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16.04.2011

Symposium in Honor of Abdilatif Abdalla on 5/6 May 2011 in Leipzig

  • Ort: Leipzig
  • Beginn: 05.05.11
  • Ende: 06.05.11
  • Disziplinen: Literaturwissenschaft, Medien-/Kulturwissenschaft
  • Sprachen: Sprachenübergreifend

“Deep Language“ Crossing Borders: Exploring the Use of Culture as Resource

in Political Activism and Resistance in Africa and Elsewhere

Symposium in Honor of Abdilatif Abdalla on 5/6 May 2011 in Leipzig,

Germany

 

The choice of language is inevitably connected to the purpose the specific language can serve. In political resistance the choice is particularly delicate. Although both, the speaker/writer as well as the situation towards which the resistance is directed are embedded in a certain cultural and therefore linguistic setting other languages or other modes of language might be

required. What are the conditions under which cultural expressions, used as a means for resistance, can become accessible to an international community? What kinds of transformation processes are required to make local or localized symbolic orders accessible to a globalized public sphere in order to address the international community and thus gain support? Inherent in these questions is the assumption that those who are in need of support are the ones who have to overcome linguistic and cultural boundaries. While this seems to be a truism and a ‘fact of life’, it is exacerbated by the colonial heritage of a dependent language bias where it is felt that because ‘Africa’ constitutes ‘the other’ of the ‘West’, expressions in African languages are, in fact, in need of ‘translation’. What, then, does it take, that the international

community is prepared to listen? How do activists with different backgrounds choose to moderate this balancing act between the local of expression and the global of solidarity?

 

Abdilatif Abdalla who was the first political prisoner in independent Kenya and who this symposium is to honor has perceived a more pressing purpose for his language use in political resistance from within Kenya: veiling the message. Using his cultural and social background of belonging to the patrician elite of urban Swahili culture, of being a mwungwana, he was able

to counter the assault on his personal and political integrity during solitary confinement by writing poetry in Kimvita. The knowledge of poetry, and the ability to condense thoughts and topics by means of the rigid principles of Swahili poetry, leading to what also known as lugha ya ndani – ‘deep language’, is one of the cornerstones of being Swahili.

 

The symposium will give a voice to many of Abdalla’s friends and acquaintances including Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o who have worked with him, who know about the linguistic and cultural struggles involved in political resistance and who are looking forward to honor Abdilatif Abdalla.

 

Preliminary Program

 

Thursday, 5th May 2011: Bibliothek Albertina, Beethovenstraße

9.00-9.30 Welcome (Vice-Rector of the University of Leipzig)

9.30-10.30 Laudationes Abdilatif Abdalla (Gudrun Miehe, colleagues and friends)

10.30-12.00 Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Keynote Speech

12.00-12.30 coffee break

12.30-13.30 Sheikh Abdilahi Nassir: (Hope and despair in Kenyan politics during and after Independence)

Kai Kresse: Sauti ya wasiotosheka: Voice of the discontent - the writer, politics and Swahili intellectual practice

13.30-15.00 lunch break

15.00-16.00 Mohamed Bakari: The poetics of Abdilatif’s agony

Ken W. Walibora: Doing things with words in prison poetry in Abdilatif Abdalla’s Sauti ya Dhiki

 

Villa Ida/Medienstiftung, Poetenweg 28

19.00 Reading: Abdilatif Abdalla,

Introduction and translation: Irmtraud Herms, Marion Feuerstein-Tubach

 

Friday, 6th May 2011 Bibliothek Albertina, Beethovenstraße

9.00-10.30 Farouk Topan: Uungwana: Thoughts, deeds and appearances

N.N.: (Lugha ya Ndani)

Said A.M. Khamis: (On translation)

10.30-11.00 coffee break

11.00-12.00 Ridder Samsom: (On translation)

Ekkehard Wolff: Language in Africa – between the local and the global

12.00-14.00 lunch break

14.00-15.30 Ahmed Rajab: (Politics)

Walter Bgoya: (Translating politics)

Wangui Wa Goro: Translation as a tool for democracy and human rights

15.30-16.00 coffee break

16.00-18.00 Panel Discussion: “Kenya – Twendapi?” – “Kenya – where are we heading to?” 1968-2011

Moderation Helmut Asche

Film: Mnazi vuta n’kuvute (Abdilatif Abdalla/Khamis Ramadhan)

18.00 closing of conference (Rose Marie Beck)

Von:  Claudia Böhme

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