Felwine Sarr – Writing the humanities from an African perspective

My research project starts from the premise of the diversity of approaches to reality across civilisations and eras, the plurality of modes of knowledge, and gnoseological and epistemological relativity. It proposes a rethinking of the plurality of human thought processes based on the idea of the equality of principle of the different schools of thought, while recognising their incommensurability. This leads us to consider these different schools of thought from their horizons and the configurations of the imaginable that they propose, as singular paths of the mind, developed simultaneously, shaped by the cultures from which they come.

Thinking about these issues in an African context requires an epistemic shift. We need to integrate the complexity of African social structures and apprehend them in their cultural and historical specificities. This requires a change of position within constituted fields of knowledge and reshaping  an act of thought that pays particular attention to its archaeological context and to current trends in the societies studied.

This restructuring project requires a thorough rethinking of the social sciences, necessitating an epistemological questioning of the objects, methods and status of the knowledge produced by the human and social sciences, applied to African realities. The major obstacle to such an approach remains the difficulty of determining an epistemological field, in other words the specific objects to be examined, but also the singular methods needed to do so. A recurrent criticism of the Western vision of knowledge is that it overestimates the prerogatives of the subject, based on the illusion that the latter, by his or her own means (reason and/or sense), can produce thought that takes account of the complexity of reality. The pitfall of European methodology is that it adopts a single criterion to explain reality. What’s more, when it comes to knowledge, its approach is based on the desire to produce a reality governed exclusively by experience and reason. The fruitfulness of the methodological approach based on the principle of the excluded third[1] will be examined. This approach distinguishes the subject from the object in order to interpret reality. It transforms objects into momentary entities and cuts up reality into tiny fragments that we then try to reconstitute. This is part of the residual positivism of the Western gnosiological tradition, based on a two-thousand-year-old atomism. This approach has been useful for the development of physics and the natural sciences, but it is much less fruitful for the humanities and social sciences, because the objects studied are multi-layered and the subject is not separated from the object. Following the example of quantum physics, the position of the observer modifies the object observed.

But more fundamentally, the aim is to gain a deeper understanding of African societies and cultures, which are also based on their own gnosiological criteria. To achieve this, it is necessary to adopt modes of apprehending reality other than scientific knowledge as it is currently constituted. Exploring the relatively unknown territories of African ontomythologies and epistemogonies allows a more open approach to the different types of knowledge that have helped to preserve the future of African societies. It is necessary to explore the possibilities offered by other forms of knowledge and other interpretations of reality. These are modes of knowledge that have demonstrated their long-term operational properties in different areas of human activity: therapeutic and environmental knowledge, technical know-how, social, historical, psychological, economic and agronomic knowledge. This knowledge has ensured the survival, growth and sustainability of African societies. To mobilise this knowledge, it is necessary to explore African cosmogonies, myths, diverse cultural expressions and linguistic resources.

We will also debate a theory of knowledge constrained by the limits of Western vision, questioning the exclusivity of the logocentric episteme and the framing of modes of understanding by a single mode of written thought. This study reconsiders the question of knowledge at its roots. It aims to rethink the conditions that make knowledge possible. “What can I know” is the question posed by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. “How is knowledge possible? These questions defined physics and metaphysics in the 18th century.

The questions we might ask ourselves instead might be : Can we acquire knowledge other than through experience ? Can we acquire knowledge through the senses ? What can the arts and non-discursive ways of thinking teach us about reality? Can we envisage an epistemology of the senses ?

This examination of knowledge will be developed by considering the objects of the epistemological quest as well as its modes of perception of reality. Since Aristotle, explaining has consisted of determining causes or identifying the first cause. Considering explanation as the only way of thinking about the world is intrinsically biased. Linear causality” thinking has a limit, and that limit is first cause. Complex and dialogical thinking (Morin) has put this way of interpreting reality into perspective, by revealing its limits.

Human intelligence lies in our ability to go beyond the different possibilities of thought, to understand them and to make them interact. The aim, however, is not to bridge the gap between these different approaches to knowledge and reality through a unitary and convergent dialectic. It will not be a project of systematic research containing the ultimate truth, nor a synthesis, but rather an attempt to present these possibilities in order to produce something intelligible from their self-reflection.

[1] This view is also being challenged within the Western episteme by proponents of quantum physics and thinkers such as Nicholas Georgescu-Rogen, who has promoted transdisciplinarity and the principle of the excluded third.