she thanks you no then Artur says darling what is it then Yleli some crawling things composing herself anyway tell your mother we are grateful then Artur says mommy my wife says she thanks you a lot for the things then AC Artur's mother says tell her I am glad she likes them now I think I will go and prepare the evening meal Monka will cook for you and your wife your wife eat some rice and stew if you need anything you come and tell us or just shout for any of the children then she says to Yleli my lady I am saying goodbye accompanied by a wave of a hand Yleli waves back the moment she is through the door on the right hand side Yleli rushes in to close it then she rushes into the room and brings out the sack bundle she is crossing towards the path when Artur stops her so she is going to take in the thing that is right in there that she is screaming about she is pretending she likes it then Artur says what is all this then Yleli says those horrid creatures of course then Artur says why are you taking them then Yleli says throwing them away of course then Artur says what rubbish then Yleli says what do you mean what rubbish if you think I am going to sleep with those creatures then you are kidding yourself then Artur says but you can't throw them away just like that haven't you seen snails before then Yleli says my dear did you see a single snail crawling on the streets of New York all the time you were in the States and anyway seeing snails and eating them are entirely different things so then Artur goes on but I would give them to my mother to give them to me I could give them to my mother to cook them for me then Yleli says and give them the opportunity to accuse me of unadaptability no thank you she wrenches the bundle from Artur and as she turns off Monca opens the door on the right her eyes taking the scene Yleli hurries down and dumps the sack near the path all the same time at the same time Monca disappears so what is happening is something interesting because this guy has come back suddenly from America suddenly he can't eat something that he was nurtured on so there's a kind of disillunation there and I'm saying that there's a connection between this and that and I'm saying that the novel is capturing it but there are other issues to be explored okay let me explain it a little bit more by getting back to my text here okay disappointed by Artur's attitude of a loss of cultural consciousness because Artur's mother eventually hears that the lady has thrown the snails away ACCOM convinced her frustration through proverbial language and then she says and I'm quoting for the book before the stranger should dip his finger into the thick palm nut soup it is a town's man must have told him she's citing a proverb what is also established here is that beyond merely being disappointed however ACCOM's motherly fan so ACCOM is really very disappointed and Yleli is disrespectful throughout the text etc etc but what is also being established here is that beyond being disappointed ACCOM's motherly function and a caring character and his position towards his son and his foreign african-american wife is also a temperament that is encapsulated in the Akhan Fanti proverb oba tain na inim di anibabidi right which who's near corresponding rendition notice how I choose my word though near corresponding rendition it means that it's not quite but thank you who's near corresponding rendition in English would be I beg your pardon I beg your pardon it's a proverb oba tain na inim di anibabidi it's a proverb that is figured overtly in the play even by ACCOM's other name Mami the Fanti word Mami who's near corresponding rendition in English would be the word mother Mami has several other associative indications so this proverb that I just quoted means daughter who knows what a child will eat so I'm saying that wanting to give her the child's nails wanting to cook for them asking her actual sister daughter to cook for them is a kind of motherly function but in many readings of the play because this ACCOM embraces you lately in spite of all the rudeness and the disrespect and everything and when the play is being interpreted it is said this is a kind of romanticized idealist reading of the mother african trope how can this woman who showed disrespect suddenly be reconciled with the mother into that now the play presents ACCOM's identity a central to the self-constitution of the compassionate metrach of the african family this is indeed literally signifying the play by the extract just read where ACCOM in conversation with the two states they told us when we arrived that you've come to stay with us and the food is very almost unbiable in the city these days as with Mashi Ngai from Nevers Conditions we notice Ileilis from Ileilis questions to that ACCOM is speaking Fanti that's the full significance of what she says and which is relayed through her character and the speech in English is not conveyed so I'm saying that we're still missing something because when she's to be speaking in Fanti the interpretation is different and there's more in there the historical mother africa rendered through ACCOM's maternal role is represented as embodying a full self-awareness of the wants of her needy children it is interesting that while ACCOM via her actions articulates an image of cultural harmony part of the eroding consciousness of ACCOM Ileilis on her part reinforces patronising western assumptions of cultural superiority over Africa and Africans with a question my dear did you see a single snail crawling the streets of New York so if snails are not eating in New York snails should not be eating in Ghana that kind of thing here again, Edw is interested in exploring the contradictory identities that emerge in the shaping of Africans and people are from African descent that's a result of their different historical locations and different modes of acculturation one is reminded in particular of Tino Achebe's statement that Africa is not a mere geographical expression it is also a metaphysical landscape it is in fact a view of the world and of the whole cosmos perceived from a particular position a table of observation would suggest that one needs a certain grounding in Africa to appreciate and articulate this view in this perspective despite Ileilis having a very demeaning attitude towards Atos people at the end of the play ACCOM asserts that's at the very end of the play she says anyway be careful with your wife you tell her you tell us her mother is dead if she had any tenderness her ghost must be keeping watch over her all which happened to her this posture of ACCOM has been understood to present an idyllic impractical romanticized image of a mother Africa embracing her wayward child or children several critics have seen this as yet another uncritical invocation of the nostalgic and her's problematic mother Africa trope in African and African diasporan fiction her but to come to a proper appreciation of ACCOM's world view and her actions we have to relate this to other cultural narratives within the fantasy context ACCOM's demeanor in relation to Ileilis is an outlook that can be interpreted philosophically via the Akhan fantasy motherhood affirming program which says a near equivalent translation of which in English will be a mother does not reject or ignore a bad child and I'm saying that that is the kind of cultural context from which this one is coming because we need to decode and break down and translate the language we need some other extra knowledge of the cultural context within the language that fantasy which has been translated into the English is and where I to be as intelligible in the Shona as Shenzhen right here I could have shown exactly what the Shona you know I could have drawn more on the Shona in that respect OK with the attitude ACCOM also symbolizes one of the most overriding character which is associated not only with the historical imagined idyllic mother Africa but also with real life African mothers warmth, love and protection ACCOM further becomes an edw's text emblematic of a non-alienated figure of resistance who refuses in spite of all the historical odds against her and her people to succumb easily to the loss of yet another more of a progeny who has undertaken the journey of return to Africa as part of a psychological process of self-rehabilitation and as a descendant of formerly enslaved Africans and I'm saying that you lately in spite of her dislocation within the culture has actually come home to connect with the people and the African mother both in terms of the mother continent receiving the children and also in terms of Atru's mother actually appreciates this and is working along those lines OK in what other specific ways then may the case for a closer philosophical intellectual link between the study of African linguistics and the general field of African literature has been made and what I'm saying is that to arrive at these kind of extra meanings in the text which I haven't seen in any kind of reading in terms of whatever you know bringing in these other proverbial or whatever things we need to look at that close relationship between literature and philosophy and that's the kind of connection that I'm trying to establish between linguistics one of the first incongruities of our modern era is the still ongoing alignment of modernity and development for example with western intellectual and philosophical thought and traditions this is a recurring motive in our intellectual life in our educational systems with consequences for our real world existence as one writer has put it much of the philosophical education of Europeans and Americans consists of a systematic immersion in a dogma according to which the first signs of human reasoning appeared in Europe usually among Greek ancestors such a doctrine collapses the moment it is confronted with real accurate factual historical data in this sense even African philosophers assume the predominance of western tradition especially in relation to a tradition of literacy as one is not too surprised to hear otherwise remarkable an African philosopher as the Ghanian Parmi Jechi argue that and I'm quoting him as a result of the lack of writing in Africa's historical past the indigenous philosophical output of African thinkers in the traditional setting has remained part of their oral traditions and has come to be expressed also in religious and sociopolitical beliefs and institutions while the deconstructive work done by people like Jechi because what they've done is basically that look there's an African philosophy and that philosophy can be retrieved is recoverable and the oral narratives et cetera but I'm making a different point here right while the deconstructive work done by Jechi and other African philosophers cannot by any means be downplayed it is also very disenabling for the project of African historical self rehabilitation and reconstruction to adopt this thoroughly a historical approach fallacious statements such as Jechi's have been repeated so often that they have acquired the mantra and disposition of truth and have become a kind of truth so much so that we now have continuously affirm how the African oral traditions are the source of African intellectual and philosophical thought and of African creative writing do you get the point I'm making that in order to counter that tradition that thing that Africa is also has a civilization it always has to be reference to the oral tradition that is of course important but we then ignore totally the written tradition and assign all of that to the west and I'm saying that that's also a problem and the way to actually critique and decode that is also again this close attention to linguistics okay the fact though that so have been repeated to become a kind of truth okay so that we now have to continuously affirm how the African oral traditions are the source of African intellectual and philosophical thought and African creative writing the fact though is that writing was developed in Africa before 3000 years before Christ some of the African scripts in use then were hero glyphics heratic, demotic, cushite, coptic, amharic, sebian, giz, insebindi, mende, tomah, vine Africa had empresses and empires before Europe African civilizations were built long before European civilizations so the African civilizations, predated European civilizations are Miserium, Nile, Cushite, Mali and Azenian, Zimbabwe and Buganda and Congolies, Ghanian and Benin Africa has an old literature a huge and sophisticated collection of texts some were inscribed into stone monuments and great public constructions some painted on the walls of pyramid chambers and the layers of sarcophagi some were written in ink usually of two colours, headings in red and body in text in black, on papyrus reeds beaten, washed and pasted together layer on layer to make flat smooth surfaces and some were written on reusable tablets convenient for classroom exercises these copies of writing is multi-generic this is the world's oldest literature and talking about the genesis of literary genres and historical origin of literature we have to look at that so I'm saying that to talk about our literature and the way we break down and interpret our world we have to look at the oral traditions but also look at this old literature which we usually as Zimbabwe don't have we only have the oral tradition it is important to point out though that Africans of antiquity never claim to be the only possessors of rationality neither is such a claim being made here what then is the connection here with the study of African linguistics in tandem with African literature and even in reference to past African civilisations we have perhaps to turn to Sheikh Antadiel's point that thought and particularly no philosophy can develop outside of its historical terrain our young philosophers must understand this and rapidly equip themselves with the necessary intellectual means in order to reconnect with the home of philosophy in Africa instead of getting bogged down in the wrong battles of ethno-philosophy etno-philosophy, Pauline, Huntoogie and others I'm not really interested in them as such but I mentioned them in passing whether Africa does have a written the whole point is beating about the bush even having an argument that is not the slicing with thing here because it's wrong footed at the heart of this argument is one of the most pertinent issues we have to deal with in terms of establishing a new historic paradigm for reading our cultures, for interpreting our societies and then subsequently for re-energising the project of cultural awareness our spiritual cultural reawakening which we capacity largely through a careful examination of our history our literature, our culture, etc is important however one of the biggest challenges and we need this as a preview to the economic, political and social development of the world however one of the biggest challenges we face today is that huge numbers of the African populace are marginalized from assessing the very forms of African historical knowledge which are central to the awakening of their minds and I'm saying that partly because of the problems of language and not only speaking only to a particular elite and then you want to talk about the same people who are in charge, the writers, the politicians don't really have that connection with the people because everything is done differently in addition to that we have the present situation where recycled historical myths often of African origin but distorted through historical erasure and substitution have led Africans to become psychological and spiritually dependent on other peoples and gods and images that have been created for other peoples for their own strategic beneficial existence and to arrive at this in fact this is almost like a kind of central point within our conscience because it relates to a whole tradition of our spirituality and our religion etc how can we get Africans to believe for example that the term Christ is not an Indo-European root and again this has to do with the work of linguistics using the field of linguistics, anticoanalysis and anthropology etc to connect with literature because the information is from the literature but the breakdown of the information is coming from a detailed analysis of the language how can we get Africans for example to believe that the term Christ is not an Indo-European root it comes from the pharaonic Egyptian expression Ke Shesheta which in quotes means it was applied to the divinities or series Anubis etc it was applied to Jesus only in the fourth century by religious contamination and then in fact then a few other statements in relation to this point that I'm making because some of you people here will be familiar with what I'm saying when I've made the point the argument will become clear let me just read and then explain Rha in the history of religious thought the first god Orthogenius was not created was has neither father nor mother set jealous because he is sterile kills his brother Osiris who symbolises vegetation from the discovery of agriculture to the Neolithic period Osiris rises from the dead to save humanity from famine Osiris is a god of redemption in any case Osiris is the god who 3000 years before Christ dies and rises from the dead to save men his humanity is god of redemption he is the son of his father the great god Rha he is the son of god in the book of the dead it is said 1500 years before Christ this is the flesh of Osiris Osiris's replica in the northern Mediterranean will save 500 years before Christ drink this is my blood eat this is my flesh and one can see how the degradation of these types of beliefs can lead to the ok so Egyptian cosmology also states I was one I became three this notion of the Trinity permeates all Egyptian religious thought and is found again in the multiple divine tribes such as Osiris, Isis host or Rha in the moon morning at noon at night ok so what is that you know because I've talked about language and I've talked about linguistics and I begin to talk about this and I've just given an indication by reading this that the whole notion of the Christ that we have today within our modern cultures for example is problematic but we don't question it because we don't question it because we don't know the roots of it in terms of the language and where it's coming from it's taken for granted we haven't questioned it and the whole system of education maybe from Berlin 1884 proud to now has entrenched that position but we're Africans to think that this Christ that we adhere to and which defines everything and which Christ is connected to the religious economic political system of the people that create trouble for Africans basically begin to question and explore I'm saying that our liberation would be more enhanced let me put it that way how can we in trying to break away from the thoroughly a historical and a term study of African cosmology to begin to free ourselves from the forms of political, economic, religious, psychological and spiritual mental colonisation and domination that have made us slaves to the images and gods created by others while we have discarded ours the problem of african and the development exists because to use the words of Sheikh Antaddiop by isolating oneself from the historical framework one becomes exhausted in a force battle without knowing it, slicing the air with sharp swords we have Africans and the world generally actually has to find a way of disseminating the right ideas with an educational system Africa is very rich almost every kind of mineral is found in Africa chrome, vanadium, uranium, cobalt tantalum, platinum, gold, diamonds, iron, coal not to add recent discoveries in all yet Africa is poor, this paradox first and foremost is a paradox of spirituality that's the point that I'm making so I'm connecting the poverty of our religious and mythical associations with the poverty of our economic political development etc because the same people that give you the God and the same people that give you that democracy and the politics and everything but I'm not going to go too much into that today I'm more interested in the linguistics and the language and the politics and decolonisation and all that kind of stuff that belongs to another day and another time ok, so this paradox is first and foremost a paradox of spirituality if us in Gugiaz argued our languages were part of the colonial gloom and our languages were suppressed so that we the captives would not have our own mirrors in which to observe ourselves and our enemies really critically and the relationship between our languages our literature, our cultural identity it is also worth noting in respect that while we as critics spend a lot of time writing about the value and significance of this or that message and its specific ideological content the value of the message as translated and translated into English is often also somewhat lost into the majority of our people not only because of the inassess to the other languages that the people speak and the decolonisation with them but also because we've not done enough research into our own languages and see how those languages on earth, culturally significant meanings that link with our history our traditions, our cultures etc etc etc and in case you are getting bored I'm about to wind up so patience ok I mean the fact for example that much global business is translated today in European languages and particularly with notions of freedom, development and democracy permeating several cultures of the world especially through the various but also deeply interrelated educational curricula and systems throughout the world but especially in western Europe with African nations of course largely mimicking the educational curricula in terms of Europe, this is problematic it cannot be denied that the generally accepted view that education of the leading European nations and American foster liberation indeed as someone like Chinua Chibi has argued the colonial language has allowed Africans to talk with one another however the same languages have been in Googie's words the most important vehicle through which that colonial power fascinated and held the sole prisoner the bullet was the means of physical subjugation language was the means of spiritual subjugation what I'm suggesting that I've fed that more in addition to in Googie's observation here is that this spiritual subjugation is still being perpetuated through the educational curricula a curricula that as a by-product of the 1884 Berlin division for rule of Africa seems to have bound Africans in the state of perpetual spiritual entrapment and by the spiritual one does not simply refer here to the sacred or religious the mythological etc but to all the elements cultural and otherwise that coalesce to form and reform the minds of Africans so are very the political, the cultural, you can regard also spiritual the work of cultural and spiritual regeneration is attainable especially via a focus on that interface between a close and detailed exposition of the coded messages embedded in our African languages and literatures and cultures vis-à-vis the cultural work we do with our literatures finish ok thank you very much speaking as a linguist it's super interesting for me there's so many themes in your talk that I recognise such as multilingualism, endangerment language and identity just to name but a few but through a completely different lens of literature and politics so thank you very much we've got some time for questions yes just a quick question the books that you've been holding from were they all written originally in English? yes they were all written in English but at least two of the writers at least one of the two of the writers talk about how what they wrote in English also came as a result of stories that they were told that they picked up from the folk's storytelling tradition of the Fante community for example Edu talks about how the story of the story of Anwar and the story of Diallema also came about as a result not only of the experience with African Americans later on when she went to America and travelled all the world but also because she had stories from her grandmother and her mother and so those stories found their way into the narratives but they were originally, yes they were originally European languages in a specific instance in English so what would that, especially for the play would that be something that the playwright would have envisioned being performed here in the UK or the United States? actually it's been performed in Ghana in the UK and also in the United States on a couple of occasions yes in English university students, lecturers the wider community etc but again part of the problem there is that what do people like ACCOM who's actually a character in the play but if it's performed in English how does she assess that knowledge and the issues that the writer is trying to discuss it is so problematic and we should not presume that because African literature, African Caribbean literature African American literature have reached a certain level in terms of a canon of global literature that all is well and all is right and that the writers are discussing the issues I'm saying that even when they're discussing the issues perhaps much more is being left out is being said and that a closer analysis of the linguistic content of these novels which requires extra research in fact I have a bit much more information in relation to things fall apart and the concept of Ineka and Igbo Proverbs and I found that the concept of mother is supreme in Igbo Ineka which means mother is supreme I researched Ineka and found out that within the Igbo context Ineka also means authority and power and control and influence and I understood why the boys began to prefer the stories that the women told whereas Okonko, the central character wants his sons to listen to stories of fighting and war and violence and bloodshed but they prefer to listen to other stories and I was able to connect that and I was able to argue for example in the paper that I would have presented at the conference that happened that in that case when you look at the question of gender relations within African societies and you look at households that have men that's for example that might be to a certain degree patriarched as it is in Africa and globally but also there's a certain other dynamic other realm where women wield power in terms of influence that they have over children which is important and even in a context where a man goes to the farm and brings food and he is the breadwinner of the family if the woman does not prepare that choice delicious meal which requires skill and intelligence and creativity and also the balance of life forces and needs and responsibilities the yam that you found is useless and that in that sense if you look at power relations if we look into our linguistics going into NECA going into that concept of language and what it means in terms of cultural significations allows you to have a better appreciation of the cultural dynamic and so you can pose that as a counterpoint so when a feminist critic in the West says children are actually a sexist writer all the women are subservient to their men you deconstruct that by using language and linguistics and literature that is what we need to do more of that not just to interpret the themes on the surface but to break down the language to go into the Igbo to go into the Akan to go into the Chishona and there was a brilliant thing that Seraphine Homala and all of that all those languages to go deep inside to understand the world view and if you get the opportunity literature in African language language classes next year because we have a brilliant team that talks about literature in the literature in African language is actually doing something related to what I'm saying here because Senjira was able to give us an insight into Chishona culture Seraphine using Homala folk tales was able to give us an entirely different world view which you won't get from reading Mongobecti Cameroon you won't get it because that world view is talking about coloniser colonised but when he gives us the Homala folk tale and gives us a brilliant I should have recorded that lecture when he gives us that brilliant thing you understand the world view on a different perspective because he has that linguistic facility and I'm saying that as somebody who is a student of African literature I need to go more into African linguistics I need to go more into African linguistics to break down the meanings within my culture so even me as an Akan I don't understand the full significance of this the fact that I speak Chih doesn't mean that I don't need to understand everything I'm a Thedw saying I have to delve deep and research into the language that someone like Senjira has been doing for years here I'm saying that that's really essential and we take it for granted so the knowledge that we ultimately present to the world that this is the knowledge because you've read some novel or you've read some Fanti writer that knowledge isn't complete but because you don't have the skill and the dexterity you don't know because you haven't gotten to the bottom the heart of the matter and also in the older universities in Timbuktu and Alexandria and etc if you were talking about you were described as a professor of literature you were inevitably also a professor of linguistics because they could not presume that you could be a professor of literature without studying and knowing the language and again I'm saying that sorry that's a bit of a long answer to your question I like to talk as you can probably talk no question yes it's interesting thank you very much but I'm just wondering because you never spoke so much of that class classes I don't know whether you've seen some in the West or some English films or in the countries but in Manningworth the English language it's not just about elitrin the other in Africa but in the countries that are colonised but it's also about even if you like your own people domestic affairs for instance if you look at Infinetics for instance in the walking class language where we're in Yorkshire and in London less tectonic the word that in my yoka don't taste like what it order cockney because of what you're saying it's not just about criticising the order in terms of behaviour social structure but also personally if you like biologically looking at the order's language style of speech which is classically illustrated in the film such films like Educating Rita for instance or Black Bear Lady even in those colonies in those countries even in their own country they're doing exactly the same thing absolutely I mean I agree with you I wouldn't contest that and that's true there's a class system within languages some people sometimes when at a point in time you speak Pigeon maybe the thing you are not of a certain because you have to speak Queen's English or whatever you do restiving this but that of course is contested by this whole idea of we don't have one dominant language that we can have different varieties of English and of course what you're saying has to do not only with the language but the culture that comes with it looking down on blacks and Irish and dogs and all of that history so all those kinds of things have to do with the people in London thinking that they are smarter than Steven Gerard the captain of Liverpool speaking with a Liverpoolian accent or something I know there are those class distinctions but my 40 in this paper is actually to talk about our linguistic alienation as Africans and how it has affected us so I do take in your point and absolutely I agree that analogy I was trying to transport the same idea into Africa where we would find let's say like the Cambridge graduate going to places in Nigeria and thinking you know I've been to Cambridge more than you guys and transporting ideas from the West into his own domestic place thinking that he's such an intellectual giant that happens a lot in this novel too I don't know whether you were here when I read that passage where the guy comes back and suddenly he can't speak Shona no more he can't speak his language and he begins to speak English and the English is supposed to give him a sense of superiority his own family members so that class system is actually I talk about it a bit maybe not exactly the same sense but I do recognise you know what you're saying Thank you for really thinking about the relevance of you mentioned the world the African world and starting there there is a core issue because the world he taken as a reality poses a nontological problem in order what what is it when you ask a question what is, that's a problem now if I understood you well you are raising the issue of the epistemology of knowledge absolutely now my problem of what I'm trying to say is that you seem to advocate that includes the new epistemology of African culture to reveal how to fight African culture again I'm not going to go into African culture because that again is a problem what is it, that's not a problem your debate is how do we assess African culture if Africans cannot even practice the language which we tend to know the language says the practice is a piece of language as one of the markers at least in their asset in the production African culture I'm the one who talk about African knowledge because that again is contentious but how do we go about this new epistemology because it's a problem that you've raised but if we have this issue that today Africa in the globalisation sort of way or trend whichever world one would prefer is sort of connecting to this sort of way forcefully or willingly or unwillingly that's the reality how do we go about this new epistemology that you advocate if for example Africans cannot be agents of African culture in the 21st century or at least they will not be capable of using languages from what we've raised in the novel to contribute to this sort of what I call you know African culture how do we then address the issue of the identity of African culture today for academic discourse because you are raising a real problem that we are not even looking at the right parts what you call it incomplete the incompleteness is an epistemological issue because we are not in the south sea or we are not covering some significant area that are getting lost as we are speaking in order what if Africans can speak African languages and we are still collecting information about this African to define or to build our discourse on African culture in the 21st century there is a problem that's what you say our approach is incomplete by being incomplete it can actually reach a point where it is invalid how do we solve an epistemological issue when there is no sense of I don't know direction in that because it seems it's a conundrum but I think there's also a power dynamic in there there's a power relation because the reason why the majority of African resources are being used and distributed worldwide to make our nations richer et cetera is because the majority of the people do not have access to those resources because the dissemination of those resources are structured within a global discourse where languages are French and Spanish et cetera so when you're discussing gold shares in the gold of the Ashanti people you're not doing that in Trey or any other Ghanaian language it's in English and it's an elite core who have access to the nations resources whereas the people who actually should benefit in terms of the majority are totally disenfranchised and don't have access to it don't even be able to participate in the debate so the conundrum, the problem that you kind of pointing to it's still very much tied and this is the problem that I have with Berlin 1884 or 1885 enslavement and people like to say oh why is he still what's wrong with him, why is he still talking about slavery and why is he still talking about colonialism and all those things so those things are long gone but the point is that the inability for us the majority of our people I'm not happy to be in Ghana on holiday and the elite to have a generator while the rest of the people don't because they can't even afford meals unless they can get a generator so we don't have access to the means and I think that's because the system that we inherited are systems which have been thrust on us it may work in America, may work in England, may work in other places because at least even here there might be a benefit system to take off the poor et cetera over there it's in such a way that there's a middle class who are straddling the space between metropolitan capitalism and local capitalism sifodding the profits for themselves, bringing the majority here so the shell and the multinationals and whatever will come and take off the oil give you royalties you still won't be able to even refine the oil even though you've discovered the oil it has to be something and then so the majority when they refine it of course they're only going to give you the cramps on the master's table and it goes on and on so how do we arrive at that we cannot arrive we cannot begin to solve the problem unless we begin to transform the system that's why I usually have arguments with certain colleagues that you might think oh it's okay our democracy, our politics but how democratic is that democracy how many people are benefiting the political party might come and you might elect a new leader who claims to be better than the previous government but how are the majority of the people in Ghana Nigeria, Trinidad, Barbados, wherever how do they get access to each resources equally and the reason why that does not happen is that even the discussion is like me and you we can only speak French the rest of them can only speak English and all the trade and everything is conducted in French you and I are more likely to benefit because the people who speak in English won't even have access to it we will only give them the cramps after we've taken the lion's share and so that is why our destiny should be connected with our languages and some people would argue that French, English, Spanish have also become African languages because large populations of Africans speak them fine I don't have a problem with that argument if they want to see them as African languages cool cultures interact and cross fertilize but how many people Francophone elite you know, Espanol elite Spanish elite, African elite how many people actually have access to the resources that's why we have that common drum Africa so rich yet so poor because under a number of circumstances if the people had a means of determining part of the distribution of their wealth then the poverty thing wouldn't be there but for the people to have that means the system under which the people are when they have the leaders and so on and so forth who have their masters here that they report to that control them by remote those guys would have to transform the system one of the most opposite examples is where they talked about democracy for Africa and Lumumba won the elections in the Congo and they had expected Africans with European interest to win and those didn't win in Lumumba won and so Britain, France, Belgium, America et cetera were talking about democracy for Africa and Lumumba said in the Congo to give every African child education, school, free data and then what did they do? This is admitted it's not even me who's saying it MI6 somebody died about last year they actually put it in the times or something we organized the assassination of Lumumba Belgium, France, English, England, America because Lumumba was going to use the resources of the Congo to develop the Congo what will happen to that after all that Leopold has planted and after all the cobalt and cobalt that Belgium has taught from everybody every child is having access to free education, etc Europe is no longer going to feed on Africa and Europe is no longer going to be rich Europe is no longer going to be first world advanced industrialized world Africa remains third world, backward and primitive and then the media will now even show as more primitive because we have Ebola and all of that thing Europe won't have that advantage in the interest so what is militating against us is an existent European Anglo-European Order I'm not saying that all European people I'm not saying that but a power bloc which is interested in ensuring that end until we begin to want to take a decision to our own hands but think to see we're going to get salvation from them through the ballot box But is that a linguistic problem or economic problem? It's an economic problem but that economic problem cannot be divorced from the linguistic problem because the point that I was sure was that it seems to me that if one wants to talk about say for example why Africa's war is such I would see for people who go back to 1884 is the way which the economic order has been organized and organized in such a way that we've managed just some together a little doing things for example garmers just from oil right? but the fact of the problem for example in the United States is producing more oil than anyone else in the world even a bit of a fact that the price of oil has dropped by 50% Now the question of what you get from your oil and your capacity to bag it has absolutely nothing to do with linguistics it has to do with the way in which the economic order is not organized and what kinds of constraints that one has given the question of the economic exchanges and power relations so I fail to see how the question if everybody can spoke the same language you can give a high of variance to God or I can't how would that effect that would, how would that effect the question of the price of oil okay okay great okay let me respond to this so I agree with you totally it's the economic order right? European capitalism the unequal relations between the west and Africa and that dominant economic system which ensures for example that Ghana has to go to the IMF again and more recently so is that world or that the Bretton Wood constitution and all of that but how I'm saying that the linguistic problem comes in partly as a result is that the people that are having the transactions the people who are the leaders let's say of the various African countries for example right they are dealing with the Europeans because they constitute the class and they are dealing on behalf of their people and their people don't have a voice what I'm saying is that if for example they want to discuss the destiny of Ghana and the Akhan people, the Ghana people the Fante people, the Hausa people the whoever people had a say in that and really understood the dynamics of what is happening because a lot of them don't even understand what is happening and see the west as a source of liberation I was telling that to my students that you got to talk about the people that these people are exploiting us but they watch images on TV and they see America is it's happening, England is happening what are you trying to tell them when you tell them that these are our presses or something like that so for people to begin to articulate their wants and their needs even if it's English as you mean everybody had access equal access to the educational system in English or French or Spanish and resources were evenly distributed we wouldn't have that problem where just a few monopolised wealth so yes absolutely I agree with you totally it has to do with the economic order the guy in my shoes is there what's the name of the guy no the guy got all that money then a bachelor whether or not a bachelor spoke whatever language if it's consistent with stealing the money he was not acting for on behalf of a particular class it doesn't matter what language he speaks so maybe the problem is that's the difference of course we are acting and it doesn't matter what language he speaks oh okay okay okay I understand I agree with you totally but I'm not trying to draw a one to one correlation between speaking a language and corruption for example that's not the point the point that I was trying to make simply was that Africans are disempowered disenfranchised from discussing their destiny because discussions are being run over the top of their head so I agree with you entirely it has nothing to do with whatever language one speaks perhaps the problem is multifaceted and we can look at it in so many different ways but I'm saying that for a people to control their destiny you have to be in control of their language and their culture and somehow that will help them be able to say the things that they want to say so for example this Western education thing that we have only actually still very a minority of people that have it in the different countries if everybody had equal access to it then the democracy maybe I don't know might be truly democratic so I agree with you I mean I'm not this I accept yes I'm not sure what I agree with because we cannot always reduce being free from the law you know we will be but not always rational all over the world you know we cannot reduce everything there is no question we do this on the day economics has to do with the allocation of the law I mean you could say economic principles play the dominant role you know but we cannot reduce it to economic principles alone even things are just taking over the ration ok you control the question yes I think she and Sarah Finn and other people and it's one of the most interesting questions but obviously I'm not a linguist so for me this is a very hard question to answer but in what measure is or do you believe African languages are disclosures of African epistemologies like in one way is this epistemological question embedded in the language and for me that's the central question because then how is this specific to African languages and not all languages like how would this not become an issue of every language like this school ok I'm kind of fighting my corner because if you come and tell me that my gods are pagan and savage and primitive etc and you're bringing me a new Christ and you're saying all of this to me in English and I'm able to say to you that in my before you brought me your god the notion of God said if you want to speak to God speak to the wind or or nobody teaches a child or a child's animal is taken care of by God I'm trying to say to you that in my philosophy, in my culture I already have a notion of God so the way that I'm a country in that dominant narrative that you're bringing to me to say that my gods are whatever is that I'm using my culture, my language to say that I have a world view where I also had the notion of the supreme being and it didn't necessarily come to me through the years to come so you cannot come and tell me to abandon my African gods now because I'm fighting my corner and projecting it from the African perspective doesn't mean that other cultures might not have it but at this particular point in time I'm not interested in that so what I'm saying is that you can you can talk about knowledge and the production of knowledge and the epistime of knowledge from my perspective using philosophy or culture whatever that will counter a certain dominant in position of a certain thought or system or political or cultural, economic system whatever on me but I'm not so is it exclusive to Africa? Maybe not but I'm interested at this point in time in seeing how my own cultural philosophy can help to liberate me and make me free and not make somebody subject me to something because after coming to tell me that you know how I can come and tell me that the only way that I can develop is that I should always hand you my gold for you to the process of my oil for you to process it if my people actually understand that they'll begin to question that so I'm not saying that it's exclusive to Africa but it's almost like I'm speaking from my perspective that is specific is that like a carrier of knowledge and it is exactly exactly unfortunately it's so not my field so I kind of struggle at the but you're making a lot of sense though I mean you're still making sense perfect sense then my question is for example if the books you read if they had been written in another time and translated into English would we have the same kind of issue with the translation every translation is a rewriting it's a re-narration it's not exactly the same so even when I write my book and I write it in a can and I translate it into English the English translation might not necessarily contain everything that I can't say even if I've done it to the best and if he's a better translator than me he might still lose out something so every translation is an act of rewriting you understand that poses that there's an original in the language in the mother tongue how does that pose a philosophical problem sorry I'm wanting to think but I found it very interesting how you gave the examples of saying like we can tell that they're speaking another language even though it's all in English so you're able to see that absence probably I wouldn't not knowing an African language probably but the fact that there's an original somewhere is a keeper of that epistemology a keeper but you know yeah I mean that original would be there it wouldn't necessarily be intact because I might interpret it differently but we might all be drawing from the same cultural source you understand so we might say something and understand each other the three of us are actually here these two here are my Ghanaian brothers and sisters they can understand that but the way that we will say this philosophical perspective to you but you know his might be slightly different from Sarah's and mine slightly but we might be drawing from the same base but yes there is some resource base that is identifiable as African in terms of the language it's why we can communicate it's why you can speak Italian with somebody and I won't understand unless maybe I've lived and grown in Italy or I've learnt the language I'll be missing something so there's a call but your interpretation might be different from Alena's interpretation if Alena is asking you to tell me what the dialogue of a ghost means in Italian and you explain it, you use Italian but you translate it, you might use slightly different words and Alena might use slightly different words I might say that oh actually what Alena said is very similar to what Benedicta said but still there's a different inflection because Alena's own, maybe for her she had a different experience with a ghost at a particular point in time so she put a little bit of that into her translation so it's kind of knowledge isn't that static you know what I'm saying it's just that there's also a certain call so I don't know if I've addressed the question Troiun, you had your hand up too Yeah, I tried to explain it So I'm sure that knowledge and the role of linguistics in this I think it's sometimes dangerous but we don't recognise that the very control of these sources which you can monitor on your left is political and political is law and law is language so if we divorce that linguistic from economic control economic mismanagement and abuse somehow we're that's not a little bit that's fine but the point is is that yes there are economic constraints but people need the ability to access the physical mechanisms that control those economic distortions those economic chains so I worry when you divorce politics and the right of the grassroots to access the high level physical form because it exists inside the indigenous languages the translations and these things and some people who are familiar with them might know what it means in the UK culture others might not but that's what I'm firing about when we talk about linguistics and we talk here instead of literature we sometimes forget that it's core role in things like instruments of law is also or something I guess Can I just add a small point I agree with you in the sense that language of course is very important as an access tool however I'll come from Russia everyone speaks the same language everyone can understand each other they still can't have access to the political mechanisms because of corruption because of the economical and political studio corruption throughout the structure corruption in everyone else everyone speaks the same language everyone has the same inequality everyone isn't equal as everyone else did you want to I understand that at one time say that language does not say we give it but also I think I think what you just said makes perfect sense but also please nobody be mistaken to think that I'm trying to say that once you speak a language everything is okay of course exactly that's not that point at all issues of corruption issues of influence always coming but I guess part of the thing that I liked about the point that you made also was that you know there's a bit of linguistics even in the law that determines you want to make a point I'm going to give you an example of things to report and talking about do you agree with me in the certain words that language may have because of one's knowledge of the language and so I thought when you started was the question of what would be sometimes the unknown of the text or the unconscious of the text which you call a subterranean text and I thought of your argument which I think is perfect and you made it very valid is that if one has a deeper knowledge of the understanding of the text and I think you made a wonderful point when you talked about the question of contestation between the notion of sexism etc. which I think is a logical and great argument but to jump from there that's where my difficulty comes to jump from the talk now of a better understanding and because we don't understand the language that is why lack of democracy and so that is where you think of I would skip into the logic of what you were saying in the logic of the text and I was saying that in terms of the question of linguistics and the question of language and that is why people are improbished I just find that I just find it as a I was just I mean the clarification of the laws in Africa are not in indigenous terms they are mostly in European terms and I understand what you are saying on the interpretation but I am saying that in the same way that the United Nations wrote this in the 11 years the United Nations 11 years used things like functional literacy and all these kinds of things just to support those key indicators of ways people are I am saying that I am not saying of course with linguistic we are going to have this egalitarian world but what I am saying in Africa is that the lack of it clearly means to political political power, political instruments to ways of challenging the economic markets I mean tunnel oil is the company that exploits the oil in Ghana as an Irish company so if the people who were in Ghana at the time who were able to engage with those discussions at the time had access to the information that was coming out there but there would be a tendency to make perhaps some of them some of the harsh impacts of that I can talk about my geo statistically it's called Tomar let me just respond to that if you had a multi-lingual education even though it was actually information I think it was a moment to have a movement for the progress so I do hear what you are saying on the set and what you are saying in Russia it's a different political discourse you are right language language can I we are really very short of time ok go for it and then we'll let that out language is embedded with disease ostensibly many of it are spoken there is quite emotion that takes place even in real languages which are not open to cultural motivation and you can't you shouldn't be who just go around observing people people speaking sign expressing themselves in sentiments that are not open to cultural motivation this is the only one's answer about translation of languages better than them because some of them are being missing translation is so key because what happens when we do translate I mean much as I agree that there isn't a one to one correlation between the linguistic and the economic if you like the fact is that the destiny of the people or whatever things they are going through it's a multifaceted problem the economic one is tied to the linguistic one I mean if the political parties come and start speaking English and telling the people we are going to do this for you and the people vote for them but they end up not doing it for them and this has been going on for years and years and years isn't there some kind of connection with the fact that the elite who always have access to English and have access to economics and to power always remain in that position that we never do things for we are always looking up to them they don't understand your language but you break it down for them you have opinion leaders whatever there's still always something and I agree totally that it's an economic problem the world problem is an economic problem capitalism versus whatever it's an economic problem but even the way in which the economic policies are passed down to the people very inaccessible to a large number of people and again the linguistic comes in there and of course I agree with you for example that everybody might speak Russian it doesn't mean there's no corruption that one absolutely it's all a question of systems that are in place all I was saying simply was that in terms of African historical rehabilitation in terms of our destiny the fact that a majority of our people are also disenfranchised from access to knowledge access to resources etc so for example it's only the English speaking people who always go to the school and they start or whatever what happens to the person like ACCOM and marching guy who never go to school would they ever have access to the nation's resources no big no because there's no chance you have to go to a particular roots and that roots is constrained so yes it's an economic problem but that economic problem also closes the avenue for many many people and I'm saying that our condition is multifaceted that's the religious problem which I tried to point out by saying that some figures that we are following for example doubtful but it's a myth but it's language that created it language created it and it's that entrend that myth but linguistics goes into that myth and even if you want to establish the connection between the economic and the languages that the same person that comes and gives you that God or the Jesus that you look up to that looks like him brings you his democratic system so his economics is tied with his linguistics because he's spoken to you in a language in English and to deconstruct that and to turn him down you have to get rid of his language so there's actually even a direct connection between the language the same people give you the why Jesus the same people give you the democracy the same people give you the church so there's a connection we have to look at it but having said that I do concede to what everybody has said and I totally disagree with you but as the Igbo people always say wherever something stands, something else always stands there's always different perspectives and thank you all so much for making it a lively debate thank you so much