Because of the recurring theme of being unable to know oneself when controlled or robbed of freedom by the government in the memoir "Reading Lolita in Tehran" http://www.bookrags.com/Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran, I've come to wonder how much influence media has on how we view ourselves.
In the United States, we could certainly say that advertisement overload can flood our perceptions of what it means to be, for instance, a proper boy or girl. Television shows and video games can influence the way one perceives violence and sex (for example) and how liberally or conservatively they apply those parts of life into their own personal definition of "self". Media gives us a context within which we continuously update our view of self in relation to other people and lifestyles. If this interaction does not necessarily change one's self-description or definition, it at least does constantly provide them with a challenge of how to apply their own talents and individualities to differing views of life, causing them to either adapt their self-image or endure, keeping the self-image intact.
Personally, I've recently been wondering how musical artists around the world affect our own self-images. People connect to the moody music and lyrics of songs, but does it change the person overall? When a little girl grows up for four years with bright pig tails and pink skirts (not to say that's the ideal, but just to provide an example) and in a year changes all of her wardrobe to black and listens to Rob Zombie for funzies, was it the music that changed her, or was it the events occurring around her--perhaps the influence of a group of friends, the intensity and perhaps sad relationship between her parents--that changed her? And, although her outward image would imply that she has changed fundamentally, who are we to say that we know that who she is on the inside--the real demonstration of self and character--has changed at all? Maybe this was just how her particular mindset adapted to the events around her as a purely natural development.
In a more recent and well-known example, the Colombian artist Juanes http://www.juanes.net/ presented a concert in Havana, Cuba, called "Paz sin Fronteras," or "Peace without Borders" http://www.popmatters.com/pm/article/110360-buzz-is-on-as-popular-colombian-rocker-juanes-to-headline-internatio/ A well-known activist for peace and human rights and founder of an foundation called "Mi Sangre Fundación," which provides Colombian children who fall victim to land mines with new limbs and rehabilitation, Juanes has become a non-partisan leader for peace throughout the Latin American community. In addition to his political/social songs and travails, Juanes is incredibly well known for his songs of love and romance, which automatically reach a larger fan base and have provided Juanes with record-breaking album releases at every opportunity. But in regards to Juanes' Paz Sin Fronteras concert, the goal was to unite Cubans in a showing of peace and music and to bring them attention that they so often lack as a nation isolated by the United States' political schema. The concert was met with protests and death threats from conservative Cubans and praise from those more open to his hopes of peace and openness. And in actuality, the concert enjoyed thousands of attendees for Juanes and his lineup of famous Hispanic music stars.
In such a situation, does Juanes simply offer us another way to look at life, or can we definitively say that this particular concert affected the minds of some individuals enough to give them a new purpose: one of peace, acceptance, and advocacy? I find fascinating the wealth of possibilities; there could simultaneously be the father who never had any definitive view but to survive who is now fueled with a passion for peace, the young girl who goes to a concert to hear good music and comes away put off by the political message, and the American wife who, before, was set in her views but has been caused to rethink her view of Cuban isolation due to the emotional power of the crowd in the concert. Can we say that Juanes, a cultural icon, changed any of these people or their sense of purpose? Or, on the contrary, are these simply newfound opinions brought about by a particular situation that do not, in fact, reflect a fundamental change in the way they naturally think about themselves? With all the blame and controversy placed on cultural superstars in today's media, I think it's certainly a worthy question to ask ourselves.
To what extent are we really, fundamentally changed by the touching art of singers, artists, and other entertainment icons?
Monday, November 29, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
Drôles de cultures--Identity and Taking Ourselves Too Seriously
Hi everyone! To start things off, I've changed my blog umbrella. I found that the international personal & political significance of language and how we use it to change the world around us has been a theme in what I've written so far, as opposed to what I originally intended my umbrella subject to be. Therefore, I've changed my blog to be about said international language-focused topics. In case anyone is wondering, the title of this blog means "Words that make us think." That last Arabic word there is the verb for "to think", at least as far as I researched. (If, however, the accuracy police declare that particular verb incorrect, please let me know, and I'll gladly change it.)
Now, onto today's topic. On a lighter note than many of my posts, I'd like to discuss how we define ourselves around the world and provide an example of such. This was sparked by my reading of Reading Lolita in Tehran http://www.bookrags.com/Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran in English class recently. The memoir chronicles the learning process and lives of a group of Iranian women in a secret college course on English literature taught by renowned author Azar Nafisi. The students realize the tremendous legal and familial punishment they would likely suffer if anyone were to find out about and reveal this freeing, individualist, Western literature-studying class, but the promise of being able to express oneself and gain knowledge despite the trappings of the current political society proves too attractive for these girls.
Obviously, however, not everybody needs to define or express themselves within such a serious context. Just as a contemporary Persian woman may strive to proudly represent her individuality at home does not mean an American schoolboy feels the same impetus to actualize himself at whatever cost. And in my personal opinion, especially in terms of a national scale, self-deprecating understanding can help people remain down-to-earth and avoid needless, over proud conflicts (World War One, anybody?). I'm not suggesting that nations or people go around making fun of themselves and others simply so that everyone remains on the same level of low self-esteem. Rather, I'm hoping to point out that sometimes heated conflicts arise because people are too proud of a particular part of their identity and choose to overlook their faults. One could argue that even though the United States found itself in a war in Iraq that was technically illegal in the UN's terms, many of its citizens supported the war simply because America is perfect and deserves the ability to overstep international consensus when international consensus rules not in America's favor.
When thinking of how people could take this approach to simmer down pride and nationalism, comedians immediately come to mind. Lewis Black reigns supreme as America's angry comedic man, arguably never satisfied with the policies of our Head of State. Even men who make a business out of representing a certain slant of America (e.g., Jon Stewart) make satire out of the "foolish" concurrent events in the news and politics. And as always, although effective in reaching and bringing sow audiences down to earth, no one comedian ever truly connects with one hundred per cent of the people he/ she could be speaking to (out of all the people watching TV or at the Theatre). So that inevitably leaves one pocket of viewers who will not be simmered down, who will not lighten up their proud sense of identity.
Then, however, we are encountered with the comedians who cross cultural and national boundaries and make judgment calls or deprecating jokes about other countries. Now, there is a thread of philosophy that teaches that the truest image of oneself comes not from his/her biased image within, but from how his/her actions are perceived from the outside. I, for one, think there's some worth to this idea. But what I wonder is if such a philosophy is effective in the hands of comedians.
I'll give an example, and offer it up to anyone who so wishes to respond with his/her own opinion as to whether or not such humor helps or hurts relations worldwide:
There's a webseries on TV5.ca (an international French language website dedicated to television, culture, history, and French linguistics) that releases a weekly show called (translated) "Funny Cultures". It is presented solely by Boucar Diouf, a black man from somewhere in the French colonial diaspora whose mission statement is to "invite us to laugh about our differences in order to better tame them." This week's segment covered the fact that up to 30 % of edible food is thrown away in wealthy countries--avoiding the hungry mouths of poorer, less fortunate peoples as consequence. And from this, Boucar developed his joke: translated, he goes on to say "imagine we had a survey throughout the world asking "what is your opinion about the shortage of food in the rest of the world?" And regardless of the clarity of the question, the investigation amounted to jack squat. In Darfur, no one knew what food was. We asked the question in Western Europe, and no one knew what a shortage was. We asked the question in the former Soviet Bloc, and no one had any idea as to what an opinion was. And finally, we posed the question in the U.S., and guess what: no one knew what the rest of the world was." I personally found the joke funny and, if politically incorrect, at least demonstrative of overall wealth and arrogance in certain pockets of the world vs. others.
But now, I leave it to the reader: Are you truly offended when someone points out your country's weak spots? What about when a comedian makes fun of an individual trait of yours? Do you agree that, no matter how offended you may be, the is almost always something to learn about identity from the outside? And in this case, was Boucar effective in helping us to understand the unequal status of the world without deeply offending anyone's identity?
In case anyone wants to watch Boucar's video, la voici: http://www.tv5.ca/webvideo/droles-de-cultures-c-est-la-famine-qui-fait-immigrer-le-sondage-2434.html
Now, onto today's topic. On a lighter note than many of my posts, I'd like to discuss how we define ourselves around the world and provide an example of such. This was sparked by my reading of Reading Lolita in Tehran http://www.bookrags.com/Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran in English class recently. The memoir chronicles the learning process and lives of a group of Iranian women in a secret college course on English literature taught by renowned author Azar Nafisi. The students realize the tremendous legal and familial punishment they would likely suffer if anyone were to find out about and reveal this freeing, individualist, Western literature-studying class, but the promise of being able to express oneself and gain knowledge despite the trappings of the current political society proves too attractive for these girls.
Obviously, however, not everybody needs to define or express themselves within such a serious context. Just as a contemporary Persian woman may strive to proudly represent her individuality at home does not mean an American schoolboy feels the same impetus to actualize himself at whatever cost. And in my personal opinion, especially in terms of a national scale, self-deprecating understanding can help people remain down-to-earth and avoid needless, over proud conflicts (World War One, anybody?). I'm not suggesting that nations or people go around making fun of themselves and others simply so that everyone remains on the same level of low self-esteem. Rather, I'm hoping to point out that sometimes heated conflicts arise because people are too proud of a particular part of their identity and choose to overlook their faults. One could argue that even though the United States found itself in a war in Iraq that was technically illegal in the UN's terms, many of its citizens supported the war simply because America is perfect and deserves the ability to overstep international consensus when international consensus rules not in America's favor.
When thinking of how people could take this approach to simmer down pride and nationalism, comedians immediately come to mind. Lewis Black reigns supreme as America's angry comedic man, arguably never satisfied with the policies of our Head of State. Even men who make a business out of representing a certain slant of America (e.g., Jon Stewart) make satire out of the "foolish" concurrent events in the news and politics. And as always, although effective in reaching and bringing sow audiences down to earth, no one comedian ever truly connects with one hundred per cent of the people he/ she could be speaking to (out of all the people watching TV or at the Theatre). So that inevitably leaves one pocket of viewers who will not be simmered down, who will not lighten up their proud sense of identity.
Then, however, we are encountered with the comedians who cross cultural and national boundaries and make judgment calls or deprecating jokes about other countries. Now, there is a thread of philosophy that teaches that the truest image of oneself comes not from his/her biased image within, but from how his/her actions are perceived from the outside. I, for one, think there's some worth to this idea. But what I wonder is if such a philosophy is effective in the hands of comedians.
I'll give an example, and offer it up to anyone who so wishes to respond with his/her own opinion as to whether or not such humor helps or hurts relations worldwide:
There's a webseries on TV5.ca (an international French language website dedicated to television, culture, history, and French linguistics) that releases a weekly show called (translated) "Funny Cultures". It is presented solely by Boucar Diouf, a black man from somewhere in the French colonial diaspora whose mission statement is to "invite us to laugh about our differences in order to better tame them." This week's segment covered the fact that up to 30 % of edible food is thrown away in wealthy countries--avoiding the hungry mouths of poorer, less fortunate peoples as consequence. And from this, Boucar developed his joke: translated, he goes on to say "imagine we had a survey throughout the world asking "what is your opinion about the shortage of food in the rest of the world?" And regardless of the clarity of the question, the investigation amounted to jack squat. In Darfur, no one knew what food was. We asked the question in Western Europe, and no one knew what a shortage was. We asked the question in the former Soviet Bloc, and no one had any idea as to what an opinion was. And finally, we posed the question in the U.S., and guess what: no one knew what the rest of the world was." I personally found the joke funny and, if politically incorrect, at least demonstrative of overall wealth and arrogance in certain pockets of the world vs. others.
But now, I leave it to the reader: Are you truly offended when someone points out your country's weak spots? What about when a comedian makes fun of an individual trait of yours? Do you agree that, no matter how offended you may be, the is almost always something to learn about identity from the outside? And in this case, was Boucar effective in helping us to understand the unequal status of the world without deeply offending anyone's identity?
In case anyone wants to watch Boucar's video, la voici: http://www.tv5.ca/webvideo/droles-de-cultures-c-est-la-famine-qui-fait-immigrer-le-sondage-2434.html
Monday, November 15, 2010
Responsibility Across Languages
As someone who speaks two languages and strongly attempts to understand and use another (Spanish), I don't typically find that I'm inhibited from much information by a lack of comprehension of another tongue. That is, unless I search news in Chinese, Arabic, etc.--languages that do not use a Roman alphabet and that do not have fundamental relationships to widely-spoken romance languages. I can go onto a French website, a British website, and to some extent a Spanish one, and understand what's going on in a given article enough to come away with a greater global understanding/ perspective. The thing is, although such focus on language is prominent in places like Western Europe, where taking more than one foreign language in High School is frequently the norm, the same cannot be said for the population of the United States.
Unfortunately, as a nation trying to retain its hold as a global superpower (and the sole global superpower on top of it), the United States faces a drop in legitimacy if its people remain complacent in regards to learning or understanding other people's languages. If the global political-economic arena was not as it currently appears, with nations rising out of relative 2nd-world status/lack of global influence to take larger powers down a couple pegs bit by bit, then this would not be an issue, necessarily. The American people could and have, in large part, gone around using English as a lingua franca without feeling pressured to learn another nation/region's language. But as U.S. power becomes challenged more and more, there is a well-thought sentiment that recognizes the pragmatic and respectful need for Americans to learn more languages. Yet even as this field of thought sprouts and flourishes, the rise of the Internet and universal, translatable communication arises; does the accessibility and translatability of the Internet make our new need to learn other people's language a non-need again?
In my opinion, no. Although the Internet can translate (with some efficiency) almost any worded document, and many news sites come in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic versions with a simple click, there are still large pockets of valuable cultural information, in only native tongues, that slip through the cracks. Many of us have used google docs to, say, translate an English letter into Spanish for a pen pal, but this "many of us" group also knows how awkward those messages come out in the target language. And if you didn't know that, simply try translating Don Quixote into English on Google Translator--prepositions vary by languages and we do not have the same idiomatic phrases. (Example: In French, it rains ropes, not cats and dogs.) So with information that cannot be perfectly translated or that is not translated at all, what do we do? Do we simply assume that the minds that publish things in our own language provide us with equally valuable information, of the same subject, and just hope it's all out there for us to find out our leisure?
Well, no, because primarily, that's arrogant. Assuming that anything of value is published in English as well as its native tongue represents a haughty sentiment from which I recommend we all estrange ourselves. Also, let us not forget that understanding someone else's language can help us understand new aspects and opinions on history, which we know is necessary to learn in order to intelligently plot the future.
In an example relating to history, we frequently (and in my case, very recently, with the reading of The Poisonwood Bible) discuss the Congo when learning about European colonization in school. I personally have learned that the Congo is an African country that has long had interactions with European nations, was humanly manipulated and decimated, in parts, by the Belgian colonial machine, and has endured horrendous economic & military manipulation by its own Congolese government almost since inception as an independent nation. But we very infrequently hear about what the state of the Congo is now from a Congolese person. Why? In large part, Congolese people don't speak English. Sure, you can read an article in Time magazine about the after-effects of Mobutu's regime, but that is largely secondhand knowledge and information. Firsthand knowledge comes from communication from a person who has lived the environment, who in this case would speak either French, Lingala, Kikongo, or one of various other languages represented in the Congo. I have a video here that demonstrates my point http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UmCoYsENkc&feature=related. In it, a Congolese comedian does his sketch for a francophone audience in "Festival Juste Pour Rire." While demonstrating his political undercurrent of whites being afraid of blacks, and, in the example of the book "Tintin au Congo" http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/08/21/2009-08-21_too_racey_for_kids_offensive_tintin_book_depicting_africans_as_monkeys_banned_fr.html, a racist work nonetheless accepted and part of a widely loved series of French Belgian (Wallonais) books, we get a view of a modern Congolese citizen that is direct and accurate . He (comedian Eddy King) is a relatively wealthy Congolese man, which is not necessarily the norm, but to say that his opinion is less valid or demonstrative of Congolese people is ignorant of the personal intricacies that make us individuals. To even approach understanding the full breadth of a nation, one must accept all its peoples, socio-economic representatives, and cultural non-pluralities. And, finally, in this case, we cannot do so without the understanding of a specific foreign language.
In a world where legitimacy is increasingly determined by how well you can communicate and understand the needs and powers of others, knowledge of a foreign language roars to the forefront as a necessity. With the rise of the Internet, many things are written in English, but not everything is. And frequently, the real grit of culture--the life juice, the quotidian struggle and beauty, the political beliefs-- are not out there in all their individuality in the language most conducive to anyone who might be listening. To foster positive international relationships, we have to put forth the effort to understand others just as much as they wish to be understood; after all, as the self-espoused wealthiest nation in the world, with the most access to news, technology, and travel, isn't it much easier for us to put forth this necessary effort? Let's be responsible here. Let's own up to our undeniable resources and capability and learn more languages.
Unfortunately, as a nation trying to retain its hold as a global superpower (and the sole global superpower on top of it), the United States faces a drop in legitimacy if its people remain complacent in regards to learning or understanding other people's languages. If the global political-economic arena was not as it currently appears, with nations rising out of relative 2nd-world status/lack of global influence to take larger powers down a couple pegs bit by bit, then this would not be an issue, necessarily. The American people could and have, in large part, gone around using English as a lingua franca without feeling pressured to learn another nation/region's language. But as U.S. power becomes challenged more and more, there is a well-thought sentiment that recognizes the pragmatic and respectful need for Americans to learn more languages. Yet even as this field of thought sprouts and flourishes, the rise of the Internet and universal, translatable communication arises; does the accessibility and translatability of the Internet make our new need to learn other people's language a non-need again?
In my opinion, no. Although the Internet can translate (with some efficiency) almost any worded document, and many news sites come in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic versions with a simple click, there are still large pockets of valuable cultural information, in only native tongues, that slip through the cracks. Many of us have used google docs to, say, translate an English letter into Spanish for a pen pal, but this "many of us" group also knows how awkward those messages come out in the target language. And if you didn't know that, simply try translating Don Quixote into English on Google Translator--prepositions vary by languages and we do not have the same idiomatic phrases. (Example: In French, it rains ropes, not cats and dogs.) So with information that cannot be perfectly translated or that is not translated at all, what do we do? Do we simply assume that the minds that publish things in our own language provide us with equally valuable information, of the same subject, and just hope it's all out there for us to find out our leisure?
Well, no, because primarily, that's arrogant. Assuming that anything of value is published in English as well as its native tongue represents a haughty sentiment from which I recommend we all estrange ourselves. Also, let us not forget that understanding someone else's language can help us understand new aspects and opinions on history, which we know is necessary to learn in order to intelligently plot the future.
In an example relating to history, we frequently (and in my case, very recently, with the reading of The Poisonwood Bible) discuss the Congo when learning about European colonization in school. I personally have learned that the Congo is an African country that has long had interactions with European nations, was humanly manipulated and decimated, in parts, by the Belgian colonial machine, and has endured horrendous economic & military manipulation by its own Congolese government almost since inception as an independent nation. But we very infrequently hear about what the state of the Congo is now from a Congolese person. Why? In large part, Congolese people don't speak English. Sure, you can read an article in Time magazine about the after-effects of Mobutu's regime, but that is largely secondhand knowledge and information. Firsthand knowledge comes from communication from a person who has lived the environment, who in this case would speak either French, Lingala, Kikongo, or one of various other languages represented in the Congo. I have a video here that demonstrates my point http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UmCoYsENkc&feature=related. In it, a Congolese comedian does his sketch for a francophone audience in "Festival Juste Pour Rire." While demonstrating his political undercurrent of whites being afraid of blacks, and, in the example of the book "Tintin au Congo" http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/08/21/2009-08-21_too_racey_for_kids_offensive_tintin_book_depicting_africans_as_monkeys_banned_fr.html, a racist work nonetheless accepted and part of a widely loved series of French Belgian (Wallonais) books, we get a view of a modern Congolese citizen that is direct and accurate . He (comedian Eddy King) is a relatively wealthy Congolese man, which is not necessarily the norm, but to say that his opinion is less valid or demonstrative of Congolese people is ignorant of the personal intricacies that make us individuals. To even approach understanding the full breadth of a nation, one must accept all its peoples, socio-economic representatives, and cultural non-pluralities. And, finally, in this case, we cannot do so without the understanding of a specific foreign language.
In a world where legitimacy is increasingly determined by how well you can communicate and understand the needs and powers of others, knowledge of a foreign language roars to the forefront as a necessity. With the rise of the Internet, many things are written in English, but not everything is. And frequently, the real grit of culture--the life juice, the quotidian struggle and beauty, the political beliefs-- are not out there in all their individuality in the language most conducive to anyone who might be listening. To foster positive international relationships, we have to put forth the effort to understand others just as much as they wish to be understood; after all, as the self-espoused wealthiest nation in the world, with the most access to news, technology, and travel, isn't it much easier for us to put forth this necessary effort? Let's be responsible here. Let's own up to our undeniable resources and capability and learn more languages.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Poisonwood Bible and the Legitimacy in Naming
In The Poisonwood Bible, a now-married Leah finds herself living in the changing political climate of the Congo. Post-Lumumba's death, post Tshombe-expulsion, post-Tshombe re-entry by the orders of Kasavubu, post-Kasavubu firing Tshombe after he wins election, and now, finally, post-military overthrow by Minister of Defense Mobutu. Mobutu, as the story often goes, becomes mad with power over his tenure as Dictator of Zaire. But he begins with intensions that seem legitimate at the beginning--to rename the cities and colonial street names of the old Congo to better represent Sub-Saharan kin and history--but soon drift off course, spiraling into nonsensical and oxymoronic manipulations of language. In the context of Poisonwood, however, Leah finds herself (on page 446) grapppling with the beginning of Mobutu's name-changing legislation. Her thoughts come off as such:
Change all the names of cities on the map-->Become more African.
Understandable.
Change the African name of "Congo" to Zaïre...to make the nation "African-er".
This makes much less sense. But at least we can understand where Mobutu may have been coming from. Mobutu wanted to have an African name never used or manipulated or misspelled by Europeans.
Then, however, the ball was really dropped, when Mobutu decided to call the period of African reclamation of the Congo “l’authenticité” (authenticity, in case you were doubtful). Leah, a speaker of Kikongo, Lingala, and French, likely saw that this was oxymoronic. The term used by Mobutu to call upon the re-Africanization of the Cong—achem, I mean...Zaïre, is French. Not Kikongo. Not Lingala. Not Tshiluba, not Kingwana. .
Leah very clearly demonstrates her lack of respect for these changes, highlighting not only nonnative language use by Mobutu, but also a disrespectful glossing-over of political events, noting, "But what is authentic about it, I keep asking Anatole. Kinsasha's main street is Boulevard the 30th of June, in memeory of that great Independence Day carefully purchased by thousands of pebbles thrown into bowls and carried upriver. How authentic is that? What really became of that vote is another matter, not memorialized in any public place I can see. There is no Boulevard Janvier 17 Mort de Lumumba."
What the book brings up here is obviously that choice of not only physical language but the language of that which one chooses to depict in history is very powerful in setting a background for the day-to-day life of a nation's people. Even, as in this case, for setting up an inauthentic background. This point caused me to wonder, however, where does the government split with the people in terms of language, and why? When claiming to represent the people who were oppressed, why make official the language of their oppressors (French), the language that a markedly small portion of the 55%-61% literate country even knows how to or bothers to speak ? Is this simply to keep legitimacy in the realm of international politics, to claim that the government can communicate in a prominent world language, and that it is thus deserving of attention?
Such reasoning would surprise me, considering Mobutu reduced his government to a kleptocracy in which the Dictator leeched its people’s income for his own good (which entailed palaces, cars, and other luxuries). The great extent of this illegitimacy was exemplified in Mobutu’s defaulting on all his loans to (ex-colonial overlord) Belgium in 1989 (), cancelling development programs in the country and worsening the economic disparity of Zaïre’s populace.
What good is caused, and who does a leader truly represent, when such a leader declares a colonial, non-native, language (which, in this case, brings back memories of terrible manipulation and mutilation, which is not a typo) official? To what extent can the historical removal of nation-changing events (like Lumumba's assasination) in street signs (and, subsequently, a large part of the public sphere) be powerful in controlling the collective memory and thought in a particular society? I know of friends' parents who grew up learning inaccurate, government-fabricated history in their classrooms; they were shocked to learn the truth upon leaving their home nation's education system. In this case, as depicted in the Poisonwood Bible, I think the manipulation and misuse of language demonstrates a particularly powerful example of unjust control by the government.
Whether Mobutu was entirely effective in his manipulation of language or whether he can really be given all the blame for the subsequent pight of the Congolese could be contested, I suppose. Who is to say whether the widely-despised Mobutu achieved his goal of blindfolding the people to his kleptocracy, erasure of history, and international illegitimacy? Who is to say that, if he did succeed, it wasn't the concurrent American government's fault nearly as much as Mobutu's, being that they would support anybody but the somewhat-socialist Lumumba, whose dedication to peace was apparently of no great testament to his worth as a leader? And of course, one could always argue that none of this would have occured without the vicious colonial rule over the Congo by the Belgians. But that's all essentially speculation, and one could always argue that no one could have predicted the full extent to which Zaire would be manipulated by its own leader after Belgium's departure. However, what can definitively be said, as Leah later points out, is that with so much wrong done linguistic, economic, and political levels, and with so many parties involved, that "We have in this story the ignorant, but no real innocents."
Change all the names of cities on the map-->Become more African.
Understandable.
Change the African name of "Congo" to Zaïre...to make the nation "African-er".
This makes much less sense. But at least we can understand where Mobutu may have been coming from. Mobutu wanted to have an African name never used or manipulated or misspelled by Europeans.
Then, however, the ball was really dropped, when Mobutu decided to call the period of African reclamation of the Congo “l’authenticité” (authenticity, in case you were doubtful). Leah, a speaker of Kikongo, Lingala, and French, likely saw that this was oxymoronic. The term used by Mobutu to call upon the re-Africanization of the Cong—achem, I mean...Zaïre, is French. Not Kikongo. Not Lingala. Not Tshiluba, not Kingwana. .
Leah very clearly demonstrates her lack of respect for these changes, highlighting not only nonnative language use by Mobutu, but also a disrespectful glossing-over of political events, noting, "But what is authentic about it, I keep asking Anatole. Kinsasha's main street is Boulevard the 30th of June, in memeory of that great Independence Day carefully purchased by thousands of pebbles thrown into bowls and carried upriver. How authentic is that? What really became of that vote is another matter, not memorialized in any public place I can see. There is no Boulevard Janvier 17 Mort de Lumumba."
What the book brings up here is obviously that choice of not only physical language but the language of that which one chooses to depict in history is very powerful in setting a background for the day-to-day life of a nation's people. Even, as in this case, for setting up an inauthentic background. This point caused me to wonder, however, where does the government split with the people in terms of language, and why? When claiming to represent the people who were oppressed, why make official the language of their oppressors (French), the language that a markedly small portion of the 55%-61% literate country even knows how to or bothers to speak ? Is this simply to keep legitimacy in the realm of international politics, to claim that the government can communicate in a prominent world language, and that it is thus deserving of attention?
Such reasoning would surprise me, considering Mobutu reduced his government to a kleptocracy in which the Dictator leeched its people’s income for his own good (which entailed palaces, cars, and other luxuries). The great extent of this illegitimacy was exemplified in Mobutu’s defaulting on all his loans to (ex-colonial overlord) Belgium in 1989 (), cancelling development programs in the country and worsening the economic disparity of Zaïre’s populace.
What good is caused, and who does a leader truly represent, when such a leader declares a colonial, non-native, language (which, in this case, brings back memories of terrible manipulation and mutilation, which is not a typo) official? To what extent can the historical removal of nation-changing events (like Lumumba's assasination) in street signs (and, subsequently, a large part of the public sphere) be powerful in controlling the collective memory and thought in a particular society? I know of friends' parents who grew up learning inaccurate, government-fabricated history in their classrooms; they were shocked to learn the truth upon leaving their home nation's education system. In this case, as depicted in the Poisonwood Bible, I think the manipulation and misuse of language demonstrates a particularly powerful example of unjust control by the government.
Whether Mobutu was entirely effective in his manipulation of language or whether he can really be given all the blame for the subsequent pight of the Congolese could be contested, I suppose. Who is to say whether the widely-despised Mobutu achieved his goal of blindfolding the people to his kleptocracy, erasure of history, and international illegitimacy? Who is to say that, if he did succeed, it wasn't the concurrent American government's fault nearly as much as Mobutu's, being that they would support anybody but the somewhat-socialist Lumumba, whose dedication to peace was apparently of no great testament to his worth as a leader? And of course, one could always argue that none of this would have occured without the vicious colonial rule over the Congo by the Belgians. But that's all essentially speculation, and one could always argue that no one could have predicted the full extent to which Zaire would be manipulated by its own leader after Belgium's departure. However, what can definitively be said, as Leah later points out, is that with so much wrong done linguistic, economic, and political levels, and with so many parties involved, that "We have in this story the ignorant, but no real innocents."
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