STRATEGY OF SUBVERSIVE RATIONALIZATION FOR AFRICA
STRATEGY OF SUBVERSIVE RATIONALIZATION - for uncovering modernity inAfrica. The strategy emphasizes the internalization of the scientificmethod and rational modes of thinking as well as the assimilation ofkey scientific knowledge, as the epistemological foundation of anykind of modernity. It also stresses the necessity of renovatingconformist, traditionalist or totalizing belief and knowledge systems,worldviews and cultures, that stand in the way to essential changes onthe road to modernity - a mega-project of autonomization,individuation, rationalization, demystification and feminizationprocesses (less patriarchal forms). Modernity is also a project ofdemocratization, liberalization, secularization, trans-nationalization, systematization, technocratization and humanizationprocesses.
The strategy relies on scientific knowledge, which offers onlyincomplete and patchy theories of the real but nonetheless possiblythe best models of reality, for reordering and reconstructing theAfrican reality and for engaging it with up to date, robust andeconomically efficient technical know-how. More generally, it relieson calculative thinking and on the scientific tradition as the mostviable civilizational horizon of a budding region, whose tortuous anduncertain transition to modernity may necessitate an imaginativestrand of thinking. Triumphant techno-scientific dogmas need not leadinevitably to the devastation, excesses and wastefulness of post-industrial consumerist cultures. They need not to be a model for anAfrican modernity, which can avoid being exceedingly obsessed, en-framed or ordered by technology.
Humans, knowledge and technology are co-emerging, co-evolutive andmutually co-constitutive of each other. And as soon as we are born weenter into a corrupted reality: corrupted by ancient customarythinking, viewpoints and taboos; corrupted by ancestors' tyrannies,norms and ideals; corrupted by the veiling visions of pre-contemporarycosmologies, revelations and prophecies; corrupted by inherited alienreligious canons and credos - including those of ConstantinianChristianity and Imperial Islam, which from a scientific perspectivecan be assimilated to blind lotteries (confirmed by statistics) ofself-confirming systems of medieval thinking, superstitions andprejudices; corrupted by lies, mis-information and deceptions;corrupted by spirits, divinities and other cultural paradigms; and,more universally, corrupted by conventional modes of thinking,knowing, understanding and being.
The strategy of Subversive Rationalization aims at freeing,'uncorrupting' or modernizing mentalities and mindscapes, thus openingthe way to the emergence of some brand of original modernity on theAfrican continent, going further than the simple ownership and displayof modernity's most visible technological gadgets and gizmos. It aimsat reforming the technological code with key technologies: of theself, of sign, of freedom, of change, of creativity, of power and oftruth. These technologies are fundamental for guiding the 'rebirth' ofthe self, or for cultivating the 'reborn' Afro-self as a more modernself; for enlarging the freedom necessary for the required societaltransformations; for evolving effective technological symbols andmeanings, such as those of a generous and mobilizing vision of amodern Africa; for designing and manufacturing appropriate materialartefacts; for innovating in processes of change, includingtechnologically-induced socio-cultural change; for reordering powerconfigurations; and for uncovering, producing or reconstructing truth- an essential technology in a sea of lies, half-truths, self-delusions, clichés, cock-and-bull stories, and an importantconstitutive element of modernity.
If 'ideas shape the course of history' (Keynes) or if 'imaginationshapes history' (Napoleon) then access to modernity entails going pastinflationary rhetorical discourse, utopian dreams and ceremonialentertainments. It requires subversive ideas and actions and amethodology that can engineer radical and terribly complex adjustmentsin the intricate inner working of African communities. It calls forcritical thinking, dialogue, self-examination, 'self-exorcism' andoutright 'war' against the conservative supremacy of the status quoand the authority structures that maintain it. This cannot beachieved through somewhat academic, elitist and reductionistpolicies. The basic choice facing the region is between customaryreligio-mythic, idolatrous or astonishingly over-religious rules, onthe one hand, and enlightening development regimes substantiated bycontrolled experiences, on the other hand.
The relative bottom position of most African countries in the techno-scientific global order is beyond dispute and current STI strategiesmay leave half the region as deprived as ever, blown by the fiercewinds of technologization and globalization, locked into scientificand technical dependency and unable to meet key MDGs. In thesecircumstances, a strategy of Subversive Rationalization may be helpfulfor putting in place new foundational power-knowledge frameworks andconfigurations, and for improving the African condition.
The African problematic of low exploitation of science and technologyis well known in details and is often understood as the main reasonbehind the region's poor socio-economic performance. In this lowtechno-scientific environment, attempts to give substance to the ideaof an African Renaissance and comparable initiatives, haveproliferated: Nyerre's Ujamaa, Mobutu's Authenticité, Sengor'sNégritude, Nkruma's Conciencism, Kenyata's Harambee, Wade's Omega,Bouteflika's Ennahda Movement, Mbeki's 'Call to Rebellion' (1998) -let alone the vision of the Commission for Africa. These initiativeshave mostly been successful at developing, justifying andcommunicating specific visions of modernity. But they also all havebeen failures because they have not only under-estimated the colossaleffort required for achieving the necessary makeovers but they alsoconveniently ignored the most important changes to bring about: thepainful modernization of the mythological landscape, including pre-modern Abrahamic, Shamanic and Animist mythologies. These changesimply a paradigmatic shift toward scientific ways of observing,questioning, analyzing and knowing or toward science as the latestmyth or the new religion of the time that can propel the continentinto some kind of modernity.
Rationalization refers to a maturation process guided by thescientific method and by instrumental reason, more than by fairy talelegacies, superstitions, revealed or divine knowledge, as historicallyenvisioned by prominent Enlightenment philosophers and scientists ofthe 16th and 17th centuries. This rationalization enables bettercontrol and more accurate calculation of means to achieve preciseends, resulting in superior technological or technical effectivenessand flexibility, and in greater industrial advance. Modernizingnations are more ideologically open or keener to mathematize andchannel the forces of nature for their own benefit. And they are moreoriented toward the corrosion of doubt - believing in things thatcan be empirically supported -- and toward improving lives in thisworld (rather than in the after-life). In these mindsets, there areno place for Jonas-in-the-whale type of spellbound stories, amazingarchangels, absurd limbos, far-fetched miracles, occult forces andprovidential intrusions. Reality is what is perceived throughtechnological means. This results in developing societies beingprogressively subverted into essentially more 'advanced', enlightenedor disenchanted ones.
Subversion refers to a process of overthrowing or overturning systemsof principles and convictions as well as forms of dominance, controland power that are incompatible with or are not sustained byinstrumental rationality and renovation processes. These processesresult in the uprooting of totalizing, oppressive or terror structuresthat obstruct the way to modern manners of grasping reality - fromterrorizing gods and demons, authoritative governments, phallocraticecclesiasts, polygamous masters, mystifying medicine men to cloisteredwomen, domestic slaves, mutilated girls and abducted brides. Astrategy of Subversive Rationalization, therefore, means clearing theway toward more pragmatic, empirical and mechanical worldviews and atcritically challenging pre-modern systems from un-enabling governancestructures, including commanding husbands, as well as fromconstraining cosmological and ideological formations, whether home-grown or alien.
The strategy of Subversive Rationalization intends to probe theknowledge-power-technology gaps with modern / scientific modes ofperceiving. Filling this gap necessitates not only acquiring newtypes of information, such as scientific, technical and business, butalso abandoning some habitual or pre-scientific types of knowledgethat stands in the way to progress and modernity. As much endeavourmay be required to unlearn or deconstruct a pre-modern realityacquired through acculturation and socialization, than to learn newscientific and technical knowledge and a new version of reality.
Scientific proficiency is by far the trickiest to achieve since itoften comes in conflict with long-established traditional knowledgeedifices, which may not be seriously altered without social andpolitical struggles. Undeniably, pre-modern spiritual constructions,including those originating from the Middle-East and ancient Arabia,tend to mesmerize, domesticate or subjugate African societies, leavinginsufficient room for true scientific ways of viewing, judging,behaving, existing and living. These scientific ways must gain groundover non-scientific ways.
In a strategy of Subversive Rationalization, medieval faith-basedrepresentations, infrastructures and institutions, such as theinstitution of Heaven / Hell - amongst the most powerful establishmentregulating the lives of Africans - are superseded or supplanted by newthinking, unleashing the power of efficient systems, such assuccessful innovation systems.
Indeed, Evangelical and Qur'anicmodels, although of relatively recent human construction, may lackdecisive values for accessing modernity, such as democraticgovernance; the complete utilization of feminine talents andaptitudes; affection and care for nature; a concern for the future;superiority of scientific methods and hypotheses over 'gaseous' orprophetic knowledge; a strong focus on life before death and a lessfatalistic attitude toward the lifeworld and poverty - allindispensable preconditions for uncovering modernity. In manycircumstances mytho-religious texts and documents - promoted by apervasive and expanding physical and human infrastructure (not exactlya hotspring of fresh worldviews) - may constitute a virtual owner'smanual for one's life. This is especially so for Africans-of-one-book, which under certain conditions may not be conducive toparadigmatic innovation. Only techno-scientific knowledge can sustainthe deep transformations to modernity.
Subversive Rationalization requires pushing back fabulous or pre-scientific beliefs formations in order to clear a space or a pathwayfor more scientific views and practices. The central tussle is beingplayed between various categories of knowledge - from scientificallyfounded to unfounded. This could be the crucible where a meaningfulAfrican modernity could emerge, through a redefinition of cultural,social, economic, ideological, mythological and politicalrelationships with science and technology.
Technology is more than a tool or an instrument at our disposal. It isalso an organizing activity in which humans themselves are organized.The more technologies evolve and become ubiquitous the more humans arethemselves transformed and organized into resources, raw material,system components, toys, cogs, devices and sex organs and optimizedfor the sake of system efficiency - the essence of technology. Theoutcome is easier and more secure and prosperous ways of life, butdominated and regulated by the rigorous disciplinary order oftechnical systems. In this framework, the African youth struggles tobecome 'efficient' resource in the global job market, while technologymainly reveals Africa as a collection of folkloric curiosities, and animmense fuel station coveted for powering the global technologicalengine.
A techno-scientific renewal through a strategy of SubversiveRationalization could be helpful in promoting Pan-African integrationand in responding to the special needs of the region. It could besupportive in revitalizing, refreshing, unifying and integratingknowledge systems in African territories. These systems are greatlyfractured, compartmented, 'medievalized' and largely unscientificallyfounded (Muslim / Christian division and exclusive possession),balkanized (by six colonizing powers), fragmented (+ 1000 idioms andworldviews), and mythologized (with indigenous and foreignsuperstitions). Knowledge is also sometimes monopolized (non-sharingknowledge practices and ethos), atomized (not part of any advancedinternational knowledge networks), decontextualized (uprooted,transplanted from the technologically-advanced areas), unused orunderused (scientists as taxi drivers), misappropriated (by powerhungry sources), under or mis-professionalized (shamanic knowledge),misapplied (ecocidal) or misinterpreted (disregarding scientificrevolutions). African knowledge is also somewhat being eroded(extinct or dying knowledge), canned (ready-made shipped in a pre-packaged fashion), drained (brains seeking greener pasture), rarelyrented (against royalty payments) and always somewhat plagued withancestors-,Western- and phallo-centricity. A strategy of SubversiveRationalization would provide an enhanced and more modern ordering ofknowledge and reality.
Current science, technology, innovation and knowledge policyapproaches remain hopelessly naïve and basically adjunct to the actualworking of knowledge economies. They do not address the issuesspecifically related to a region a bit 'stained' with pre-modernhabits of mind, languages and views of the universe and life. They donot put enough emphasis on the structural-constitutional issues thathave stabilized many African spaces into pre-modern technological waysof life (with some growing islands of imitative modernization). Thesespaces can graduate into some sort of modernity through a moreintensive, rational, unfettered and popular use of avant-gardescience, technology and knowledge and with the requisite mental orintellectual costumes of modern times.
Free-thinkers, scientists, policymakers and stakeholders could beinfluential in contextualizing and supporting a strategy of SubversiveRationalization in the African region. In line and in full support ofNEPAD, they could commit themselves to building competences foracquiring and incorporating vital techno-scientific knowledge instrategic areas and to encouraging and utilizing science as a way ofthinking, which fortunately or unfortunately, is highly injurious anddetrimental to time-honoured traditional or pre-modern myths,prejudices, doctrines, tenets, precepts, credos, faiths or fantasies.
A strategy of Subversive Rationalization could entrust opinion makersand the scientific and entrepreneurial communities to sound courses ofaction such as strengthening capacities for converting or revampingexisting traditional knowledge systems, including faith-based systems,and for restructuring or recreating reality. These could includeAfricanizing, decolonizing, indigenizing, liberating, re-cosmologizing, re-mythologizing, re-charlatanizing, re-prophetizing,re-sacralizing and re-deifying processes for a different Africanadventure, driven by thriving methodical ways of thinking andscientific practices..In summary the strategy of Subversive Rationalization uses the powerof scientific thought to launch a counter hegemonic offensive in orderto subvert disabling traditional and repressive knowledge-power ordersthat stand in the way to a new realism, or to the rejuvenation andreconstruction of the African reality. The strategy may be valuablefor bringing about a post-totemic, post-enchanted, post-Abrahamic,post-phallocratic, post-colonial and post-fragmented regional spaceand in moving Africa forward into a distinctive, creative, secular andauthentic form of modernity.
Jacques L. Hamel
ARSTA Blog Contributor
The strategy relies on scientific knowledge, which offers onlyincomplete and patchy theories of the real but nonetheless possiblythe best models of reality, for reordering and reconstructing theAfrican reality and for engaging it with up to date, robust andeconomically efficient technical know-how. More generally, it relieson calculative thinking and on the scientific tradition as the mostviable civilizational horizon of a budding region, whose tortuous anduncertain transition to modernity may necessitate an imaginativestrand of thinking. Triumphant techno-scientific dogmas need not leadinevitably to the devastation, excesses and wastefulness of post-industrial consumerist cultures. They need not to be a model for anAfrican modernity, which can avoid being exceedingly obsessed, en-framed or ordered by technology.
Humans, knowledge and technology are co-emerging, co-evolutive andmutually co-constitutive of each other. And as soon as we are born weenter into a corrupted reality: corrupted by ancient customarythinking, viewpoints and taboos; corrupted by ancestors' tyrannies,norms and ideals; corrupted by the veiling visions of pre-contemporarycosmologies, revelations and prophecies; corrupted by inherited alienreligious canons and credos - including those of ConstantinianChristianity and Imperial Islam, which from a scientific perspectivecan be assimilated to blind lotteries (confirmed by statistics) ofself-confirming systems of medieval thinking, superstitions andprejudices; corrupted by lies, mis-information and deceptions;corrupted by spirits, divinities and other cultural paradigms; and,more universally, corrupted by conventional modes of thinking,knowing, understanding and being.
The strategy of Subversive Rationalization aims at freeing,'uncorrupting' or modernizing mentalities and mindscapes, thus openingthe way to the emergence of some brand of original modernity on theAfrican continent, going further than the simple ownership and displayof modernity's most visible technological gadgets and gizmos. It aimsat reforming the technological code with key technologies: of theself, of sign, of freedom, of change, of creativity, of power and oftruth. These technologies are fundamental for guiding the 'rebirth' ofthe self, or for cultivating the 'reborn' Afro-self as a more modernself; for enlarging the freedom necessary for the required societaltransformations; for evolving effective technological symbols andmeanings, such as those of a generous and mobilizing vision of amodern Africa; for designing and manufacturing appropriate materialartefacts; for innovating in processes of change, includingtechnologically-induced socio-cultural change; for reordering powerconfigurations; and for uncovering, producing or reconstructing truth- an essential technology in a sea of lies, half-truths, self-delusions, clichés, cock-and-bull stories, and an importantconstitutive element of modernity.
If 'ideas shape the course of history' (Keynes) or if 'imaginationshapes history' (Napoleon) then access to modernity entails going pastinflationary rhetorical discourse, utopian dreams and ceremonialentertainments. It requires subversive ideas and actions and amethodology that can engineer radical and terribly complex adjustmentsin the intricate inner working of African communities. It calls forcritical thinking, dialogue, self-examination, 'self-exorcism' andoutright 'war' against the conservative supremacy of the status quoand the authority structures that maintain it. This cannot beachieved through somewhat academic, elitist and reductionistpolicies. The basic choice facing the region is between customaryreligio-mythic, idolatrous or astonishingly over-religious rules, onthe one hand, and enlightening development regimes substantiated bycontrolled experiences, on the other hand.
The relative bottom position of most African countries in the techno-scientific global order is beyond dispute and current STI strategiesmay leave half the region as deprived as ever, blown by the fiercewinds of technologization and globalization, locked into scientificand technical dependency and unable to meet key MDGs. In thesecircumstances, a strategy of Subversive Rationalization may be helpfulfor putting in place new foundational power-knowledge frameworks andconfigurations, and for improving the African condition.
The African problematic of low exploitation of science and technologyis well known in details and is often understood as the main reasonbehind the region's poor socio-economic performance. In this lowtechno-scientific environment, attempts to give substance to the ideaof an African Renaissance and comparable initiatives, haveproliferated: Nyerre's Ujamaa, Mobutu's Authenticité, Sengor'sNégritude, Nkruma's Conciencism, Kenyata's Harambee, Wade's Omega,Bouteflika's Ennahda Movement, Mbeki's 'Call to Rebellion' (1998) -let alone the vision of the Commission for Africa. These initiativeshave mostly been successful at developing, justifying andcommunicating specific visions of modernity. But they also all havebeen failures because they have not only under-estimated the colossaleffort required for achieving the necessary makeovers but they alsoconveniently ignored the most important changes to bring about: thepainful modernization of the mythological landscape, including pre-modern Abrahamic, Shamanic and Animist mythologies. These changesimply a paradigmatic shift toward scientific ways of observing,questioning, analyzing and knowing or toward science as the latestmyth or the new religion of the time that can propel the continentinto some kind of modernity.
Rationalization refers to a maturation process guided by thescientific method and by instrumental reason, more than by fairy talelegacies, superstitions, revealed or divine knowledge, as historicallyenvisioned by prominent Enlightenment philosophers and scientists ofthe 16th and 17th centuries. This rationalization enables bettercontrol and more accurate calculation of means to achieve preciseends, resulting in superior technological or technical effectivenessand flexibility, and in greater industrial advance. Modernizingnations are more ideologically open or keener to mathematize andchannel the forces of nature for their own benefit. And they are moreoriented toward the corrosion of doubt - believing in things thatcan be empirically supported -- and toward improving lives in thisworld (rather than in the after-life). In these mindsets, there areno place for Jonas-in-the-whale type of spellbound stories, amazingarchangels, absurd limbos, far-fetched miracles, occult forces andprovidential intrusions. Reality is what is perceived throughtechnological means. This results in developing societies beingprogressively subverted into essentially more 'advanced', enlightenedor disenchanted ones.
Subversion refers to a process of overthrowing or overturning systemsof principles and convictions as well as forms of dominance, controland power that are incompatible with or are not sustained byinstrumental rationality and renovation processes. These processesresult in the uprooting of totalizing, oppressive or terror structuresthat obstruct the way to modern manners of grasping reality - fromterrorizing gods and demons, authoritative governments, phallocraticecclesiasts, polygamous masters, mystifying medicine men to cloisteredwomen, domestic slaves, mutilated girls and abducted brides. Astrategy of Subversive Rationalization, therefore, means clearing theway toward more pragmatic, empirical and mechanical worldviews and atcritically challenging pre-modern systems from un-enabling governancestructures, including commanding husbands, as well as fromconstraining cosmological and ideological formations, whether home-grown or alien.
The strategy of Subversive Rationalization intends to probe theknowledge-power-technology gaps with modern / scientific modes ofperceiving. Filling this gap necessitates not only acquiring newtypes of information, such as scientific, technical and business, butalso abandoning some habitual or pre-scientific types of knowledgethat stands in the way to progress and modernity. As much endeavourmay be required to unlearn or deconstruct a pre-modern realityacquired through acculturation and socialization, than to learn newscientific and technical knowledge and a new version of reality.
Scientific proficiency is by far the trickiest to achieve since itoften comes in conflict with long-established traditional knowledgeedifices, which may not be seriously altered without social andpolitical struggles. Undeniably, pre-modern spiritual constructions,including those originating from the Middle-East and ancient Arabia,tend to mesmerize, domesticate or subjugate African societies, leavinginsufficient room for true scientific ways of viewing, judging,behaving, existing and living. These scientific ways must gain groundover non-scientific ways.
In a strategy of Subversive Rationalization, medieval faith-basedrepresentations, infrastructures and institutions, such as theinstitution of Heaven / Hell - amongst the most powerful establishmentregulating the lives of Africans - are superseded or supplanted by newthinking, unleashing the power of efficient systems, such assuccessful innovation systems.
Indeed, Evangelical and Qur'anicmodels, although of relatively recent human construction, may lackdecisive values for accessing modernity, such as democraticgovernance; the complete utilization of feminine talents andaptitudes; affection and care for nature; a concern for the future;superiority of scientific methods and hypotheses over 'gaseous' orprophetic knowledge; a strong focus on life before death and a lessfatalistic attitude toward the lifeworld and poverty - allindispensable preconditions for uncovering modernity. In manycircumstances mytho-religious texts and documents - promoted by apervasive and expanding physical and human infrastructure (not exactlya hotspring of fresh worldviews) - may constitute a virtual owner'smanual for one's life. This is especially so for Africans-of-one-book, which under certain conditions may not be conducive toparadigmatic innovation. Only techno-scientific knowledge can sustainthe deep transformations to modernity.
Subversive Rationalization requires pushing back fabulous or pre-scientific beliefs formations in order to clear a space or a pathwayfor more scientific views and practices. The central tussle is beingplayed between various categories of knowledge - from scientificallyfounded to unfounded. This could be the crucible where a meaningfulAfrican modernity could emerge, through a redefinition of cultural,social, economic, ideological, mythological and politicalrelationships with science and technology.
Technology is more than a tool or an instrument at our disposal. It isalso an organizing activity in which humans themselves are organized.The more technologies evolve and become ubiquitous the more humans arethemselves transformed and organized into resources, raw material,system components, toys, cogs, devices and sex organs and optimizedfor the sake of system efficiency - the essence of technology. Theoutcome is easier and more secure and prosperous ways of life, butdominated and regulated by the rigorous disciplinary order oftechnical systems. In this framework, the African youth struggles tobecome 'efficient' resource in the global job market, while technologymainly reveals Africa as a collection of folkloric curiosities, and animmense fuel station coveted for powering the global technologicalengine.
A techno-scientific renewal through a strategy of SubversiveRationalization could be helpful in promoting Pan-African integrationand in responding to the special needs of the region. It could besupportive in revitalizing, refreshing, unifying and integratingknowledge systems in African territories. These systems are greatlyfractured, compartmented, 'medievalized' and largely unscientificallyfounded (Muslim / Christian division and exclusive possession),balkanized (by six colonizing powers), fragmented (+ 1000 idioms andworldviews), and mythologized (with indigenous and foreignsuperstitions). Knowledge is also sometimes monopolized (non-sharingknowledge practices and ethos), atomized (not part of any advancedinternational knowledge networks), decontextualized (uprooted,transplanted from the technologically-advanced areas), unused orunderused (scientists as taxi drivers), misappropriated (by powerhungry sources), under or mis-professionalized (shamanic knowledge),misapplied (ecocidal) or misinterpreted (disregarding scientificrevolutions). African knowledge is also somewhat being eroded(extinct or dying knowledge), canned (ready-made shipped in a pre-packaged fashion), drained (brains seeking greener pasture), rarelyrented (against royalty payments) and always somewhat plagued withancestors-,Western- and phallo-centricity. A strategy of SubversiveRationalization would provide an enhanced and more modern ordering ofknowledge and reality.
Current science, technology, innovation and knowledge policyapproaches remain hopelessly naïve and basically adjunct to the actualworking of knowledge economies. They do not address the issuesspecifically related to a region a bit 'stained' with pre-modernhabits of mind, languages and views of the universe and life. They donot put enough emphasis on the structural-constitutional issues thathave stabilized many African spaces into pre-modern technological waysof life (with some growing islands of imitative modernization). Thesespaces can graduate into some sort of modernity through a moreintensive, rational, unfettered and popular use of avant-gardescience, technology and knowledge and with the requisite mental orintellectual costumes of modern times.
Free-thinkers, scientists, policymakers and stakeholders could beinfluential in contextualizing and supporting a strategy of SubversiveRationalization in the African region. In line and in full support ofNEPAD, they could commit themselves to building competences foracquiring and incorporating vital techno-scientific knowledge instrategic areas and to encouraging and utilizing science as a way ofthinking, which fortunately or unfortunately, is highly injurious anddetrimental to time-honoured traditional or pre-modern myths,prejudices, doctrines, tenets, precepts, credos, faiths or fantasies.
A strategy of Subversive Rationalization could entrust opinion makersand the scientific and entrepreneurial communities to sound courses ofaction such as strengthening capacities for converting or revampingexisting traditional knowledge systems, including faith-based systems,and for restructuring or recreating reality. These could includeAfricanizing, decolonizing, indigenizing, liberating, re-cosmologizing, re-mythologizing, re-charlatanizing, re-prophetizing,re-sacralizing and re-deifying processes for a different Africanadventure, driven by thriving methodical ways of thinking andscientific practices..In summary the strategy of Subversive Rationalization uses the powerof scientific thought to launch a counter hegemonic offensive in orderto subvert disabling traditional and repressive knowledge-power ordersthat stand in the way to a new realism, or to the rejuvenation andreconstruction of the African reality. The strategy may be valuablefor bringing about a post-totemic, post-enchanted, post-Abrahamic,post-phallocratic, post-colonial and post-fragmented regional spaceand in moving Africa forward into a distinctive, creative, secular andauthentic form of modernity.
Jacques L. Hamel
ARSTA Blog Contributor
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