Dear All,
Some members of the group may be interested in the blog below (6
pages) on a freethinking strategy - a strategy of `Subversive
Rationalization' - to pull Africa toward some form of distinctive
modernity. Any comment?
Jacques L. Hamel
jachamel@gmail.com
http://jachamel.googlepages.com
"The world we have created is the product of our thinking. It cannot
be changed without changing our thinking" Albert Einstein
"Science is a way of thinking much more than a body of knowledge"
Carl Sagan
The objective of this blog is to share ideas on a strategy - a
STRATEGY OF SUBVERSIVE RATIONALIZATION - for uncovering modernity in
Africa. The strategy emphasizes the internalization of the scientific
method and rational modes of thinking as well as the assimilation of
crucial scientific knowledge, as the epistemological foundation of
any kind of modernity. It also stresses the necessity of renovating
conformist, traditionalist or totalizing belief and knowledge
systems, worldviews and cultures, that stand in the way to essential
changes on the road to modernity - a mega-project of autonomization,
individuation, rationalization, demystification and feminization
processes (less patriarchal forms). Modernity is also a project of
democratization, liberalization, secularization, trans-
nationalization, systematization, technocratization and humanization
processes.
The strategy relies on scientific knowledge, which offers only
incomplete and patchy theories of the real but nonetheless possibly
the best models of reality, for reordering and reconstructing the
African reality and for engaging it with up to date, robust and
economically efficient technical know-how. More generally, it relies
on calculative thinking and on the scientific tradition as the most
viable civilizational horizon of a budding region, whose tortuous and
uncertain transition to modernity may necessitate an imaginative
strand of thinking and a complementary strategy. Triumphant techno-
scientific dogmas need not lead inevitably to the devastation,
excesses and wastefulness of post-industrial consumerist cultures.
They need not to be a model for an African modernity, which can avoid
being exceedingly obsessed, enframed or ordered by technology.
Humans, knowledge and technology are co-emerging, co-evolutive and
mutually co-constitutive of each other. And as soon as we are born we
enter into a corrupted reality: corrupted by ancient customary
thinking, viewpoints and taboos; corrupted by ancestors' tyrannies,
norms and ideals; corrupted by the veiling visions of pre-
contemporary cosmologies, revelations and prophecies; corrupted by
inherited alien religious canons and credos – including those of
Constantinian Christianity and Imperial Islam, which from a
scientific perspective can be assimilated to blind lotteries
(confirmed by statistics) of self-confirming systems of medieval
prejudices; corrupted by lies, mis-information and deceptions;
corrupted by spirits, divinities and other similar cultural
paradigms; and, more universally, corrupted by conventional modes of
thinking, knowing, understanding and being.
The strategy of Subversive Rationalization aims at
freeing, `uncorrupting' or modernizing mentalities and mindscapes,
thus opening the way to the emergence of some brand of original
modernity on the African continent, going further than the simple
ownership and display of modernity's most visible technological
signs. It aims at reforming the technological code with key
technologies: of the self, of sign, of freedom, of change, of
creativity, of power and of truth. These technologies are fundamental
for guiding the `rebirth' of the self, or for cultivating
the `reborn' Afro-self as a more modern self; for enlarging the
freedom necessary for the required societal transformations; for
evolving effective technological symbols and meanings, such as those
of a generous and mobilizing vision of a modern Africa; for designing
and manufacturing appropriate material artefacts; for innovating in
processes of change, including technologically-induced socio-cultural
change; for reordering power configurations; and for uncovering,
producing or reconstructing truth – an essential technology in a sea
of lies, half-truths, self-delusions, clichés, cock-and-bull stories,
and an important constitutive element of modernity.
If `ideas shape the course of history' (Keynes) or if `imagination
shapes history' (Napoleon) then access to modernity entails going
past inflationary rhetorical discourse, utopian dreams and ceremonial
entertainments. It requires subversive ideas and actions and a
methodology that can engineer radical and terribly complex
adjustments in the intricate inner working of African communities.
It calls for critical thinking, dialogue, self-examination, `self-
exorcism' and outright `war' against the conservative supremacy of
the status quo and the authority structures that maintain it. This
cannot be achieved through somewhat academic, elitist and
reductionist policies. The basic choice facing the region is between
customary religio-mythic, idolatrous or astonishingly over-religious
rules established on pre-modern methods, on the one hand, and
enlightening development regimes substantiated by controlled
experiences, on the other hand.
The relative bottom position of most African countries in the techno-
scientific global order is beyond dispute and current STI strategies
may leave half the region as deprived as ever, blown by the fierce
winds of technologization and globalization, locked into scientific
and technical dependency and unable to meet key MDGs. In these
circumstances, a strategy of Subversive Rationalization may be
helpful for putting in place new foundational power-knowledge
frameworks and configurations, and for improving the African
condition.
The African problematic of low exploitation of science and technology
is well known in details and is often understood as the main reason
behind the region's poor socio-economic performance. In this low
techno-scientific environment, attempts to give substance to the idea
of an African Renaissance and comparable initiatives, such as
Nyerre's Ujamaa, Mobutu's Authenticité, Sengor's Négritude, Nkruma's
Conciencism, Kenyata's Harambee, Wade's Omega, Bouteflika's Ennahda
Movement, Mbeki's `Call to Rebellion' (1998) - let alone the vision
of the Commission for Africa and other similar initiatives - have
mostly been successful at developing, justifying and communicating
specific ideas of modernization. But they also all have been
failures because they have not only under-estimated the colossal
effort required for achieving the necessary makeovers but they also
ignored the most important changes to bring about: the painful
modernization of the mythological landscape, including pre-modern
Abrahamic, Shamanic and Animist mythologies. That means a shift
toward scientific ways of observing, questioning, analyzing and
knowing or toward science as the latest myth or the new religion of
the time that can propel the continent into some kind of modernity.
Rationalization refers to a maturation process guided by the
scientific method and by instrumental reason, more than by fairy tale
legacies, superstitions, revealed or divine knowledge, as
historically envisioned by prominent Enlightenment philosophers and
scientists of the 16th and 17th centuries. This rationalization
enables better control and more accurate calculation of means to
achieve precise ends, resulting in superior technological or
technical effectiveness and flexibility, and in greater industrial
advance. Modernizing nations are more ideologically open or keener
to mathematize and channel the forces of nature for their own
benefit. And they are more oriented toward the corrosion of doubt -
believing in things that can be empirically supported -- and toward
improving lives in this world (rather than in the after-life). In
these mindsets, there are no place for Jonas-in-the-whale type of
spellbound stories, amazing archangels, absurd limbos, far-fetched
miracles, occult forces and providential intrusions. Reality is what
is perceived through technological means. This results in developing
societies being progressively subverted into essentially
more `advanced', enlightened or disenchanted ones.
Subversion refers to a process of overthrowing or overturning systems
of principles and convictions as well as forms of dominance, control
and power that are incompatible with or are not sustained by
instrumental rationality and renovation processes. These processes
result in the uprooting of totalizing, oppressive or terror
structures that obstruct the way to modern manners of grasping
reality - from terrorizing gods and demons, authoritative
governments, phallocratic ecclesiasts, polygamous masters, mystifying
medicine men to cloistered women, domestic slaves, mutilated girls
and abducted brides. A strategy of Subversive Rationalization,
therefore, means clearing the way toward more pragmatic, empirical
and mechanical worldviews and at critically challenging pre-modern
systems from un-enabling governance structures, including commanding
husbands, as well as from constraining cosmological and ideological
formations, whether home-grown or alien.
The strategy of Subversive Rationalization intends to probe the
knowledge-power–technology gaps with modern / scientific modes of
perceiving. Filling this gap necessitates not only acquiring new
types of information, such as scientific, technical and business, but
also abandoning some habitual or pre-scientific types of knowledge
that stands in the way to progress and modernity. As much endeavour
may be required to unlearn or deconstruct a pre-modern reality
acquired through acculturation and socialization, than to learn new
scientific and technical knowledge and a new version of reality.
Scientific proficiency is by far the trickiest to achieve since it
often comes in conflict with long-established traditional knowledge
edifices, which may not be seriously altered without social and
political struggles. Undeniably, pre-modern spiritual constructions,
including those originating from the Middle-East and ancient Arabia,
tend to mesmerize, domesticate or subjugate African societies,
leaving little room for true scientific ways of viewing, judging,
behaving, existing and living. These scientific ways must gain
ground over non-scientific ways.
In a strategy of Subversive Rationalization, medieval faith-based
representations, infrastructures and institutions, such as the
institution of Heaven / Hell – amongst the most powerful
establishment regulating the lives of Africans – are superseded or
supplanted by new thinking, unleashing the power of efficient
systems, such as successful innovation systems. Indeed, Evangelical
and Qur'anic models, although of relatively recent human
construction, may lack decisive values for accessing modernity, such
as democratic governance; the complete utilization of feminine
talents and aptitudes; affection and care for nature; a concern for
the future; superiority of scientific methods and hypotheses
over `gaseous' or prophetic knowledge; a strong focus on life before
death and a less fatalistic attitude toward the lifeworld and
poverty – all indispensable preconditions for uncovering modernity.
In many circumstances mytho-religious texts and documents - promoted
by a pervasive and expanding physical and human infrastructure (not
exactly a hotspring of fresh worldviews) - may constitute a virtual
owner's manual for one's life. This is especially so for Africans-of-
one-book, which under certain conditions may not be conducive to
paradigmatic innovation. Only techno-scientific knowledge can sustain
the deep transformations to modernity.
Subversive Rationalization requires pushing back fabulous or pre-
scientific beliefs formations in order to clear a space or a pathway
for more scientific views and practices. The central tussle is being
played between various categories of knowledge - from scientifically
founded to unfounded. This could be the crucible where a meaningful
African modernity could emerge, through a redefinition of cultural,
social, economic, ideological, mythological and political
relationships with science and technology.
Technology is more than a tool or an instrument at our disposal. It
is also an organizing activity in which humans themselves are
organized. The more technologies evolve and become ubiquitous the
more humans are themselves transformed into resources, raw material,
system components, toys, cogs and devices (if not sex organs) and
optimized for the sake of system efficiency – the essence of
technology. The outcome is easier and more secure and prosperous ways
of life, but dominated and regulated by the rigorous disciplinary
order of technical systems. In this framework, the African youth
struggles to become `efficient' resource in the global job market,
while technology mainly reveals Africa as collection of folkloric
curiosities, and an immense fuel station coveted for powering the
global technological engine.
A techno-scientific renewal through a strategy of Subversive
Rationalization could be helpful in promoting Pan-African integration
and in responding to the special needs of the region. It could be
supportive in revitalizing, refreshing, unifying and integrating
knowledge systems in African territories. These systems are greatly
fractured, compartmented, `medievalized' and largely unscientifically
founded (Muslim / Christian division and exclusive possession),
balkanized (by six colonizing powers), fragmented (+ 1000 idioms and
worldviews), and mythologized (with indigenous and foreign
superstitions). Knowledge is also sometimes monopolized (non-sharing
knowledge practices and ethos), atomized (not part of advanced
international knowledge networks), decontextualized (uprooted,
transplanted from the technologically-advanced areas), unused or
underused (scientists as taxi drivers), misappropriated (by power
hungry sources), under or mis-professionalized (shamanic knowledge),
misapplied (ecocidal), misinterpreted or ignored (disregarding
scientific revolutions). African knowledge is also somewhat being
eroded (extinct or dying knowledge), canned (ready-made shipped in a
pre-packaged fashion), drained (brains seeking greener pasture),
rarely rented (against royalty payments) and always plagued with
Western and phallo-centricity. A strategy of Subversive
Rationalization would provide an enhanced ordering of knowledge and
reality.
Current science, technology, innovation and knowledge policy
approaches remain hopelessly naïve and basically adjunct to the
actual working of knowledge economies. They do not address the issues
specifically related to a region a bit `stained' with pre-modern
habits of mind, languages and views of the universe and life. They do
not put enough emphasis on the structural-constitutional issues that
have stabilized many African spaces into pre-modern technological
ways of life (with some growing islands of imitative modernization).
These spaces can graduate into some sort of modernity through a more
intensive, rational, unfettered and popular use of avant-garde
science, technology and knowledge and with the requisite mental or
intellectual costumes of modern times.
Free-thinkers, scientists, policymakers and stakeholders could be
influential in contextualizing and supporting a strategy of
Subversive Rationalization in the African region. In line and in full
support of NEPAD, they could commit themselves to building
competences for acquiring and incorporating vital techno-scientific
knowledge in strategic areas and to encouraging and utilizing science
as a way of thinking, which fortunately or unfortunately, is highly
injurious and detrimental to time-honoured traditional or pre-modern
myths, prejudices, doctrines, tenets, precepts, credos, faiths or
fantasies.
A strategy of Subversive Rationalization could entrust opinion makers
and the scientific and entrepreneurial communities to sound courses
of action such as strengthening capacities for converting or
revamping existing traditional knowledge systems, including faith-
based systems, and for restructuring or recreating reality. These
could include Africanizing, decolonizing, indigenizing, liberating,
re-cosmologizing, re-mythologizing, re-charlatanizing, re-
prophetizing, re-sacralizing and re-deifying processes for a
different African adventure, driven by thriving methodical ways of
thinking and scientific practices.
.
In summary the strategy of Subversive Rationalization uses the power
of scientific thought to launch a counter hegemonic offensive for
subverting disabling traditional and repressive knowledge-power
orders that stand in the way to a new realism, or to the rejuvenation
and reconstruction of reality. The strategy may be valuable for
bringing about a post-totemic, post-enchanted, post-Abrahamic, post-
phallocratic, post-colonial and post-fragmented regional space and in
moving Africa forward into a distinctive, creative, secular and
authentic form of modernity.
Details regarding the strategy can be found in a draft website -
http://jachamel.googlepages.com
- (600 pages).
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