Prominent linguists and scholars, led by one of Africa’s most reputed historian, Professor Toyin Falola, have brought to the fore the contributions of African women in transmitting, preserving and building of indigenous African literacy and languages despite the advent of colonialism and its onslaughts.
This observation formed the core during the last edition of the Toyin Falola Interview Series which was streamed across several social media platforms, television and radio stations in many parts of the world with a viewership of over 2 million.
The interaction, with the theme: “Languages and Archives in the Knowledge Production About Africa” had panelists such as Ghirmai Negash, professor of English and African literature and also the Director of the African Studies Program in Ohio University, he also founded and chaired the Department of Eritrean Languages and Literature at the University of Asmara; Ngom Fallou, professor of Anthropology and former Director of the African Studies Centre at Boston University, with research interest in the interaction of African and non-African languages; Abiodun Salawu, professor of Journalism, Communication and Media Studies, and Director of the research entity: Indigenous Language Media in Africa (ILMA) at the North-West University, South Africa; Ousseina Alidou, a distinguished professor of Humane Letters in the School of Arts and Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick; and John Mugane, professor of African Languages and Cultures at Harvard University and the Director of the African Language Program.
In his enquiry, Professor Falola foregrounded the politics of silence and gender relations in epistemological discourse. To which Professor Alidou clearly replied stating that “Very often, we don’t talk about silence; we are looking for voices and for writing. Once we have silence, it means erasure. It means a lack of connection of the possibilities that existed and the potential that can be offered in the present and in the future.
If within the domain epistemology, epistemology is seen only as the monopoly of men then it means that humanity is not progressing the right way. It means that there is a whole body of knowledge system, a thought process that has been dismissed.
Epistemologies are not conveyed only through Latinisation or through any script system. Whether it is Ajami, Tiv or Nko, epistemologies are carried through several mode systems and African women have contributed to the production of epistemologies in their indigenous literacy systems, in the oralised forms and other forms of conversations, whether they are the scripts, the embodied forms or other manifestations of ways of carrying through process.
“The Southern African region, the West African region, the Maghrib region and central Africa all have monographs which include important works by women. Women were forward-looking in terms of saying multilingualism is the Lingua Franca in Africa. So if we are talking about modern African literary figures, we cannot escape establishing women as critical in the formation of modern African literature in multilingualism. Women created an inter-lingual dialogue between writing systems in the poetic and literary sense, and also philosophising into that. The cultural policy of the Tuareg people was such that women were the transmitters, the custodians of literacy. However, with the interference of European colonialism in the French system, it was a total linguistic assimilation and dismissal of any indigenous literacy system. It is very important that we decolonise the psychology that comes to be associated with how we understand the history of writing in the multiplicity of the script system of Africa. We have to decolonise the way we write and think and also ways of translating Africa.
”Earlier, Professor Negash spoke on the underpinnings that guard the formation and sustenance of epistemologies, stating that “The question of epistemology has a long history. But in its current form as we got it, is mainly from post structuralists. Episteme of course as many us understand is from Greek language. The notion of episteme is a set of relations that unites different discursive practices. This is a quotation from Michel Foucault, I’m using this because he was the one who elaborated on this point. What he meant by ‘unites discursive practices’ includes the statements, the concepts, the constellation of ideas. They generate scientific knowledge across disciplines starting from the humanities, the medical sciences, anthropology, history and what have you. Because of these discursive practices, they have to be repetitive. Narratives are created, statements are created, worldview is created and these become the sciences.
“When we have the scientific disciplines in the scholarships, we usually have also people who carry them so to speak. There are exponents of the theories, of the statements. For example, the idea of post structuralism, the idea of Marxism, or the idea of disciplines in histories, there must be also people who are coming with new ideas. There is also the idea, for example, of creating new paradigms in Linguistics, like Chomsky and so on. These are the people who create discursive practices or discursive formations. Once this is set, there are also underlying subtexts of power relationship at a global level. Then it becomes a dominant, the mainstream idea to which not just academics and scientists and scholars but also the general population listens to: who is this speaking? How should we do this? And so on and so forth.
“So in terms of discursive practices, discursive formations, epistemologies, they are not birthed, but there is always a context. Always a context is created. And the context comes from place to place. And if the context is created in terms of power relations, for example, let me take you back to the major epistemological figure, exponent of a particular set of ideas, a paradigm, I’m taking of Hegel who had the platform to talk about Africa: Africa has no culture, Africa has no civilisation, Africa has no history, Africa has no language, and so on and so forth. Once that idea and epistemology is created, established, and reproduced, and then it comes in different forms. It goes to different disciplines. It goes to linguistics; it goes to history, it influences many methodologies across disciplines.
“There is something very important for us to ask. Where were Africans when these paradigms/discursive practices were created? Africans were producing knowledge; Africans had religion; some of them had even scripts like these classical languages of Eritrea and Ethiopia and other parts of the world. Then there is what we call epistemic violence, art work, the European kind of epistemology was self-perceived superiority towards the other indigenous African knowledge systems. So it was dominating because of colonialism, because of imperialism and this is where the other lap or the connection between colonialism, imperialism and epistemology comes to work.
“If I may add, let’s also be reminded that the knowledge production in terms of global order has been created in between six and eight languages. These are European languages, if you want to add Latin and Greek languages as well. The other languages of participations, African languages particularly, although had presence, were always left on the margins. It is always superseded as if it was not there, because of the power dynamics.”
In his historicization of the failure of prominent African literary texts being translated to indigenous languages, Professor Ngom argued that “Because of the colonial legacy that has rendered or defined literacy as only literacy in European languages or ability to use the Roman script. And that legacy has permeated all African traditions, all African institutions so that when someone is telling literature in Francophone Africa, what this really means is that they are studying French literature. If they are in the English part of Africa, the assumption is that good literature is European literature.
Therefore, our own intellectual productions have been dismissed from the very core of knowledge production. So it is not a surprise that major African writers are not even known in their own communities. In my own Ajami, there are very famous local Shakespeares. The sad part is that there is a rift in our communities so that within the same family, the people who are trained in the local mode compared to those trained in the Eurocentric mode, the rift has evolved so that for example, those who trained in the Ajami traditions become very famous in their own work, in the informal sector and those who will promote it are those who are writing in French and English and using the Roman script.
“My big challenge is to recognise that history did not begin in the 19th century. Look at history from a long rail. And archives now allow us to be able to do that. Despite the suppression of African languages, intellectual production in African language have not died, in fact, they have flourished in many parts. The challenge is how do we preserve them? And how do we train the new generations that require the skill needed to access the information belonging to them?
This is because we have never been trained to do so. That is the first challenge. How do we train the new generation of scholars who can read Yoruba and Ajami the same way they can read classical Shakespeare poetry or old English? I think that is the problem that we face. We haven’t taken this seriously until now. And I think now we do have an opportunity to expand the canon of literature, actually. Despite the great contributions of our great leaders who have been mentioned here, Ngugi wa Thiong o and others, we are still operating within the understanding that is literature in Roman Script. How about Musa who is writing in Ajami Script? How about the Hausa who are writing in Ajami Script? How about the Tiv who are writing in Tiv? I think all things need to be incorporated in the definition of what African literature is. And I think that is important because what I have found that is so fascinating when I look at the literature that is produced by these people, they are writing as Africans. And in their sources, you actually see, it’s really an African who is speaking, conveying and reflecting local epistemologies, and I think this is so fundamental to incorporate that in our training of the new generation, the challenge is, I think we need to reform our institutions. It is important to train the new generation, and to incorporate it in our educational systems.
“We need to find a way to overcome this linguistic paradox. How is it that to become an expert of Yoruba, you are trained to speak English? Can you be taken seriously if you are claiming to be an expert of France without being able to read or speak French? So I think this double standard really needs to change, and the way to do it really is a fundamental reform of our educational system. It doesn’t mean rejecting all the languages. What it means is incorporating these languages and these cultures in our curriculum for several reasons. It creates new skills that are much needed to engage African traditions and languages in knowledge production. It can be used to create new social mobilities, resources. But there is a huge market for advertisement in these areas, and I think we can connect that to economic growth. People have to understand that if you say you study these African languages, you have the skills, then you have also possibilities for social mobility. But that is also a political issue. Until we are able to do that, until our governments are aware that these languages could be commodified just as French and English have been commodified, so that if someone is going to Yoruba land to do research, Yoruba should be required for that person. If you go to France to do research, you can’t do so in Youruba, you have to do it in French. And I think these are the issues I’m really interested in. And I think that now with technology, initially there was a fear that technology was going to destroy African languages. We actually see that it is helping us in preserving some of these archives from being lost. It is also revitalising that some of these languages that were endangered are being saved. I do hope that in our conversation we will go into more details on how best we can create new centres of learning these languages in Africa.”
The Toyin Falola Interviews has remained a vital platform for the interrogation of some of Africa’s greatest minds, intellectuals and leaders on matters that affect the continent and also its extension in the diaspora.
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