Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
To read or listen to Linton Kwesi Johnsons dub poetry is to experience a revolutionary use
of (Standard) English.2 Linguistic revolution does not occur, however, in his provision of a
patois alternative. Through a reading of Johnsons poetry as a performance of voices, I will
argue that his aesthetic transforms the discursively hegemonic identity of Standard English. 3
Utilizing Bill Ashcrofts poststructuralist approach to postcolonial studies, I read Johnsons
texts as foregrounding the scene of a constitution of meaning.4 These meaning event[s]5
explicitly take place in actual practice rather than structural abstraction;6 his voices are
located in specific locations of Londons urban environment. The precise construction of a
socially situated voice enables an exposition of the performed aspect of all discourse.
Indeed, vocal construction extends to a performance of SE itself. It is this strategy of
Johnsons poetics which, I argue, enables the political transformation of SEs dominant
identity within social as well as literary spaces.
Brathwaites question, which I use as an epigraph, is a potent one within postcolonial
literary studies. As Ashcroft explains,
One of the main features of imperial oppression is control over language. The
imperial education system installs a standard version of the metropolitan language
as the norm, and marginalizes all variants as impurities. Language becomes the
medium through which a hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated 7
Such cultural colonialism would have impacted upon our young poet. Johnson was born in
Jamaica but moved to London when he was eleven, thus being educated in both Jamaican
and English schools.8 On either side of the Atlantic, Johnson would have been subjected to
the imperial education system Ashcroft describes. During the increasingly racialized and
racist tensions of 1970s and 1980s, the social and state enforcement of SE upon migrant
communities, persisted beyond the school gates. Lord Scarman was calling for blacks to
speak standard English during the same period in which he wrote the controversial report
on the Brixton riots of 1981.9
Johnson did not heed Scarmans call. Having disagreed with the Brixton report in
the provocatively celebratory Di Great Insohreckshan, the speaker concludes never mine
Scarman 10 his poetry similarly rebels against repression of discursive freedom. The iconic
title of Inglan is a Bitch demonstrates a subversion of linguistic national identity. He refuses
wi hav fist
wi have feet
wi carry dandamite in wi teeth
(p.12)
The speakers teeth literally embody the poems (linguistic) violence, culminating a list of
the more traditional weapon[s] (p.12) of dissidence.
Johnsons resistant poetics can be situated in the West Indian literary tradition
which, according to David Dabydeen, seeks to subvert English canons by the use of lived
nigger themes in lived nigger language.11 Brathwaites notion of Nation Language also
advocates a resistant Caribbean verbalization which is not the standard, imported educated
English12 but is much more closely allied to the African aspect of experience in the
Caribbean.13
Such a vernacular which can embody [...] authenticity, 14 for Ashcroft, upholds an
essentialist view of language or of some authentic cultural experience. 15 Indeed, Johnsons
voice cannot be reduced to authentic essentialism. Firstly, his identity and voice negotiate
British and Jamaican cultural contexts. Secondly, and herein lies the essays theoretical
foundations, the dialect of Johnsons poetry is emphatically not that of his speaking voice.
This claim is evidenced by the textual rendering of his interview with John La Rose. 16 Of
course, the voice bears resemblance to Johnsons own and to other dialects in postcolonial
communities. Nonetheless, Johnsons texts present a performed voice, an exacerbation of
dialect which translates the speakers identity in a carefully constructed manner.
As analysed earlier, Inglan is a bitch reveals the tonal function of Johnsons vocal
construct. The poem also gestures towards an under-acknowledged strategy of his poetics:
the adoption, or performance, of SE. In the fifth verse, a new voice enters; dem sah dat
(p.40) invokes the presence of an outsider commenting on the speaker and the community
with which he is associated. The following five words black man is very lazy (p.40) is the
poems only sustained moment of conventional spelling and pronunciation. I read this line,
then, as an acknowledgment of Johnsons ability to give voice to, to perform, SE.
11 David Dabydeen, On Not Being Milton, Routledge Reader in Comparative Literature, p.412
12 Brathwaite, p.282
13 Brathwaite, p.283
14 Ashcroft, Empire, p.42
15 Ashcroft, Empire, p.41
16 For aural evidence, see interview [Greece 1987]
2
Such a strategy is explored more fully in Street 66, a poem whose specific urban
locations situate the type of discursive performances on offer. Its narrative presents a vibrant
house party which is intruded upon by the appearance of police. The partys interior offers
the space for dialect, for poetic and rhyming indulgence in the Rastafarian imagery of mystic
red, | green, red, green . . . pure scene (p.9). A greenah riddim (p.9) combines the
marijuana-hazed hedonism with the rhythmic beat of both the party and the poetry which
constructs its pure scene. Whilst the majority of the poem adopts the dialect pronunciation
common in Johnsons work, the narrative intrusion of police offers the opportunity for an
alternative voice. In response to Westerns dialect-inflected question Whos dat?, comes
the reply Open up! Its the police! Open up! (p.10). The text performs the SE voice of the
police. This type of expression is associated with a certain social space, that is, outside of the
party. The ability to disrupt patois and adopt SE awakens the consciousness of performance,
in the rest of the poem and Johnsons poetry at large, of an alternate voice.
Language, then, can be considered a material practice and as such is determined by
a complex weave of social conditions and experience.17 Ashcroft, here, invokes Saussures
distinction between langue and parole. Instead of a traditional focus on the codes of
language, known as langue, Ashcroft argues that: