Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Historical approaches to the study of social sciences in Africa provide clear evidence of the dominance of Western thought and voice in the narrative of life and interpretation of social reality. This dominance has created a dilemma for African scholars to engage with the world and has downgraded their perspective to a mediocrity. To many non-European scholars, including those in Africa, this is the essence of epistemic racism and cultural arrogance entrenched in Eurocentrism. In the words of Molefi Asante, ‘until we (Africans) reset the social sciences, humanities, sciences and arts more closely to our own historical tales we will continue to assume the role of junior brother and sister to other world narratives as if our own experiences, that is, those of our ancestors, are less important than others. The primary argument advanced in this article is that knowledge is bound to time and space and that no scholar is omniscient and omnipresent. The historical processes under which we were socialized influence us all and we think and speak from our multiple localities. With this said, the contention of this article is that Eurocentrism by seeking to occupy the central place and by imagining itself as a ‘universal point of view’ undermines the humanity of others and their worldviews. The article adopts Afrocentricity as a necessary theoretical lens for Africans in the quest to decolonize the ‘social sciences’ from Eurocentric hegemony and to liberate Africans to speak and think from their context to enable relevance.