Language, culture and decolonisation

Abstract

Language, Culture and Decolonisation discusses the importance of language in decoloniality from a global perspective, and the decolonisation process from the disciplinary vantage points of history, politics, philosophy, and literary studies.

The book makes original contributions to our understanding of how, in Fanon's words, colonialism gets under the skin of the colonised by taking control of a people's history, language and culture, and denigrating all three. This edited volume examines classic and contemporary arguments that make the case for the importance of indigenous languages, including creole, in the cultural formation and expression of one's identity. It also looks at arguments that make the case for the appropriation of the language of the coloniser as a method of subversion. French and English, for example, became the lingua franca of an elite pan-African intelligentsia.

This insightful book also shows how the coloniser, in promoting indigenous cultures and languages, may defuse and control potential political resistance, as we see in the case of the South African government and the Zulu nation.