A Globalectical Imagination
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o Every imperial state has always put its own national literature at the center, conceived as the only center of the literary universe. In my most recent memoir In the House of the Interpreter, I have shown how Shakespeare occupied a central place in the colonial education, a writer most beloved by the colonial order. One could have been hanged for possessing Marx’s Communist Manifesto but embraced for possessing a copy of Shakespeare. Yet, class struggle and the notion that power came from and was maintained by the violence of the sword, in our world today tanks and drones, had been dramatized by Shakespeare long before Marx and Engels discussed it as theory. But the colonial state had faith that Shakespeare could be taught safely as a “mindless” genius. Thus they trusted the narrow view of interpreting text to do its work and mutilate Shakespeare. Macbeth’s bloody dagger could be explained away as the result of blind ambition, a fatal flaw in the character. It was a power grab through assassination. A globalectical reading of Shakespeare would have freed him from colonial and imperial prisons. Imperial nations had taken power by the sword; maintained it by the sword and the colonized could only grab it back by the sword. Today a Fanonistic reading of Shakespeare would yield contemporary relevance even for students outside the imperial perimeters. It’s not just Shakespeare, Goethe, or Balzac. A certain reading of postcolonial literatures can equally straight-jacket the ethical and aesthetic vision. That’s why in my book, Globaletics, I have argued for globalectical readings of texts and literatures. Globalectics assumes the interconnectedness of time and space in the area of human thought and action. It’s best articulated in the words of my all time favorite, William Blake when he talked about seeing the world in grain of sand, eternity in an hour. Any text, even human encounters, can be read globalectically. Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 |
Essays in this Forum
Break out of the Prison House of Hierarchy!
by Mukoma Wa Ngugi A Globalectical Imagination by Ngugi wa Thiong'o World Literature and the Postcolonial: Ngugi's Globalectics and Glissant's Poetics by Duncan McEachern Yoon “You Are the Prisoner, the Discoverer, the Founder, the Liberator”: Contextualizing Decolonial Paths of Afro-Hispanic Literature in Latin America, Equatorial Guinea and Spain by Elisa Rizo Globalectics Beyond Postcoloniality by Carole Boyce Davies |