ON CLASSICAL AFRICAN THOUGHT IN MODERN TERMS

This project explores the significance of classical African thought in terms of its applicability within contemporary contexts. The notion of the classical is used in preference to conceptions through which foundational African thought is more often characterised. These concepts are those of the “traditional” and the “endogenous”.

The endogenous character of many of theses schemes of thought is being challenged by a colonial and post-colonial modernity in which these once dominant but now often marginalised schemes of thought have become alien to the dominant epistemes through which modern African societies are organised and managed. The concept of the “traditional” is also not employed here since many of these schemes of thought are functioning within modern societies in a manner that foregrounds questions about the parallel existence of various forms of modernity, within and between societies.

The conventional understanding of the opposition of the traditional and the modern is therefore called into question by the active coexistence of styles of thought and action which represent each of these supposedly antithetical points of social development.

One of such forms of conflictual or heterotopic modernity is one in which the underlying premises of these pre-modern systems have a part.

Christianity, Islam and other more recent entrants into African experience might also be examined in terms of how they have been made endogenous to Africa.