Ngugi wa Thiong’o at UH Manoa

"Monolingualism is not a good thing for the world." Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Above: Ngugi and Noe Noe Silva in the English Dept. UH Manoa, April 2008


This past spring semester was a blur of writing and teaching, but a few particularly inspiring moments come to mind. One was Ngugi's visit to UH Manoa as the Inouye Lecturer, sponsored by the American Studies department. Generous as he is, he also gave lectures in various departments, including a visit to the English Department as part of a panel with Political Science PhD candidate and fellow Kenyan Sam Opondo, Dr. Shankar from English, and Dr. Noe Noe Silva, also from Political Science.

Ngugi reminded us that Decolonising the Mind (1986) is "intimately tied to the Pacific," recounting the story of how a visit to Aotearoa (New Zealand) and discussions with Maori he had met inspired him to write the book for which he is most well-known. Speakers on this panel addressed how relevant Decolonising is to studies of politics and language, and in their own work, more than 20 years later.

Ngugi responds: "Recovery of languages is part of saving the world."

Beforehand, I had joked with Cheryl that we need to send Ngugi to the Philippines as the solution to all of our woes. Oddly enough, Ngugi then brought up the Philippines as an example to support his point about colonized memory: "Wherever Europe went, they planted their memory." The starting memory of the Philippines? King Philip. The effect of being named after its conquerer is the message "I belong to Philip" - and this is the beginning of memory for the Malay inhabitants of this archipelago in the China sea that happened to be in the path of the Spanish. If the Spanish colonialists planted memory on bodies and minds through language, then, Ngugi explains, "decolonising the mind is resurrection of another memory" - the buried memory of place and minds.

Who am I?

A return to the previous state of being, Ngugi asserts, has the effect of "securing a base [of identity? of power?] in order to effectively engage, in order to give and take" in the world.
A country that survives by supplying cheap labor to the rest of the world has no traction. It's all give, no take.

Fuck. No joke.