The articles do affirm that there are always other ways of seeing and

knowing about the space that is called Africa, Zimbabwe in particular,

and the ‘different spaces’ that constitute the multiple framings that the

intended audiences would have to imbibe “or” and contend with. I urge

our audiences and readership to look at the papers/conversations from a

plethora of angles in light of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s theory of

“The dangers of a single story”. Truth/ fact is relative in this regard, so

are the epistemological and ontological bases upon which the selected

articles/conversations are framed and structured. The conundrum of tree

and forest quickly comes to mind. Depending on the objectives of the

study around which individual conversations herein are framed, there

could be risk of dwelling on the individual tree and its characteristics at

the expense of the forest and its whole topography and vice versa.  

Similarly critical, the contexts within which the framing of the

conversations are structured, including their primary sources, can only be

appreciated socio-culturally and historically for fuller ‘understanding’.

The whole debate about ‘memorialisation’ and literature as the repository

of memory comes into focus (Andre Brink in an interview with Maree,

1999: 42). We end up with a maze around memory, literature,

storification and the language that is used to package the same, not as

mere linguistic particles, but as markers of socio-cultural and historical

meanings within the context of storifying experiences as repositories of

history and vice versa. The literariness of the ‘creative’ ability of language,

as part of dialogue with/within eminent texts come to the fore, thus

stressing the intertwined nature of the contributors’ conversations and

the pieces that they critique using selected frameworks of their choice.

Whorf (1956: 147) buttresses the individuals’ mediation of meanings

through their native languages: “individual’s conception of the world…is

intimately related to the nature of his native language”.  Languages and

the texts that they create are as political as they are social and vice versa. 

In view of the multiple indigenous languages and “cultural dissimilarities” across the geographical space called Africa and its

Diaspora, there are no short-cuts to excavating and conversing and dialoguing with African Languages and related Literary Studies, more so

with the histories of impositions of alien epistemologies that strive to

perpetuate Western hegemony over the African continent, albeit subtle

and beguiling in the ‘post-colonial’ period. The field of African Languages and Literary Studies, that partly constitute the intangible heritage of the African peoples on the continent and the Diaspora, is too vast to be an exclusive preserve of specialised scholars, let alone thinkers,cultural gurus, as well as knowledge creators.  Nonetheless, the foregoing admission is cognisant of the African intellectual spaces that the

contributors are carving out vis-à-vis the purely European angle and lenses that have been predominantly used to traverse, navigate, judge, evaluate and appreciate African experiences and narratives, including their underlying epistemologies and ontologies, hence the contestations. 

Most important in my present discussion are the areas of social

knowledge that the contributors to the present volume expose and explore

as they contribute to building the knowledge base about the disciplines

we are currently intersecting and interacting with. I do appropriate a

number of voices in respect of areas of Social knowledge of which

language is a kingpin, not in itself, but as immersed and embedded in the

very experiences, psychological perceptions, framings and symbolisms

that languages propagate. Gadamer cited by Kearney (1995: 262, cited in

the UNISA online Module, Language through an African Lens, 2020)

emphasises language as fundamental to understanding. He argues that

understanding “must be historically and linguistically mediated…We are

always partners in dialogue…” As shown in the articles and

conversations initiated in the present Journal Issue, texts and the

symbolic framing that they project are part of a unified whole.

Atomisation of linguistic features alone outside the social meanings, and

indeed political and spiritual as well as intellectual meanings, risks

misreading of the envisioned messages. 

The contributors to the current volume delve into the narrativised

experiences of some of the black women drawn from Zimbabwe as

representative of others from some African communities. They also look

into divergent disruptions in diverse African communities and the

underlying causes. In its dexterity, the volume brings together an

intersection of voices that speak to the framing, symbolism and shifting

constructions in ‘storifying’ the struggles for emancipation and fighting

for ‘space’ and agency from the margins within some African spaces that

depict subordination and subjugation. The different conversations

constituting the present volume subject Zimbabwe under some intense

spotlight. Why Zimbabwe could be receiving such attention and framing

could be stemming from the internal complexities heightened by

scatterings of the Zimbabweans across the globe against the earlier

bravado that Zimbabwe as a state has exuded and continues to exude. 

The perceived bravado against the backdrop of hegemonic international

powers vis-à-vis some subterranean discourses about shifting identities,

patriotism, struggles for equality and emancipation, as well as artists’ first

hand ‘storification’ of  lived historical experiences cast novel images

about intra- and extra-personal relationships, over and above injecting

fresh ideas about agency, as well as ‘being and becoming’, aspects that

the genocide literature from Namibia bring into conversation.  

Framing and symbolism is drawn from the underbelly of the

popularised official narratives as they intersect with the recovered

subterranean discourses embedded in the writings of the selected writers’

stories that the contributors use in their discussions. Suffice to state that

the selected writers depict the images and framing of experiences from

the margins. For instance, such titling as Without a name or We need new

names, A Grain of Wheat or more vexing, Harvest of thorns and The scattering,

among others.  And how about Mothers’ Day messages by and among

Zimbabweans posted on WhatsApp? What shifts doe we find in the

framing of the Mother symbol? 

The margins signify inferiorisation, exclusion, marginalisation and at

times manipulation and exploitation since positionality in itself is

symbolic. The present articles, thus, represent mediation to subvert the

ascribed framing, in some cases as is the case with Nyoni’s exploration of

messages and depictions of Mothers Day from selected posts by

Zimbabweans. Whatsapp framing and imaging using an open-ended

social media vehicle certainly constructs new meanings of Mother within

an intersection of globally-mediated experiences. The lenses used to view

Mother in the Mothers Day messages is not fixated culturally, bringing in

different social meanings that interact with the ‘native’ meaning of

Mother. Is the quest for Mother’s Day emancipation in tandem with that

of emancipation in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novels Matigari and A grain of

Wheat? How about the framing of ‘Mother’ and social relationships in

Without a name, We need new names and Butterfly burning? The pervasive

grains and shifts speak to the social and historical contexts and memory

that Whorf, Gadamer and Brink cited earlier wish to be considered when

audiences dialogue with articles and literary texts, particularly the

symbolic framing through mediated language as a means of conveying

‘meaning’ and ‘understanding’.

Could the post-colonial dismemberment and intra-racial

cannibalisation of the marginalised explored in Matigari be universalised

across the African states and with what justification? The underpinning

materialities do expose some lacuna. A question that I wish to pause here

is: Can we discuss African Languages and Literary Studies as a unified

universal entity using borrowed alien and imposed conceptual

frameworks?  What could be the ‘ideal conceptual framework’ for

studying and appreciating different framings and thematic lines depicted

about Africa and the African Diaspora? Can the African Diaspora

citizens be framed within the same symmetry as the Global North

citizens and why? That Pennycook and Makoni (2019) uphold the Global

South categorisation as people, places and ideas that have been left out

of the grand narrative of modernity [and revered knowledge economies],

is pertinent.  

As epistemological and ontological debates about the relationships

between the Global North and the Global South continue uncoiling,

what stands out clearly is that no single family of humankind holds

monopoly of knowledge, regardless of innumerable claims of superiority

within schools of thought elsewhere. In view of the fact that language is

continuous mediation and dialogue with each other orally in

communication and in written texts, audiences/readers are cajoled by the

present collection of articles to revisit histories of mainstream narratives,

intolerance, exclusion, marginalisation, disenfranchisement and agency

that some of the conversations in the present volume address. I use

‘conversations’ because there is no single reading to any of the said

narrative and contribution that each of the said articles proffers,

including the views that they solicit from their respective audiences and

readers. The entanglements in historical experiences, even as claims to

physical and intellectual spaces, dreams and hopes continue to be

contested terrains, similarly, conceptions of “being and becoming”

continue shifting. So are the memorialisations and storifications of the

same, making the symbolic relative. 

 

Conclusion

 

Claims to monopoly of knowledge have created dystopic images of

human experiences, identities, dreams, civilisations, including visions of

the future and how much people can do for themselves and for future

generations. Could there be a single ideal framework for discoursing

shifts in ‘being’ and becoming, identities and ‘framing Mother’ within the multiple ‘storifications’ and ‘memorialisation’ of memory and

experiences, dreams, hopes and futures that the contributors and their

respective conversations herein grapple with? Aime Cesaire’s Notebook of

a Return to My Native Land aptly summarises my erstwhile view of

everyone meeting at the rendezvous of knowledge. African folklore

expresses it even more succinctly when it observes that there is enough

room for every bird to fly in the sky without colliding. The current

edition of JoALLS is but a minute fraction in the construction of the

knowledge economies about African Languages and Literary Studies,

hence our desire to include more discourses and conversations that do

enhance deeper appreciation of the language disciplines and numerous

accompanying literary genres. 

 

 

References

 

Adichie, C. N.  2009.    “The danger of a single story”. 

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=Adichie%2C+C.+N.+%E2%80

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me..69i57j33i22i29i30l2.11106j0j15&sourc.  Accessed 28 March 2021  

Bulawayo, N. 2013. We need new names. New York: Reagan Arthur

Books, Little, Brown and Company. 

Brink, A. 1999. Cited in an interview with Maree, S. on “Self-translation”. 

André Brink - Self-translation.self-translation.blogspot.com › 2009/07 ›

andre-brink. Accessed 28 March 2021. 

 

Cesaire, A.  1995. Notebook of a Return to My Native Land. Newcastle

upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books Ltd. 

Gadamer H. G. cited in Kearney, R. 1995. “Narrative imagination:

between ethics and poetics”. Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 21

( 5-6): 173-190. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0191453795021005-613 

Kubuitsile, L. 2016. The scattering. Cape Town, South Africa: Penguin.

Pennycook, A and Makoni, S. 2019. Innovations and Challenges in 

Applied Linguistics from the Global South. London: Routledge.

UNISA online Module, Language through an African Lens, 2020. 

Accessed August 2020

Vera, Y.    1994. Without a Name, New York: Farrar, Strauss and 

 

Giroux. 1998. Butterfly Burning, New York: Farrar, Strauss and

Giroux. 

Wa Thiong’o, N.  1967. A grain of wheat. London: Heinemann._   1987.   

Matigari. London: Heinemann. 

Whorf, B. L. 1956.  Language, thought, and reality: selected writings. Cambridge,

Mass.: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.