Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: NigerianID | Introduce Chinese Language in Schools – Fashola

And, Toyin, I would not be so fast to reify European-produced or European mediated ideas about progress. As I stated earlier, the idea of reason being a universal invented and bestowed on the world by Europe is not true at any level. First, reason is a relative 'truth," not a universal. It is not the holy grail or the only holy grail of knowledge. Second, Europe did not invent reason and its techniques. The historical chronology and genealogy of civilization and knowledge formation does not begin in Western Europe. It begins rather from the East, the Near East, the Middle East and parts of Mediterranean world and made its way in a symbiotic diffusion first in classical antiquity to Greece and then to Rome, and then to Europe proper in the Middle Ages and the early modern periods. My critique of Negritude, or more precisely Senghor, is not to be taken as an endorsement of European and Eurocentric claims about progress and development. Ken's argument in this regard is compelling and I totally agree with it. The challenge before us is to decenter and relativize Europe and its universalist claims instead of lionizing them. If I understand Ken, his point is that we should search for more holistic forms of "development" and progress, and that even in our age progress and "development" cannot be reduced to mere products of technological modernity. This does not mean throwing away technology and science but bridling their most dehumanizing-- and destructive-- aspects while harnessing their power to drive qualitative change. More importantly, Ken asks that we acknowledge that we pay a price, sometimes a heavy one that may diminish our humanity and "development," by embracing the notion that Euro-modernity and its technological capitalism and consumerism are the path to progress.

On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 8:13 AM, Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes, Pius, that's indeed only one aspect of Negritude. Even the guilty party, Senghor, has other postulations that have stood the test of relevance and intellectual sophistication. Diop and Cesaire do not go so far as Senghor in asserting dichotomies of progress, although aspects of their own epistemologies too can be legitimately critiqued. I feel that one should appreciate the fact that the Negritudists were the first serious group of scholars that did not just critique Western universalist claims but developed alternatives to them. Some of these ideas are quite sound and were iconoclastic for their time. More importantly, they were the first to disturb the idea of Europe as the center of human progress, suggesting that progress could occur simultaneously in multiple contexts. You can argue with how they went about doing this but you have to give them credit for doing it. 

Toyin, please read Messey Kebede's A Philosophy of Decolonization. He does a very good job of distilling and defending Negritude's less controversial and important contributions.

Sent from my iPad

On Nov 25, 2012, at 6:30 AM, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com> wrote:

"Oyinbo repete!" as a particular Yoruba expression would put it.

English [ as a carrier of knowledge]  overflowing.

You people are really educated.

What?!

This river of knowledge is flowing from you as if you are talking a walk next door.

It would be interesting to understand, something  I expect philosophy and psychology of education explore, the initiatory stages, the various mental doors opened and conceptual platforms consolidated, the skills mapped onto the brain as the  mind is reshaped, as one climbs the ladder to becoming  adept in a field of knowledge.

What factors motivate people to pursue such expertise?

Having expressed my wonder, I move on to look at the points made.

The complementarity point is fundamental. Moses puts it beautifully. Thanks for another delightful summation.

I begin to suspect, though, that the European paradigm of progress is much richer than it is given credit for.

On Negritude, I was looking the other day into Irele's 'What is Negritude?' and observed his struggle to present the finer points of the problematic Senghorian formulation.

I am very interested in what one could read to appreciate the richer contributions of Negritude.

I wonder if much has not been lost in the cultural move from French to English across languages and societies in the way Negritude was translated.

thanks

toyin

On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 5:59 AM, Pius Adesanmi <piusadesanmi@yahoo.com> wrote:

Moses:

Beware of the ides of synecdoche. You may be making a particular strand of "negritudist philosophy" stand for the whole thing here. There was/is more to that discourse than the roforofo fight between Hellenic Reason and Negro Emotion which Senghor initiated and refereed.

Pius

 

---

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, 24 November 2012, 15:11
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: NigerianID | Introduce Chinese Language in Schools – Fashola

Oga Toyin,

I had a feeling after writing my comments that I had done more to conceal my point than to reveal it. Thanks for calling me out on it. My point is that Kenn's argument seems to reaffirm the problematic view of Negritudist philosophers and intellectuals regarding progress. Their response to and critique of the technological modernity of Europe was to argue that Africans/blacks are different from Europeans and have been conditioned by geography, culture, and socialization to value and express emotion, intuition, and artistic creativity above reason, verifiability, investigation, science, technology, and other markers of progress valued and posited as universal standards by Europeans. My point is that by positing an alternative African standard of progress, one founded not on science and reason but on artistic and humanistic excellence, this Negritudist notion concedes and surrenders the realm of reason, science, and technology to Europe or Euro-America. Why would one do that when one can narrate Africa and Africans as capable of appreciating and producing scientific/technological knowledge and progress, as in fact a center of scientific and technological progress, even if this technological culture may have some distinctly African flavors? Further, I stated that I prefer the revised Negritudist notion that Africa and Europe are not just separate spheres of progress, separated by the dichotomy of science/technology and arts/humanism, but also zones of complementarity that complement each other, together driving human progress. Technological progress cannot be sustained, the argument goes, without humanistic developments, and qualitative societal progress stagnates when a society relies solely on humanistic and artistic pursuits. I prefer this argument but I also recognize that it, too, is problematic in that it leaves intact the Eurocentric claim that technological and scientific progress defined by European notions of reason is a universal or that it should be. The notion of complementarity does not challenge the hegemony of European technological and scientific modernity. I realize that I have not resolved the problem but I didn't set out to do so. I set out to point out the problem I see with Kenn's argument in response to your query, especially the paragraph you quoted admiringly.

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 12:27 PM, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com> wrote:

Oga Moses,

Your English is really big here.

Can you explain, please?

toyin

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 7:02 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:

Beautiful words, but for me Kenn's idea in those words comes dangerously close to the highly problematic Negritudist attitude to notions of scientific and technological progress, and their concomitant veneration of alternative cultural and "intuitive" premises of progress, arguments which ultimately serve to unintentionally underscore and reify the equally problematic dichotomous view of progress and lag inherent in the paradigmatic Eurocentric ideas that the Negritudist intellectuals set out to challenge in the first place. I prefer the idea of complementarity, which revisionist rereadings of Negritude, like Messay Kebede's, stress above the idea of a separate cultural baseline of progress for "emotional" African peoples. The idea of complementary, too, has its own blindspots, to be sure, since it does nothing to fundamentally challenge and in fact leaves intact the paradigmatic, universalist claims of Western technicist modernity and the ideas of progress that flow from these claims.

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 12:22 PM, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com> wrote:

i really like this-

...or we can imagine that the notion of progress is totally bound up in cultural values disseminated by dominant structures, and that independence means not only resistance to those structures which privilege the way wealth and power are constructed in the global north, but rethinking the received wisdoms that link notions of progress to scientific rationalism.

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 5:18 PM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

or we can imagine that the notion of progress is totally bound up in cultural values disseminated by dominant structures, and that independence means not only resistance to those structures which privilege the way wealth and power are constructed in the global north, but rethinking the received wisdoms that link notions of progress to scientific rationalism.

--
Compcros

Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
 
 

--
There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.


---Mohandas Gandhi

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
 
 

--
Compcros

Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
 
 

--
There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.


---Mohandas Gandhi

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
 
 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
 
 

--
Compcros

Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
 
 

--
There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.


---Mohandas Gandhi

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com