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The Agĩkũyũ, the Bible and Colonial Constructs: Towards an Ordinary African Readers‟ Hermeneutics

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The Agĩkũyũ, the Bible and Colonial Constructs: Towards an Ordinary African Readers‟ Hermeneutics CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository THE AGĨKŨYŨ, THE BIBLE AND COLONIAL CONSTRUCTS: TOWARDS AN ORDINARY AFRICAN READERS‟ HERMENEUTICS. by JOHNSON KĨRIAKŨ KĨNYUA A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Theology and Religion College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham February 2010 . [1] ABSTRACT THE AGĨKŨYŨ, THE BIBLE AND COLONIAL CONSTRUCTS: TOWARDS AN ORDINARY AFRICAN READERS‟ HERMENEUTICS. By Johnson Kĩriakũ Kĩnyua February 2010 (346 Pages) Recognising the paradigm shift in African biblical studies where the image of a “decontextualized and non-ideological” scientific Bible reader is slowly being replaced with one of a “contextualized and ideological” reader, this research seeks to explore and understand the role of the “ordinary readers” in the development of biblical interpretation in colonial Kenya. It seeks to understand whether the semi- illiterate and illiterate can engage the Bible as capable hermeneuts. The study uses postcolonial criticism to recover and reconstruct the historical encounters of the Agĩkũyũ with the Bible. It reveals that ordinary African readers actively and creatively engaged biblical texts in the moment of colonial transformation using several reading strategies and reading resources. Despite the colonial hegemonic positioning, these Africans hybridised readings from the Bible through retrieval and incorporation of the defunct pre-colonial past; creating interstices that became sites for assimilation, questioning and resistance. The study proposes an African hermeneutic theory that accepts both scholarly readers and the ordinary readers with respect to biblical interpretation as constitutive of a community of readers positioned in a particular sociocultural milieu. It invites the socially engaged scholars to commit to: reading the Bible from the experienced reality of societal margins; reading communally with each other; and to read critically. The metaphor Sokoni (at the marketplace) is proposed as the starting point in which both the “ordinary” readers and scholarly readers can engage the Bible through the language of the African theatre and storytelling. [2] ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am delighted to acknowledge and give thanks to the members of staff who helped me get access to archived documents in respective institution‟s archives and for the support they offered me in the days and months I spent in those archives. They include staff members at Pitts Theology Library Archives at Emory University (Atlanta), The University of Edinburgh Library Special Collection (Edinburgh), The Church Mission Society (C.M.S.) archives at The University of Birmingham Library Special Collection (Birmingham), The British and Foreign Bible Society (B.F.B.S.) archives and The Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K) archives at the University of Cambridge (Cambridge), the Kenya National Archives (Nairobi), the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (P.C.E.A.) archives (Nairobi), the School of African and Oriental Studies (London), the National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh), and the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World (University of Edinburgh). I am also indebted to Dr. Francis Gĩthieya who read my initial proposal and for offering very helpful comments, particularly on the African Independent Churches. I want also to acknowledge Rev. Jason Nyaga, General Ngũngi of Chuka, Uncle Dan Mũkuha, Nicholas Gathitũ, Gathoga (formerly General Kĩrĩ Hinya), and Mwalimu Mwema for sharing with me their vast knowledge on various dimensions of life in the villages and detentions in Kenya during the Mau-Mau crises. I am grateful to Anne Baird, Jill Oglesby Evans, Prof. Zablon Nthamburi, and Dr. Nehemy Kĩhara for reading the early parts of my dissertation and for the useful suggestions they made. I am equally grateful to Charles Ng‟ang‟a Wairia, Mary Waturi Kĩriakũ and especially Dr. Scott Grosse for the care with which they proofread and reviewed the final draft of this dissertation; and the conversations that clarified my thinking on various issues. I am thankful for the financial and material support from Dr. Belle McMaster, The Revs. Anne & John Wheeler-Waddell and other institutions which made my studies at The University of Birmingham possible. I am very grateful to my supervisors Dr. R. S. Sugirtharajah and Dr. Deryn Guest for the supervision and professional collaboration. I am thankful for their thoughtful and creative feedback, and more generally their comments that encouraged me to revise and improve most of the chapters in the dissertation. I owe a huge debt of thanks to my wife Waturi for her love, support and her tireless effort to see to it that the family remained calm and stable during my long periods of absence. My absence was most felt when she suffered multiple injuries from a motor vehicle accident. I will forever remain grateful for her courage, faith and support despite the harrowing experience. I give thanks to our children Wanjirũ, Kĩnyua, Wangechi and my mother-in-law Eunice Wangechi Gathitũ who remained supportive throughout the period of my study. To all I say, “mũromaatha gũkuumia”. [3] CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 I 1.1a Overall Primary Aim and Secondary Aim 1.1b Motivation for this Research 1.1c Presumptions 1.1d Importance of this research 1.1e Re-Defining Hermeneutics 1.1f Chapter Outline II 1.2.1 Literature review 1.2.2 Biblical Historical Criticism and Postcolonial Contexts 1.2.3 Methodology 1.2.3a Postcolonial Criticism 1.2.3b Historical Consciousness 1.2.3b1 Allusion 1.2.4 Limitations of a Multi-disciplinary Approach CHAPTER 2: BIBLE AND COLONIAL IDENTITIES: COLONIAL CONSTRUCTIONS, REPRESENTATIONS AND MARGINALITY 37 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Colonial Principles of Legitimation 2.2.1 Dichotomisation of Reality 2.2.2 Semblance and Differentiation 2.2.3 Metaphysical obligation 2.2.4 Stereotyping: Racial Categorisation 2.3 Conclusion CHAPTER 3: LOCATION OF CULTURE IN THE COLONIAL HERMENEUTICS: AMBIVALENCE, MIMICRY, AND HYBRIDITY 77 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The Bible, Literacy, Colonial Ambivalence and Anxieties 3.2.1 The Bible as the literacy primer 3.2.2 Possibility of an African Knowledge and Gnosis 3.3 Cultural Doubt and Liminal Space 3.3.1 Hybridity and Anxious Repetition 3.4 The Founding of Colonial Hermeneutics: Kikuyu Conference, Double Vision, and Mimicry 3.4.1 Homogeneity 3.4.2 The Word of God 3.4.3 Linguistic Control and Mission Comity 3.4.4 Ambivalence 3.4.5 The Ethereal and Colonial Actualities 3.5 Hybridity and the Aesthetics 3.6 Conclusion [4] CHAPTER 4: THE GĨKŨYŨ BIBLE TRANSLATION: THE COLONIAL FACTOR 123 4.1 Introduction 4.1.1 Translation as a Complex Activity 4.1.2 Translation as a Second-Level Interpretation 4.2 A Summary of the Evolution of the Gĩkũyũ Bible 4.2.1 The Early Bible Translation in Kenya 4.2.2 Translation work in Gĩkũyũ 4.2.3 The United Kikuyu Language Committee (U.K.L.C.) 4.3 The Colonial Situation and Issues of Translation 4.3.1 Translation as hegemonic and assimilative: the Gĩkũyũ Orthography 4.3.1a Common Language and Civilisation 4.3.1b Unification of Language in East and Central Africa 4.3.1c Translation as a tool for Colonisation 4.3.1.1 Invention of a New Gĩkũyũ Orthography 4.3.2 Translation as cultural imperialism: Ambivalence and Hybridity 4.3.3 Translation as Interpretation: Untranslatability of religious terminologies 4.3.4 Translation as Scriptural Imperialism: Denominational and nationality rivalry 4.4 The Colonial Situation and Translation as an “In-between” Space 4.4.1 Africans‟ Role in Translation: Awakening, Questioning and Resistance 4.4.1a Charles Mũhoro Kareri 4.4.1b The African Christian Language Conference 4.4.1c Bildad Kaggia 4.4.1d Jomo Kenyatta 4.5 Conclusion CHAPTER 5: THE TRANSLATED TEXTS AND THE TYPES OF READING: THE ROLE OF COMMON SENSE HERMENEUTICS 170 5.1 Introduction 5.1.1. Common Sense Hermeneutics 5.1.2 Bible as the Word of God 5.1.2a Use of Allusion 5.1.2b Interpretative Resources 5.2 Reading Strategies 5.2.1 Reading and Interpreting the Bible for Conversion Experience 5.2.1a Storytelling 5.2.1b The Bible as a Moral Text 5.2.1c The Bible as an Awakener and an Enabler 5.2.2 Reading the Bible as a Road Map to Nation-Building 5.2.2a The Bible and the Gĩkũyũ nationalism – Harry Thuku 5.2.2b Allusion as a Hermeneutical Resource - Gideon Mũgo Kagĩka 5.2.2c A Hermeneutical Crisis: Clitoridectomy 5.2.2d Independency 5.2.2e Mũiguithania: Jomo Kenyatta and Agĩkũyũ Nationalism 5.3 Conclusion [5] CHAPTER 6: RESISTANCE AS A DISCURSIVE PRACTICE 216 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Subversive Readings 6.2.1a Bildad Kaggia: Demystification of the “Ũhoro wa Ngai” 6.2.1b Arathi: The Esoteric Dimension of Resistance Hermeneutics 6.2.1c Mau-Mau and Detainees: Guerrilla Hermeneutics 6.3 Language as a “figural ploy” 6.5 Potential Hermeneutical Optic 6.6 Conclusion CHAPTER 7: THE BIBLE, COLONIAL IDEOLOGICAL DISTORTIONS AND THE REVIVAL OPTION 248 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Detention and Villaginisation 7.2.1 Purpose of Detention Camps 7.2.2 Rehabilitation 7.2.3 Involvement of Colonial Churches 7.2.4 Independent Churches and Schools Banned 7.3 Role of the Bible 7.3.1 Role of Psychoanalysis: Dr. J. C. Carothers and the Psychology of Mau-Mau 7.3.2 The Bible as the Word of God: The Basis of Rehabilitation 7.3.3 The Bible as the Manual for Life 7.3.4 The Universality of Biblical Messages 7.3.5 Apocalyptic Vision: 7.3.6 Strategies: Free Bibles, Direct and Indirect Persuasions 7.3.7
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