Seizing the oppressor’s tongue became a form of resistance and self-reclamation

Evidence

I imagine that the moment they realized the oppressor’s language, seized and spoken by the tongues of the colonized, could be a space of bonding was joyous. For in that recognition was the understanding that intimacy could be restored, that a culture of resistance could be formed that would make recovery from the trauma of enslavement possible. I imagine, then, Africans first hearing English as “the oppressor’s language” and then re-hearing it as a potential site of resistance. Learning English, learning to speak the alien tongue, was one way enslaved Africans began to reclaim their personal power within a context of domination. Possessing a shared language, black folks could find again a way to make community, and a means to create the political solidarity necessary to resist. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 341

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Marginalized people reclaim themselves in language by turning the oppressor’s tongue against itself — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 349; Reclaimed slurs retain traces of the struggle that resignified them; Identity adopted as liberation can harden into a new form of imprisonment — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1078 (+2 more)

Related

• Marginalized people reclaim themselves in language by turning the oppressor’s tongue against itself (similarity 0.89)
• Enslaved Africans’ linguistic loss was itself a source of terror (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• For the colonized, speaking itself replaces violence as the first act of self-assertion #corroborates (0.85)
• Racial repression provides the terms for its own resistance #expands (0.78)
• Reclaimed slurs retain traces of the struggle that resignified them #expands (0.75)
• Identity adopted as liberation can harden into a new form of imprisonment #complicates (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1078