TUPI OR NOT TUPI
Mental colonization and its multiple facets
Thomas Butler, nov. 2017
In colonized Kenya, English became the correct language to speak, while the native language was dismissed, discouraged and even punished in schools. The same thing happened to native literature – British literature was highly valued, while the colonized was devalued. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a Kenyan author who grew up in British ruled Kenya reckons with the implications of this language suppression in his essay “Decolonizing the Mind”: “What were the consequences of, on the one hand, this systematic suppression of our languages and the literature they carried, and on the other hand the elevation of English and the literature it carried?” (343). With this question he discusses how English was made to be the “magical formula to colonial elitism” (343) But, to fully understand the gravity and weight of his question, one must first understand how he views language as communication. In particular, how language, through literature and orature, transmits “the whole body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world” (346) and the implications of this claim. To do so, the Kenyan author insightfully dissects language.
According to Thiong’o, language as communication has three “aspects or elements (343)”: the language of real life – a concept he borrows from Karl Marx - language as speech, and language as written signs. The language of real life is the unspoken language we exert with our social and labor divisions; it is the involuntary dialect that emanates from humans existing and going about their daily lives, relating to one another and cooperating (343 - 344). Speech is vocal representation of signs (objects, actions, events) that allow us to communicate and influence the “language of real life” (344). That is, we speak and through doing so we can influence our social organization, our relationships and almost all aspects of our existence. Written signs are an imitation of the spoken ones: They are a “representation of sounds with visual symbols.” (344) It is a replication of sounds, engraved in a medium, that allows a third party to replicate them without literally having to have heard them. Habitually, these tree aspects convolute and uniquely represent those who speak.
Wa Thiong’o asserts that “in most societies the written and spoken languages are the same in that they represent each other […] there is broad harmony […] between the three aspects of language as communication” (344) Meaning, spoken and written languages reflect the daily activities of the community, or what the authors calls “language of real life (343)”. As such, over time this reflection accumulates the idiosyncrasies, the “almost self-evident truths” (344), of a community that makes it “a way of life distinguishable from other ways of life” (345). The abstractions, the signs, the language of real life, that collectively emanate language are a synthesis of our environments. We pour our culture into our symbols and our symbols pour our culture back on us.
Gradually accumulating differences, noticeably different attributions to the same signs arise – the same language can have different iterations and represent different cultures; for example, while “fag” in American English is a denigrating slur towards homosexuals, in British English it is a synonym for cigarette. The same signs can have very different meanings. This leads to the creation of “distinguishable ways of life” (345), such as different cultures and, on a smaller scale, generational gaps. As such, language is a representation of its people, and people are a representation of their language.
For emerging members of a community (kids) language is an especially formative tool. It hints at what to identify with, what to value, which values and morals to have and how to enact all these notions. This “tool” function of language Ngugi dubs as “language as culture” (345): “an image-forming agent in the mind of a child” (345), something that is “mediating between me and myself” (345). Language instructs youngsters on how to view and interact with the world and themselves, what social roles they have inherited, which ones they can embrace, how to feel and how to reminisce. Language, after all, displays itself as a phenomenon quite central to social and cultural beings.
Language is the unspoken social and labor divider, it is speech, it is writing, it is a comprehensive guidebook and a reflection of a people’s minutiae. And by so proficiently developing this conceptual framework, Thiong’o illuminates us. Furthermore, he answers his own question about the consequences of subjugating a language. “To control a people’s culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others” (346), it is to control who one thinks he/she is, it is to hijack the first motor of self-definition of a person that will impel all other aspects of character and psychological development; it is to seize “how people perceived themselves and their relation to the world” (346). And, since a foreign language transmits the language of real life of a foreign country, a colonialized country’s people, such as the author’s, would be forced to self-define according to extraneous notions. Their understanding of themselves and of the world that surrounds them would be derived from a language reflecting all that is foreign to those native of the land, to their values and to their lives prior to colonization.
According to Thiong’o, it creates a “disassociation, divorce, or alienation from the immediate environment” (347) given that what is relayed to the children through their forced language are the values and morals, in this specific case, Europe and England. As such, Ngugi concludes that “the domination of a people’s language by the languages of the colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized” (346) With this phrase he synthesizes good part of what had been analyzed previously. The language of a people is the vehicle of their culture, and therefore, to the core of their social and moral values, their aspirations and character - to the core of the people themselves. Thus, to dominate and devalue a language is to dominate and devalue a people in their core. It is to make these same people diminish themselves and value their oppressors. These people are locked in a mental cage with bars often reinforced by brutal regimes and state apparatuses, a cage that can very hard to escape, but not impossible. Some are able to transpose this invisible lockdown and critically revisit their old life and ways of thinking. Stepping out of his cage, Ngugi stripped his old experiences and reassembled them into a conceptual framework. Jamaica Kincaid also broke free from her bars. But differently from Ngugi wa Thiong’o, her recollection is much more subjective.
Kincaid writes about her experience of first visiting England, metropolis to her homeland, and therefore the place whose “language of real life” (Wa Thiong’o, 343) was upon her forced. She had grown up with all things English, from appliances to literature, being taught that these were invariably superior to her nation’s own productions. She had never actually been to England, but, with so many British things in her life, she created a vivid conception of that country in her head; one that was bound to be shattered. “The space between the idea of something and its reality is always wide and deep and dark” (424) states Kincaid. That is, the discrepancy that exists between the imagined version of something – like a person, a movie, a city - and the actual physical manifestation of such an idea is gargantuan. One can think of the relationship between an idea and reality to shadow puppetry. The real manifestation of a phenomenon would be the puppet: a form hidden behind a canvas. The idea, therefore, would be the shadow: a projection of the true body - the sole thing one is able to observe through the canvas. From a spectator’s point of view, the shadows dance and contort in marvelous, beautiful patterns. However, these shadows are rarely faithful representations of their sources. If one decides to step behind the canvas, what appears to be a square may have been two triangles superimposed. What an idea is may be, and often is, a distortion of the real forms of phenomena – a shadow will never be a solid, no matter how hard we try: an idea will never truly be a real physical manifestation, just a representation of it. Ultimately, it is the puppeteers that decide what and how they want the audience to see. In Kincaid’s case, the shadow - the idea - she saw was that of Britain: a lifetime with everything having a “made in England” stamp (420) cast a protruding shadow for her. The puppeteers - the colonizers - through their regimes, managed to chain down the colonized as so they would never be able to peep behind the canvases. But Kincaid managed to break out of her mental imprisonment and decided to glimpse behind the curtains: She decided to visit “England”. However, behind the thick, colonial canvas, she found out, laid a rotten, mangled form onto which light was favorably shone. And it resulted in rage.
The disparity between what she thought England was – a semi-perfect quasi-magical source of wonders - and what it is – just another Island – was so immense that Kincaid felt utterly deceived: she “wished every sentence, everything I [she] knew, that began with England end with ‘and then it all died […]” (428). Such huge disappointment was created when she finally uncovered what laid in the “wide”, “deep” and “dark” space between the idea and reality of England that she simply wanted it all to die. She grew up hearing that in Britain the weather was almost magical, that the people were beautifully fair skinned and nice, and that the country had the most gorgeous landmarks. But once she actually stepped on British soil she found out that the weather was dreadful, the people were ugly and rude and what was supposed to be the most beautiful geographical land mark she’d ever seen, the White Cliffs of Dover, was just a disgustingly pale, white-ish, ugly big rock (425 - 426). So dastardly hideous the Cliffs were, she deemed the landmark the perfect place for all her old ideas regarding that island to jump off from and die (428). From death, arose new thought. Now conscious of the chains she had been forced upon, and wary of new ones that might come, Kincaid expands the meaning of colonial domination. Together with her Kenyan counterpart, a quite comprehensive frame forms.
Thiong’o gives the reader a conceptual framework to understand this rage; “the language of real life” (423), the different facets and uses of language and the resulting “dissociation” (347). Jamaica Kincaid demonstrates the frustration resulting from ripping through her indoctrinated upbringing. She gives the human dimension of realizing one’s own “dissociation” (Wa Thing’o, 347), the angst and frustration of living through and emerging out of the colonial “education” her Kenyan peer so eloquently describes. She exposes one of many ways in which someone who was deceived regarding the core of her own being feels after perceiving this trickery. But angst, as to she herself eludes, is only one of the ways this frustration manifests itself on humans. Since everyone under colonial power was indeed human, one can only imagine other ways, ways not as healthy as anger, frustration has emanated and scarred generations, countries and populations; from those who like Kincaid and Thiong’o escaped their “colonial mindset” to those still trapped in it alike. Both authors, though, fail to explore other forms of cultural dependence not due to direct colonial domination. But within Brazilian Modernism, we find works and authors who have such a topic as a central theme.
During the 20th century, even though Brazil had long since been a colony, Brazilian modernist artists were very concerned about Brazil’s conspicuous cultural dependence towards foreign countries. In 1928 Oswald de Andrade, one of the major exponents of Brazilian modernism, published his “Cannibalistic Manifest” as a culmination of his distaste regarding the dependence for Portuguese, other European and American culture that permeated his society.
Andrade, at the beginning of his manifest, states: “Tupi, or not tupi that is the question.” (3) Cleverly borrowing a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet – “to be or not to be” - while inserting the phonetically similar “Tupi” (ethnicity of one of Brazil’s largest indigenous tribes) he twists the original meaning of the phrase. While prince Hamlet contemplates suicide, Andrade asks about the fate of Brazilian culture: Should it commit suicide and just surrender to overwhelming foreign influence? Or should it choose to live, breathe, reflect and represent Brazil and its peculiarities? Andrade’s own opinions feel clearly implied as the latter statement however, the author, in his manifest, constrains himself to a more diagnostic role.
Oswald is especially concerned about how foreign influence inserts and perpetuates itself on national soil. He states: “What trampled the truth was the clothing, the impermeability between the interior world and the exterior world. […] American cinema will inform.” (3) Even simple things such as clothing, he teaches, create an impermeable barrier, an obstacle, between our inner worlds, our thoughts, and the exterior world, the reality that surrounds us; a “dissonance” (Wa Thiong’o, 347) is created when we overvalue things originated from places not our reality, even with regards to clothing. If one ever walked through the streets of Brazil during the equatorial summer and has seen someone wearing a fur coat (not an uncommon sight), one knows there is, still, a dissonance between the interior and exterior worlds alive amongst the population; clearly such people are dressing according to a standard not Brazilian - trying to reflect a language of life that is not his/hers own. Oswald goes deeper and explains one of the ways this disinformation arises: American cinema. In a country where most movies are foreign, this is in itself an alarming fact indicating cultural submissions, it’s no wonder that foreign customs permeate its culture. All those constantly screened movies reflect the American language of life; maybe in an American summer like the ones in Illinois or Seattle where the temperature is not nearly as hot as in Brazil it makes sense to wear a fur coat. When its 40 degrees Celsius outside the last thing one should want to wear is a fur coat. But, after so much blatant intrusion of the language of real life of another country in to a second thought all sorts of media, e.g. cinema, one might be led to think that it is appropriate conduct. But it’s a dissonance between cultural practices and places nevertheless. Movies, clothing and other products are products of a culture, and as such carry and emanate the idiosyncrasies of the creators. So, to consume them without reflection, is to assimilate, knowing or unknowingly, these peculiarities.
As such, with Andrade we understand that cultural domination, the domination of the “mental universe” of people, can present itself in several ways; interiorly, like in language corrosion of colonial regimes, and exteriorly like through excessive exposure to cinema, propaganda, products and other exports that lead to the devaluation process like the one of colonization. But, by putting the Brazilian, Kincaid and Thiong’o side by side, we learn much more.
The three authors together offer the reader a comprehensive spectrum of mental domination and colonial (or colonial-like) cultural disesteem. They, as a set, teach that mental domination is a much more comprehensive phenomenon than each one describes individually. Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s conceptual take teaches how a regime can force a people to self-devalue from “inside out”, assimilating, through the medium of language, a set of values and morals that impel the devaluation of further spheres of life. Kincaid exposes the intrinsic discrepancy that exists between the idea and the physical manifestation of such idea. And furthermore, she recollects the human, psychological and emotional – often frustrating and infuriating - aftermath of transposing the barrier between idea and reality. Oswald goes through the route opposite to Thiong’o, demonstrating how the devaluation process can happen from “outside in”: how the assimilation of diverse types of exports that carry a set of values and morals can rub off and spread through the population. Mental domination, as their writings collectively convene, has multiple facets, routes from where it might originate, that may or may not act together. Given such a comprehensive phenomenon, one is left wondering just how widespread it is or isn’t, and if it affects, especially unconsciously, aspects of our lives. As Andrade’s fellow countryman, I can say that, at least in Brazil, our cultural productions and even our social divisions, are very much unchanged in the almost 100 years since his Manifest was first published. A very conspicuous example of this is the American School of Sao Paulo, the country’s financial capital.
The American School of Sao Paulo is a peculiar educational institution. Priced at an average of 3 times higher than any other “elite” school, it is a space reserved only for the wealthiest Brazilians, attaching a sort of aristocratic prestige to anyone that attends. Also, since its instruction is fully in English, and as most of its student admissions are reserved for the children of American expats, its reputation only increases as a selective, worldly institution - an institution where a Brazilian attending would receive high commendation and perceived credibility. But in fact, it is all things but worldly. It is American, and despite the United States casting its shadow all over the world to make it seem like it is everywhere and everything, it is one, just one, country - one with a very specific language of real life, with its accompanying speech and writing - a language of real life that the students there are taught and infused with from the moment they first set foot in the school, and that, because of the pervasiveness of American movies, products and way of life in Brazilian society, might even be more valuable than the nation’s own. This valuing disparity is epitomized in the American School: a symbol of a quasi-colonized culture. It creates people that are only technically Brazilian.
Misfits in their own homelands, internationalized kids are almost mystical creatures. Your rich uncle’s cousin, that one girl whose family owns half of all the airlines in Brazil, the guy whose dad was on the news yesterday – are all reflections of someone else, usually someone with money. They seem to be always talked about, but never around, like a secret society sometimes spotted around the city, but always confined in secluded groups. A girl from the international school can look exactly like the “girl from Ipanema” herself - the archetypal Brazilian woman. But, upon any deeper interaction her outer cosmetic shell cracks, revealing a very peculiar and contradictory interior.
Not truly American, and much less Brazilian, they become a group that suffers doubly from the “dissociation” Ngugi mentions: enough reminiscent customs and values that reflect living their lives in Brazil, and at the same time a lifestyle imported from America, Americanized kids are like a gear with a brook tooth. They can pass, to greater or lesser extents, as functioning members of either mechanism, Brazil or the United States. But, once the machine turns long enough, the misshaped gear will become evident: it will hinge. No matter the place, someone created in the space between “idea and the reality” (424), in this case created with the idea of America, but in the reality of Brazil, will not properly fit into either. The gap Kincaid exposes will inevitably exist as an ambivalent mental cage. If Kincaid, having to transpose only one of these mental cages responded with rage, one can only imagine what might be in store for these eternal misfits. One way or the other it is clear: they are, as a group, only legally Brazilian. And for that they are celebrated.
The jubilee stems from different origins. The natural-like deference for wealthy people in a financially driven society, and rich people’s political-economic ties that make them a modern aristocracy, appears to be fruit of the most pulsating points of origin. But the fact that considerable portions of the economic, financial and political elites chose to enroll their offspring in American schools - which usually means they will continue to be Americanized furthermore in life through higher education and so forth - reveals that there is no need for a country to be formally colonized for it to suffer from the “mental domination” (346) Thiong’o exposes. It reveals that colonial-like domination can even be sustained by the country’s own people given the right exports as cultural fuel. It shows that a country like the United States, with as big a shadow as it casts, willing or unwillingly, perpetuates a system that holds its position as a superpower in place – it has a big portion of the world watching its shadow puppetry. More so, it reveals that we are surrounded by shadows, by ideas, cast from different molds that have different ideological purposes, and that we are the ones that need to learn to transpose between shadow and the source of light. We owe it to ourselves to have the opportunity to see, if like Kincaid, we are blinded by a rotten mold, or if something else lies behind the culture. We have to remain conscious that, first and foremost, we ourselves support the foreign chains that bind us, our fellow countrymen and women, to confinement in a discrete, silent and infectiously pervasive, state of submission. But, we can, and should, put aside these bindings of submission and allow ourselves to escape our mental cages. The world outside is mesmerizing.
Works cited
de Andrade, Oswald. “Cannibalistic Manifest”. Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul) website, november 18th, 2017. http://www.ufrgs.br/cdrom/oandrade/oandrade.pdf. Pgs. 3 – 6. Web.
Kincaid, Jamaica. “On seeing England for the first time”. The Broadview anthology of expository prose, third edition (2016). Pgs. 419 – 428. Print.
Wa Thiong’o, Ngugi. “decolonizing the mind”. The Broadview anthology of expository prose, third edition (2016). Pgs. 340 – 348. Print.
