Page 25 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 13

Economy

of sensation, imagination, or the er have intended it for. Eurocentric of ourselves as Africans and how
passions, had ever encountered, knowledge is not produced just for our relationships with the rest of
in the seventeenth or eighteenth its own sake. Its purpose throughout humanity has led us where we are
century, anything like man. They the ages has been to enable them to in the context of a global economic
appeared when man constituted ‘know the natives’ in order to take historical process. It is a hermeneuti-
himself in Western culture as both control of their territories, includ- cal problem of self-understanding in
that which must be conceived of ing human and material resources which we have to position ourselves
and that which is to be known. for their benefit. Such control of as authentic human beings who have
knowledge was used to exploit the made a contribution to human civili-
The historical emergence of non-European peoples, colonize zation, and justifiably so since Africa
each one of the human sciences them both mentally and geo-stra- is the Homeland of the World Cra-
was occasioned by a problem, tegically, as well as subordinate the dle of Humankind. In a word, it is a
a requirement, an obstacle of a rest of the Third World to their hermeneutic task in which we have
theoretical or practical order: the economic designs and interests, at to foreground ourselves in the con-
new norms imposed by industrial the expense of African culture. text of reconstructing our economic
society upon individuals where What is critically important for real- historical consciousness.
certainly necessary before psy- ization is that Africa and its peoples
chology, slowly, in the course of have been subjected to a process of It is wrong to copy ‘systems’ or ‘dis-
the nineteenth contort, could economic disorganization, economic ciplines’ developed elsewhere, while
constitute itself as a science; and fragmentation and economic disin- at the same time talking about the
the threats that, since the French tegration of their historical-cultural need for ‘renewal’ and ‘rebirth,’.
Revolution, have weighed so heav- and civilizational achievements.
ily on the social balances, and even These achievements, in many cases, The aim, therefore, is to create
on the equilibrium established by have been appropriated by other an African self-understanding, in
the bourgeoisie, were no doubt peoples and turned around on their economic terms, which is necessary
also necessary before a reflection heads against the African people. if Africa is to emerge as a proud
of the sociological type could ap- In the process, the African civiliza- member of the economic global
pear. But though these differences tion, including African indigenous society to which it belongs. It is my
may well explain why it was in fact economic relations, has been raped; argument that this can be achieved
in such and such a determined set plundered, despoiled and dehistor- if we infuse the Eurocentric market
of circumstances and in answer to ized. economy with African metaphysics,
such and such a precise question so as to bring about a situation in
that these sciences were articu- The process of economic re-awak- which her achievements are recog-
lated, nevertheless, their intrinsic ening and economic recovery has nized and for these achievements to
possibility, the simple fact that to be one of a historical decon- be seen as the building blocks of the
man, whether in isolation or as a struction, consciousness raising human heritage.
group, and for the first time since and restatement not in the way the
human beings have existed and post-modernists and post-structur- We need to make a new skin, devel-
have lived together in societies, alists have argued, but by Africans op a new thinking, try to put afoot
should have become the object of tracing the origins and achievements a new human being. What is called
science – that cannot be consid- of their civilizations with a view to here for is not a cultural-histori-
ered or treated as a phenomenon developing new economic episte- cal egoism, but an other-directed
of opinion. mologies of knowledge production openness, not an already established
based on African lived experiences interpretation of nature, history,
We cannot, therefore, talk about in their global implications. world and the ground of the world.
the production of ‘knowledge for It is an open-ended project of a
its own sake’ without interrogating The process must delve into African humanity that finds itself engaged in
its purpose. There cannot be such economic, historical and cultural joint struggles. All colonized people
a thing as the advancement of sci- experiences throughout African – all people in whose spirit is born
ence for its own sake. Those who history. of an inferiority complex, by the
pursue ‘science for its own sake’ burial of a local cultural originality
find that their knowledge is used It is, therefore, about the recon- – find themselves face to face with
for purposes, which they may nev- struction of our understanding the language of the civilizing nation,

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