Hauntings of the metaphysical empire? Anthroponomic patterns in contemporary Zimbabwe

Abstract

In this article, we discuss personal names and naming patterns in contemporary Zimbabwe as a way of thinking through the hauntings of the metaphysical empire. We are interested in how the metaphysical empire, particularly through the process of linguicide, ‘invaded’ the ‘mental’ space of the colonised and significantly changed the way people use English and indigenous languages to name children. We examine anthroponomic patterns to tease out certain ideological properties of the metaphysical empire as it persists in the present—its hauntings. In the Derridean sense, haunting is understood as pasts that persist in the here and now, such as the prestige and power of the linguistic forms identified as English. While the use of English in personal names can be interpreted as a type of imperial debris, we show how indigenous ways of knowing the world nevertheless filter through these ruins in the form of uniquely Zimbabwean-English names.