Colonisation and language

From imprisonment by the colonial language to subversion through lalangue

Abstract

This article proposes an approach between psychoanalysis and decolonial thinking to reflect upon the psychic effects of the process of banning the use and subsequent extinction of the mother languages of original and diasporic peoples in places marked by assimilationist colonisation policies and possible resistance strategies, given this specific type of colonial violence. Starting from the Lacanian premise that the unconscious is structured like a language, we seek to investigate the psychic consequences of the erasure of thousands of original languages from diasporic peoples and the imposition of a Western monolanguage. Then, through Lacan’s final teaching and the concept of lalangue, we observe, in a singular field, through a clinical vignette, the invention of the unconscious subject as a response to language colonisation.