3 quotes
Knowledge belongs to the one who succeeds in mastering a language.
Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (1989)
Language also reveals its power through an insignificant slip of the pen, for no matter how one tries to subject it to control and reduce it to “pure” instrumentality, it always succeeds in giving an inkling of its irreducible governing status.
Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (1989)
The story of man’s infatuation with his language is an unending one. In a remote village of Africa, a wise Dogon man used to say “to be naked is to be speechless.” Power, as unveiled by numerous contemporary writings, has always inscribed itself in language. Speaking, writing, and discoursing are not mere acts of communication; they are above all acts of compulsion.
Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (1989)