The claim that Africans cannot articulate their worldview justifies the trained fieldworker’s decoding role
Evidence
This opinion stems from the derogatory, Eurocentric conception that Africans live in a world that is essentially symbolized and ritualized in character. This implies that indigenous African peoples predominantly articulate their beliefs and values through rites, rituals, and masquerades, rather than using discursive verbal statements, such as proverbs and myths. Such an argument calls for the intercultural fieldworker, who is professionally trained, to be active in trying to decode (interpolate the meanings of) such behaviour (symbolic and ritual), proverbs, and myths in a comprehensive and discursive manner, as seen in the works of Marcel Griaule (1965) and Alexis Kagame (1956). — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 534
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Sets up the Griaule/Kagame lineage of professional ethnophilosophy — a key thread in African philosophy debates.