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Preliminary communication

https://doi.org/10.21464/sp33107

African Experience, Development, and the Metaphysical Radicalism of the African Humanities

Jacob Aleonote Aigbodioh ; Ambrose Alli University, Faculty of Arts, KM 70 Benin Auchi Road, P. M. B 14, NG-ED–310101 Ekpoma


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Abstract

African colonial experience in the South of the Sahara, a product of African social¬-cultural interaction with European colonialist globalisation of foreign values, is often perceived, notably in some African humanities (as against the social sciences) as posing a predicament to African socio¬cultural development. The situation has generated a spurious, metaphysical understanding that the African predicament stems necessarily from what her colonialist experiences have created of her cultures and human nature – a negative psychic inheritance. This is indicated mostly by the radicality of some proffered panaceas to the African predicament, say, violent revolution, existential suicide, cultural revivalism and acquiescence in the African fate. The paper argues that the understanding of African colonialist experience as a crippling challenge to African development runs deep in the consciousness of some African elite today, breeds disillusionment and hopelessness in the possibility of reversing the African predicament, and serves as an alibi for social vices. It, therefore, urges the need for a more collaborative, practical and strategic programme for the purpose of deconstructing the popular “irrationality” that is embedded in African cultures, and hence, to re¬humanize the understanding and resolution of the African predicament.

Keywords

African experience; metaphysical radicalism; violent revolution; existential suicide; cultural revivalism; development

Hrčak ID:

219844

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/219844

Publication date:

6.11.2018.

Article data in other languages: french german croatian

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