By Mary Mba (Ph.D.)
“To forbid words is to erase the world they describe.”
—Sony Labou Tansi
In 1979, Congolese writer Sony Labou Tansi published La Vie et demie, a surreal and grotesque novel that imagines a dictatorship so absurd and violent it makes language itself a casualty. Decades later, in a very different setting, the Trump administration has implemented a chillingly real campaign of linguistic erasure—quietly banning words like diversity, transgender, systemic racism, pregnant person, and even woman from federal communication.
In my recently completed academic paper, I draw a provocative comparison between Labou Tansi’s fictional regime and the real-world linguistic censorship imposed by the Trump administration across two presidential terms. Though they exist on different ends of the spectrum—one a postcolonial African dictatorship, the other a contemporary Western democracy—the parallels are striking. In both contexts, language is not just controlled—it is redefined, weaponized, and erased.
Take Executive Order 13950, which labeled concepts like “white privilege” and “systemic racism” as “divisive,” or the 2025 ban on terms like LGBT, female, and assigned male at birth. These are not merely semantic shifts. They represent a form of bureaucratic violence that targets already marginalized groups by rendering their experiences unspeakable. As Michel Foucault and Judith Butler would argue, when language is removed, so too is the framework for identity, resistance, and legal protection.
In La Vie et demie, Tansi’s characters resist the regime’s control by speaking in poetry, irony, and contradiction. Martial, the indestructible rebel, and his daughter Chaïdana, who preserves his legacy through storytelling, remind us that to name the truth—even when language is broken—is an act of rebellion.
The United States is not immune to the dangers of linguistic control. We see it not only in executive orders and policy revisions, but in attempts to ban books, restrict inclusive curricula, and threaten academic freedom. Yet, resistance persists. Writers like Eve L. Ewing use poetry to reclaim erased histories, and journalists like Nikole Hannah-Jones reframe the American story through projects like The 1619 Project. Their work, like Chaïdana’s, insists on naming what power wants us to forget.
This is not just a literary or academic issue—it is a democratic one. The words we are allowed to speak shape the futures we are allowed to imagine. When “diversity” becomes unspeakable, diversity itself becomes unrecognizable. When “woman” is erased, so is the struggle and triumph of women’s lived experiences.
As Tansi shows us, language is never neutral. And in every age, we must fight for the right to speak our truth—especially when the silence is sanctioned.
🔗 Read the full academic study (coming soon).
🎙️ Coming up next: A podcast episode exploring banned words, storytelling, and survival.