...this belief that a universal language—often that of the coloniser—is needed to unite groups that would otherwise remain divided.

In this quote, and at this time, I was romanticising the notion of a common language in a way that saw in a diversity of terms and languages a potential source of division. This is exactly the kind of rhetoric that wa Thiong’o warns against, this belief that a universal language—often that of the coloniser—is needed to unite groups that would otherwise remain divided. Though the impetus remains the same, I am guided by a desire to bring communities together. The way I approach it today is through a desire to value incommensurability and the ways in which it forces us to relate differently, to find new ways of communicating, rather than feeling the need to make one particular, more ‘universal’ language more inclusive. Here I am turning to the work of Edouard Glissant to better understand what this can look like theoretically and hoping to find ways of bringing that into practice through the installation.