Author’s Note: I have written this essay in the spirit of an unconventional writing style that often incorporates elements that are more reminiscent of poetry than standard (non)fiction prose. The point of this is to drive home the point that I wanted to make at the end of the essay: “The point, really, is to bring language closer and fuck it so hard that I impregnate it.” Impregnation here is a metaphor for how–despite the manifold differences in speaking the same language in different ways and with different accents in the same world–one can pick up any language (foreign or native) and start making it their own, and start producing with that language. At the end of the day, I think this speaks to our unique human nature: though we are all humans, we are bound to do things differently–yet love and humility requires that we accept that no one’s way is the perfect or ideal way to do things (especially with such a benign endeavor as speaking a language) and that should prompt us to the acceptance of un-depraved acts.


The palm kernel riddle has not proven as seemingly difficult as the effort to prove the destruction of confidence through accent, in the fact that the palm kernel riddle can be neglected without any actual consequence except the lack of an intellectual orgasm. The palm kernel riddle, as the Yorubas would have us believe, is that we cannot know, without scientific research, how water gets into the coconut. If I were to summarize the time we live in, I would say it is inferential undermining. A spirit now inspires the masses’ spirit to trample on another to live well: “You don’t trample, you don’t eat”; “You don’t trample, you don’t have housing”; “You don’t trample, you don’t enjoy social be-ing.” This logic is anchored in the bourgeoisie’s desire to trample on the masses. Now, this disease has spread to the heart of the masses—fulfilling the metastatic nature that makes the bourgeoisie’s desire manifest. The logic is required for the masses not to live in anarchism, says the bourgeoisie. Fear sowed deep into the heart makes the masses neglect Mr. Marx when he says that one has nothing to lose but his chains—the chain, as it is, is the tool the bourgeoisie use to claim the masses’ sweat.

The bourgeoisie’s logic, which started in the white man’s land, was made manifest by the white man’s individualism—a practice that is rooted in a lack of copacetic love for the other to function well. Unlike the Africans’ communalism, his individualism requires him to want more rather than share more. This began his desire to be incursive, and this began his incursions to conquer the ones he could not believe were of equal human standing as him. This is why we must pay attention to how we are destroyed: if we agree that all humans are one, as Parmenides wants to tell us, we would be required to love one another, and loving one another does not lead to destruction. You cannot love your family house and burn it to the ground. You cannot love your mother and be malicious towards her. 

As Mr. James Baldwin tells us, of course, you can despair! It is in human nature to live in despair. Of course, you can fight. It is in human nature to fight since living requires the separateness of persons. But love and solipsism require us to be gracious. It requires us to hold each other’s hands.  As a matter of historical fact, the white man does not agree with the ancient wisdom of Parmenides. But he finds in the foolish words of Kipling a reason to “Take up the White Man’s burden”—a burden that was never supererogatory but oppressive. Who loves their world and makes it their burden to destroy it?  The incursive white man. This tells us the manifold of things, but the most didactic lesson is that he does not love himself. And here, you find the sardonic characteristics of his world. A man must love himself. That is the beginning of his prosperity, and, by extension, the beginning of other’s prosperity.

A man who does not love himself destroys himself. By extension, he would destroy Others, too. This is where we come to the crippling part of his incursions. To destroy others, he has to defeat his mind because a defeated mind can no longer grow outside of the givings of the man who destroyed him. For example, the husband in a patriarchal society has to defeat the wife’s mind into believing she is the second sex and that is all she could be—the property of the husband. The white man does not understand the nature of love, but he understands this. So when he got to the land he had determined as occupied by lower minds, he told them his mind was the paradigm for intelligence. Ditto his culture and religion. As history would have it, he made them accept it through whip lashes and struggling to keep the master’s belly nutritious. Sometimes, the master’s belly is in the same area as the whip, but most times, it is in the master’s home country. And that is how the master got his nutrition: He says, “Make them bleed; let their blood grow our plants. Our kids must eat! Their kids must be wack!” Oh, poor kid. The master’s guilt you must inherit or discredit. 

The function of the incursion is not one: it is not merely physical. It also functions to destroy the victims of the master’s whip mind. To defeat their mind, the master must first defeat their language. So, the master says their language is vernacular. They cannot accept anything else. “The master will whip us,” they say among themselves. And that is how he anchors in a new world order: Through whips, tears, and blood. A language defeated is a world defeated. A person only understands the world through the language he can speak. A person only understands his forms-of-life through his epiphanies. But the vision gets blurred immediately the master maimed his victims’ tongues and gave them his own tongue. And here is the difficulty: a person’s epiphanies are left unnoticed because he has been maimed. The master, however, did not give them his own tongue per se, but the master’s tongue that was not well refined. So, the victims of the master’s whip would have an accent different from the master’s accent. And here starts the degradation of the master’s victims: they cannot speak as beautifully as us even though they speak our language, so we are more beautiful than them. The pain goes deep among the victims who have good minds and want to be. The victim suffers.

Now, we get to another part. They call it the post-colony. The post-colony is a bad man: it rapes its victims. It puts the animal under him in their mouth and asks them to suck it but don’t suck it dry. “You can try to be good. But don’t just be too good”. The post-colony has destroyed the man—his victims: it has, simply put, destroyed his language. Recall: a language defeated is a world defeated. The colony has now become the empire, so the defeated man must prove his man-ness. So, when he goes to the embassy, his ability to prove his man-ness determines his destiny. If he cannot prove that his language has been defeated, he cannot be allowed access to the world. So, the man must come to appreciate the language silently. Though with the accent.

But the man’s accent is also degraded by the empire. His accent wouldn’t let him garner proper credibility whenever he speaks because the master’s world has made his own accent the paradigm. So, the man must be looked down upon by the master’s world.

It takes humility to understand another person. However, it takes love to understand another person’s accent. Not love as in the plenitude of beatitude we see between two characters in novels or movies—writers call them the lover and the beloved. This sort of love does not require wisdom or understanding. As Mr. Francis Bacon warned us, it requires the lover and beloved’s foolishness. The love required to understand another person’s accent is love as a state of being: Love as in the natural affection one feels for things that appeal to him even though he doesn’t know it. The love of a flower fills our hearts before scientists help us probe the flower’s nature. The love of a flower fills our hearts, and we bring it home. A world that loves you, then, must bring you home. Despite the accent in your mouth, the world that loves you must give you home. 

The world that does not bring you home because of your accent, pushes you to the backstage curtain. As a matter of empirical fact, this is the position we find the victims of the master’s whip. The backstage curtain, as I see it, is a function of minuscular hate. Minuscular hate because I agree with Mr. Baldwin when he said no one can be dismissed as a total monster. However, the minuscular hate fulfills its purpose. The very serious function of minuscular hate, Ms. Toni Morrison explained, is distraction. “It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”

Of course, the blue sky is not the same as the dark night: one tells us it is the day, and the other tells us it is the night. But we must love them equally because there cannot be the night without the day, and the latter cannot be without the former. Despite their contradictions, they offer a living body way of life that is equally reputable: the blue sky allows a man to earn to live; the dark night allows a man to live to earn. The significance of these opposites, thus, is unhidden. The unison of opposites is what allows man to live—to be. There cannot be the night without the day, and there cannot be the day without the night. If one lasts much too long, man will perish.

However, the accent difference is not the same as the opposite between the blue sky and the night. Accent differences are different ways of the same thing. But the man who suffers accent degradation is already degraded, so he cannot be seen as an equal in the empire the master has ordered into the new world. To put it clearly, his accent makes him less in the new empire order.

The most incontrovertible thing that accent degradation does to man is make him lack confidence. The function of his lack of confidence is not to give man strength—strength to live; strength to give; strength to eat; strength to put food on the table; strength to play; strength to be, and strength to be-ing.

I was told, by a woman in one of the most morally despicable countries in the universe, that my accent wouldn’t allow me to be invited to play. As I see it, she is mistaken. It is my confidence that will determine which room I find myself in. The function of the lack of confidence is to let you put yourself in a position where you won’t be invited to play. And here we must be careful because when we don’t invite people to play when they deserve to play, by the mere fact of their presence and human nature, we indirectly invite them to burn the playground so that we can at least see them—not just their physical being but also their power.Now, you might ask why capture a reality so grotesque that makes disgust look like holiness with such an obscure language. The point, really, is to bring language closer and fuck it so hard that I impregnate it. It births. Of course, you can take care of its production, but you’re welcome to abandon it. In any case, just don’t let it suffer because the sufferer who ends up having nothing to lose would destroy you. Your desire to not see things because you love or hate me will destroy you. For the sake of love and humanity, don’t let it suffer.

About the Author:

Idowu Odeyemi is a philosophy PhD candidate and an essayist at the University of Colorado Boulder. He was the Harper PhD Fellow and the Center for British and Irish Studies Ogilvy Fellow. He is currently a fellow at the Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Colorado. In 2018, he was shortlisted for the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize and his works have appeared in The Republic, Olongo Africa, Brittlepaper, The Philosophical Form, and Metaphilosophy, among others.

*Feature image by Vasilina Sirotina on Unsplash