Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Note on Theoretical Marginalization and Language

Even more responses/debates on Facebook:

• Dave Okorafor

  Beautiful!

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• Mitterand Okorie

  Hah. Prof. Isn't this some sort of walking back on the arguments you put forth in your 2017 book chapter: Diaspora Intellectuals in Euro-American Academy? Seems African intellectuals have to consistently grapple with this anxiety of how to write and speak to a glocal audience, oscillating permanently between two or multiple intellectual sensibilities.

  

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  • Moses Ochonu

    Mitterand

    , great poser. I don't think it is, but maybe I am evolving, as they say. That chapter was stuck in the complaining, lamenting, and diagnosing phase as it were. I'm trying to get us to think our way out of the morass in response to the question posed to me during the session. If my recollection is correct, I similarly gesture in the chapter towards the crafty strategy of the subaltern group who used, apologies to Pius, "the language of discourse" to gatecrash the Western theoretical citadel.

    

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• Emakoji Ayikoye

  Masterfully argued. What role has modern mobile technology which allows texting play in this decline?

  

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• Paul Obi

  Prof. 

  Moses Ochonu

   I agree with you to a large extent. After some experiences with academic writing and research in the West, it became clear to me that, we are still lagging behind in bounds. My area of interest is Journalism, Media & Communication - Political Communication. I found out that our academic research and publications were too theoretical, lacking field research, data and empirical evidence. More so, while the Nigerian curriculum in Media & Communication Studies is still dwelling on Lasswel's Theory of Who say what, when, where and how; in the West, Journalism, Media and Comm Studies are focusing on Interpretative Journalism, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Post-Truth. Thus, I'm learning the ropes from the Western context... 

  

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• Omar Muktah

  We can only do that through our indigenous languages.

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  • Omar Muktah

    Xman Ola

     Okay. Keep mastering.

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• Marius Kothor

  Thanks for this post, Professor 

  Ochonu

  . The Zoom conversation sounds very generative. I've read this a few times now and I am trying to understand why I find all of this to be true and yet so unsettling. Maybe the part that I find dispiriting is how we are always trying to convince the Western world that what we have to say is worth reading, worth knowing. I guess it's one manifestation of our larger predicament, our position as 'subalterns.' Of course, we should always be conscious of that. But in a global knowledge economy where Blackness, especially African Blackness, is seen as the negation of knowledge itself, I wonder if the quality of our writing can save us from the fact that we are not meant to be seen as people who know anything that is worth serious consideration. We should absolutely strive to be better writers but what if we orient our intentions for our writing elsewhere; towards ourselves, towards other African communities instead of the West? What if people in Nigeria aspire to become better writers so that they can be better understood by Ghanaians, or what if Togolese people strive to write more eloquent French so that they can be better understood by the Senegalese? Or what if we just strive to be better writers for the simple pleasure of writing well in of itself?

  

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  • Moses Ochonu

    Thanks Marius. As I indicated, there are several strategies for overcoming/combatting the challenge, some of which I shared with the group. I just felt that I didn't do justice to the language aspect. It is unfortunate but true that the levers of global academic thought are located in the West and insurgents must try to gain entry into the paradigmatic knowledge precincts. As I stated, the "poor writing" excuse is just that: an excuse. However, to the extent that it is a reality, it must be addressed. In smart warfare, you want to take away your opponent's excuse/alibi, especially if they're in a dominant position and you have no viable alternative to going through them. Yes, it is possible for Africans to imagine a different, local, and contiguous audience but unfortunately that's not what they often do or want. It is what it is (bigger discussion for another day). In fact my Nigerian audience posed the question to me in the context of their often failing attempts to break into Western intellectual/theoretical debates and were asking me specifically for strategies for overcoming the marginalization, devaluation, and refusal to take Africa-produced theories/perspectives seriously. Regardless of what I think of the larger problem, we live in a world in which for many people, especially many of our people, breaking through to the West is the ultimate goal. I no longer judge it as I understand the pragmatics of it. Instead I try to help them do it, especially since I believe that if done properly, as the subaltern group did, it can disrupt the Western academy and its assumptions and "globalize" African modes of thought.

    

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  • Marius Kothor

    Thanks, Professor 

    Moses Ochonu

    . As always, you offer us so much to think about/think with.

    

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  • Oyeronke Oyewumi

    Prof Ochonu, Marius took the words right out of my mouth: I do not know why we must be appealing (begging) our oppressors for acknowledgement & recognition. Like Marius, I found your response absolutely dispiriting!As "successful" in the US academy as you and I are supposed to be, what does this "success" amount to in transforming the world for Black people, Africans, Nigerians, and our children? (Have you heard that increasingly in the US, quite a number of the so called high-achieving children of African immigrants are coming down with devastating mental illnesses)!What has our erudition & mastery of the Queen's English contributed in easing Africa's painful predicament? Whatever we have been doing ( which you promoted) and we are still doing, is a failed strategy!

    I am more interesed in learning how & what the Chinese are doing to actualize themselves & their own sovereignty! The last time I checked, they did not do this at some "theory table!"

    

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  • Moses Ochonu

    Egbon, permit me to disagree a little even if our premise is the same. Our colleagues in Nigeria don't buy our position at all and are eager for validation in the West. It is unfortunately what pays their bill and builds their career. I have changed my tack now to acknowledge that uncomfortable reality. I don't want to be the arrogant America-based scholar who knows more than them and wants to show them a different, better way. In any case, I'm implicated in it since I'm in the Euro-American academy and would be a hypocrite were I to try to condemn or critique their quest for a seat at the epistemological table of the Global North. That's one. Secondly, they cannot be lamenting how no one in the Euro-American academy takes their ideas and theories seriously but then refuse to take the craft of writing (in English) seriously. Writing is the medium of expression that will get their foot in the door for them to be heard. Thirdly, if as you and I know very well, the most common excuse they use to exclude African and Africa-derived theories and perspectives from the citadel of consequential scholarly conversations is that the writing is poor (I have many stories to tell in this regard but privacy and confidentiality prevent me from telling them), then it seems wise to take that excuse off the table, especially if the desire is to break through and be taken seriously.

    

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  • Oyeronke Oyewumi

    I hear you, and I share the dilemma. Nevertheless, I am not sure that the solution is to encourage their belief in a non-existent Santa Claus

    

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  • Adeleke Adeeko

    My posiition is much closer to that of Moses on this matter. Many, many, well regarded, Africa trained, Africa based, and whose work is Africa derived, do exist. Bluntness is my preference on this issue: we all have to find our ways into, and within, the dominant because the dominant is us all. Scholars should not seek to appear in outlets they consider inimical to their own interests, narrow or wide. We all know that "poor writing," a good part of which is the control of grounds of discovery and exposition, whether from Kontagora or Ijebu-Ode or Boulder, Colorado, will not get a scholar very far. 

    

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  • Oyeronke Oyewumi

    No one disputes the need for excellence in the command of language or whatever else one chooses to do. The problem is to think that language incompetence is what is holding Africans back. This is false. There would be no systemic racism in the USA towards Black Americans if language were the issue. A counterpart of this unfounded argument is how Africans change their names in order to be "accepted" by white supremacist gatekeepers & all. The last time I checked Black people murdered by Police in US: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner (say their names) had English/European names not African! If the statement "the dominant is us all" were believable or the point, we would not need Black Lives Matter, #EndSARS, resistance movements or the need for change!

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• Wa Wanjiku

  Well in!!

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• Alex Amaechi Ugwuja

  This part of your recommendations to the challenge framed in that question seems to be quite disquieting, Prof; yet the truth of it gnaws at the intestines. It would be just fine to sketch here some other time, the other recommendations which you covered better in the Zoom presentation. As our people say, things do not stand all alone by themselves.

  My one kobo contribution.

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• Charles Ugo Agwam

  I have argued elsewhere that proficiency in English in our world today means more than using a language of communication, it is the gate-pass to everything intellectual. Thanks dear Prof. for sharing your thoughts.

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On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 9:17 AM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:

There is a reason why in China and to a lesser extent Japan, English is the most valued social asset and English language instruction has spawned a lucrative industry. Parents spend thousands of dollars to enable their children learn the language. They know that fluency and facility in the language will confer access, cachet, and opportunities on their children beyond the borders of China or Japan. Chinese researchers in all disciplines are desperate for their papers to appear in English language journals and publications. It is what it is. They say scholars do not analyze the world as they wish it to be but as it is. The pragmatics of language choice contrast with wished-for linguistic ideals.

At any rate, my overarching argument is that once you make a choice to ignore the prerequisite of linguistic mastery (whether the prerequisite is underwritten by racism or founded on actual deficits or both) you cannot then legitimately complain that Western scholars, for whom English (or French) is their medium of thought and theorizing, are not taking you seriously. You have given them a ready alibi/excuse to ignore your theories. You cannot have it both ways. If you want to stand a chance of combatting and overcoming this marginalization, you must come into the fray through the medium of the global Lingua Franca(s). If you want to theorize and think in Swahili  or Yoruba and do not see the need to translate such thought into English or French, why would you complain that the white man scholar refuses to accord your theories the attention you think they deserve?

Meanwhile, here, below, is a parallel debate on the topic/update raging on Facebook.

• Lawan Umar

  It is very true, I still find it very difficult to published in certain journals. At times you have to look for English editor.

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• Adeleke Adeeko

  Language is not something added to thought. Language is not a mere vehicle--as if a vehicle could ever be mere--of thought. Language is thought.

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  • Moses Ochonu

    

    Agreed Egbon. But is language not also a strategic medium that could be strategically deployed, independent of thought content, to challenge an epistemological behemoth or to break into certain paradigmatic circles? In other words, don't we elect to speak or write (or even think) as the occasion demands depending on what we hope to accomplish, who we want to reach, etc? Isn't language, to certain extent, a choice?

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  • Adeleke Adeeko

    Moses Ochonu

     Of course, the writer or speaker's rhetorical selections ought to match the occasion--which includes the effect sought. Even so, the theories of language use that I favor argue that there is no outside to the text. The writer's wish can get to the audience only as, and in, the uttered or written text. You may call it the àfọ̀ṣẹ (uttered-to-pass) view of language. (And, contrary to what some Yorùbá speaking readers might want to think, no magic or mystery is implied.)

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  • Abdul Mahmud

    Moses

     & Adeeko, Profs, my sense is that you have both addressed the same subject of linguistic determinism from the same standpoint. The essential of Moses' update is how thought - whether as "language is thought" or as "language of thought" - can be expressed, deployed, written or spoken to give clarity to thought. I appreciate the specific concern of Moses and how his specific concern interrogates writings in my profession as well - legal writings, particularly briefs of argument and courts' judgments. There's an emergent legal-linguistic poverty, compared to the era gone-by, that makes one puke. I think your calls are about fine writings and fine thoughts! Regards. 

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  • Peter Sylvanus

    Adeleke

    , interesting Prof. So, what in your opinion would be the solution to this dilemma?

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  • Aghogho Akpome

    Peter Sylvanus

     My understanding of 

    Adeleke Adeeko

    's intervention is that we can not truly express our thoughts in the language of another. Our scholarly and theoretical perspectives will remain devalued and in the margins if we continue to exert oursel… 

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  • Peter Sylvanus

    Aghogho

    , understood. My question is about the action(s) to take. So, what should we do to play as "equals"? Bear in mind that Prof. Biodun Jeyifo has argued that "English is an African language" (see Jeyifo [2018]). If so, shouldn't we "exert ourselves… 

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    TANDFONLINE.COM

    English is an African language – Ka Dupe! [for and against Ngũgĩ]

    English is an African language – Ka Dupe! [for and against Ngũgĩ]

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  • Aghogho Akpome

    Peter Sylvanus

     Yeah, this is a very good question. And although I have not read this Jeyifo article (which I will read promptly), I can remember Achebe's argument that we can domesticate English. Along those lines therefore, we can use our 'African' English to make our voices heard. I am very wary of exerting ourselves in the attempt to master 'Western English' (for want of a better way to put it). I'd rather we focus on speaking to ourselves much more than seeking the attention of the West by trying to master their language - which I think we will never be able to achieve. (And by saying we will never be able to achieve that mastery, I actually mean that the West will never concede the mastery to us).

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  • Adeleke Adeeko

    Peter Sylvanus

     My solution, if it could be so called, is simple: get a good grip of the languages (technical, theoretical, philosophical, grammatical) of the field or journal in whose knowledge fabrication exchanges you are trying to participate. It does not matter whether you are African, German, or Nepalese. 

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  • Adeleke Adeeko

    Peter Sylvanus

     I agree with Biodun Jeyifo on this: English, like French, is an African language. Christianity and Islam are also African religions. Very, very few of us can write intelligibly in those languages we call "ours." 

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  • Adeleke Adeeko

    Aghogho Akpome

     Yes, if by "another" you mean a language that one has to LEARN to use. In order for me to write literary criticism in Yorùbá, my first language, and participate in the life of the scholarly community of Yorùbá language literary criticism, I must assume the responsibility of learning its idioms. By the way, I am not quite competent in writing literary criticism in Yorùbá language. I am still learning to do it. My aim here is to urge us to complicate the "language" question. 

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• Peter J Okafor

  Thanks for sharing this insight as one in the balancing position with two legs in-between in the two worlds. The over-excitement and misuse of the social media, slangs, lazy unexplainable abbreviations, colloquial expressions, influence of mother tongue, local mannerisms and apparent fallen educational standards, have all added to complicate this. Not many people can begin and finish write ups more than two to four paragraphs, more when the language is not their usual, and not many want to write down their thoughts in clear terms for fear of being wrong or criticized. Language is expressive of thought, the vehicle of effective communication and a mastery of it is the password to the heart of key audience. Once again thanks for sharing - it reminds me of your similar interventions in the past on theoretical framework and literature review

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• Aghogho Akpome

  I see your point but it has huge contradiction. The very process of acquiring this mastery in Western linguistic forms is one of the major ways of perpetrating the theoretical hegemony we seek to upend. To follow that process is to be immersed so deeply and to continue to validate/legitimize Western thought to the point that it becomes almost impossible to return to one's original modes of expression. And that is precisely how hegemony and domination works. Without rejecting your suggestion, my preferred method is that we stop seeking validation of our ways of thinking from the West. We need to stop being so desperate to get their attention. If we pay attention to ourselves, we will go a long long way. If we de-emphasize the teaching of Kant and Russel and blah blah and teach Mundimbe and Achebe and Mbembe and actually USE these ideas in our own works, we will surely get the others to pay attention. If we keep writing for THEM, I doubt we will ever be free. 

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  • Peter Sylvanus

    Aghogho

    , nice suggestion. Are you implying that we erect, for instance, our own journal indexing bodies to strengthen our local journals and contents? If so, and considering that there are types of English, whose would be the benchmark? 

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  • Aghogho Akpome

    Peter Sylvanus

     Nobody would argue against strengthening our scholarly publishing capabilities. We can definitely develop international quality assurance and benchmarking protocols without being slavishly dependent on neo-colonial 'masters'. There are significant numbers of academics and institutions outside Africa that do not subscribe to neo-colonial relations of dependence. 

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• Ama Uche Chukwu

  You really have no sympathy for the nonsense

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• Ama Uche Chukwu

  So how do some of us who are already aware of our linguistic shortcomings make up for it and be able to join the drive to advance our own theories

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On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 3:33 AM Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

Apologies for so much posting on this subject but I would like to look more carefully at this point I made-

''Even the work done by Abiodun and Lawal at the foundation of their careers at the then University of Ife in Nigeria, work arising from research funded by that university and delivered at seminars in that university, were often published in Western journals, in the days well before the advent of open access.''

Akinsola Akiwowo's work in developing a theory of sociation, the Asuwada theory,  from Yoruba origin Ifa literature, was cultivated, first delivered and possibly its first essays published in the context of the then University of Ife where he was at the time.

But his essays that are best known everywhere variants of sociological theory are discussed was published in sociology journals in the West where they generated a high level of attention, with feedback from scholars within and beyond Africa.

Such attention is very significant for scholarship, raising the question of how the West has successfully globalized its own locality, an example others could learn from, navigating the local/global matrix created by the West while developing their own versions of the same dynamic.

toyin 

On Sat, 31 Oct 2020 at 07:10, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

Questions Arising

''But more significantly, the greatest disaster may be the untapped knowledge and theories in all indigenous languages. Yoruba, for instance, is so rich not only on ontologies but also on epistemologies. The tragedy is that they are untapped.

... I began to plead to convert the extensive ideas in Igboness into large-scale theories. Afigbo, the preeminent historian—in my opinion the country's best historian of his era—was so well grounded that he was able to use the rich resources of the Igbo to complicate the archives.''

Toyin Falola

Even when this work is done, and by Africans, a good degree of it is not published in contexts readily accessible to Africans.

The most powerful works in Yoruba aesthetics known to me, the work of Rowland Abiodun, Babatunde Lawal, Wole Soyinka and Henry John Drewal and Margaret Thompson Drewal, are published solely by Western presses, often academic presses, often expensive even in the West.

Even the work done by Abiodun and Lawal at the foundation of their careers at the then University of Ife in Nigeria, work arising from research funded by that university and delivered at seminars in that university, were often published in Western journals, in the days well before the advent of open access.

Toyin Falola, whom I quote above, can be examined in terms of the same paradox, although his publication strategies need to be better understood in their scope and complexity.

Two of his contributions to theory known to me are ''Ritual Archives'' and In Praise of Greatness.

But what are the chances of Africans, generally, reading these texts?

You will need to bring out some good money to purchase his book on African philosophy co-edited with Adeshina Afolayan or The Toyin Falola Reader and the monumentally sized In Praise of Greatness. 

Implications-Falola, for one, is phenomenal in generating publishing opportunities about Africa and for Africans, but, having established and continuing to sustain that level of scholarly production, what are we going to do about broad based accessibility of these texts?

On Sat, 31 Oct 2020 at 03:39, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Moses:

Your position needs considerable revision along the lines offered by Ken and Biko.

But more significantly, the greatest disaster may be the untapped knowledge and theories in all indigenous languages. Yoruba, for instance, is so rich not only on ontologies but also on epistemologies. The tragedy is that they are untapped.

I was taken aback the first time I read Foucault—I kept wondering what he was talking about that I did not already know.

Four of us interviewed Kelani last Sunday. The first question that Ken asked him was about power. The ontology of his answer, based on Yoruba, was not far different from Gramsci's Prison Notebook.

Thus, the Nsukka people have Igbo, which Westerners don't have. They need to milk it. When I collaborated to create the Ogbu Kalu Center, in honor of one of my best friends in the world who died young, I began to plead to convert the extensive ideas in Igboness into large-scale theories. Afigbo, the preeminent historian—in my opinion the country's best historian of his era—was so well grounded that he was able to use the rich resources of the Igbo to complicate the archives.

TF

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, October 30, 2020 at 9:26 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Note on Theoretical Marginalization and Language

Oga,

 

Yes, the default stock response of some of our people to linguistic critique and to efforts to improve language proficiency in English is "grammar no be our language,"  "colonial mentality," and "grammar is no be intelligence" etc. They wear their poor writing skills as a badge of Afrocentric honor. There are many variations of this common, hackneyed Nigerian justification of bad writing and poor linguistic skills. Of course, it's all a defensive mechanism to avoid having to do the hard work of improving their writing.

 

Well, Ngugi is exhibit A of the duplicity and impracticality of the "write and theorize in your mother tongue" canard. It doesn't work. He returned to English after his initial experiment writing in Gikuyu. 

 

The insistence on "mother tongue" intellection and the hostility to English (or French) mastery undermines our effort to break through and to have our theories and modes of thought understood, valued, and engaged in the Euro-American academy. 

 

We cannot be complaining about being shut out and not being taken seriously and then say English (or French) mastery is not an important objective or is a colonial hangover or a surrender to linguistic imperialism. Why give the hostile Western interlocutor an excuse to ignore your perspectives by writing badly?

 

One Facebook respondent says we can theorize in our mother tongue. Of course we can, but we cannot then turn around and complain that Western scholars are not according our theories and ideas the seriousness they deserve or that they're not engaging these ideas.  We can't have it both ways.

 

On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 5:35 PM Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Moses:

Do they really say that "so proficiency, fluency, and mastery are not important?"

Or

That we should use our mother tongues at the primary level, at the very list, and promote African languages? Ngugi recently won the prize in Swahili, and his recent novel is written in English.

 

 

Which is why I have no sympathy for the pseudo-Afrocentric nonsense that English (or other European languages) is not our mother tongue so proficiency, fluency, and mastery are not important.

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, October 30, 2020 at 5:28 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Note on Theoretical Marginalization and Language

 

 

Earlier today, I had a Zoom session with the Music Study Group of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Nigeria. Thanks to

Peter Sylvanus

, the HOD of Music at UNN, for organizing it.

One of the questions put to me during the session is how the marginalized theoretical and scholarly perspectives of Nigeria/Africa can receive serious reception and respect in a global (read Western-dominated) academic culture that devalues Global South thinkers and thinking by default and values Euro-American ones also by default.

There are several strategies, some of which I shared with the group, but one aspect of the answer that I didn't get to cover adequately is that of language. In my experience the cheapest, easiest excuse that the Western academy uses to exclude and disenfranchise African scholars and their perspectives is to say that their writing is poor—that they can't write.

There are of course all kinds of racist and othering underpinnings to this tactic, but sometimes the excuse is based on an actually existing writing deficit. And I would argue, following our late friend, Pius Adesanmi, that to be taken seriously and be reckoned with in the Western academy, we have to write back to Western theorists as insurgents bypassing and crashing the gates and gatekeepers but we have to do so in a language that is intelligible to the gatekeepers, in their own academic lexicon. That way, you take that go-to alibi off the table and compel them to examine and engage with your work on its merit.

You can have, as Africa-based scholars often do, radical, iconoclastic, novel, and revisionist perspectives, theories, and approaches, but if you do not deprive your Western interlocutors of the poor writing excuse, they'll always use it to exclude you.

That is why I emphasize linguistic mastery and writing excellence, and lament the decline of writing in Nigerian universities. If the writing is bad no one is going to grasp or have the patience to comprehend the radically new theory and argument you're advancing. And this contention applies to all disciplines, including the hard sciences.

Which is why I have no sympathy for the pseudo-Afrocentric nonsense that English (or other European languages) is not our mother tongue so proficiency, fluency, and mastery are not important. Whether we like it or not, English is the scholarly Lingua Franca of the world we live in and your access to global scholarly conversations and intellectual capital is directly proportional to your written and oral fluency in it. Ask the South Asian scholars of the subaltern collective how they broke through and forced their theories on the Western academy after going through a similar complaining phase as us.

More importantly, if we're asking for a hearing at the theoretical table, it is not compromise or self-betrayal to adopt the prevailing paradigmatic linguistic medium. After all, we're the ones seeking to alter the global epistemological dynamic, force a reckoning with African and Africa-derived theories, and teach Western scholars our ways of knowing and seeing the world.

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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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