Colonized writers can use colonial tools without being defined by them

Evidence

There is the term Africa itself, there is the language of the colonizer, there are the literary forms of the colonizer and the concept of literature itself, not to mention the strategies of production and distribution in general. These things may either be rejected or accepted - or they may be used as tools on the understanding that the worker is not defined by the tools. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3434 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

18. The emphasis here is on functions, and on the determination of these by the social division of labour. By the term ‘intelligentsia’ here I do not simply mean ‘writers’, less still ‘litrerateurs’ The term includes, rather, all those whose function in the social division of labour is (a) to produce ideas and (b) to lead the institutions of state and society on the basis of claims of knowledge. In a colonial society, state-associated strata occupy key positions in this social category, and the upper layers of such strata function under a professional compulsion to use mainly the language of the colonizing country in the public sphere; in private life, and in activities associated with leisure time, they may continue ro use their own language(s). For these upper layers, then, the linguistic differentiation between public and private spheres, with the concomitant tendency of the public sphere determining in the long run the social mores of the private sphere, is a structural feature of this colonial matrix, individual exceptions notwithstanding. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1534 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Decolonized writers transformed English fiction via imported-colonial language — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 288; Artists and writers are remapping the Americas beyond colonial borders; Colonized writers internalize the colonizer’s aesthetic to erase their own identity — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 330 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonizer’s language and forms can be used as tools without defining the user #corroborates (0.97) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3434
• Colonial intelligentsias are structurally compelled toward the colonizer’s language in public life #complicates (0.78) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1534