Epistemologies for African Studies

The social sciences in their application to Africa have incorporated epistemological and theoretical choices (e.g. relating to time, space, otherness, rationality, identity, boundaries, agency, vicarious representation, authenticity and myth) which do not readily submit to metatheoretical critique. In recent decades, the North Atlantic hegemonic project behind this state of affairs has become discernible in a number of political and intellectual developments. These include the decolonization of the African continent and its subsequent recolonization on a monetary and cultural footing (as opposed to a political and administrative one as in 1900-1960); the emergence of African and intercultural philosophy; the rise and fall of post-modernism; advances in the history and sociology of science and ideas (Kuhn, Said, Bhabha); and the emergence of feminism, Afrocentrism, and other attempts to intellectually construct the world from peripheral and minority positions. This part of the project takes up these challenges to the formulation of an epistemology for African Studies in the twenty-first century. Wim van Binsbergen's 1999 inaugural for the chair of foundations of intercultural philosophy is devoted to this topic.

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page last modified: 11-04-99