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Paper short abstract

This paper considers how interpellation by the colonial state was both juxtaposed with and displaced by vernacular forms of designating oneself and others in the Central Highlands of Angola.

Paper long abstract

If naming others was part and parcel of colonialism, names in western and vernacular languages were often entangled in attempts to represent oneself and others in colonial society. In Angola, interpellation by the colonial state, which sought to make legal and racial categories equivalent with social places through the indigenato regime (1926-1961), was both juxtaposed with and displaced by vernacular forms of designating oneself and others. This paper argues that designations in Umbundu, the main language spoken in the Central Highlands of Angola, both challenged and reproduced the racialization and hierarchy that structured colonial society. In so doing, it suggests how a certain reading of "reference as différance," as proposed by Jacques Derrida, might contribute to the theorization of naming, difference, and translation by dwelling on iterational displacement.