Quest 

Abstract: This volume brings together fifteen essays investigating aspects of interculturality. Published between 1969 and 2002, the essays operate at the borderline between anthropology and intercultural philosophy. Ethnographic data are derived from field research carried out in Tunisia, Zambia and Botswana. While a number of chapters focus on specific African contexts, others have a more theoretical focus, or deal with the whole of Africa. The essays are arranged in five parts: 1. Preliminaries; 2. The construction of intercultural knowledge through anthropological fieldwork; 3. From anthropological fieldworker in southern Africa, to North Atlantic diviner-priest: an experiment in intercultural philosophy; 4. From cultural anthropology to intercultural philosophy; 5. Exercises in intercultural philosophy. [ASC Leiden abstract]

Abstract: A search for the African Renaissance, the present buzzword in South Africa, produces a wide variety of meanings. Searching the web results in several hits under Renaissance Incorporated: the African Renaissance as marketing device. Searching South African bookshops leads predictably to the section 'Politics' or 'Current Affairs', again to 'Business', but also to 'Religion': the African Renaissance as ideological and spiritual beacon, äs a political programme for Thabo Mbeki's government, an instrument of foreign policy, Africa's response to globalisation, a marketing strategy and a 'back to roots' recipe for moral regeneration. African Renaissance conferences resonate with pan-African nostalgia and romanticised visions of Africa's heritage and lost empires. Traditional chiefs evoke the African Renaissance to safeguard their power and privilege: the African Renaissance äs an instrument of neo-traditionalism.

Abstract: In this Postscript to the collection Truth in Politic: Rhetorical Approaches to Democratic Deliberation in Africa and beyond, the author argues that its project, while at first superficial glance appearing to deal with abstruse topics of limited applicability (a reading of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in terms of Aristotelian rhetoric), in fact addresses phenomena of the greatest significance for the African continent as a whole, thus taking up major debates in Quest over the years. These include: the reflection on the philosophical canon (in this case: Aristotle and rhetoric); the development of an African philosophy that is relevant to major current transformations on the African continent – in this case the viability of the state, democracy, reconciliation and freedom; that is critically and radically aware of the global hegemonic context in which it is being produced; and that yet situates itself, globally, in the field of tension between the universal and the particular. In this way, this Postscript both situates, and vindicates, the present collection, and offers a manifesto for Quest in the future. Introduction: Why this Postscript I whole-heartedly share the conviction of my fellow-editors (Philippe-Joseph Salazar and Sanya Osha), as to the quality and the relevance of this collection. Its project, i.e. seeking to elucidate contemporary African politics (and particularly the epoch-making 1994-1998 Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa) in the light of Aristotelian rhetoric, directly addresses the raison d’être of Quest as an African journal of philosophy. Especially in this first issue of Quest under my responsibility, I feel it is not out of character (to use an expression from Aristotle’s philosophy of virtue) for me to examine, in this Postscript, this collection as a coherent whole, and to highlight its dilemmas and solutions. I thus build on the shorter overview presented, in the Foreword, by Philippe-Joseph Salazar, who was the main intellectual and organizing force behind the conference on which the present 1 Cf. the footnote on p. 7 of this volume. 2 I am indebted to my fellow-editors Philippe-Joseph Salazar and Sanya Osha for constructive remarks on an earlier version of this argument. However, the responsibility for this argument’s shortcomings and one-sidedness is entirely mine. © 2004 Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine de Philosopy – ISSN 1011-226X – http://quest-journal.net Aristotle in Africa: A comparative Africanist reading of the TRC 239 collection is based. Far from disqualifying the various contributions in this volume for the specific disciplinary and geographical and temporal focus they each take, my aim is to bring out their potential to contribute to what, through major debates featuring some of the great names in African philosophy, have been the leading themes in Quest through the years: 1. the reflection on the philosophical canon, both in the North Atlantic and in Africa (with possible extensions towards the world’s other philosophical traditions, in Islam, Judaism, India, China, the New World, etc.); 2. the conceptual and theoretical effort to develop African philosophy into a tool that illuminates, by comparison and contrast, current socio-political developments on the African continent; 3. the critical reflection on the North Atlantic dominated, hegemonic context in which African knowledge production takes place today, and the formulation of radical anti-hegemonic alternatives; and finally 4. the exploration of the possibilities for an intercultural production of knowledge that, while affirming its specific (e.g. African) roots in space and time, yet situates itself in the field of tension between the universal and the particular. Applying these themes to the present volume implies assessment, and therefore deviation from the editorial pretence of neutrality. Considering the seriousness of the matters we are dealing with, such may be inevitable. Even in a book centring on rhetoric, elegance cannot always take precedence over what is perceived (albeit from an individual standpoint) as relevance. While most authors in this collection prefer the Aristotle of Rhetoric, exploring (by Aristotle’s own definition) the possibilities of persuasion, others feel more comfortable with the Aristotle of Organon, exploring the possibilities of arriving at a literal truth through formal procedures. The latter approach implies a more compelling, less malleable and less performative conception of truth than the former, even in intercultural matters like those at stake in this volume. The four objectives outlined above are full of contradictions, 3 The locus classicus of rhetoric is, of course, Aristotle’s book of that name, available in a number of modern editions and translations, including: Aristotle 1926, 2001, 1991. In the present volume, the contributions particularly by Salazar, Cassin and Garver contain essential pointers to the main issues, and important classic and recent writings, in the field of rhetoric. For the application of rhetoric as an analytical tool in the South African context today, see the brilliant Salazar 2002. For an excellent recent collection also cf. Bernard-Donals & Glejzer 1998. 4 Aristotle, Rhetoric, I, 1, 135526. 5 Cf. Aristotle, Organon, numerous editions e.g. Aristotle 1938, 1960. 6 van Binsbergen 2003b.

Abstract: Martin Bernal's 'Black Athena' has evoked three kinds of reaction: scholarly evaluation of the historical evidence for Bernal's claims, both of Ancient Europe's indebtedness to West Asia and Northeast Africa, and of the construction in recent centuries of the Greek miracle as a Eurocentric, racialist myth; appropriation of the Bernal thesis by African-American and African intellectuals in the process of identity construction and in the politics of global knowledge production as a counterforce to Eurocentrism and scholarly racism; and critical scholarly extrapolation of the Bernal thesis with regard to African material beyond ancient Egypt. Arguing that origin is not to be equated with subsequent local transformation and performance in maturity, the present author posits that a different mode of thinking about cultural dynamics and interdependence is required. Two case studies tracing the geographical distribution and probable diffusion of geomantic divination and mancala board games since the 16th century, suggest that it is a typical pattern of African cultural history to see active early participation in global cultural flows, followed by subsequent 'cultural involution' and the loss of virtually all trace of an earlier intercontinental exchange. The unit of analysis is civilizations; 'Africa', the continent, is not a viable unit of analysis in this connection. Notes, ref., sum. in French (p. 100)