The presidential election of 2007 that sworn in Barack Obama as president of the United States of America heightened the idea that rightly, or wrongly, suggests the world (at least the U.S.) has become post-racialised. I will explain how the notion of post-raciality is a distraction to the demands of racial diversity in the twenty-first century. I use the conversational thinking as an alternative method to show how the possibility of both nuances in the form of racial conflict/diversity can subsist. The difference I envisage is that between highly melanated Africans and European Americans. Here, I argue that dialogue is still the most preferred option in racial conflict. However, the dialogue I propose is not a promise akin to the post-racialised, but a relationship that can exist in the midst of conflict, while at the same time acknowledging difference.
If a people were to write their own history to be solely accepted as an ideal, it would not be abnormal for them to do so in their own favour. The history of the African peoples as documented by Western literatures, mostly comprises the exaltation of European culture through various stereotypical labellings of African history and culture.In the same vein, most Africans would be tempted to rewrite African history in favour of the cultures/ traditions of the African people themselves. Western historicism, however, has gradually denied the African an identity, primarily by eulogising its vindictive colonial presence in Africa, with the purpose of creating a cultural superstructure for the West. Through critical analysis and the conversational method, we submit that a balanced reordering of history in a sane manner is quickened when informed African scholars in their various disciplines take up the task of historiography to create their own peculiar narrative that will provide both the scholarly agenda and its related content, to set the African people on a course of wholesome prosperity.
The present article aims to initiate a conversation with Alena Rettová on her article “Post-Genocide, Post-Apartheid: The Shifting Landscapes of African Philosophy, 1994-2019” that was published in Modern Africa in the Summer of 2021. We identify several issues in her historical account of African philosophical thoughts that need polyphonic engagement in order to ensure that Africa’s pluralistic intellectual heritage is not reduced to a monophonic one. We are intentional at being Rettová’s intellectual dialogical partner on the reading of African philosophy, while bearing in mind that the ideologies of apartheid and genocide are still active. While we explore some key aspects of her work, we also acknowledge that African philosophy is constantly in the making and it would be problematic to use the yardstick of one context, in this case, the Western context, as a benchmark in order to account for the progression of philosophical thoughts in other philosophical contexts (Africa) without taking into account the historical peculiarities of each context.
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