Decolonising the Mind by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

A Critical Note:

In the context of post-colonial studies, language is a weapon and a site of intense neocolonial
conflict. Many post-colonial scholars and writers have studied the colonial practice of
imposing the colonizer's language onto the people they colonized and the subsequent effects
the brought in. The practice has been observed as the systematic oppressive strategy of
imperialism deeply impacting the psychological, physical, and cultural well-being of the once
colonized people. Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s groundbreaking book Decolonising the Mind: The
Politics of Language in African Literature (1986) is a sharp critique on the use of language as
a tool to colonize and how a postcolonial subject has to get rid of its hegemonic effect.
Among Ngugi’s numerous observations on the importance of language, one is as following:
“Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and
literature, the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our
place in the world... Language is thus inseparable from ourselves as a community of
human beings with a specific form and character, a specific history, a specific
relationship to the world.”

Ngugi considers the use of English in Africa as the use of a "cultural bomb" that
blasts and wipes out pre-colonial culture, history, heritage and identity. He believes that the
effect of the cultural bomb is “to annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their
languages, in their environments, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their
capacities and ultimately in themselves." He argues that it leaves colonized nations
"wastelands of non-achievement," and leaves colonized peoples with the desire to "distance
themselves from that wasteland." He continues that the penultimate effect it causes is a sheer
"colonial alienation" which he describes in following terms:
“(Colonial Alienation) is like separating the mind from the body so that they are
occupying two unrelated linguistic spheres in the same person. On a larger scale it is
like producing a society of bodiless heads and headless bodies.”
However, Ngugi exudes optimism. He holds language also as a weapon of resistance
for the colonized people against the linguistic hegemony and imperialism. He argues that
despite every attempt to erase African languages, they have survived largely because they are
kept alive by the workers and peasantry, the proletariats among the population who can still
be the decisive force and agent in “decolonizing” our “mind.”
 Ngugi, therefore, theorizes language as the foundation and carrier of culture and
posits that the role of the writer in a neocolonial nation is inherently political: To write fiction
in English is to "foster a neocolonial mentality"; on the other hand, writing in African
languages is a blow to imperialism's systematic oppression. He, therefore, advocates for the
African writers to adopt their vernaculars like Gikuyu and Swahilli as means of writing by
abhorring English. Ngugi himself declares his decision in the preliminary pages of the book
of abandoning English.
Thus, Ngugi's critically acclaimed work, Decolonizing the Mind, challenges the
dominant Eurocentric and American-centric narratives that have long overshadowed African
voices and experiences. The book comprises his impassioned call to decolonize African
mind, culture, heritage and history, and thereby dismantle harmful stereotypes, and usher in a
new perspective on the continent. Many critics including Gayatri Spivak observed that
Decolonising the Mind is in large part a reiteration of much of Ngugi's previous works that
concentrate on language and imperialism, which had previously existed fragmentarily in the
form of lectures, interviews, and scattered articles. It was perfectly suited to its moment in
Africa and relevant to neocolonial struggles in other nations, and it was quickly adopted to
the canon of post-colonial studies in language.
Ngugi remains one of the most significant interpreters of Frantz Fanon, another
influential figure in the field of post-colonial studies. Fanon gave careful attention to the
violent ramifications of colonialism on the psyches of the colonized. In Decolonising the
Mind, Ngugi builds upon Fanon's post-colonial psychoanalysis by proposing art as a means
of healing the trauma of colonialism. Ngugi also remains "sincerely committed" to the works
of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and it is important to note that many liberation
movements in Africa have had Marxist roots.