| KEYNOTE |
| RE-CONTEXTUALIZING SELF/OTHER ISSUES: TOWARD A HUMANICS IN AFRICA |
Itsuhiro Hazama
Director of Nairobi Research Station, JSPS |
This joint symposium is organized by young researchers from Makerere University and Kyoto University. Presenters and discussants specialize in various areas of study, such as social anthropology, social philosophy, comparative literature and aesthetics, and they are invited from various parts of the world as East Africa, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States for the purpose of an exchange and its promotion of information and views. We open this symposium to general audience to activate discussion and insure the involvement of researchers and under- or post-graduate students of all faculties. Under these formations, we are intending to raise an intellectual platform in Makerere University conducive to international multidisciplinary integration centred on re-contextualizing self/other issues.
The presenters' main discipline will be anthropology. This is because the
aim of this symposium is anthropological reconstruction through discussion
on its potential as a 'Humanics of alternative social vision' that takes
into consideration the problem of politics of representation as well as
the risk of blind belief in a given ideal world. Each presenter will show
'one of the possible ways', based on data derived from close participation
in and observation of daily life in the field. The symposium will seek
to demonstrate the possibility of an alternative world or worldview, concerning
topics such as peace construction, social change and dilemma of rural society,
ethnobotany, sense of the world, and lifestyle of urban youth. Each presentation
will endeavour to provide a key to make the concept for imaging the ideal
society as a bundle of the world of possibilities. In contrast to mainstream
economics, which is based on the framework of prescriptive model, anthropology
aims to rely on the descriptive model based on the theory of middle range
and tireless renewal of the same from case studies.
Now, what is the meaning of anthropological researches in contemporary
Africa? At present, African countries are in the midst of the continent's
turbulence of modernization and globalization. Reductive explanation of
those changes in terms of modernization or dependency theory, however,
fails in understanding of the fertile and vivid dynamism of reality; the
inner tension within the society and social mobility and plasticity. The
most important tasks in current anthropology consist of understanding African
reality through the fine observation of the everyday life of people and
then producing discourses, which can intervene into the development-oriented
policies trying to conceive societies by the overwhelming power.
It goes without saying that we cannot conclude that 'application' as mentioned
above grasps all the meaning of anthropology. Anthropology has explored
the ethos/culture of societies as unique entities which are alive in the
'non-modernized' spheres like Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and has
reversed the understanding of the concepts such modernity as well as what
life meaning or happiness is. As the factor of making relativistic the
obviousness in the modern civilization, it has given the amplitude of imagination
for a new social plan and the clue to conceive 'another way possible' to
people in the developed countries who are suffering the distortion arising
in the course of the economic growth.
On the other hand, African thinkers such as Okot p'Bitek have criticized
anthropology, since even before Orientalism criticism by Edward W. Said,
which has alienated 'They-Africa' as a mirror image of 'We-West,' with
assigning 'primitiveness' and 'innocence' to Africa. Even though anthropology
defines itself as 'the study on understanding of other cultures,' scholarship
in the field has failed to be an exceptional case but succumbed to objectifying
Africa through the Western-biased scope and represented it as a homogeneous
entity in this context.
As socialist regimes in Soviet and Eastern Europe collapsed around 1990,
communism, which was the most influential alternative social model in Africa
during 1960-70s, lost its influence. Now that American capitalism triumphs,
intellectuals argue and talk about the 'End of history,' and discussing
on new social vision has come to be regarded as silly. Anthropology, as
a discipline that stimulates and offers alternative social vision, seems
to be negated in terms of politics of representation inside the context
of anthropological argument and relevance to the real world outside of
anthropology.
We voice opposition to such trend. We should inherit the critical attitude
toward dominant (Western-biased) ideology and its value of criticalness
which anthropology has kept since its birth. However, we do not offer 'another
and only way.' The history of social movement and its theory witnesses
us that we must be consistently careful about any form of exclusion or
attempt at making a utopian world. Instead, we try to show 'other many
ways' or multiple possibilities and construct the ideal social image as
a complex bundle of possibilities. Such practice is suitable for anthropology
which has formed middle-ranged descriptive models and persistently renewed
them.
Today in Africa, 'economic/social development' is the most vigorous ideology
that invokes the images of possible worlds. Modernity and its way of thinking
enwomb the arts of 'familiarization' and elimination, which turn unknown
things to understandable things. In the course of understandings, this
way of thinking tends to create 'the other', to grasp unknown things, eliminate
their various 'otherness' themselves, and consequently construct undoubted
'the self', the idea of 'development' basically rooted in the same soil.
Such sort of bias, so to say 'blind obviousness', covers up perplexing
incommensurability of 'otherness' to lay the ghost of agnostic; and what
is more, structurally oppresses it subconsciously. Considering 'subjectivity'
of the other and de-familiarizing given 'the self', this seemingly incompatible
back-and-forth is the marrow of anthropological thought. In this sense,
we believe that anthropological approach and practice for encountering
'the entire other' with 'otherness' can free us from modern desire to rule
and control the other.
In this symposium, twelve presentations will be made in three sessions set up along the issues and questions as follows;
(1) Theoretical Issues on African Anthropologies and African Studies
---What Is the Self/Other in the Contexts of African Anthropologies and African Studies?
(2) Creational Issues on African Anthropologies and African Studies
---How Can We Express the Self/Other's Experiences in African Contexts?
(3) Practical Issues on African Anthropologies and African Studies
---How Can We Interrogate the Relationship between the Self and the Other in the African Contexts?
We will illuminate various creative practices and wisdom in African societies
and open arena to discuss our longings for emancipation. It is not until
we have discussion through the mediation of these key ideas, creativity
and 'emancipation', that we bridge anthropological case studies to the
social theory based on 'various other ways'. We named this intellectual
liberation itself as 'Humanics' ad interim.
Since every case study in anthropological scholarship covers only a particular
topic, it may have some limits. It is for this reason that this symposium
proposes to bring together various scholars in the field of anthropology
in Africa in order to bring together the studies, exchange ideas, and inspire
each other and therefore rise above the limits. We will also welcome guests
and participants from related fields of social sciences, philosophy and
other arts and sciences.
We believe this is one of the best ways to make 'Humanics' work as a tool
of long dialogues with other fields of modern science or with real dimensional
development politics. This will be our contribution in this very important
area of African scholarship and development.
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