SPEAKING THE SELF: THE ETHICS OF NAMING AND DECOLONIAL LANGUAGE IN CHILDREN’S NARRATIVES

Abstract

Names and naming of places and characters in literature are the building blocks of a great literature as they shape the foundation; the stakes get critically high when these linguistic dimensions are coloured with biases and intentions of colonialization in postcolonial children’s literature. This paper investigates the act of naming and argues, it functions not merely as a linguistic label but as a site of power, memory, and moral encounter. Drawing upon theory of performativity proposed by J. L. Austin, Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance, and Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics of the Other, investigation is conducted to highlight how naming mediates between domination and recognition through close readings of postcolonial narratives of Yangsook Choi’s The Name Jar (2001), Beverley Naidoo’s Journey to Jo’burg (1985), and John Steptoe’s Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters (1987).

The South African setting in Naidoo’s narrative, naming emerges as an index of racial hierarchy and linguistic apartheid, where the colonial lexicon erases indigenous subjectivity. Choi’s diasporic narrative reconfigures naming as a negotiation of belonging and selfhood, transforming the child’s linguistic anxiety into ethical self-assertion. Steptoe’s retelling of an African folktale reclaims indigenous naming as a moral language of recognition, aligning linguistic restoration with virtue and communal harmony. The intersection of linguistic philosophy and postcolonial ethics, the concept of “ethical naming” is a mode of language use that affirms the Other’s right to self-definition while resisting epistemic domination. Postcolonial children’s literature functions as a humanistic site of decolonial pedagogy, where the word becomes both an instrument of resistance and a medium of moral restoration.