RE: The problem of an African epistemology: Can the Igbo have a theory of knowledge?
Very interesting post. At the beginning I thought you'd treat the question as a rhetorical one. In the ned it is, based on your conclusions.
By all means, it is period.
The same eurocentric attitude that makes anyone doubt about the rationality and capacity for abstraction of africans makes them doubt, say, their artistic capacity.
We may be asking, as it was asked decades ago, can africans produce art? can they produce music.
Of course, if you measure what they produce by european standards, you may be inclined to conclude no!
Those paitings and rhythms look nothing like Michelangelo or sound nothing like Mozart, therefore, they are "below the dignity of criticism" (as Jefferson said about Phillis Wheatley's poems).
How do we know what we know? therein lies the definition of epistemology. Every single culture in the world has a way (organized/articulated or not) to achieve knowledge and derive conceptions of the world and their place in it from that knowledge, therefore any culture in the world is capable of philosophizing.
Thanks for the reply! Yes it is a very tough topic.
The short answer, in my opinion, is that the idea of philosophy, art, music, etc., being "judged" by arbitrary standards is a very old and eurocentric way of thinking, but the sad part is it still permeates western thought. The question is how do we stop this kind of faulty thinking?
Well, I think that Africans, like Latin Americans or any other non-european group must generate their own validation.
We can't expect validation to come from outside sources. I know it is difficult, for instance, to get things published and circulated, but if efforts are made to invest in the difusion and discussion of each culture's particular epistemologies and ontologies from within and towards a wider audience (taking advantage of today's tech resources), then we can make alternative conceptions of knowledge and the world as ubiquitous as mainstream western thought.