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'Global' English Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Wizard of the Crow The European English Messenger 16.1 (2007) Reviewing a Book and How It Relates to Global English Ngugi wa Thiongo, Wizard of the Crow New York: Pantheon / Random House, 2006, 768 pp. Robert Phillipson (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark) and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (Åbo Akademi University, Vasa, Finland) Paving the ways of seeing and willing a moral universe of freedom, equality, and social justice within and among the nations of the earth is surely the special mission of art. Art is dreams of freedom and creativity. Ngugi wa Thiongo, 1998, 131. Many authors from the former British empire with his equal in heaven. He is surrounded by produce a wonderful range of novels. One of sycophantic, scheming people whose main the most distinguished writers is Ngugi of preoccupation is graft and staying in power. Kenya. He is exceptional in that after writing a There are plenty of utterly evil characters, who handful of successful novels in English he subject themselves to cosmetic surgery so that switched to producing plays and novels in an they can more effectively function as the ears African language, Gikuyu, so as to reach a very and eyes of The Ruler. One who falls seriously different audience. He has also written an ill is diagnosed as suffering from white-ache, impressive range of scholarly books, the most the urge to be a white person, and later actually famous of which is Decolonising the mind. goes through limb transplants in order to achieve The politics of language in African literature this. (1981), updated in a series of lectures in Oxford, Race, and the challenge of restoring dignity published as Penpoints, gunpoints, and to Africans, is one of the recurrent themes of dreams. Towards a critical theory of the arts the novel, always packaged subtly so that the and the state in Africa (1998). Ngugis latest narrative never flags. The rulers ideas are book, Wizard of the crow, is a landmark in implemented ruthlessly in the state media and African and world literature, a novel written and education systems in ways that remind one of published initially in Gikuyu, then translated by Zimbabwe, Libya, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan the author into English. It is a monumental, all- alas, the list is endless, and some roots European embracing work in the Tolstoyan tradition, (Stalinism, Kemalism, fascism). A beautiful satirical in the spirit of Cervantes, and Orwellian instance of the books undercurrent of irony is in its moral indignation and political commitment. that the study of the wise thoughts of the Ruler, The narrative also draws extensively on an and the need to have them mindlessly African cosmology of wisdom, folklore, the internalised, is termed parratology. Another that grotesque and the fantastic: as one of the storys the new colonialism of corporations is termed narrators puts it, In his tongue the real and the corporonialism. marvellous flowed out of each other (op.cit., Ngugi doubtless draws inspiration from his p. 570). own experience of corruption in Kenya The setting is a deeply corrupt African state, (portrayed in Petals of blood, 1977) and being dominated by The Ruler, whose grandiose imprisoned by Kenyatta (leading to his auto- project is to build a contemporary Tower of biographical description in Detained, 1981). Babel, the Marching to Heaven project, for The novel is therefore in no way science fiction, which funding is needed from the Global Bank. a mere comic romp, or a gloomy dystopia. It is The Ruler deifies himself, both in the sense of a subtle and complex allegory of the monstrous living up to absolutisms Létat, cest moi and regimes that are in place in many parts of the in that the building will enable him to hobnob world, with the representatives of the Global 50 Bank and the US Ambassador (and Europeans freedom, etc etc (p. 237) (colonial power in a more subordinate role) as vital links in was transferred to those who would maintain maintaining this sort of world order. A sizeable British imperial interests). There are also poetic chunk of the novel is set in New York, where uses of language, for instance to tone down a the Ruler has gone to plead his case for funding, polemical point (by the female hero): unsuccessfully. He falls ill with such unique violence against women bedevils many a home rich, symptoms that western medical research is poor, white, black, religious. In the world today, a flummoxed, and satirised, whereas it is only the husband measures his maleness by mauling his wife. A wizards sorcery that can influence him. wife swallows insults in surly silence instead of resisting the violation of her sacred self. A sacred self soon This grim scene of evil does not make for becomes a scared slave, leading to a scarred life (pp. grim reading, because of a compelling, varied 429-430). narrative style, and comic light relief as in At other points the use of language is more Shakespeares tragedies. The counterpoint to playful, taking the sting out of a home truth about the ubiquitous evil is the younger generation, how the worlds resources are exploited: who have formed a movement for social When it came to forests, indeed to any natural resource, change, with two main characters male and the Abur-rian State and big American, European, and female, yes, there is a delightful and profound Japanese companies, in alliance with the local African, interpersonal thrust too who represent the Indian, and Japanese rich, were all united by one slogan: potential for achieving a just social order. They A loot-a continua. (p. 201) are multi-faceted characters, of varied Occasional utterances are signposted as being experience: the male hero has studied in India in English, invariably connoting high prestige. and is deeply influenced by Indian and Buddhist The infrequent citations in Gikuyu add to the thought, the female hero is an astute political richness of the text. organizer with a clear mission to work for * * * * * change in extremely difficult conditions. The Ngugis book was written in an African central couple find themselves obliged to take language for local consumption and on the role of a sorcerer, a wizard, a witch doctor enjoyment, drawing maximally on local cultural who attempts to heal minds and bodies. This and linguistic norms. Along with his earlier plays they carry off with great human insight and and novels in Gikuyu and their translation into wisdom, and recourse to traditional herbal craft. Swahili, Ngugi significantly demonstrates that Even the great and good, despite being so world literature does not presuppose use of a modern, and monopolising the countrys European language or one of the Asian resources, experience a need to consult the languages with a millennial literary tradition. In wizard, so that the young couple, on separate the Kenyan context, the importance of using a trajectories, get intimately involved in secrets local language, rather than an elite language of state, and in the intrigues of the Ruler and with intrinsically foreign cultural baggage, is that those who surround him. the reading habit can be fostered at the Gender stereotypes are challenged, partly by grassroots. In addition, the polemic thrust of the showing that people of either gender can work novel represents a potential for furthering for change (so as to combat men in power, who political change, for consciousness-raising as a abuse that power at the expense of ordinary practical instrument for decolonising minds. people), partly by males becoming humiliated To classify the novel as postcolonial makes victims of husband bashing. the point that such literature can be written in a The language is varied and rich. There are language that is not the language of colonisation many resonances of the King James Bible, or present-day corporonialism. On the other which tallies well with the extensive hand, if the label postcolonial is seen as a Christianisation of Africa. A minister addresses restrictive categorisation, it should not be used. the Ruler: Ruler who art our father here on Likewise, Amitav Ghosh refused to accept a earth, the English who gave us civilisation, prize in Commonwealth literature for one of 51 The European English Messenger 16.1 (2007) his splendid novels precisely because he did not the present-day world it is Anglo English that accept this designation. Wizard of the crow is remains the touchstone and guarantor of world literature, dealing with universal themes English-based global communication in a context where the narrative and the (Wierzbicka 2006, pp. 13-14). This Polish- characters epitomise global and local corruption Australian scholar also refers to the in the age of corporate empire. ethnocentricity of many theorists from the Anglo- The translation of Wizard of the crow into American world who mistakenly take Anglo English, and a global elite readership, raises the English for the human norm (ibid., p. 12). This issue of what type of English the book is written is the colonial universe that Ngugi was socialised in, or rather has been translated into. Is it the into but has made a complete break from. It is new English that Chinua Achebe pleaded for worth tracing some of its roots. 30 years ago? And if so, is this different from The marketing of world English has been the standard English of the core English- part of political discourse on both sides of the speaking countries? Or does Ngugi write in Atlantic for two centuries. Efforts to make it Afro-Saxon English, to use the term used by intellectually robust have been more spasmodic Ali Mazrui to refer to African elites who are (see Phillipson in press). I. A. Richards, who switching to English professionally and even in combined appointments at Cambridge and the home? Or is the language rather Global Harvard (see the analysis of his key role in English? And if so, is this English what literary criticism in Britain and the US from Departments of English Studies are, or should 1920-1960 in Williams 1961, pp.
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