Decolonising the Mind (1986)
Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature (James Currey, 1986), by the Kenyan novelist and post-colonial theorist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, is a collection of essays about language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity. The book, which advocates linguistic decolonization, is one of Ngũgĩ's best-known and most-cited non-fiction publications, helping to cement him as a preeminent voice theorizing the "language debate" in post-colonial studies. Ngũgĩ describes the book as "a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism, and in teaching of literature". Decolonising the Mind is split into four essays: "The Language of African Literature", "The Language of African Theatre", "The Language of African Fiction", and "The Quest for Relevance". Several of the book's chapters originated as lectures, and apparently this format gave Ngũgĩ "the chance to pull together in a connected and coherent form the main issues on the language question in literature." The book offers a distinctly anti-imperialist perspective on the "continuing debate…
- Published
- 1986
- Pages
- 128
