The Ethos Of Rehumanization Essay

It is interesting to point out here, again, rehumanization is a necessary process which enables the society to heal from the rifts of dehumanization. Thus, the rehumanizing strategy enables the colonized or the other to write his back into humanity so to speak. There are some key postcolonial thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Edward Said seem to express a firm belief in the value of the concept of the human. Certainly, the colonized attempts to change him/her self from an ethos of dehumanization, to one with an ethos of humanity and rehumanization. In the novel, the rehumanizing process is depicted in many ways such as rewriting and contesting the history of the colonized as written by the colonizer, enhancing the dignity of the colonized,

In fact, in most postcolonial writings the question of the dignity and rehumanization of the colonized is intertwined with the question of history. Indeed, the history is the compass that wise people use to locate themselves on the map of the world, the history tells the people who they are. This priceless part also tells what the people have been, where they are now, but most importantly, where they still must go. So it can even say that true African history is a powerful weapon against British colonial history that has been used for mental enslavement and colonization of the African people. This is precisely that Ngugi attempts to write back into African history of what has been deliberately erased. Thus, Ngugi attempts to recover the suppressed history of Africa, he insists on the importance of history as says: ‘‘History is very important in any people. How we look at our past is very important in determining how we look at and how we evaluate the present.'' (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, 1978) Thus, Thiong’o repeatedly insists the necessary to rewrite and portray true history. For this reason, Ngugi in his novel explicitly reveals the historical truth and resort to quoting significant historical characters, such as Waiyaki Wa Hinga, Jomo Kenyatta or Harry Thuku