COLONIZING IN ENGLISH AND ENGLISH COLONIZED

I. NGUGI WA THIONG'O (Kenya, 1938)
English = Erasure of local
Written, literary, not oral (2536)
Rules and violence rather than communal joy (2537)
Cosmopolitanism not worth loss of local

II. JOHN AGARD (Guyana, 1949)
English = Creates imaginary world (cricket)
2542: "Listen Mr. Oxford Don"

1. Outsider/rebel/apostrophizes
2. Linguistic outlaw (syncopation; pidgin)
3. Metaphors: "mugging," "assault," "incitement"
4. breath = free speech; inspiration
5. English becomes his ally

III. SALMAN RUSHDIE (1947) AND "HYBRIDITY"
--Rushdie and English as an Indian language
--Hybridity as colonizing [2540]
--Similarities with Agard
--East, West (1994) ["...home's best"?]

("Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat "--Rudyard Kipling)

"THE PROPHET'S HAIR"
1. What is the story about?
--The Necessity and functioning of the Sacred for social stability?

2. Narrative Form and Techniques?
Oral Myth self-consciously complicated with wit/humor
a. structure = story within story 2856-60/2845-49;disorienting and spell-binding
b. [2854 + 63/2843 +52] Magical realism?
2858/2847: Hashim possessed by Truth
2863/2852: Sheikh Sin's Sons

3. Hybridity as Inventiveness
a. Hashim = Eastern money lending (2856/2845); Western collecting (2857/2846)
b. Sheikh Sin = bogeyman or businessman (2855-56/2844)
c. Eastern (Muslim) myth is spliced with Western (Christian) parable (2863/2852)

4. The Sacred restored: Hashim self-destructs; wife goes mad; son and daughter killed; Thief of Thieves killed by police, sons are punished with restoration of their crippled limbs; and only the elderly blind wife regains sight and the pleasure of natural beauty.