Naming and Othering in Africa: Imagining Supremacy and Inferiority through Language

Description

This book examines how names in Africa have been fashioned to create dominance and subjugation, inclusion and exclusion, others and self. Drawing on global and African examples, but with particular reference to Zimbabwe, the author demonstrates how names are used in class, race, ethnic, national, gender, sexuality, religious and business struggles in society as weapons by ingroups and outgroups. Using Othering theory as a framework, the chapters explore themes such as globalised names and their demonstration of the other; onomastic erasure in colonial naming and the subsequent decoloniality in African name changes; othering of women in onomastics and crude and sophisticated phaulisms in the areas of race, ethnicity, nationality, disability and sexuality. Highlighting social power dynamics through onomastics, this book will be of interest to researchers of onomastics, social anthropology, sociolinguistics and African culture and history. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements List of figures List of tables 1 Introduction Section One Global, cultural and ethnophaulic nomen othering of Africa 2 Africa and global onomastic othering dichotomies 3 Names as cultural othering of Africa 4 Ethnophaulisms as crude nomen othering in African contexts Section Two Selfing and othering in colonial and de-colonial onomastics in Africa 5 UMlungu/Mzungu/Oborofo decoloniality and coloniality nuances 6 Onomastic attestations of coloniality in Africa 7 Colonial othering of African anthroponymy Section Three Names as exhibits of gendered, disablist, exclusion and sexist subalternities in African contexts 8 The woman other in African names and naming 9 Disablist, homophobic and sexist nomen othering in Africa 10 Socio-political onomastic exclusions in Africa 11 Conclusions and recommendations Index