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Author: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (goo-gee) was born in Kenya in 1938 into a family of low-class workers

• He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine.

• In the time of his childhood, Ngũgĩ experienced settlers of the British colony in Kenya (1895-1963).

• In the time of his teenage years, he went through the Mau Mau War which was a war in British Kenya. The group of Mau Mau people was dominated, politically, by the Kikuyu people. However, they fought against the white European settlers in Kenya and the British Army.

• The Mau Mau War was a huge episode from 1952-1962 and that inspired a major theme in Ngũgĩ's early works.

• Ngũgĩ made his way into the literary group in East Africa with his first presentation of his play The Black Hermit at The National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962.

• Ngũgĩ was very critical of the inequalities within the Kenyan society and communicated with the public in the languages of their daily lives.

• Ngũgĩ was arrested and sent to prison without charge at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison on December 31, 1977.

• During his very productive periods of literary works, he worked on eight short stories, two one-act plays, two novels, and a regular column for the Sunday Nation under the title, As I See It.

Audience : Transition

• Transition is an international review of politics, culture, and ethnicity. While other magazines routinely send journalists around the world, Transition invites the world to write back. Three times a year, its writers fill the magazine's pages with unusual dispatches, unforgettable memoirs, unorthodox polemics, unlikely conversations, and unsurpassed original fiction. Transition tells complicated stories with elegant prose and beautiful images.

• Transition publishes writing by and about Africa and the African diaspora, with an eye towards a global perspective.

• The Journal/Article appeals to students of African Studies, Arts & Culture, Gender Studies, Literary Studies, and Politics.

• Other readers/audience include groups that are interested in topics such as: African Americans, Black Nationalism, Race & Ethnicity, Popular Culture, Social Justice.

• Published by: Indiana University Press on behalf of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

• First Issue of Transition was Published in 1961

• This is important to point out because this journal began to be published only a few years after many of the civil rights movements mentioned in the article had already begun and were in motion:

• India’s independence in 1947, the Chinese Revolution in 1949, the defeat of the French in Vietnam at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the start of the Mau Mau–armed challenge of the British colonial state in Kenya in 1952, and a similar armed challenge against the French in Algeria, Ghana’s independence in 1957; the initiation of the Cuban revolution in 1956; the rise of the civil rights movement in the United States, marked by the now-famous act of Rosa Parks’s refusal to give her seat on a bus to a white person in Alabama in 1955; not to mention the workers movements in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, often marked by general strikes and mass uprising.

Thesis/Main Argument

Ngũgĩ' is striving to push for a critical rethinking of the people who have been oppressed by the acts of colonialism and shift an awareness of self, governed only by their own “vision” which encapsulates a departing from a “mythic consciousness” and an opening of the boundaries of their own shores to the social struggles worldwide. Ngũgĩ's intent is to connect and heal the people of the world and recover the “right to imagine” to recover the true memory of cultures that have been stripped away and mutilated beyond recognition, to create a world which is for all the peoples well being first, rather than selfish capitalist notions and greed.

Ngũgĩ has stated within his 1972 collection of essays in Homecoming that George Lamming through his works evoked, ”an unforgettable picture of a peasant revolt in a white-dominated world. And suddenly I knew that a novel could be made to speak to me, could, with a compelling urgency, touch cords deep down in me.”

Ngũgĩ's Arguments:

The deconstruction of the “mother image” introduced through the colonial and post-independence schooling is a difficult process, as this tool is one of cultural dependency through the forceful colonial system of a mutilated biased education, alienation, and a narrative of “culture umbilical cords” which can still be connected through a “slimy” class of people seen as the Creightons of the colonial world.

Through the artistry of imagination Ngũgĩ argues that even under an oppressive colonial system, an artist can still “exercise the sovereignty of his imagination to dream of new worlds.” (169) “Imagination is the supreme sovereign, for it is not bound by time and space, nor by authority.” (169) The authority of any state cannot touch the confines of anyone's mind or imagination of freedom of oppression and peace.

Themes/Key Terms

Decolonization - the dismantlement of colonization (prevalent during 1953 when In the Castle of My Skin was published).

“[Lamming] elaborates on themes already touched upon in that seminal text of the aesthetics of decolonization written by a thinker just past his early twenties” (164).

Anti-Imperialism

Lamming’s work emerged during this time of opposition to colonialism which is prevalent to his celebration and reflection of people making history during this time (1950-1960’s).

Awakening

The people’s focus shifted to an awareness that they should be allegiant to themselves, for themselves and governed by a “vision” to include worldwide people of similar racial and social struggles.

“My People” - a phrase used as Trumper’s new ideal vision for the future In the Castle of My Skin which encompasses more than race and nationalism and helps defines a culture that suggest racial pride and freedom of the people.

“It is the possibility of this people being organized and taking back their sovereignty which terrifies the colonial state” (166).

Neocolonialism - the use of economic, political, cultural, or other pressures to control or influence other countries.

Caretaker Government

This term coined by Lamming, is described as “the settler/colonial state may depart through the front door, but it leaves behind its representatives in the new independent state… it act on behalf of the imperial interest and because of its short-lived temporary character” (167). This type of governing will only result in a wilting legacy placed by the colonizers that will never compare to the original motherland they came from and there can never be stability or progress with this type of flimsy, “slimy” power in place.

Globalization

Lamming argues that globalization is the transformation of colonization and needs to be interrogated to ensure that the future processes are decolonized whether it be the economy, politics or culture. Globalization still allows certain countries of power to dominate and oppress others.

Enslaving Aesthetic

Mutilation of Memory

Also referred to as the production of amnesia, is another way the Colonizers enforce their ideals on those they are oppressing. By wiping out a country’s own culture it is easier to manipulate them especially through education.

Language

“The colonized has never and can never produce Shakespeare. And Caliban has no language. He can only be taught/given language” (168). Shakespeare and English are the “greatest exports of the Empire”, meaning that they are used to not only colonize, but enforce auto-enslavement. Without a language of their own, the people are defined by the roles given to them by the colonizers.

Alienation

Alienation is a important tool used by colonizers in order to have further control of people’s “land, labor, power, values, even psyche” which further threatens the only freedom of sovereignty (168).

Sovereignty - the full right and power of a governing body over itself.

“Soverignty lies with the subject freed from his subjection to an oppressing other, free to regain his own subjectivity as an agent of his being” (166).

Subject vs Person/State

Subject - “renders habitual obedience to no one”

Person/State - “renders habitual obedience to the sovereign”

Imagination

Ngũgĩ claims that imagination is the supreme sovereign because it cannot be bound by time and space, nor by authority. No authority is able to claim your mind, in the sense of not being able to imagine, dream or think. They can try to control you through tactics like stripping your culture and taking away your native language, but your imagination can provide the dream of freedom.

Colonialism as a Process of Alienation

(3 Minute Mark)

Evidence/Support

Ngũgĩ drew heavily upon significant cultural moments happening throughout the world, which he felt were working to “redraw the power map of the world by the forces of decolonization.” Such as, the worker’s strikes in Asia and Africa or the civil rights movement in the United States. He felt that Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin was a narrative working to embolden people to gain power for themselves and realize their collective consciousness under sovereignty.

In Trumper, Ngũgĩ saw the embodiment of a character that had witnessed the power of the people and their ability to redefine society’s structure. The notion of power being in the hands of the masses is further reaffirmed through the ideas of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. However, Ngũgĩ believed Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s views that, “sovereignty [begins] with the people [and] remains there” were most comparable to Lamming’s.

Ngũgĩ also recognizes a connection between Lamming’s ideations and that of the English language and Shakespeare’s impact on creating a civilization that relied on specific cultural values in order to maintain a power structure. As stated, “Language here is being used to reproduce a master and slave consciousness in order to reinforce the material reality of the same.” Ngũgĩ also discovered the importance of an individual’s imagination in Lamming’s work, which he believed was the only defense against colonialism.

Discussion Questions

Throughout Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin, the word "shame" is used repetively. What does the speaker try to say about this word and the society that he is living in during that time?

Ngũgĩ states, “colonialism is a totality of alienation” (168). How is this reflected in Lamming’s work? More specifically in the character of G?

How do you think Ngũgĩ and Lamming's work affected the lives of people from the Caribbean? In your opinion has it been in a positive way? Explain why, or why not?

How do the texts we have read so far, Kincaid, Cesaire and Lamming (Ngũgĩ ) differ? (stylistically, tone, claims, etc...) Do you think their choices are successful and what are their effects?