Introduction

The idea for this journal issue began with an interest in publishing works written in “local languages” in Africa, because when we talk about African literature today, we mostly are concerned with African authors who write in European languages (English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish). Since African literature and its aesthetics are also translations of European languages, it is important to return to seminal works such as Ngugi Wa Thiong’o Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986) and Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism (1950). These texts analyze the struggle for language in Africans’ right to humanity. For Wa Thiong'o, the call for the rediscovery and the revalorization of African languages remains a process of decolonizing history. The new way to think about African history is to re-read it or to take it to new expanses. For Césaire, colonial discourse dehumanizes the African, hence the need to seize oneself as a historical subject, for it is through language that one transmits culture. The key question then becomes: what culture are we transmitting right now?

We have contributions in colonial languages including French and English because we fundamentally believe that these languages are African languages. The Chadian writer Nimrod calls for the need to make French an African language. In La Nouvelle Chose française, he writes: “it is time we consider French an African language.”¹ Since it is impossible to write in Dùala, her mother tongue, Frieda Ekotto decided to write her piece in her colonial language as a process of decolonization.

Perhaps it is time we expand translation theory to discuss African literature. An African writer’s imagination moves from creolized languages and cultures to a European language. In this sense, we cannot talk about African literature without translation.

It is hard, if not impossible, to engage with the question of language in African literature without a critical sense of the impact of European colonialism on the continent.

Many consider the “Scramble for Africa” that followed the now infamous Berlin Conference in 1884-85 to be the culmination of European colonialism in the continent. While in 1870, only around ten percent of the African territory was formally under the control of the Europeans, in less than half a century, by 1914, only ten percent of the territory remained in the hands of the Africans. However, such a view presumes a totalizing perspective toward the continent from the outside, which often alienates one from the concrete daily experiences of colonialism associated with the continent.

Indeed, due to the arbitrariness of colonial division of the continent, and the varied experiences and practices of the Europeans in the African continent across centuries, people from different geographical areas or historical moments have varied experiences of “colonialism.” In the realm of linguistic practice, although it is known that the colonial policy of indirect rule, adopted by the British and the Germans, and the corresponding linguistic practice of adaptation varied drastically from the policies of the French and the Portuguese, who preferred a more direct approach that imposes the languages of the colonizers as the only recognized official language in public domains and formal practices. It should be highlighted that the degree of implementation of their policies also varied significantly from region to region and in different historical periods, both as a result of domestic resistance of culturally and socially distinct local communities and as a result of the shift of immediate interests of the colonial metropolises.

Take the example of Kiswahili. Despite being recognized as a compelling example of an African language, one cannot take for granted the indigeneity of the language to its users in the continent without also considering the arbitrary employment of the language by the German and British colonizers for regional administrative purposes. Resistance to the use of the language was registered whenever the regulated use of the Swahili language implicated inequality and subordination to an imposed social hierarchy, which constituted a dynamic factor the colonial government had to consider in the evaluation of its language policy. When the colonial government no longer invested heavily in the Swahili language and decided to encourage direct use of a European language, Swahili was also voluntarily taken up by many speakers who, despite their varied relationships with the language, made use of it due to its status as a regional lingua franca for effective communication in the midst of anti-imperial struggles.

The history of the standardization and the promotion of Swahili under colonial governments also engenders a coerced separation between Arabic and the African continent, or at least between a limited profile of the “Arabic language” and part of the African continent, as it was created in the minds of the colonizers. If, in the case of the Swahili-speaking regions, “de-arabization” and the forced adoption of the Latin script can be understood as a noble gesture of the restoration of an authentic “Bantu” culture free from the contamination of the external forces of the Arabs, such an interpretation would hardly sound reasonable if one takes into account the various Arabic-speaking communities in the continent, and the fact that they were all negatively affected by European imperialism and still suffer from the consequences of it. The various layers of experiences of “colonialism,” which also go together with different kinds of policies, on the other hand, call for an expanded understanding of colonialism capable of accommodating the miscellaneous oppressive experiences that forcefully tied a whole continent together.

It is crucial to understand the impact of colonialism for a critical appreciation of works written in African languages, not because European civilization succeeded in reshaping the African continent according to its own interests, but because in every possible moment, the Africans were always readily disposed to turn the imposed cultural elements into weapons of resistance, to the extent that any non-historical affirmation of the cultural identity of a language as being “African” runs the risk of falling into a problematic trap of authenticity that bears imperial connotations alienated from reality experienced in Africa. To this effect, Chidi Amuta, in The Theory of African Literature, calls for a more comprehensive understanding of the question of language in African literature to effectively carry the revolutionary spirit and ideological pursuits of everyone from the continent who advocated the use of local languages as an anti-colonial gesture:

Literary creativity and consumption in each African country is simultaneously taking place in both the European and African languages. While the bulk of oral literary creativity is being carried out in African languages in the rural areas, much of written literature is done in European languages. African literature written in English, French, and Portuguese exists alongside a growing tradition of written literature in Yoruba, Igbo, Gikuyu and Xosa. Given this spectacle, to insist that African literature be created exclusively in either of these sets of languages is to ignore the social and historical predication of the language situation itself. Even if all of African literature were suddenly to be created in African language without due attention to the ideological content of the literature and its relationship with its audience, the revolutionary dreams of the advocates of linguistic indigenization would be thwarted.

If literature qua literature is to play its sectoral role as a cultural force in the transformation of society, then the language question needs to be redefined in more pragmatic terms. The problem, to my mind, is not that of language in the sense of verbal signification–that is, European vs. African–but rather that of strategies for cultural communication in a neo-colonial situation. In effect, language needs to be reconceptualized to mean the totality of the means available for communicating a cultural form to the greatest majority in a manner that will achieve a clearly defined cognitive–ideological effect in the consciousness of the audience so defined. [...]

Language qua language is therefore not the issue in African literature. The problem of communication in our literature is directly related to the forces that prevent human communication at the economic and social levels. As part of the struggle to correct this anomaly, all the avenues of cultural communication should be explored to get the benefit of progressive revolutionary literature across to the greatest possible majority of our peoples. In this respect, European languages, African languages, oral performance, written expression, radio broadcasts, etc. are implicated.²

In other words, the “language question” in African literature inevitably entails the procedure of bridging the gap between socio-economic development in the post-colonial era, which still demands heavy use of European languages for practical purposes, and dignified cultural recognition free from the oppressive burdens of colonialism. At the same time, productive discussions about the language of African literature should also serve as the hub of communications for anti-imperial endeavors in every sense at different levels.

This understanding also leads to a renewed understanding of the place of a translation. In his famous essay “Des Tours de Babel,” Jacques Derrida calls into question the hierarchy between the original and the translation and draws attention to the quality of both the original and the translation within each individual context. In African contexts, translation from or into a local tongue is often predicated upon one’s sensitivity to the socio-historical conditions that shape one’s understanding of language, as well as an active attempt towards liberation. The translation, on the other hand, should also be read as a hybrid cultural and social rendering of the spirit of the original drawn from “all the avenues of cultural communication” for the sake of cross-cultural transcendence and liberation, instead of a word-for-word rendering from an “original” based on a conventional linguistic or stylistic framework.

In addition to reading for the stylistic challenges towards the notion of a language per se and the limitations of a specific genre as understood by many, it is also worth mentioning that there are more than fifty recognized countries in Africa, and among which no less than 24 countries take English as their official language for various reasons. In addition, there is also a big population of African descent living in the diaspora, among whom many have English or another non-African language either as their first language, or as a language of substantial importance in different capacities. Even if what we are able to cover in this issue is only a very small part of the literary and artistic productions related to language and Africa, we are still feeling short of space to do justice to the context each specific piece entails. Therefore, we invite the readers to read imaginatively, and also to look for the reason and the value of the linguistic varieties associated to the use of one single language, as well as the relationship between the writer and a language.

Outside of language-based notions of translation, and recognized in the Oxford English Dictionary, translation also denotes “the expression or rendering of something in another medium or form.”³ The Chicago School of Media Theory considers how language- and non-language-based modes of translation can be understood in relation, specifically how each “offer different orientations of a similar process: the first describing a change of form within a medium, viz. language; while the latter describes a process that is enacted between media.”⁴ However, this issue of Absinthe considers yet another definition of translation, one that encompasses both intra-medium and inter-media processes: translation defined as “transformation, movement, shift.”⁵ Though this lateral definition has fallen out of common use, much of African and black diasporic theory, art, and literature is informed by a complex politics of forced and volitional transformation through European colonialism, not just in language, but in land, and the construction of self.

In contemporary Congolese artist Sammy Baloji’s Mémoire⁶, black bodies haunt the frame, wavering between gray and gossamer, charcoal and opaque. In this multimedia photography series, Baloji juxtaposes archival images from 1906 of European officials and Congolese laborers who worked for the Belgian mining company, Mining Union of the Upper Katanga (now Gécamines), with original photographs taken 100 years later. Though the images overlay a century, they evoke iterations of industrial yet barren landscapes, ashen and vexed laborers, and uneven power relations. Through photography Baloji affords a kind of time travel and critical reflection on how European colonial practices of exploitation continue inhuman conditions in the mines. Baloji allows us to perceive the translation of colonial greed into Congolese land. However, there are multiple registers of translation in motion. While the images transpose time, the photographs themselves are acts of translation through the medium (digital photographs overlay archival images on satin matte paper). As such, it is worth considering the multiple layers of translation at play within Africa and its diasporas that transcend the verbal.

Overall, this issue contemplates the implications of Africa and its diasporas in translation, moving through temporalities and mediums, from the literary to mixed media, and pivots on a notion of translation generated by particular modes of questioning identity, and various colonial histories that engender underlying assumptions about blackness.

This issue is robust with contradictions and linguistic, geographical, and conceptual tensions, contending with what it means to speak from various kinds of African and black identities. While some contributors highlight the frustrations of expressing Africanity through colonial languages, others consider colonial languages possible vernaculars with which to challenge colonial thought, using both colonial and local African languages with intention. Still, some insist on promoting the enriching qualities of local African languages like Yoruba. And some contributors turn to various forms of code and media as a method to consider the poetics of translating blackness and Africanity.

An ethical reading and appreciation of literature written by African writers, or art works put together by African artists, in a Western space demands genuine intellectual and practical efforts to discard the colonial relics that obstinately survive into the current moment, in pursuit of a better future of prosperity that does not have to rest upon exploitation, subordination and elimination of other people. It is therefore convenient to quote from two verses⁷ written by the renowned Mozambican woman writer Paulina Chiziane’s The Song of the Slaves⁸, composed to honor the slaves and other “offspring of Africa” who suffered the consequences of imperialism, and to facilitate remembrance of the essence of African literature and culture:

Africanidade⁹

  A africanidade não está na superficialidade garrida das capulanas
  Africanidade é a busca da tua existência desde o princípio do mundo
  É libertar a mente para não te colonizares a ti mesmo
  É colocar o saber das academias ao serviço da liberdade
  

Africanity

  Africanity is not in the smug superficiality of capulanas
  Africanity is the search of your existence from the beginning of the world
  It is to liberate the mind so that you do not colonize yourself
  It is to put the knowledge of the academies at the service of liberty
  

Frieda Ekotto, Imani Cooper and Xiaoxi Zhang

Notes

1. Nimrod, La Nouvelle Chose française. Arles: Actes Sud, 2008. p. 27. ⮭
2. Chidi Amuta, The Theory of African Literature, p.112. ⮭
3. "art, n.1." OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2019. Web. 23 July 2019 ⮭
4. Lund, Karsten. “The Chicago School of Media Theory Theorizing Media since 2003.” The Chicago School of Media Theory RSS, 2007, lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/translation/. ⮭
5. "art, n.1." OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2019. Web. 23 July 2019 ⮭
6. Mémoire can be translated in English to mean the literary genre of memoir writing. It can also mean memory, remembrance or keeping something in mind. ⮭
7. in the epigraph, Paulina Chiziane did not call this work poetry. Instead she wrote, Com estes versos escravos, remontamos à raiz de todos os conflitos. São versos livres, tristes, alegres, musicados, para ritmar a dança da história. With these slave verses, we reassemble the root of all the conflicts. These verses are free, sad, happy, musical, to give rhythm to the dance of the history. ⮭
8. O Canto dos Escravos. Maputo: Matiko e Arte, Lda, 2017. ⮭
9. The part quoted in this introduction is only one stanza of the entire poetic song. It is translated by Xiaoxi Zhang. ⮭