Decolonising the Mind

Ngũgĩ's 1986 manifesto on language, literature, and the African mind

Tradition: Late-twentieth-century anglophone African literature / postcolonial theory

Ngũgĩ's 1986 manifesto — "Decolonising the Mind" — language and the African writer

Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's 1986 manifesto, based on his 1984 Robb Lectures at Auckland. In four chapters — "The Language of African Literature", "The Language of African Theatre", "The Language of African Fiction", "The Quest for Relevance" — Ngũgĩ argues that genuine decolonization requires writing African literature in African languages (he himself shifted from English to Gikuyu starting with Caitaani Mũtharaba-Inĩ (Devil on the Cross), 1980). Foundational for late-twentieth-century postcolonial theory; the culminating reference point of the Ontological Atlas — a literature still being made.