More literary theory today from a paper I'm proud of. I may comment on Thiong'o's equation of culture with language later, but for now you need an intro…
How humans determine what is self is a topic of much theoretical debate. However many of these theories of self-identification highlight the twin fundamental notions of culture and language as unavoidably instrumental in the construction of identity. The most germane of these to our discussion derives from the French neo-Freudian psychologist Jacques Lacan's extrapolations on Ferdinand de Saussure's principles of semiotics.
Mainstream linguistic thought from its inception as a separate discipline in Saussure's time, has pointed out the arbitrary nature of the link between the signification of any given (linguistic) symbol and its associated signifying form (whether graphic or phonic). Dividing a sign into signifiant and signifié is a powerful way to theorize language, since it emphasizes its social nature. If the link between a symbol and its meaning is in fact arbitrary, then I must possess the same decoding strategy as you do in order to understand your intended meaning: I must speak the same language.
The implications for this fundamental principle of language are enormous when considering its extension into domains outside of linguistics. Lacan believed that the subconscious is organized like a language: as a system of signs where the links between signifier and signified are as arbitrary as purely linguistic signs are. If the subconscious—which is the underlying force behind all human behavior, in the view of Freudian psychologists—is organized into the same kind of system that exists in language, then how one explains language becomes a key to how one explains that behavior.
Another way of stating the fact that separate dialects maintain separate systems of arbitrary links between both the arbitrary signifiants, or coded symbolic forms, and the arbitrary signifiés, or concepts they reference, is to say that there is a symbolic order that precedes our intention to signify. As we intend to pluck a signifier from that system, in an attempt to convey a certain meaning we are confronted with the fact that the signifier we choose not only contains its own history in the minds of the others we seek to communicate with, but that it will also necessarily retroactively determine the meanings of a whole range of associated signifiers.
The effects of this retro-active determination of meaning along what's known as a chain of signification are particularly easy to recognize in ideological contexts where the meanings of the associated signifiers are notoriously slippery: "democracy" in a communist ideological field of meanings means something quite different than "democracy" in a capitalist ideological field of meanings. "Freedom", is also determined differently if the one invokes communism (it becomes a kind of emancipation from bourgeois oppression), than if one intends to invoke a capitalistic meaning (more of a capacity to effect personal gain).
It is this retroactive fixing of meaning as a necessary side-effect of all systems of signification that drives Lacan's theory of subjectivity—or for our purposes: of identity. At the critical "mirror-stage" of self-identification each psyche must split—through first realization of the fact that an "other" is gazing back—into a conscious (what I imagine the other is seeing), and a subconscious (the now repressed psyche) subject. This split comes as a result of the traumatic experience of entering a social order, or in other words, of realizing that there are "others" out there.
This determination of the subject's identity as such, via entry into a social order, is much more closely related to language than to the sense of vision that a mirror might imply. To simplify perhaps beyond justification: there is a linguistic parallel between this entry into a social order comprising self and other (where each other has not only its own history, but also has an identity retroactively fixed in relation to the self's subjectivity). Lacan suggests that this is not only a parallel, but one and the same operation: that the process by which we recognize an other visually is the same process by which we grammatically objectify others, and thus discover ourselves in a subjective position. In other words, becoming a subject entails entry into a symbolic order at the point of a signifier in a chain of signification. As the subject enters this chain of signification it retroactively fixes the meanings of associated signifiers, the product of which is that subject's symbolic identity: an identity which is at once social and discursive.
The trick of this symbolic identification in terms of culture is to remember that even though, from the perspective of the subject involved, there has been some act of realization (that there are others out there), the very thing that subject is discovering is that its position in the order represented by the existence of others has been pre-determined by those others. Not only do the others each have their own individual history, but their very existence retro-actively fixes the identity of our Subject within chain of their socio-cultural order.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, eminent radical Kenyan author and playwright is quite famous for his views on the kind of identity one's choice of language portrays. To be painfully brief, in his theoretical treatise Decolonising the Mind, Ngũgĩ demonstrates his Marxist belief that all forms of communication have the effect of perpetuating systems of social values within individuals—systems of values which in turn define those individuals. These systems of values and the communication used to express, reflect, and maintain them are what constitute culture. In his own words:
Communication between human beings is…the basis and process of evolving culture. In doing similar kinds of things and actions over and over again under similar circumstances, similar even in their mutability, certain patterns, moves, rhythms, habits, attitudes, experiences and knowledge emerge. Those experiences are handed over to the next generation and become the inherited basis for their further actions on nature and on themselves. There is a gradual accumulation of values which in time becomes almost self-evident truths governing their conception of what is right and wrong, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, courageous and cowardly, generous and mean in their internal and external relations. (14)
So when Ngũgĩ defines culture as embodying "those moral, ethical and aesthetic values, the set of spiritual eyeglasses, through which [individuals] come to view themselves and their place in the universe," it can be said that culture, then, is a tool for the definition of the self, and that the self becomes what culture makes of that self (14). Since language is one of the means by which humans communicate, it stands to reason that language is a medium for culture, and thus for self-identification.
Because of his project of breaking with all colonizing influences, there came a point in his career that Ngũgĩ rejected the identity that the colonial language (and therefore culture) had branded him with. He cast off his English first name, John, and thus symbolically refused to be known by the (neo-) colonial system. He also (later) decided never more to write anything in the colonial language he learned at the colonizer's schools. Not only would this constitute an act of protest and resistance to (neo-) colonial powers—since he was, in effect, refusing to allow the English to exploit his literary talents to enrich their own language—it was also a way for him to regain a sort of cultural purity in his literary works.
For Ngũgĩ, African writers can never truly express themselves adequately in a colonial language because colonial languages carry histories (or perhaps a sort of memory) of the culture they were formed in—a culture no African shares. Were he to write in English, the very values that have made him what he is would be distorted by the very fact of having to conform themselves to a system of communication whose cultural heritage (or stressed values, in this case) was inexorably foreign.
Ngũgĩ's viewpoint was developed at least partially in response to another famous African writer's thoughts on the role of language in processes of identification. Chinua Achebe explained his view of his own choice of English as the linguistic medium in which he would convey his literary thoughts. To summarize: whatever the historical forces that caused them to be thus, many nations in Africa contain several, if not dozens of major language groups within their national borders. Although the colonizing European powers caused much damage to Africa, their presence and accompanying languages became, for good or for ill, a common tongue by which nationalism could be expressed—especially among those nationals who otherwise could not have understood each other. In Achebe's own words, "those African writers who have chosen to write in English or French are not unpatriotic smart alecks with an eye on the main chance—outside their own countries. They are by-products of the same process that made the new nation-states of Africa" (96). This makes African writers who express themselves in English or other colonial languages spokespeople par excellence for the national struggles they portray in their literature.
Achebe goes even further to state that English, for him, was not an impediment to full expression even though it was not his first language—this language called English was not only adequate to the representation of his (personal experience of) culture, but was actually even desirable as a medium for being able to reach a greater audience than his native language would have been able to—even within his own nation. In fact, he argues, the English he chose to write in was not simply an imitation of the style of writers from the British Isles: it was ineffably different. Achebe's very goal in writing was not only to convey a message (and thus, by extension, convey a culture as well), but it was also to alter the English language itself: bending it to fit his African "peculiar experience" (101).
In a way, Ngũgĩ's reply to this kind of logic is to re-center the debate—to re-focus on what he feels is the only real solution to the oppression of neo-colonialism: a Marxist-style proletarian revolution. In order to make the debate fit his vision of a new world order in which Africans are no longer exploited for their very sweat and blood, soil and air, he introduces the notion of culture and its role in the process of self-identification (in fact, in the process of self-determination). If colonial bourgeois powers are able to maintain an exploitative presence in Africa despite the withdrawal of the military machinery previously necessary to maintain the oppression, then the only way for them to accomplish that is to maintain a sort of cultural presence preventing the majority from determining its own identity and agenda.
Achebe, Chinua. "The African Writer and the English Language," Morning Yet on Creation Day. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1975.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Decolonizing the Mind. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1986.
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