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This is a Literature Review study.

September 10, 2025

Decolonization, with or without the Mother Tongue: The Blinkards (1915) and Translations (1980)

Key Points

The concept of an uncolonizable language suggests that language can transcend colonial definitions and boundaries.
Frantz Fanon's ideas contrast with those of other theorists, highlighting the significance of indigenous resources in self-representation.
The works of Sekyi and Friel illustrate how English is racialized as the language of whites, complicating colonial narratives.
This examination informs ongoing discussions about language power dynamics in postcolonial societies.

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The article develops the idea of an uncolonizable language as a language that belongs to all. This analysis contrasts Frantz Fanon’s theorization of colonized societies in which the ideas of the mother tongue, indigenous cultural resources, and the struggle for self-representation are much less salient, with critiques developed by other postcolonial and post-classical theorists and thinkers like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Amilcar Cabral, Audre Lorde, Sylvia Wynter, Édouard Glissant, or Abiola Irele. To illustrate this argument, a reading of Kobina Sekyi’s The Blinkards and Brian Friel’s Translations asks readers to consider the racialization of English as the “language of whites” through the lens of colonial catachresis.

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