As is well known, the biblical sixth commandment, “Thou shall not kill”, is intimately linked to the First Commandment, “I am the Lord”. By linking the two at the top of Moses's two-column table, language is given priority: the name of God can be uttered only when the possibility of death has been set aside. In this way, the linking of these two commandments marks not only the birth of language, but also, more importantly, the start of ethics. As such, commandments one and six form the basis of practically all Western ethics from Kant's categorical imperative (the unconditional maxim needs a First Word to enter into force) to Lyotard's language games (for which all utterances are charged with the moral imperative to respond), for example. But how on earth does this famous linguistic and ethical structure fare in a context whereby the written text is not given priority, in a situation where prohibitions are inherited orally? This paper will attempt to expose the thorny issue of the role of the sixth commandment in the context of Rwanda. This will imply neither the exposition of the history of the arrival of the Bible in Rwanda nor the way it helped to consolidate the colonial regime. This paper will also not examine the neglect of the prohibition against murder during the genocide of 1994. Instead, the essay will examine the linguistic and cultural problems one faces when determining the birth of ethics in two radically different contexts.

Using theorists such as Deleuze, Guattari and Heidegger, this essay is a critique of Ngugi wa Thiong'o's much publicized decision to write in Gikuyu rather than English, the language Ngugi condemns as the instrument of colonialism and its successor, neo-imperialism. In line with Deleuze and Guattari's argument that Kafka's work is best apprehended as the determination to make German bear the full weight of his “minor” (as a Czech Jew) experience, this essay elucidates the ways in which Ngugi's ostensibly political turn is unable to write what it means to live, in Deleuze and Guattari's phrase, “in another's language”. To live, that is, the experience of “dislocation” (a rubric which would include colonialism and the failures of African sovereignty, not least among them) from one's own language (however provisional and contingent such a claim on language always is) as the first – necessary – condition of making literature. Of making language bear the weight of the very experience it is intent on denying articulation.

Tanzanian novelist and philosopher Euphrase Kezilahabi strives to “dismantle the resemblance of language to the world” (1985: 216) through challenging the fundamental philosophical dichotomy of subject and object. The result of this dismantling will be a new “language whose foundation is Being” (Kezilahabi 1991: 69; lugha ambayo msingi wake ni kuwako). This is an expression of a new relationship between humanity and Being built on a holistic epistemology of experience and embodiment. Through “kuwako”, Kezilahabi expresses in Swahili the Heideggerian concept of Sein (Being). His adherence to Heidegger, however, puts him at risk of compromising the very foundation of his own philosophy: his continued critique of essentialism. This article argues that Kezilahabi salvages his concept of “kuwako” from these essentialist pitfalls precisely through his declared “destructive rather than deconstructive stand vis-à-vis the Western philosophy of value and representation” (Kezilahabi 1985: 4). The destruction is implemented on the thematic level: a phase of “vurumai” (chaos) which destroys previous traditions of philosophy is staged in Nagona. However, translation is an even more powerful device to carry out this destruction: “kuwako” is not an innocent reiteration but a radical reformulation of Heidegger's central philosophical concept, decisively informed by Kezilahabi's lifelong propensity for existentialism.

This article explores the ways in which African American Mercer Cook's translation practice reflects complex overlaps between his professional/personal selves and an ideological backdrop that encompasses black internationalism, US race struggles and mid-twentieth-century diplomatic relations with Africa. A first section explores how Cook, a university professor of French, uses what he terms the “close-to-home” value of translation in order to expose his African American students to what has been written about them in French. At the same time, translation is seen by him as essential to building a “shared elsewhere” where his students can reflect on their place within a black world that is neither nation-bound nor monolingual. A second section examines the way in which Cook's translation practice is inflected by his role as US ambassador in francophone West Africa during the 1960s. In this context, the convergence of US civil rights with official US Cold War policy on postcolonial African states is key to understanding Cook's stance as a translator and the way in which he seeks diplomatically to propel his translations of L.S Senghor's texts towards a racially riven US readership.

This article focuses on Georges Balandier's autobiographical essay Afrique ambiguë (1957). Its translation into English, Ambiguous Africa: Cultures in Collision (1966), provides the basis for an examination of the concept of translation in its linguistic but also, and above all, transcultural dimensions. As a text, Ambiguous Africa does not quite render the subtlety of the French original but beyond its translational shortcomings, Balandier's book is also shown to conduct an in-depth analysis of late colonialism in sub-Saharan Africa. This era is characterized by a high degree of cultural anxiety on the part of the colonizers and the colonized. Echoing other anti-colonial thinkers of the period – Balandier was a regular contributor to Présence Africaine – he records the environmental, artistic, psychological, and linguistic devastation generated by the colonial process in this part of the world. Balandier's assessment is pessimistic, but he identifies the ability of some unassimilated African intellectuals and members of messianic movements such as Matswanism and Kimbanguism to challenge the hegemonic status of the colonial Ur-Text. This emancipative move relies on vernacular intellectual and cultural resources and is driven by an attempt to re-write and translate biblical stories anew. It is argued here that this process of indigenous re-appropriation, however ambiguous it might have been assessed by Balandier, is postcolonial for it bears witness to a partial de-canonization of the colonial source text.

This article analyses Shakespeare and Molière's enduring appeal in various African countries and the diversity of their plays’ adaptations. The starting point is the discrepancy between the two playwrights, Shakespeare in Africa being an artistic phenomenon (a controversial one in some quarters), while the adaptation of Molière remains mainly the domain of school curricula. This article will first provide a historical overview of activities related to the introduction of Shakespeare and Molière's works in Africa. Second, it will set out to analyse the varied adaptation and “Africanization” of both playwrights’ work. It will shed light on the political and scholarly disputes over the incorporation of these authors in school curricula after independence and examine the ways in which these classical European texts were domesticated in Africa.

Transnational African author Tierno Monénembo is known for his unstable narratives and travelling storytellers. In this article I will discuss two of his novels, Pelourinho (1995) and Les Coqs cubains chantent à minuit (2015). Drawing on nomadic thought, the article will argue that Monénembo's lesser-seen subjects are figures of mobile débrouillardise who embody and play out a collective nomadic thinking with which they mediate unstable space. Translation is indirectly addressed here as part of that débrouillard practice, whereby stories, situations, and agency are mediated by these secondary characters. Monénembo translates their wily movement and flexibility into French by keeping mobility at the centre of his structural and linguistic choices. This reading will be framed in an understanding of subjectivity as always conditioned by mobility (after Braidotti), an essential lens for viewing postcolonial African subjects in the era of ongoing decolonization (Mbembe). Though written 20 years apart, the novels are remarkably similar in their depiction of space and character. Mirrored journeys westwards across the Atlantic seek to draw out the African heritage of lost relations in Latin America. Encounters with multiple, unfamiliar faces are reflected linguistically in the collision of several languages, and I will suggest that where such translingual environments are hostile for some, there is a simultaneous emergence of creativity. This happens both at character level and with the author's own negotiation of different languages and styles. Monénembo demotes protagonists and place to emphasize secondary characters who shape their own space. Drawing on the work of Rosi Braidotti, I use nomad thought to frame these figures as always mobile, savvy, and innovative. This is a positive vision of subjects as dynamic entities, ready to transform, and to translate.