Emevwo Biakolo in the reader argues the following: What can we make of the
cross-cultural paradigms in view of the African condition? It seems to me that
they serve merely to obscure efforts to come to grips with the African
condition. They provide no access to understanding either the past with the
or Present Africa. Identify and explain these cross-cultural categories and
argue as to whether you agree or disagree with his analysis
Introduction
A critical dialogue between Africa and Europe, the West is necessary in discovering the
truth of and about Africa. It is now necessary for Africans to assert and uphold the right of
Africans of the meaning of experience and truth in their own right. For this truth shall
emerge out of the experience of the interactive encounter between Africans and
Europeans. Against this opening, this essay shall identify and explain Biakolo’s
cross-cultural categories and argue his analysis.
Biakolo’s Cross-Cultural Categories
Biakolo has pointed out that for a very long time in the field of philosophy the central
concern has been the relationship between the subject and its object and how the western
world thought about the “other”, other being non-Caucasian races. Biakolo provides an
explanation of the ways in which the Western world, with its ever-increasing contact with
peoples of new-found colonies, would build their understandings of non-Caucasian people
or what he refers to as “the other”. From an African perspective, it refers to African
condition” and how the West understood Africa.
Biakolo has embarked on examining several cross-cultural paradigms in a bid to
demonstrate that the approach adopted in comprehending the value of the personhood of
the African and his philosophical products was immensely flawed. He addresses the
problems created by Western constructions of the African person and his/her life-world It
assays how those constructions have hindered an apprehension of philosophy in Africa as
a product of Africans acting, distinct from being simply objects acted upon. Perhaps the
most important of these is the realization that African culture is different from, not opposite
to Western culture.
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