Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa

Turning Over a New Leaf

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367466930
• eBook ISBN: 9781000068061
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

This provocative book is anchored on the insurgent and resurgent spirit of decolonization of the twenty-first century. The author calls upon Africa to turn over a new leaf in the domains of politics, economy, and knowledge as it frees itself from imperial global designs and global coloniality.

With a focus on Africa and its Diaspora, the author calls for a radical turning over of a new leaf, predicated on decolonial turn and epistemic freedom. The key themes subjected to decolonial analysis include: (1) decolonization/decoloniality – articulating the meaning and contribution of the decolonial turn; (2) subjectivity/identity – examining the problem of Blackness (identity) as external and internal invention; (3) the Bandung spirit of decolonization as an embodiment of resistance and possibilities, development and self-improvement; (4) development and self-improvement – of African political economy, as entangled in the colonial matrix of power, and the African Renaissance, as weakened by undecolonized political and economic thought; and (5) knowledge – the role of African humanities in the struggle for epistemic freedom.This groundbreaking volume opens the intellectual canvas on the challenges and possibilities of African futures. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of Politics and International Relations, Development, Sociology, African Studies, Black Studies, Education, History Postcolonial Studies, and the emerging field of Decolonial Studies.

1 Introduction

Beyond the European game

As an African decolonial ‘writer in politics,’ in addition to my desire to ‘write what I want’ (to exercise epistemic freedom), I strive to produce liberatory knowledge subversive of the Eurocentric epistemology of concealment of crimes of racism, slavery, colonialism, patriarchy, sexism, and capitalism. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in his Writers in Politics: A Re-Engagement with Issues of Literature and Society (1997: xvi), delineated key characteristics of such writers, noting that their works ‘reflect one or more aspects of the intense economic, political, cultural and ideological struggles in a society.’ Writers on politics do not merely write ‘about politics.’ They take clear sides ‘in the battle field’ of ideas, where the oppressed and violated (the people) confront the oppressors and their well-crafted systems, structures, institutions, strategies, and ‘games’ of oppression, exploitation, and dehumanization. Decolonial writers in politics are never ‘neutral,’ as Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1997: xvi) explained: ‘What he or she cannot do is to remain neutral.’ Born in Africa, which experienced slavery and colonialism, I cannot ‘remain neutral’ either. As a product of a dehumanizing modernity/coloniality and its ‘European game,’ I seek decolonization, deimperialization, depatriachization, debourgeoisefication, decorporatization, deracialization, detribalization, and democratization as the broader ‘will to live’ rather than ‘will to power’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2019; see also Dussel 2008). As a product of and as someone employed by the ‘westernized modern university,’ I strive to liberate myself from ‘miseducation’ (unlearning impositions of colonialism/coloniality), and I am consistently ‘re-educating’ myself (relearning). My entry point is rethinking and unthinking thinking itself because it is in the epistemic domain that the sources of systemic, structural, and institutional crises are resident (see Hoppers and Richards 2012; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018b). My target is what Frantz Fanon (1968) called the ‘European game.’

At the centre of the ‘European game’ which Fanon urged the colonized to abandon is epistemic and ideological trickery. This is fundamentally a game founded on the epistemological invasion of the mental universe of its targets (coloniality of knowledge), the transhistoric expansion of imperial/colonial/capitalist/patriarchal heterosexual power (coloniality of power/coloniality of gender), the social classification and racial hierarchization of world population (coloniality of being human itself), conceit, and seduction (rhetoric of modernity). In all this, Eurocentric epistemology actively worked and continues to work as the primary and active enabler of planetary European hegemony. As understood and defined by Samir Amin (2009: 154), Eurocentrism is ‘a theory of world history’ which puts Europe at the centre of the idea and philosophy of human history, and which is a cultural expression of Euromodernity, mediated by the inferiorization of others and the superiorization of Europeans. Teshale Tibebu, in Hegel and the Third World: The Making of Eurocentrism in World History (2011: xxi), identified Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) as one of the key articulators of Eurocentrism and concluded that ‘All Eurocentrism is thus essentially a series of footnotes to Hegel.’ Hegel embodied Eurocentric epistemology and the ‘geo-culture’ of Euromodernity. He was not alone. They were many other philosophers of Euromodernity and Eurocentrism, including David Hume and Rene Descartes.

The key logic at the centre of Euromodernity was a radical shift from a ‘God-centred’ society to a ‘science-centred’ society, whereby those who claimed and monopolized being complete human beings (Europeans/Cartesian subjects) simultaneously claimed to be creators of human history and innovators who conquered and reordered the world, in the process redefining human life itself as they disregarded traditions and religion. Fanon (1968: 252) explained why the ‘European game’ has to be abandoned in the following strong words:

When I search for Man in the technique and style of Europe, I see only succession of negations of man and an avalanche of murders. The human condition, plans for mankind and collaboration between men in those tasks which increase the sum total of humanity are now problems, which demand true inventions. Let us decide not to imitate Europe; let us combine our muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us try to create the whole man, whom Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth. Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions. Comrades, have we not other work to do than to create a third Europe?

The ‘technique’ and ‘style’ of Europe is carried by Eurocentric epistemology. The primacy of epistemology and indeed the entanglement of knowledge and ontology features even in the widely read book called The Bible. Knowledge is invoked at the very myth of the foundation and genesis of the universe. In the Book of John, the Bible says that at the beginning was the ‘word.’ Western secular philosophers have interpreted the ‘word’ as logos, which is a key element in modern epistemology (way of knowing). The key point here is that epistemology is the primary domain within which ontology emerges (is created and articulated). One can therefore posit that epistemology enabled God (the creator) to envision the universe before practically creating the world in seven days. This means that the world is an epistemic creation. Walter D. Mignolo and Cathrine E. Walsh (2018: 135) give credence to this proposition:

What matters is not economics, or politics, or history, but knowledge. Better yet, what matters is history, politics, economics, race, gender, sexuality, but it is above all the knowledge that is intertwined in all these praxical spheres that entangles us to the point of making us believe that it is not knowledge that matters but really history, economy, politics, etc. Ontology is made of epistemology. That is, ontology is an epistemological concept; it is not inscribed in the entities the grammatical nouns name.

Mignolo and Walsh (2018: 136) elaborated that ‘It is knowledge weaved around concepts such as politics and economy that is crucial for decolonial thinking, and not politics and economy as transcendental entities.’ Perhaps it was for this reason that God planted the ‘Tree of Knowledge’ at the centre of the Garden of Eden. When Eve and Adam ate the fruits from this tree, it is said that they immediately realized they were naked (reality dawned on them). In other words, they became aware of themselves. This proposition resolves the long-standing egg-chicken conundrum in the knowledge/epistemology-reality/-ontology dialectic. What is therefore emphasized in this book is that the modern world system and the global order are epistemic creations. Such spheres of life as society, politics, and economy are also epistemic creations. The ‘European game’ is a secular invention of the modern world in the image of Europe, claiming that only Europeans are creators and rendering ‘Others’ as imitators. At the centre of the ‘European game’ is Euromodernity as a broad discursive formation enabled by the invasion of the earth through the colonization of knowledge (coloniality of knowledge), which, in turn, enabled the colonization of time, space, nature, and people.

Euromodernity materialized through the colonization of time (rupture and difference) in the first instance. It is driven by the racial, imperial/colonial, capitalist, and hetero-patriarchal logics of domination, exploitation, and dehumanizing experienced by all those rendered as ‘pre-modern.’ But to legitimate itself Euromodernity’s rhetoric of salvation, social evolution, progress, civilization, rationality, scientism, emancipation, modernization, development, and liberalism was laid out. Its horizon is universalism, with Europe and North America at the centre. Even today, those who are enchanted by Euromodernity continue to push the colonial struggle of completing the ‘unfinished project of modernity’ as a guarantor of human freedom and human flourishing (Habermas 1996). This is why one finds such leading African philosophers as Olufemi Taiwo writing books like Africa Must Be Modern: A Manifesto (2014: xii), in which he posits that ‘modernity is life,’ and its key tenet is ‘the open future’ (see Taiwo 2014: 185). This enchantment with Euromodernity is understandable. It comes partly from a strong belief in its claims and promises to overcome all human problems through the deployment of enlightened secular thinking and modern science in order to deliver a brave new world, and partly from its effective strategies of seduction and a concealment of ‘coloniality’ (its underside/its negative side) (see Quijano 2000).

However, to be enchanted by Euromodernity is to fall headlong into the logics and traps of the ‘European game,’ where even enslavement and colonization were articulated as part of the discourse of progress and salvation. Defining the ‘European game’ from the perspective of decolonization, it is a terrain of racism, domination, exploitation, and dehumanization for those who experienced negative modernity, and were targeted for enslavement and colonization. On the other hand (and read from a Eurocentric perspective), the ‘European game’ is a triumphant story of the successful delivery of the gifts of salvation, progress, civilization, rationality, scientism, emancipation, liberalism, and development. Euromodernity is defined as a gift. Of course, Europe and North America benefited materially from the ‘European game’ through the slave trade, colonialism, and capitalism. Meanwhile, Africa suffered due to the slave trade, colonialism, and capitalism. Inevitably, the Eurocentric perspective urges Africa to imitate and emulate Europe and North America in its search for liberation and development.

The key problem with the Eurocentric perspective is that it conceals the ‘underside’ (violence and violations) of Euromodernity known as ‘coloniality’ (negatives of Euromodernity) (see Quijano 2000). Tibebu (2011: xvi) posits, ‘There are three pillars of negative modernity: the American holocaust, New World slavery, and colonialism.’ Colonialism is succeeded by coloniality. This is the term for the transhistoric expansion of racist logics which enabled inimical processes of enslavement, racial capitalism, colonial domination, hetero-normative patriarchal domination, and their perpetuation into the present (see Quijano 2000; Morana et al. 2008). Even the post-Cold War emergent ideas of multiple, plural, and trans-modernities have not adequately resolved the dirtiness of the concept of modernity and its Eurocentrism. Gurminder K. Bhambra (2007: 1) revealed the modus operandi of Euromodernity as ‘rupture and difference—a temporal rupture that distinguishes a traditional, agrarian past from the modern, industrial present; and a fundamental difference that distinguishes Europe from the rest of the world.’

The push for the completion of the ‘unfinished business of modernity’ is countered by the decolonial perspective, driven by an effort to complete the incomplete decolonization/decoloniality. At the centre of the contemporary decolonial struggles are such targets as racism, enslavement, imperialism, colonialism/coloniality, capitalism, and patriarchy. The envisioned horizon is that of a pluriversity in which many worlds fit, and ecologies of knowledges strive (Santos 2007; Escobar 2018; Reiter 2018). The proposed turning over of a new leaf for Africa is directly informed by decolonization. The call comes from the Caribbean revolutionary Frantz Fanon: ‘For Europe, for us, and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man.’ The expansive and revolutionary process of turning over a leaf for Africa entails a radical negation of racism, enslavement, colonialism/coloniality, capitalism, and patriarchy in their past and contemporary forms. It means abandoning the ‘European game’ on the grounds that it is dehumanizing and dismembering other human beings.

These inimical processes are enabled by the paradigm of difference predicated on religious and pseudo-racial scientific thought constitutive of the unfolding of Euromodernity. The consequence has been the social classification and racial hierarchization of humanity in accordance with invented differential ontological densities. Europeans arrogated to themselves the category of ‘modern humans’ and relegated others into the status of ‘primitive/pre-modern sub-humans’ as they colonized time itself. Thus, to Fanon, Europe, though it invoked the idea of the human throughout its history, failed to create common humanism. Rather, through such inimical processes as enslavement (turning African people into commodities/things and trafficking them in the world market), genocides (physical liquidation/final solutions), colonization (taking over space and domination and exploitation of people/dehumanization), and epistemicides (theft of knowledge and history, appropriation, and displacement of endogenous knowledge), Europe declared war on humanity and displayed its barbarism on a world scale. This reality led Aime Cesaire (2000: 31) to depict European civilization as ‘decadent,’ ‘sick,’ ‘de-civilizing,’ and ‘dying.’ Thus, one can delineate key drivers of the ‘European game’: t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Turning over a new leaf Africa – Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: beyond the European game
• 2 The decolonial turn
• 3 The Bandung spirit
• 4 The problem of blackness
• 5 African political economy
• 6 African Renaissance
• 7 African humanities
• 8 Conclusion: turning over a new leaf
• Index