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 Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** (Re: zoul"ibn"zoul)
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First, I would like to thank my friends ‘Foolish beat’ and ‘Mohammed Ashraf’ for gratefully publishing the article in their spaces. First I need to say to Adil Osman : Thumbs up to you man not only because you put the thrust of the matter in the right track but also because you put three challenging and fantastic questions each of which may need a PhD size to tackle:
1. Exemplification of the dominant discourse in Sudan.
2. The way the general public interacts with it and responds to its message
3. How the public participates in its reproduction.
We will debate them in the very near future.
To my friend Mohamed Ashraf: Yes you are right, the article my need translation into Arabic to avoid any linguistic imperialism on my part and to widen the scope of participation, I will see to it.
I find it a matter of urgency to respond to ZOOL ‘ibn’ ZOOL.
Dear Zool ‘ibin-Zool.
In the beginning, I noticed that you are claiming that ‘multilgualism’ leads to multiculturalism’. Although it’s unclear to me where you get this fallacy from, it still reflects an opinion that deserves to get right. Firstly, the compartmentalisation between the ‘culture’ and ‘language’, or the causal relationship you’ve drawn between them ‘i.e. one leads to another’ is a faulty conception. In fact it indicates a historically inherited myth introduced by nationalists in the beginning of 19th and implemented blindly to build nations in Africa. To put in another way, the hegemonic rhetoric was that people can adopt a national language that is dictated by whoever in power without losing their historical statements or cultural practices. Although, I’m not claiming that there is a NECESSARY one-to-one correlation between a language and its culture so as to avoid any sense of determinism (i.e. we are made to think the way we do because of the language we speak), there is still a relativism that governs the bond between them. You could have recalled the classical definition that language reflects and refracts power and class struggle (you can see Voloshinov 1973: Marxism and Philosophy of Language), let alone the discoursal one that language produces and reproduces power. Although you don’t have to align yourself politically with each school of thought, you still need to speculate. It is no surprise that you see multiculturalism as problematic and as an obstacle in the process of understanding and uniting. In fact this is another fantasy introduced and perpetuated by the nation-builders and their cronies in Sudan through the manipulation of the machineries of education and mass media. They believed that when disparate people are made to speak one language, the sense of nationalism could easily be cultivated. But you can adopt a problmetising practice and asks yourself: why on earth do the southerners or even the westerners have to adopt a particular package of linguistic and cultural practices that are not theirs? Why do they have to cry their local languages and cultures for the sake of the ‘Otherness’? This is an essentialism that leads to some kind of Hitlerism as practised by current power holders. Secondly, I noticed that your rhetoric lacks historicism (i.e. the tendency to regard historical development as the most basic aspect of human existence) which may be a by-product of some sort of histrionics. More specifically, you restrict multiculturalism exclusively to the south and that is not true. The North itself was and still is multicultural in that there are at least three living languages in the very North of Sudan (Dongolese + Mahas + Halfaween’s), let alone the plethora of languages in west Sudan. In fact the Ethnologue (an official website which lists the living languages of the world) reports that in Sudan there are 142 languages, of which 134 are living languages and eight are extinct (asp?name=Sudan>Ethnologue, 2004). Thirdly, your claim that Canada and Belgium are suffering because of the multiculturalism puzzles me. You could have backed up your claim by whatever means you can. In Canada, the region of Quebec is the main region which applies a bilingual policy in that it uses French besides English. In fact the Canadian constitution itself has safeguarded the lingo-cultural ecology of the region. Belgium has set a fantastic example not only in that it has applied a pluralistic policy (Flemish + French+ German) but also because it has applied a decentralised (federal) structural system. Finally, you conclude your mock-serious comments by declaring that “Separation is a good option for those who might not want to live under one Arabic language and culture”. It is remarkable there is flagrant linguicism (parallel to racism) in this sentence. May I ask you a simple question: who you are to put such an essentialist proclamation? Where did you get this god-given right to decide on behalf of the masses? The aloofness in your tone says that the country has a particular owner who decides who to join in and under what conditions. No my friend, the marginalised and disadvantaged people had enough and they have no tears to cry over the spilt milk, and they are not prepared to cry their beloved history any more. No categorically to the centralisation that is coupled with the illegitimate power which serve the interests of a particular class of power holders and elites, and which grants itself the god-given power to decide the fate of local cultural and linguistic practices of the country. Neither the south nor the west has delegated the right to secessionism to a handful of power holders and mythical nation-builders.
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| العنوان |
الكاتب |
Date |
 *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | Foolish beat | 08-30-04, 07:40 AM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | Adil Osman | 08-30-04, 12:01 PM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | zoul"ibn"zoul | 08-30-04, 03:27 PM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | noha_g | 09-01-04, 04:46 PM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | zoul"ibn"zoul | 09-01-04, 04:55 PM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | Ashraf Kamal | 09-01-04, 09:11 PM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | zoul"ibn"zoul | 09-03-04, 07:53 PM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | Ashraf Kamal | 09-06-04, 03:20 AM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | Ashraf Kamal | 09-06-04, 03:55 AM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | zoul"ibn"zoul | 09-06-04, 07:18 PM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | Ashraf Kamal | 09-07-04, 01:33 AM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | noha_g | 09-07-04, 02:45 AM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | Ashraf Kamal | 09-13-04, 01:32 AM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | zoul"ibn"zoul | 09-07-04, 06:06 PM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | Deng | 09-07-04, 06:36 PM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | noha_g | 09-08-04, 09:49 PM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | zoul"ibn"zoul | 09-09-04, 06:32 PM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | noha_g | 09-16-04, 03:01 AM |
| Re: *** The Imperialism of Sudan Northern Arabic Language and Culture *** | zoul"ibn"zoul | 09-12-04, 06:32 AM |
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