Literature I 23
the mental universe of the colonized. It has been argued that colonialism
develops only insofar as there are colonizers who are prepared to carry
out certain roles, and colonized who accept -or defy- the demands posed
upon them by the colonial power (Mannoni ,1950): while many studies
consider the colonial situation as an institutional framework, others l∞k
at its complex psychological components. (Memml,1966; Fanon,1952 and
1961; Clignet,1984 for a review).
The dialectics of the colonial situation involve, on the colonizer's side,
the assignment of absolute values to his culture, or pseudo-universality
(Clignet,1984:84) and , for the colonized, the deprivation of the tools of
self-definition in relation to time, space and the outside world (Freire's
'culture of silence',1972; Vieira,1979; wa Thiong'o,1985; Fanon, 1961).
Examples of this alienation are the deliberate attempt to erase the
significance of the oppressed people's past, the distorted image offered
of the metropolitan culture, and the second-class status accorded to local
languages and arts as opposed to those of the metropolis.
The study of language offers a vantage point to examine the complex
relationship between culture, oppression and liberation in colonial and
neocolonial situations. Moderate and radical authors differ sharply in the
O
role they attribute to the comprador burgeolsie and therefore to the
phenomenon of 'assimilation', which in turn assumed different
characteristics among the various colonizing powers. Va Thiong'o
emphasises the dual character of language, as a means of communication
(in production, in literature and in orature, i.e. oral literature), and as
a carrier of culture:
Language as culture ... mediates between me and my own self;
between my own self and other selves; betwen me and nature.
Language is mediating in my very being. (1985:117)
The introduction of European languages in school, for administrative
purposes and for virtually all written communication is seen as breaking
this harmony: the colonized Is made to perceive his Ll as an inadequate
tool for mediation.