I started writing this as a response in the discussion entitled
"Is the Discovery Channel racist?", but then I decided to open a new topic on the general question of language, racism and colonialism. Though I'm beginning the discussion with an example and my analysis of one perhaps rather subtle relation between language and racist/colonialist attitudes, I would welcome more general discussion.
I was at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. a few days ago, and I
noticed that all six gorillas have African names: Haloko, Mandara,
Kigali, Baraka, Kwame and Kojo. Apparently this naming is very common
and includes captured gorillas and those born in zoos. Rwanda also now
has an annual gorilla-naming ceremony for animals born in national
parks. In American zoos, African names make a certain sense as a way
of acknowledging the animals' origin. Along with giving visitors a
concrete picture of bio-diversity, it seems to me that zoos can try to
heighten visitors' geographic awareness. (I guess this doesn't always
work: in the small mammal house I overheard one man saying, "It's a
rat. It's another rat." His southern accent lent this an unfortunate
comic effect, of which he seemed pretty aware.)
In spite of the
obvious reasons for giving African names to the gorillas, I think this
naming is also related to the kind of racist representations shown in the Discovery Channel discussion. In
particular, there seem to be two things at work:
First, there is
the equation African=ape, which has historically focused on supposed
physiognomic resemblances and has always associated Africans with
animals and primitiveness.
Second, there is a more subtle but
perhaps more damning appeal that we can locate by thinking about the
interest in the meaning of names, which I find frequently accompanies
western uses of languages like Swahili. For instance, the National
Zoo's baby gorilla, Kibibi, was named by public vote among three
Swahili names. On the zoo's website, we read, "The name, pronounced
kee-BEE-bee, means 'little lady.' Kipenzi (meaning 'loved one') was a
close second, and Keyah ('good health') was a distant third." I want
to suggest that this interest in name-meanings has a rather specific
appeal, which may be part of the reason that modern missionary groups
sometimes adopt names like Rafiki Foundation -- though in that case it
would be worth at least noting that the foundation predates Disney's
movie
The Lion King, which I think uses names like Rafiki to
much the same effect. I think also of the Baraka School, which offers
African-American children from poor neighborhoods of Baltimore a chance
to attend school in Kenya.
The appeal of these names, I suggest,
is in the way this linguistic interest produces and conceals an
asymmetric symbolic relation to the African racial/cultural other.
First of all, using African names lets you acknowledge the otherness of
Africa while elevating yourself above it: I am a sophisticated,
sensitive westerner who knows this African word. But there is usually
no question of learning an African language; the words is a curio. One
thereby claims an African language as something one can talk about:
'Rafiki' means "friend," 'Baraka' means "blessing," etc. This relation
between languages is not imagined as symmetric. The particular words
chosen ('Baraka' is very popular) also strike me as involving a kind of
continued linguistic colonization that tries to find Christian ideas in
African languages. In these cases it is not so much a way of
establishing the possibility of communication by finding similar
concepts, but rather a way of picking and choosing a new
African-Christian vocabulary, as though these languages were there all
along, just waiting to be redeemed by contact with the west. Finally,
there is often a kind of paternalism in this use of African names,
which imagines Africans not as animals but as children.
Recognizing
these two tendencies obviously doesn't mean blaming every use of
Swahili (or, if you can imagine it, some other African language) in
America or Europe. As I've said, there are also good reasons why you
might want to use African names for gorillas. But in the zoo I
couldn't help feeling that the problematic relation to African
languages needed some kind of acknowledgment.
I also noticed
that only one of the six orangutans had an Indonesian/Malay name
(Batang); the others have names like Bonnie, Iris, Kiko, Kyle and
Lucy. These are also pretty funny in a certain way; maybe naming zoo
animals involves you in a double bind. (I should add that apparently
there was once a gorilla named Gus; Kigali is his daughter with
Mandara.)
