Tempels’ Kiluba-based reading of Africa grounds Dokman’s Bumuntu Paradigm against Hegel’s Eurocentric grid.

Evidence

As an old dictum has it, “Historia Magistra Vitae.” History is, indeed, the best lens through which to read, understand and shape our future. … In modern scholarship, Africa has been largely studied, understood and explained according to Western grids of interpretation. This is widely known as “Eurocentric paradigm.” It is a colonial and neo-colonial view of the world with a tinge of Darwinian racial hierarchy. I have termed this a “Hegelian paradigm” insofar as Hegel provided a systematic articulation of the Eurocentric idea of Africa in his philosophy of world history. It is the ultimate expression of “manufactured barbarism.” Africa, according to Hegel, is an unhistorical part of the world – black, primitive, savage, bereft of logic, rationality and morality since the dawn of humanity. By contrast, Tempels attempted a different reading of Africa inspired by his study of Kiluba language and the African culture of the people among whom he lived for many years. This way of looking at the world from the point of view of African people is what I refer to as the “Bumuntu Paradigm.” — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 647

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what is meant by the ‘Hegelian paradigm’ versus the ‘Bumuntu Paradigm’ as rival interpretive frames for reading African history and culture.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing later: how does the Bumuntu Paradigm claim to avoid reproducing a new essentialism in replacing the Hegelian one?