The Politics of Acquiring the Colonizer’s Language in the Colonial Academy

In the context of settler colonization, mastering the colonizer’s language may carry dual, contradictory values: it affirms the subjugation of the colonized while offering them a means of liberation from oppression and colonization. This article investigates the psycho-political work of learning, acquiring, and hearing the colonizer’s language by Indigenous Palestinian Jerusalemite students studying at an Israeli academic institution. It concludes that the politics of acquiring the colonizer’s language produces a fundamental paradox for the colonized: using this language can assist them in challenging their oppression, but it can also play into the colonizer’s racialized colonial agenda.