What mental or intellectual costumes Africans need to wear in order to develop modern knowledge systems?

This is a free reflection on the power of modern science, technology, innovation and knowledge systems (STI) for revealing some distinctive style of modernity in Africa.

The modernization of these knowledge systems, as the backbones of any mode of modernity, also requires the modernization of our mental or intellectual costumes. This process is essentially the passage from closed, self-confirming, faith-based, customary, totalizing or terrorizing knowledge systems to essentially falsifiable, evidence-based, scientifically-established and technically-proven innovative knowledge systems. In these systems scientific knowledge can be construed as a theory of the real and as a technology of truth and understood as the epistemological foundation of any form of Afro-modernity. It is also the passage from the ‘Book of Scripture’ to the ‘Book of Nature’ or from the submission to the white man’s colonizing gods to the more authentic and genuine African identities, beliefs and values, such as those embodied in the concept of ubuntu. In this perspective rejuvenating knowledge systems can purge Abrahamic and Shamanic worldviews of non-scientific constituents and open a path from the mostly totemic, enchanted, mystified, supernatural, patriarchal / phallocratic and over-religious worldviews and mindsets of pre-modern Africa to the more desacralized, secular, rational, liberal, enlightened and autonomous worldviews and mindsets of modernity. This paradigmatic shift toward modern ways of knowing and understanding requires championing the scientific method, the rule of technique and innovation as well as promoting decisive scientific arbitrations, increased technical mediations and a redefinition of STI’s relationships with religious, cultural, social and economic life. For this shift to occur there is a need to better appreciate modern science as a method of both calculative and subversive thinking, as a means of achieving the systematic renovation of conventional / medieval / pre-modern realities and as a way to reconstruct and re-order African realities from fresh fundamentals and from the latest scientific insights. This may require strengthening various capacities to probe, undermine and rationalize oppressive systems (religious, cultural, social, economic, political). It may also require re-cosmologizing, re-mythologizing, ‘re-prophetizing’, re-charlatanizing and re-directing the evolution of the African reality toward a region free of wishful thinking, fallacies, lies, superstitions, prejudices, magic and witchcraft and toward an Islam-free and Christian-free scientifically-informed free-thinking innovative post-colony. The necessary capacities for achieving this shift toward more innovative scientific and technical orders and systems are grouped into eight areas.

Full reflection here: http://sites.google.com/site/revealingmodernityinafrica/newpaper

My website: http://sites.google.com/site/revealingmodernityinafrica/

Join me on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueshamel

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Submitted by Jacques Hamel on 22 February 2010 - 1:44pm.

Mental or intellectual costumes

Submitted by storytelling on 24 February 2010 - 9:41am.

HI Jacques

I really like the concept of a 'mental or intellectual costume' for it conveys the idea that developing modern knowledge systems is a kind of performance which is done for an audience. The idea of a costume is also interesting in that it gives permission for the wearer to become someone or something totally different. So some ideas:

For me, 'mental costume' contains the stories and metaphors that describe us and the stories and metaphors which we use as an interface to engage the world around us. Changing the mental costume effectively means to change the stories, rituals, metaphors, language and rules of the game. Maybe if we could describe a modern knowledge system and its characteristics more fully, we could iterate backwards in order to describe the kind of systems and processes needed to create a modern knowledge system. This would further give us an idea of the mental and intellectual costumes we need to experiment with.

Steve Banhegyi
steve@storytelling.co.za

Thanks for your Blog Entry

Submitted by KMAadmin on 24 February 2010 - 9:15am.

Dear Jacques

We sincerely appreciate your blog post and have read your entire reflection which we'd like to put onto KMAfrica in its totality. Your vision of a post totemic Africa is a powerful and important thought starter. The question I am left with is exactly how does one move into this new paradigm when the fundamental paradigms in which millions of Africans live and have been socialised are precisely those which you suggest need be to be left behind? What stories could provide solace and effectively guide us into the post totemic future?

KMAfrica Admin
info@kmafrica.com
www.kmafrica.com

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