Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Events calendar

Show all calendar items

Translating African Thought and Literature

- Export as iCalendar
Location: F204 Milburn House

‘Translating African Thought and Literature’ – Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Warwick, 25 May 2016, IAS Seminar Room (F204), first floor, Milburn House

Location: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/ias/aboutus/location

ABSTRACT

The workshop – which will open with a key-note lecture by Prof. Grant Farred (Cornell) on ‘Ngugi wa Thiongo and Dwelling’ - will focus on the way in which African and European languages, and the question of multilingualism, have contributed to the development of African thought and literature until today. The workshop is meant to be open-ended and analyse how ‘translation’, in the ‘real’ but also more metaphorical meanings of the term, has shaped African literary and intellectual productions in Africa and in the African diaspora. The fact that most African literature and thought is published in global languages such as English and French is intriguing because it seems to run counter to various attempts on the part of Africans to ‘decolonise the mind’. Indeed, African intellectuals and novelists have often advocated the practice of vernacular forms of knowledge and an active rejection of the Eurocentric legacies of imperialism. This attempted indigenization of knowledge was invariably predicated on the assumption of an innate link between linguistic deep structures and autochtonous worldviews and thought procedures: ‘A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language’ (Fanon). This workshop will approach these questions and explore the various linguistic, cultural, and epistemological factors responsible for the enduring use of the former imperial languages in African literature and thought. It will also examine the resources (linguistic and otherwise) called upon by Africans – in French, in English and perhaps also in other (African) languages – to overcome intellectual and conceptual dependency and reflect on the present and future of African cultures.

 

Programme [12-6pm]

Lunch 12 – 12.40

12.40-12.50 - Introduction – Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, University of Warwick (French Studies, School of Modern Languages and Cultures)

12.50-1.40 Key-note lecture: ‘Letting-be: Dwelling, Peace and Violence in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood’ – Grant Farred, Cornell University

---

1.40-2.05 ‘The Birth of Language or The Necessity of Rule’ - Jean-Paul Martinon, Goldsmiths College, University of London

2.05-2.30 - ‘Liaisons dangereuses? Kezilahabi’s adaptation of Heidegger's “Being”’ – Alena Rettová, SOAS, London

---

2.45-3.10 – ‘Movement in Text: Translating Nomad Subjects’ - Hannah Grayson, Durham University

3.10-3.35 – ‘VY Mudimbe and Ancient Greece’ - Daniel Orrells, Kings College London

---

3.50-4.05 Tea break

---

4.05-4.30 – ‘Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre in English: Translation and De-philosophization’, Kathryn Batchelor, University of Nottingham

4.30-4.55 – ‘Finding Fanon: Translation, “Literary Afterlife” and their Effect on Fanon’s Relationship with Africa’ – Sarah Scales, University of Warwick

---

5.10-6.00 – Concluding remarks – refreshments

 

 

 

Abstracts

 

Letting-be: Dwelling, Peace and Violence in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood’ – Grant Farred, Cornell University

Taking its theoretical departure from Martin Heidegger's question, "What is it to dwell?," this presentation thinks the possibilities of how to be under the rubric of postcolonial failure that is Ngugi Wa Thiongo's novel "Petals of Blood." This presentation pivots on the tension between dwelling as the desire for peace (an entirely plausible, even laudable, ambition for the postcolonial project) and a critique of this desire as romanticization because of every moment of peace invariably seems limned by the portent of violence that seems everywhere in a newly independent Kenya.

‘The Birth of Language or The Necessity of Rule’ - Jean-Paul Martinon, Goldsmiths College, University of London

As is well known, the Biblical Sixth Commandment, “Thou Shall Not Kill,” is intimately linked to the First Commandment, “I am the Lord.” By linking the two at the top of Moses’s two-column table shows that language is given priority: the name of God can be uttered only when the possibility of death has been set aside. In this way, the linking of these two commandments marks not only the birth of language, but also, more importantly, the start of ethics. As such, Commandments One and Six form the basis of practically all western ethics from Kant’s categorical imperative (the unconditional maxim needs a First Word to enter into force) to Lyotard’s language games (for which all utterances are charged with the moral imperative to respond), for example. But how on earth does this famous linguistic and ethical structure fare in a context whereby the written text is not given priority, in a situation where prohibitions are inherited orally? This paper will attempt to expose the thorny issue of the translation of the Sixth Commandment into Kinyarwanda and Rwandan culture. This will imply neither the exposition of the history of the arrival of the Bible in Rwanda nor the way it helped to consolidate the colonial regime. This paper will also not examine the neglect of the prohibition against murder during the genocide of 1994. Instead, the essay will examine the linguistic and cultural problems one faces when determining the birth of ethics in two radically different contexts.

 

Liaisons dangereuses? Kezilahabi's adaptation of Heidegger's "Being" - Alena Rettová, SOAS, London

Tanzanian novelist and philosopher Euphrase Kezilahabi strives to challenge the "tragic epistemology of Western man" (Kezilahabi 1985: 219), consisting in the deadly split of the totality of being into "the categories of Subject/Object" (Kezilahabi 1985: 215) and manifest in the view of literature as representation, through "dismantl[ing] the resemblance of language to the world" (1985: 216). His two experimental novels in Swahili, Nagona (proper name, 1990) and Mzingile (Labyrinth, 1991), are an implementation of this theoretical argument. The dismantling is done both on the level of style: through the employment of a non-linear, meandering plot, through lack of temporal and spatial coherence, a radical disruption of habitual ontology, etc.; and on the level of discourse: in several places, especially in the final scenes of Mzingile, the protagonists discuss the creation of a new "language" as a way to heal the fractures and fissures of epistemology: "Tutaunda lugha ambayo msingi wake ni kuwako." (Kezilahabi 1991: 69; We shall create a language whose foundation is being.) This is a projection of a new relationship between humanity and being as the foundation of a new, holistic epistemology.

Through these words Kezilahabi expresses in Swahili central concepts of Western philosophy: the concepts of subject and object and, in particular, the Heideggerian concept of Sein (Being). This paper shows that Kezilahabi's reliance on Heidegger puts him at risk of compromising the very foundations of his own philosophy - an incisive critique of essentialism - in that he assimilates certain hidden tendencies towards essentialism implicit in Heidegger's philosophy. However, the paper also argues that Kezilahabi salvages his concept of "kuwako" (being) from these essentialist pitfalls precisely through his declared project of "tak[ing] a destructive rather than a deconstructive stand vis-à-vis the Western philosophy of value and representation" (Kezilahabi 1985: 4). This destructiveness applies also to Kezilahabi's philosophical "eye-openers", Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Having passed the phase of "vurumai" (chaos; in the novels, a chaotic philosophical dance that destroys millions of people), "kuwako" is not a translation but a reformulation of Heidegger's central philosophical concept, decisively informed by Kezilahabi's lifelong propensity for existentialism.

‘Movement in Text: Translating Nomad Subjects’ - Hannah Grayson, Durham University

Transnational African author Tierno Monénembo is known for his ‘unstable’ narratives and travelling storytellers. In this paper I will discuss two of his novels, Pelourinho (2005) and Les Coqs cubains chantent à minuit (2015). Drawing on nomadic thought, the paper will argue that Monénembo’s subjects, rather than ethno-tourists, are exemplary figures of mobile débrouillardise. They embody and play out a collective nomadic mind-set which colours their approach to unstable space. Though written ten years apart, the novels are remarkably similar in their depiction of space and character. Encounters with multiple, unfamiliar faces are mirrored linguistically in the collision of several languages, and I will suggest that where such translingual environments are problematised, there is a simultaneous emergence of creativity. I will frame this reading in an understanding of subjectivity as always conditioned by mobility (after Braidotti), an essential lens for viewing African subjects in the era of ongoing decolonisation (Mbembe). The paper will also address the challenges of translating Pelourinho into English, in particular how to deal with the relationships between multiple languages in one text.

 

'VY Mudimbe and Ancient Greece' - Daniel Orrells, King’s College London

European colonialism in Africa was often justified and bolstered by turning to classical antiquity: as the self-professed ‘inheritors’ of ancient Greece and Rome, nineteenth- and twentieth century colonizers argued that they were equipped with the tools to educate and civilize the colonized African subject. Martin Bernal's well-known 1987 book Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization explored the racist frameworks of the discipline of Classics during the nineteenth century. The story about Victorian Classics and its instrumentalization in colonial education has been amply explored since the appearance of Bernal's work. What remains much less examined is the role a classical education has played in the intellectual careers of those born and brought up in the mid twentieth century who then emerged in the postcolonial moment. If we want a fuller understanding of late-twentieth-century African intellectual history, we need to think about how African thinkers negotiated their classical heritages. This paper will concentrate on the place of ancient Greek myth in the career of VY Mudimbe.

 

‘Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre in English: Translation and De-philosophization’, Kathryn Batchelor, University of Nottingham

The influence of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Critique de la raison dialectique on Frantz Fanon’s Les Damnés de la terre can be seen in Fanon’s direct engagement with Sartre’s text as well as in the vocabulary that he adopts when discussing key ideas, particularly in the now infamous first chapter discussion of violence. In Constance Farrington’s English translation of Les Damnés, however, philosophical terms are replaced with everyday ones, and the links between Les Damnés and the Critique are obscured. In this paper I explore two of the core themes in Fanon’s first chapter, namely the effects of violence on the group (the unifying power of violence), and the effects of violence on the individual (with particular emphasis on the link between violence and reason). In connection with each of these themes, I outline the resonances between Fanon’s discussion of violence in Les Damnés and Sartre’s in the Critique, and present a critique of Farrington’s ‘de-philosophizing’ approach. The paper pays particular attention to the ways in which Farrington’s changes enact significant shifts in Fanon’s conceptualization of violence, with far-reaching implications for the reception of the text in Anglophone contexts.

‘Finding Fanon: Translation, “literary afterlife” and their effect on Fanon's relationship with Africa’ – Sarah Scales, University of Warwick

My paper will focus on the translations into English of Frantz Fanon’s texts Peau noire, masques blancs (1952), and more specifically, Les Damnés de la terre (1961). These works are steeped in the particularity of the lived experience of a man raised in Martinique, educated in France and politicized in Africa. Through his examination of the psychological toll of colonialism on the colonized subject and the process of decolonization, the influence of his experience of these three places can be seen.

Here, I shall examine how the popular 1967 Grove Press translation of Black Skin, White Masks and, particularly, the emphasis on one chapter, ‘On Violence’, from Farrington’s 1963 translation of The Wretched of the Earth resituates Fanon’s anticolonial thinking away from particularity of Martinique, Africa and the socio-cultural context of the Algerian war of independence, which played a central role in the development of his work. I shall attempt to interrogate what this refocusing of Fanon’s attention through translation means for contemporary African readers, who, for the most part, must still read his work in English, in itself, a reminder of the lingering influence of imperialism on African culture. In so doing, I aim to determine the extent to which Fanon’s work remains relevant for, and in Africa today.

Show all calendar items