Knowledge of Africa, Knowledge by Africans: Two Perspectives on African Studies

How African are the so-called African Studies? The study of Africa, as developed so far by a long intellectual tradition, is part of an overall project of knowledge accumulation initiated and controlled by the West. This article advocates an active, lucid, responsible appropriation by African societ...

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מידע ביבליוגרפי
הוצא לאור ב:URI:https://journals.openedition.org/rccsar,
מחבר ראשי: Hountondji, Paulin J.
פורמט: Article ou chapitre numérique
שפה:Anglais
יצא לאור: RCCS Annual Review 2012
נושאים:
גישה מקוונת:Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
תיאור
סיכום:How African are the so-called African Studies? The study of Africa, as developed so far by a long intellectual tradition, is part of an overall project of knowledge accumulation initiated and controlled by the West. This article advocates an active, lucid, responsible appropriation by African societies themselves of the knowledge capitalised over centuries about them. It advocates more generally the development in Africa of an autonomous, self-reliant tradition of research and knowledge that addresses problems and issues directly or indirectly posed by Africans. It calls upon “épistémologies du Sud.” It calls upon African scholars in African Studies and in all other disciplines to understand that they have been doing so far a kind of research that was massively extraverted, i. e. externally oriented, intended first and foremost to meet the theoretical and practical needs of Northern societies. It invites a new orientation and new ambitions for research by Africans in Africa.