Afrikology and Transdisciplinarity

Cover

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Title page

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pp. i-

Copyright Page

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pp. 2-

In memory of Prof Dani Wadada Nabudere – an Ode to an African Intellectual Giant

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pp. iv-vi

The Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA) had the privilege in recent years of a fruitful association with the late Prof Dani Nabudere. He was the inaugural keynote speaker of our annual Archie Mafeje Memorial Lecture in Tshwane in 2010, in recognition of the late Mafeje, a South African scholar who was denied the opportunity of lecturing at the University of Cape Town...

Contents

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pp. viii-ix

Introduction

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pp. 1-8

This monograph is intended to examine the epistemology of restorative rights in view of the continuing violation of rights in all aspects of life on the African continent and other parts of the world. It is based on the research, which the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute undertook between 2006–2008, under a cross-disciplinary research project entitled...

1. Theoretical Problems. Revealed By The Research

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pp. 9-18

The research carried out above revealed how a fragmented worldview is responsible for the current misunderstandings of current social relations and institutional frameworks and thereby creates insoluble problems in society. It can now be understood why our social mind is so bifurcated and rendered partial in its understanding of issues in polarities and...

2. The Central Problem: A Fragmented Polarised Worldview

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pp. 19-29

In order to better understand the above dichotomies found in practice in understanding the concept of justice, it is necessary to trace their origins. It is clear that the problems of fragmented knowledge production arise out of the crafting of paradigms such as the natural, social science and the humanities. This fragmentation has to be overcome by a restorative practice...

3. Quantamasisation And Transdisciplinarity

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pp. 30-44

Cheikh Anta Diop recognised that it was within the natural sciences themselves that a space was opened for self-reflection that enabled the ‘new sciences’ to emerge, which enabled the physics and mechanics scientists to resolve the Greek classical problem of the Aristotelian ‘excluded middle’ that had blocked further progress in theoretical mechanics and physics. ...

4. Research, Method And Methodology

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pp. 45-69

The purpose of transcending academic disciplines is to advance the world of knowledge for human advancement through learning and action. Research is essential to this process for there can be no improvement in people’s lives unless knowledge is perpetually renewed with new experiences and applied to meet those new and old needs. But a fragmented researched-knowledge...

5. Science, Non-Science And Co-Evolution

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pp. 70-77

The implications of the relativity and quantum revolutions have had a wide impact on the way science in society and its organisation towards a more co-evolutionary paradigm are viewed. In fact, what is called the emergence of ‘complexity’ and ‘uncertainty’ arises from the collapse of the ‘classical’ model of knowledge production, which quantum physics and mechanics...

6. Afrikology And Research

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pp. 78-84

The above analysis reveals that other forms of knowledge and epistemologies that underlie them are as valid as any other and that the unity of all knowledge is beneficial to humankind. As we have noted in a separate monograph, Afrikology is an epistemology of knowledge generation and application that has roots in African cosmology and worldviews. ...

7. Transdisciplinarity And The Word

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pp. 85-116

Since the quantum revolution and the recognition by a few scientists that ‘Mode 2’ society had emerged beyond the ‘Mode 1’ society, there have been concerted attempts at creating a broader epistemology basis beyond the narrow unilinear scientific methods based on the Cartesian epistemology. ...

8. The Deconstruction Of The Hegemonic Undirectional Scholarship

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pp. 117-158

The fundamental weakness to be confronted if we are to move beyond the unidirectional and single level understanding of reality and its ‘scientific’ claims lies in reclaiming the moral ground for all knowledge. This is the issue that Cheikh Anta Diop has drawn attention to in his consistent struggle to recover what was lost of the Egyptian knowledge systems...

9. Research, Language And Epistemology

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pp. 159-170

A peoples’ self-understanding and self-definition can only take place through their languages and cultures because that is how knowledge is created. This is already clear, but it took over one hundred years to deconstruct ideologies, which asserted the contrary under the cover of academic philosophy and disciplines, as we have seen. In lived experiences...

10. Indigeneous Knowledge Systems And Afrikology

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pp. 171-175

A movement by scholars towards Communities Sites of Knowledge, which is consistent with the primacy of language and knowledge creation, reinforces the need for the recognition of indigenous knowledge systems and their linkages to science and scientific practice. Some wonderful work has been done by a Ugandan scholar by the name Catherine Odora Hoppers...

11. A Against Anti-Humanism

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pp. 176-190

The development of science in its present ‘reductionist’ form is in some quarters taking on an anti-humanist trend reflected in the philosophy of ‘Transhumanism.’ It is in emerging as an intellectual and cultural outgrowth of the Western civilisation that science is being used to fundamentally transform the human condition by developing and making...

Conclusion

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pp. 191-193

We have taken a long detour to come to the conclusion that Afrikology is a fitting epistemology for a restorative cognitive justice understood in broad terms. We began with the concern about a narrow concept of ‘justice’ within the workings of the Rome Statutes. We argued that this was due to narrow positivist legalistic conceptions of Justice seen as ‘adversarial justice.’ ...

References

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pp. 194-200

Back cover

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