Descolonizar la mente es una referencia ineludible en el debate lingüístico de los estudios poscoloniales.
«Un clásico controvertido». – Gayatri Spivak
Reúne cuatro conferencias que el autor realizó entre 1981 y 1985, cuyo hilo conductor no es solo una reflexión sobre el papel de la lengua en la construcción de la identidad nacional, cultural, social e histórica, y su función en la descolonización, sino también sobre los acontecimientos vitales que han contribuido a elaborar el pensamiento del autor.
En última instancia, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o —escritor, pensador, humanista y exiliado— concibe este libro como una declaración de intenciones: en la medida que la lengua materna es un aspecto crucial de la propia identidad, cree necesario despedirse del inglés y utilizar el gikuyu como su principal lengua de creación literaria.
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
A collection of essays about language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity, that advocates for linguistic decolonization.
‘The language of literature’, Ngũgĩ writes, ‘cannot be discussed meaningfully outside the context of those social forces which have made it both an issue demanding our attention, and a problem calling for a resolution.’
First published in 1986, Decolonising the Mind is one of Ngũgĩ’s best-known and most-cited non-fiction publications, helping to cement him as a pre-eminent voice theorizing the ‘language debate’ in postcolonial studies.
Ngũgĩ wrote his first novels and plays in English but was determined, even before his detention without trial in 1978, to move to writing in Gikuyu. He 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…’. Split into four essays – ‘The Language of African Literature’, ‘The Language of African Theatre’, ‘The Language of African Fiction’, and ‘The Quest for Relevance’ – the book offers an anti-imperialist perspective on the destiny of Africa and the role of languages in combatting and perpetrating imperialism and neo-colonialism in African nations.
