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On Good, Bad, and Ugly Malay

Tom G. Hoogervorst

in Language Ungoverned: Indonesia's Chinese Print Entrepreneurs, 1911-1949

This chapter analyzes how the Malay spoken, written, and described by people of Chinese ancestry resonated across the public sphere, from society's elites down to the grassroots. It shows how print ... More

This chapter analyzes how the Malay spoken, written, and described by people of Chinese ancestry resonated across the public sphere, from society's elites down to the grassroots. It shows how print entrepreneurs outraged colonial language hierarchies through their contents, but especially through the linguistic style they adopted. By providing a wealth of Sino-Malay and other sources, the chapter offers insights into the questions like: How did people look at their language? How did others perceive it, and how did the speech community respond to such external judgments? It pays attention to a confluence of scholarly traditions — including Hokkien dialectology, Sinographic transcription systems, and European-influenced linguistics — that shaped the ways Chinese-Indonesians talked about language. The chapter then dismantles the received wisdom that Java's Malay was inferior to that of Sumatra, highlighting strategies to talk back against these prevailing hierarchies. Ultimately. the chapter underscores the importance of spelling to colonial language attitudes.Less

Haunting and Imperial Doctrine

Laurent Dubreuil

David Fieni (ed.)

in Empire of Language: Toward a Critique of (Post) colonial Expression

This chapter shows that it is permissible to rearrange theories and words in their connection to (post)colonial possession. (Post)colonial languages make use of multiple paradigms that tell without ... More

This chapter shows that it is permissible to rearrange theories and words in their connection to (post)colonial possession. (Post)colonial languages make use of multiple paradigms that tell without telling (qui disent sans dire). Each dogma thus contains an internal tension that both makes the phrase of possession speak and attempts to displace it in the direction of another system. Each utterance is in fact likely to repeat and to modify itself. Herein the act of reconstructing possession becomes, not a tangible and preliminary critical model, but—reflecting the era of the philosophes—a new, dark Enlightenment. The great modern political themes of colonization appear, in this sense, as so many confirmations of the phrase of possession and of ad hoc deformations of it.Less

Today: Stigmata and Veils

Laurent Dubreuil

David Fieni (ed.)

in Empire of Language: Toward a Critique of (Post) colonial Expression

This chapter explores the most persistent methods of interdiction to date. The insistence of indigenous discourses in French, in tandem with the wars for independence, has made it difficult for ... More

This chapter explores the most persistent methods of interdiction to date. The insistence of indigenous discourses in French, in tandem with the wars for independence, has made it difficult for colonial verbiage to claim to represent the language without being ridiculed. But though indigenous speech does open a breach in the colonial edifice, it does not definitely undo interdiction. In exemplary fashion, the school system and the media exert a necrotizing control over any and all speech that breaks with the established order. It is true that in addition to the emancipatory virtues they reiterate, the traditional function of these two worlds is to enforce a kind of censure. Moreover, literature nowadays is not commanded to contribute to the colonial phrase, hence the chapter evokes two poetic trajectories through the density of (post)colonial language: the work of Pierre Guyotat and that of Hélène Cixous.Less

Literary Prizes, Book Prizes and African Writing

Walter Bgoya

in Media and Identity in Africa

Literary prizes and book prizes do not feature greatly in discussions about writing and publishing, perhaps because there are so few of them in Africa. When they do, the discussion tends to centre on ... More

Literary prizes and book prizes do not feature greatly in discussions about writing and publishing, perhaps because there are so few of them in Africa. When they do, the discussion tends to centre on the questions of who funds the few existing prizes, how the winners are selected, how the prizes are administered and whether or not the administrators of the prizes are located within or outside of Africa. This chapter discusses literary and book prizes in Africa, colonial language policies and the creation of African literature, and literary prizes and the language issue. The fact that South Africa and Nigeria are the African countries with the highest number of literary and book prizes suggests that the more writing there is in a country, the more likely there will also be book prizes to honour it. Literary and book prizes play an important role in promoting writing and scholarship, but it is equally evident that they depend heavily upon universities to offer an excellent education in literature and the sciences; and government and other state institutions for the funding and organisational infrastructure to administer the awards.Less

Translation and its Others: Postcolonial Linguistic Strategies of Writers from the Francophone Indian Ocean

Peter Hawkins

in Intimate Enemies: Translation in Francophone Contexts

This article discusses the difficulties of postcolonial writers in confronting a situation of linguistic hegemony effectively imposed by the former colonial languages, French and to a lesser extent, ... More

This article discusses the difficulties of postcolonial writers in confronting a situation of linguistic hegemony effectively imposed by the former colonial languages, French and to a lesser extent, English, on the literary output of the Indian Ocean islands. Many writers from the area seek to maintain the status of local languages as vehicles for literary expression, such as Malagasy or the creoles of Mauritius or Reunion. At the same time the use of French or English gives potential access to publishing opportunities, an international audience and the possibility of wider diffusion of their work. This paradoxical situation leads them to experiment with a range of solutions, such as parallel publication of two versions of a novel, bilingual editions of poems or the creation of hybrid texts in which the indigenous local languages are incorporated into texts in an idiosyncratic French.Less

Formations and Reformations of Anthropology

Laurent Dubreuil

David Fieni (ed.)

in Empire of Language: Toward a Critique of (Post) colonial Expression

This chapter explains that anthropology, at least during the first part of its disciplinary history, spoke the colonial language all too often. For Marcel Mauss, Michel Leiris, and Claude ... More

This chapter explains that anthropology, at least during the first part of its disciplinary history, spoke the colonial language all too often. For Marcel Mauss, Michel Leiris, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, colonization is both what allows ethnology to take place and what, once brought to term, will prohibit it (in the dissolution of ancestral cultures). Hence the colony as condition of possibility does not enter the field of study but instead remains outside the frame. Yet, after the epistemological crisis linked to decolonization, anthropology has sometimes closed itself off into what can be called its standard state—this supposedly reverential attitude is of the same order as the former ensauvagement, except that this time it abandons the comparison of differences.Less

Creating Prehistory and Protohistory: Constructing Otherness and Politics of Contemporary Indigenous Populations in India

Uzma Z. Rizvi

in The Death of Prehistory

This chapter explores how colonial language in India affected the politics of representation of particular communities in a contemporary world. It cites the evolutionary nature of the prefixes in ... More

This chapter explores how colonial language in India affected the politics of representation of particular communities in a contemporary world. It cites the evolutionary nature of the prefixes in prehistory and protohistory in their construction; they also overlap while supposedly demarcating two pasts that are apparently distinct. Protohistory references to Harappa shows that text rather than process is linked to ideas of technological progress while serving as a key reference point for segmentation. The chapter also examines the continuum that exists between the theory and practice of the logics of time within archaeology as practised in India and illustrates how the contemporary state continues to replicate otherness with indigenous/Adivasi populations — a consequence of a past and continued controlling and ordering of time through labels. Finally, it identifies the multiplicity of durations for the Mesolithic that adds to the confusion caused by segmentation.Less