African Philosophy, Second Edition: Myth and Reality

8 True and false pluralism

8 True and false pluralism* 'Cultural pluralism' generally means three things: (1) the fact of cultural plurality, understood as the coexistence ofcultures belonging , at least in principle, to different geographical areas; (2) the recognition of this fact; (3) the advocacy of this plurality and the will to make use of it in one way or another, either by preserving these cultures from mutual contamination or by organizing a peaceful dialogue among them for their mutual enrichment. In this now classic fonn cultural pluralism is a reaction against the cultural exclusivism of the West, and it is important to note that this reaction itself came from the West. The Europe that produced Levy-Bruhl also produced Levi-Strauss. The Europe that produced Gobineau also produced Jean-Paul Sartre. The Europe that produced Hitler had previously produced Marx - a sign that European culture is itself pluralistic, a criss-cross of the most diverse tendencies , so that, when we speak of Western civilization we may not be clear what we are talking about, and there is a danger that we will confuse currents that are opposed and irreconcilable. But whether imaginary or real, this 'Western civilization' has been created as a unitary civilization and has become the yardstick by which the civilizations of other continents are deprecated and devalued. The cultural achievements of other societies have been destroyed for its sake. This attitude bears a name: ethnocentrism. It has had its day of glory - the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of our own; and today nobody would seriously dispute that it was linked historically to colonization. It has also had its professional ideologues, one ofthe most illustrious ofthem being Levy-Bruhl (who, by the way, has the distinction of being 'entirely francophone'). * A paper read at the AUPELF (Association of Partially or Entirely Francophone Universities) colloquium, held at Louvain-Ia-Neuve (Belgium) from 21 to 25 May 1973, on 'The Universities and the Plurality ofCultures'. Published in the Acta, pp. 53--65, and in Diogene, no. 84 (OctoberDecember 1973). True and false pluralism 157 From 'progressive' ethnologists to the Third World 'nationalists' It was as a reaction against this cultural imperialism that it began to be asserted at least fifty years ago,1 and continues to be today, that European civilization is only one of a number of ways oforganizing people's relations to each other and to nature. Thus was recognized the plurality of cultures. Thus was rejected, at least in principle, the myth of Western superiority as a result of a new awareness that the technical and economic advancement of a society did not automatically produce social or moral superiority. Some even went so far as simply to invert the scale ofimperialistic values and to valorize the non-technicity of 'exotic' societies by interpreting their lesser technological development as a condition of greater 'authenticity', Le. of a greater transparency in human relations. As early as 1930 Malinowski wrote: Many of us . . . see a menace to all real spiritual and artistic values in the aimless advance of modem mechanization. One of the refuges from this mechanical prison of culture is the study of primitive forms of hmnan life as they still exist in remote parts ofour globe. Anthropology, to me at least, was a romantic escape from our overstandardized culture.2 Closer to our own time, Levi-Strauss has adopted the same Rousseauist tone, arguing that 'primitive' societies are more 'authentic' than 'civilized' societies because they are free from exploitation, because their human relations are less anonymous and more personal, because they are small enough for everyone to know everyone else and to enjoy perfect unanimity on all the most important problems.3 So we are now witnessing the valorization of a cultural plurality, the very existence of which was inconceivable to imperial ethnology . The evolutionism of Tylor or Morgan and the brash and reactionary ethnocentrism of Levy-Bruhl could not accept the idea that non-European cultures might actually exist. They could not conceive of the cultural life of 'primitive' societies except as representing the early stages in a single cultural process of which Europe represented for them the most advanced stage. Today, however, Western anthropology accepts the existence of other cultures; and, more than that, it sees them as representing the possible salvation of a Western civilization suffering from an excess of technology and 158 Analyses standardization and yearning for what Bergson called a...