ABSTRACT
This paper aims to analyze the workHibisco Roxo(2011), by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie - a novel permeated by race and gender tensions, caused by English imperialism in Nigeria, under the prism of political and socio-cultural conflicts set in capitalism. Starting from the concept ofepistemicide, proposed by Carneiro (2005), based on Foucault (1979) and Sousa Santos (1995), we verify, in multilingual practices, the values attributed to the original languages, with emphasis on Igbo in this work, and the language of colonizer in the implementation and term of colonialist and imperialist undertakings. Considering that Adichie’s writing (2011) allows another possible reading of the conflicts experienced by the current Nigerian society, there is, in the linguistic scope, evidence that the English language, a constituent element of colonization, would represent, based on the linguistic practices of the characters, a linkage to the imperialist process - underlying the action of capitalism under the recent end of colonization. Igbo’s linguistic practices, on the other hand, would represent a strategy of resistance, through the rescue of ancestral traditions, as a way of erasing the epistemicide, tensioning the policies for erasing the Igbo culture. Thus, there is a power game in which the language plays an important role in the symbolic marking of processes of domination/assimilation and/or opposition/socio-cultural resistance, both crossed by religion.
Keywords:
epistemicide; multilingualism; Purple Hibiscus; nigerian colonization; imperialism