There’s No Place Like Home: Only Somewhere In-Between, Part II
by Péjú Oshin AFHEA
With the concept of home and language being so inextricably linked, I think of Audre Lorde’s essay ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’ in reinforcing the need to generate new language.[1]
There are valuable exchanges to be had with artists and writers on the content in an anticipated bid for ‘transnationalism’, which perhaps seems kinder than the proposition of globalisation and poses the continued possibilities of shared experiences among a global diaspora. In Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o talks of the importance of using African language to talk about African literature: ‘We African writers are bound by our calling to do for our languages what Spencer, Milton and Shakespeare did for English… indeed what all writers in world history have done for their language by meeting the challenge of creating…which process later opens the language for philosophy, science, technology and all other areas of human creative endeavors.’[1]
Péjú Oshin in conversation with Nicole Rafiki (2021)
He goes on to assert that although this act alone won’t solve things entirely, we must find a way to unite which will in turn help us to maintain our multi-lingual diversity while exposing the links that connect us globally. I think about how we might apply this approach practically to working with the previously mentioned trifactor of art, artist and audience, with specific reference to art which emerges from the African diaspora. What is African Art and who is allowed to create it? What bearing does my geography have when putting work and ideas out into the world?
This process is not an easy one as it is rooted in a consensus, which we are yet to agree on, and wrapped in nuance. Perhaps in a world where we cling so tightly to our national identities because the majority of things are in flux, unity, although required, is menacing because it necessitates a relinquishing of control and a temporary, perhaps permanent, occupancy of the in-between that voids us of an absoluteness.
Péjú Oshin in conversation with Nicole Rafiki (2021)
We are constantly between nowhere and evidently somewhere; our lives are shaped by language and how we use it or don’t and marred by consistently I sometimes wonder if it is safer to consider ourselves as like the fresh clay that we take from the earth to process and turn into bricks – I am filled with a warmth in thinking about these transitional processes. I reflect on the work of artist Dineo Seshee Bopape in thinking about her use of commonplace materials such as bricks and the use of soil, clay and other materials in her work And- In. The Light of This_____ (2017).
“Home is how we anchor ourselves in the world, but we often forget to acknowledge the complexities of this four-letter, two-syllable word.”
The work includes casts of a womb, uterus, healing herbs and minerals as well as pieces of molded clay and is pertinent as it is part of an ongoing enquiry within her work that explores the concept of sovereignty – land, body and the metaphysics of nothingness through the exploration of ideas and forms of containment and displacement, and the socio-historical politics of landlessness.
The latter is the basis for fertile ground in my chain of thoughts. Our experiences are complex and cannot be theorised by those who have not lived them. Here we start the process of (re)birthing ourselves in these lands once again, a process that exists in both public and private spheres, because within this grand work of self-introspection is a collective endeavour to be seen as whole – individually and collectively. Whole like soft like clay which, even as smaller forms are created from it, isn’t regarded as being any lesser but looked at with awe for being the source of multiple objects of beauty and substance.
“Our experiences are complex and cannot be theorised by those who have not lived them. ”
Home is how we anchor ourselves in the world, but we often forget to acknowledge the complexities of this four-letter, one-syllable word. It is a paradox: weighty like the anchor of the ships that carried our dearly departed ancestors, yet light as the air around us because it is a concept that we carry with us, that morphs into a flagpole that we plant into the ground on arrival at our next destination. It flickers in the wind that started as air, gently brushing over our skin, caused by the pressure of movement between two places.
Péjú Oshin´s book Between Words & Space - a collection of poetry and prose (2021) is available for purchase at pejuoshin.com. Photo: RAI
We are constantly between nowhere and evidently somewhere; our lives are shaped by language and how we use it or don’t and marred by consistently inconsistent quantities which are weighed up as being too much or not quite enough as we exist in contexts where we are labeled as minorities. As we tread the path to creating a language and, by ripple effect, conditions that best suit us, can we look at the beauty that can be found in the poetry of our mother tongues? I ponder this pursuit as there are elements of these languages that cannot be translated, for the sentiment is so nuanced that it can only be felt and therefore not spoken.
We are creating something new, just like those before us and the ones that will come after us, as we acknowledge that our cultures are shifting, and they do so right in front of our eyes. We are the custodians of the now, arranging and archiving the moments that will be exhibited in our collective histories in years to come as we strive to make meaning from the Black, African, diasporic, Afropolitan and transnational and the plethora of words that await their ascent into the world.
[1] Audre Lorde, ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’, Crossing Press, Berkeley, California, 1984, available https://collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Lorde_The_Masters_Tools.pdf.
[1] Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, Heinemann Educational, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1986, p.29.