ABSTRACT
Derrida's theoretical-autobiographical account of his relationship to the French language as an Algerian Jew is a helpful example of biographical work that illustrates how subjects inhabit their social worlds through language. McNamara, commenting on Derrida's text, notes that 'subjectivity is constructed through the terms in which one is recognised by the Other'. Derrida argues that the 'law' of originary alienation is readily observable in the colonial situation, but is also a law for those 'whose experience of his own mother tongue is sedentary, peaceful, and without historical drama'. Every culture institutes itself through the unilateral imposition of some 'politics' of language. Understanding the subject as prosthetically interpellated through the originary alienation of language provides a provocative framework for engaging with other theorists of the colonial and postcolonial eras. African languages were used by the apartheid state in an ethnically-based 'divide and rule' approach through The Bantu Education Act.
