Determinación de la estructura y la composición corporal

I submit in this section that Oruka’s fascination for the modernist brand of phi- losophy and its uncritical adaptation in his search for African wisdom also re- quires serious revision. This fascination and adaptation are hegemonic and con- descending, as noted above. Will Oruka, and contemporary African philosophers, not derive anything of lasting intercontinental, nay global, value from African knowledge traditions? Did Africa receive only and not give anything suitable for intercultural knowledge production? Is the African position merely an invitation to take the North Atlantic hegemonic heritage with a slight pinch of salt, as Oruka implicitly does, but not to flavour it and augment it more radically with whatever world culture can learn from African knowledge traditions?

Oruka’s adaptations of the North Atlantic model in his search for wisdom in traditional Africa realistically require major adaptations. This is understandable given his inspiration from the dominant mainstream academic philosophical tra- dition of Western thought at the time. Yet, today’s realities, as we see in cultural globalization, which largely inspire the substance of intercultural philosophy, make us take a critical distance with the philosophy of Oruka. North Atlantic sci- ence cannot claim to have a monopoly on the truth. Intercultural mingling privi- leges border-crossing and subverts nationalism and identity politics. The growing awareness of globalization and cultural difference is not simply contradictory, but interdependent. Thus, ‘African’ sagacity should be conceived as compatible with and transferable into other cultural orientations. This is an active step ahead, as opposed to the mere passive acceptance of a plurality of life-worlds and re- signing oneself to the non-negotiability of that plurality.

Hence, in order for contemporary African/Africanist philosophers to make a tangible contribution to the development of philosophy, they ought to be forcibly counter-hegemonic rather than resigning themselves to marginal revisionism. The latter is often the position of peripheral powerlessness, to which the global system condemns African thinkers today. African thinkers also need to engage in a balancing act between African essentialism and a globalizing or universalizing detachment, between deconstruction and affirmation, between Africa and the rest of the world. The contemporary African philosopher needs to avoid such hege- monic assault by exploring and projecting the potential relevance of comparative Africanist models in a global perspective. Oruka does not exclusively project the life-worlds, the cosmologies, the languages, the day-to-day struggles and the pas- times, the religious, artistic, culinary, and sexual expressions, the political and legal institutions, and so on of African people, whose lives are greatly affected, even though not completely determined, by these various factors. The anti- hegemonic and comparative Africanist in the context of globalization will enable the contemporary African philosopher to explore and throw additional light on the specifically traditional African forms of expressing wisdom.

Finally, in our global age the intercultural philosopher needs to address the is- sue of an intercultural epistemology. It will consist in systematizing local wis- dom so that it becomes intelligible in other cultural orientations. The intelligibil- ity of local wisdom becomes a condition sine qua non for its share ability. This converging epistemological foundation can help inspire new ideas, enrich our perception of life-worlds, and ensure our collective survival. Hence, if we con- ceive of intercultural epistemology, we do not need to rely exclusively on those epistemologies determined by North Atlantic intellectual traditions. This implies taking African and other global epistemologies seriously. Van Binsbergen sums up this task with these encouraging words:

Anyway, the task of intercultural epistemology is not to solve the riddles of the world, but to call attention to the world-wide diversity of approaches vis-à-vis those riddles, other people’s promising attempts at such resolution, and to help create an intercultural framework within which these can be appreciated. (van Binsbergen 2003: 278)

Throughout this work, I have been exploring Oruka’s philosophic sagacity, showing rationality in indigenous African philosophy. For Oruka, philosophic sagacity is better placed than the other trends he identifies in contemporary Afri- can philosophy. I propose intercultural philosophy as a viable approach for con- temporary African philosophy in the current globalizing framework. Oruka pos- tulates philosophic sagacity - a reflection of some individuals in a given ‘cul- ture’; yet, such a conception of culture is highly problematic, as it bases itself on

173 boundaries that are gradually eroding in our global context. In his conception of intercultural philosophy, van Binsbergen chides the North Atlantic anthropologi- cal concept of culture that is applied to African philosophy without further revi- sion. Cultures do not exist (at least, not any more) in the sense of closed, discrete bounded units. What exists in contemporary conditions of globalization is a plu- rality of overlapping cultural orientations. With sangoma wisdom, van Binsber- gen leads us to see that culture is not tied to a place. In interpreting and naming the 16 possible combinations of the sangoma tablets, he shows us that they are similar to 10th century Arabian magic and to the Chinese I Ching, whose astrolog- ical implications had been elaborated much earlier in Babylonia. Crossing cultur- al boundaries with healing and knowledge production make us see that the boundaries between the seemingly unrelated therapy and knowledge systems across the world are relative and porous. In addition to their being rooted in the shared experience of the human body and mind, to some degree they share a common inspiration and intellectual past. Moreover, African philosophy today is largely tributary to the North Atlantic academic philosophical tradition, which is a hegemonic imposition in the political, ideological, economic, and cultural do- mains. In his conception of sagacity, Oruka implicitly, but not explicitly, coun- ters this hegemony. His individual philosophic sages must resemble Western sages and revel in the North Atlantic philosophical tradition. Van Binsbergen’s vision of sangoma wisdom goes beyond asserting African wisdom through the eyes of North Atlantic science. He does not just interview wise people as Oruka does, but he tries to look for wiser ways of helping them go through their daily problems. Hence, when he becomes a diviner-priest, he uses this wisdom for healing and transformation of individual and collective lives. In contrast to Oruka, who limits sagacity to abstract thinking (sophia), it would be more re- warding to broaden African wisdom to practical matters (phronesis). This practi- cal approach to wisdom contributes to an intercultural therapy, to health and psy- chological assistance nearer to people’s experiential and existential lives. We need to blend both sophia and phronesis for a richer African sagacity. We also need to blend the emic and etic approaches in our quest for sagacity. Moreover, we cannot claim, as Oruka does, that African sagacity is uniquely African. Afri- can sagacity has benefitted from its contacts with other wisdom traditions. We see that in the answers Oruka’s sages in Kenya give when they are interviewed.

The principal challenge facing the African philosopher today lies in his/her ability to engage in a balancing act, between deconstruction and affirmation, be- tween African essentialism and globalizing or universalizing detachment, and between Africa and the world. African philosophy should not be conceived of as just an abstract and academic undertaking with no bearing on African life today as Oruka implies. A new African philosophy should be one that consistently

seeks to contribute to solving individual and collective predicaments. In this way we incorporate both the theoretical and practical side of wisdom in a bid to acti- vate human virtue. This will require an African philosophy that remains close to the everyday experience of people living in historical communities, who are try- ing to conceive of and understand the world close to them, to face both domestic and outside threats. Even though these modes of thought may have stood out em- phatically as foreign imports, they have had a lasting and powerful effect upon the modern transformation of African lives. The wisdom of intercultural media- tion and negotiation remains quite a fundamental and promising challenge of our time. We must affirm local wisdom in African cultural domains, but we should also find ways to negotiate these local wisdoms into a wider context in a bid to contribute to other global wisdom traditions.

Mudimbe (2005) asserts that in spite of the diversity and variety inherent in African philosophy and beyond the sterile debate on its ‘existence’ or ‘inexist- ence’, what affirms itself amazingly is simply the vocation of something called philosophy. In his mind, this philosophy actualizes itself as a perpetual récom- mencement (an on-going process). In this case, I would propose a redefinition and re-articulation of sagacity in the globalized intercultural context. Such saga- cious knowledge ought to be fluid and flexible, rather than fixed and unchanging. Beyond all facile solutions, beyond all limited horizons imposed upon us by an- thropologists, we must have courage and make a fresh intercultural start. This will imply an intercultural philosophy that enriches and promotes a hegemony- free interaction of cultural orientations, in a bid to complement each other for our collective survival. This is an invitation and a challenge! Will we take it up or turn away?